Ferdinand Staeger

Ferdinand Staeger (born March 3, 1880 in Trebitsch , Austria-Hungary , † September 11, 1976 in Waldkraiburg , Bavaria) was a German painter and graphic artist . Staeger is also known as an illustrator and draftsman for tapestries and lace ceilings . His wife Sidonie Springer (1878–1937), who after marriage also bore her husband's family name, was also a painter and graphic artist.

Life

Ferdinand Staeger attended the textile design college in Brno from 1894 to 1896 and then the applied arts school in Prague until 1902 . There the old Prague charmed him with its Renaissance - architecture , the Vltava river , its bridges and quiet streets. In 1903 he went to Vienna , but returned to Prague again in 1904, where he stayed until 1908. In his early works there are many views from the surroundings of Třebíč , the Jihlava River and the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands . In 1907 he received an unusual commission for his young age to paint the frescoes in the parish church of St. Thomas in Neuern in the Bohemian Forest . After completion of this extensive work, he moved in 1908 with his wife to Munich and was artistic associate of the Art Nouveau - magazine Youth . During the First World War , he worked as a war draftsman in the art group of the Austro-Hungarian War Press Office from June 23, 1915 , initially in Poland and the Ukraine , and shortly before his release in autumn 1918 on the Italian front . After the First World War he illustrated numerous literary works, including a. von Eichendorff , Eduard Mörike , Adalbert Stifter , Gerhart Hauptmann and others.

In 1920 Richard Braungart wrote about Staeger in the German art and decoration magazine : “Staeger's art in the lines, his drawing and, above all, the spirit in his leaves is unique ... trees, houses, clouds and mountains, people and animals are alike , he knows no differences, which is why he embraces everything that the eye imagines with the same love. Fir branches, squirrels, grass and flowers, stones and leaves, the artist perceives everything with equal importance and puts the emphasis on care ... Staeger is not always an idealist as in these and similar leaves. In any case, it would be wrong to call him an optimist. Some of his works are painfully marked by the war; it is as if the downfall of the ideals of the high-born and saints is reflected in them. "

Staeger was not unaffected by the art ideology of the Third Reich and painted some typical Nazi paintings during this time, including Panzer am Versuchsplatz (1941) and the oil painting Defense against Eastern incursions (1943). Nazi honors were the award of the title of professor on the birthday of the "Führer" (1938) and the Goethe Medal for Art and Science (1940). Between 1938 and 1944 he participated in the Great German Art Exhibitions in the Munich House of German Art with a total of 31 works.

Bombed out in Munich, he moved to Penzberg in Upper Bavaria in mid-May 1945 . His painterly style in the years after the Second World War was a moderate impressionism , but there were also works on mythical - legendary , mystical or religious subjects, allegorical representations and his etchings with fine and precise lines that no other artist of his time did were own. Staeger was a graphic artist full of rich imagination. His graphic works cannot be characterized more accurately than Herbert Wessely with mystical realism .

After the death of his wife in 1957, he moved to Waldkraiburg , where he lived until the end of his life and still worked intensively. The British Queen Elisabeth II visited him there in 1965 as part of her visit to Germany.

In 1975, a year before Staeger's death, Herbert Wessely paid tribute to Staeger's work in his book Mystischer Realismus . Wessely comes to the conclusion that Staeger is to be counted among those representatives of the Munich painting established in Art Nouveau who had in no way come into contact with other currents of modernism .

Ferdinand Staeger was a member of the German Association of Artists .

Works (selection)

