Franz M. Jansen

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Franz M. Jansen , often incorrectly also: Franz Maria Jansen , but correctly the "M." stands for Mathilde, the name of his wife, see below, (* February 4, 1885 in Cologne as Franz Lambert Jansen ; † May 21 1958 in Büchel (Ruppichteroth) , Siegkreis ) was a German painter and graphic artist . He was an important representative of modern art and German expressionism .

life and work

Franz M. Jansen studied from 1905 to 1906 Architecture at the Technical University in Karlsruhe . From 1906 to 1910 he was a master student at the Academy of Arts in Vienna . His early work, created during these years, was still strongly symbolistic in terms of content and its