• Graphic portfolios and book illustrations: Forest legend , Junge Liebe , poems (Uhland, 1911), The Mastersingers of Nuremberg (12 sheets, Kern, Munich, 1921), Gerhart Hauptmann portfolio (15 sheets, Seitz, Düsseldorf, 1923), Tuti Nameh (1921), Mozart on the trip to Prague (Mörike, 1919), Das Stuttgarter Hutzelmännlein (Mörike, 1920), Die Narrenburg (Stifter, 1919), Bunte Steine (Stifter, 1920), The Rainbow (Ginzkey, 1924), Sun fairy tales (Karola Bassermann, 1920), fairy tales from 1001 nights (1919), German poems in silhouettes (1908), Happy Walking (1930), illustrations in the youth and numerous bookplates .
• Paintings : Farmer with wheelbarrows (oil canvas, Munich, Neue Pinakothek ), Schwarzer See (oil canvas, Munich, Städtische Galerie Lenbachhaus), SS -Wache (oil canvas), Wir sind die Werksoldaten (oil canvas), The Polish campaign (oil canvas), Political Front (oil canvas), Battle of the Centaurs (oil canvas, private collection), Destroyed Schwabing (oil canvas, private collection, Munich), Anny Staeger (oil canvas, private collection), The Key ( Oil canvas, private collection), Plowing Farmer ( watercolor , private collection), Prague (watercolor, private collection), Sic transit gloria mundi (watercolor), Adam and Eve (watercolor), Wintersnot (watercolor, private collection Munich), Grazing Pegasus (watercolor) . The numerous works that are in the depots of the Waldkraiburg City Museum are not mentioned here.
• Frescoes: Parish Church of St. Thomas, Neuern in Bohemia
• Tapestry canvas: love spring

Collections

• Waldkraiburg City Museum
• New Pinakothek Munich
• Municipal gallery in the Lenbachhaus
• Army History Museum , Vienna
• Albertina (Vienna)
• State Graphic Collection Munich

Exhibitions

• 1920 Munich, Glaspalast Munich
• 1927 Munich, Graphic Collection Munich
• Karlsruhe
• Wurzburg
• Vienna
• Paris
• Barcelona
• 1933 Brno
• 1934 Prague
• 1974 Waldkraiburg
• 1992 auction over the estate of Staeger in the collection of his sister Anny Staeger at K & K Ekkehard Kettner in Munich
• 1992 sales exhibition "Das Graphisches Werk Staegers" at K&K Ekkehard Kettner in Munich
• 2005 Waldkraiburg, City Museum, "Ferdinand Staeger for his 125th birthday".

literature

• Reinhold Conrad Muschler: Ferdinand Staeger. A monograph XIX 354 p., Numerous. Fig. Black / white, Leipzig 1925, Max Koch publishing house
• Staeger, Ferdinand . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 31 : Siemering – Stephens . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1937, p. 440 .
• Ferdinand Staeger . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 4 : Q-U . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1958, p. 337 .
• Richard Braungart: Ferdinand Staeger. With 15 illustrations. In: Reclam's universe. 34, 1918, pp. 430-435.
• Exhibition catalog Kunstverein, Frankfurt Main: Art in the 3rd Reich, documents of submission. Frankfurt am Main 1974, p. 177.
• Herbert Wessely: Ferdinand Staeger. Mystical realism. Munich 1975.
• Berthold Kinz: Painting in German Fascism. Munich 1974, p. 319.
• Exhibition catalog Munich City Museum, Munich: The Twenties in Munich. Munich 1979, p. 765.
• Exhibition catalog Stadtmuseum Waldkraiburg: Ferdinand Staeger on his 125th birthday. Waldkraiburg 2005.

Web links

• Literature by and about Ferdinand Staeger in the catalog of the German National Library
• Staeger, Ferdinand . In: East German Biography (Kulturportal West-Ost)
• Pedigree (accessed December 19, 2014)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Eva Obermayer-Marnach: Springer, Sidonie; married Staeger . In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 . tape 13 , 59. Delivery: Spanner Anton Carl – Staudigl Oskar . Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 2007, p. 54–55 ( biographien.ac.at - online edition).
2. ↑ Walter Reichel: "Press work is propaganda work" - Media Administration 1914-1918: The War Press Quarter (KPQ). Communications from the Austrian State Archives (MÖStA), special volume 13, Studienverlag, Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-7065-5582-1 , p. 184.
3. ↑ s. Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 (= The time of National Socialism. Volume 17153). Completely revised edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-596-17153-8 , p. 523.
4. ↑ Database of the Central Institute for Art History, German Historical Museum and House of Art: Information on all exhibited works of art.
5. ↑ kuenstlerbund.de: Full members of the German Association of Artists since it was founded in 1903 / Staeger, Ferdinand ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on March 19, 2016) 
6. ↑ Ernst Wilhelm Bredt: On Ferdinand Staeger's "Forest Legend" . In: Art for everyone: painting, sculpture, graphics, architecture . Issue 3/4, November 1918, pp. 57-60 ( digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de ).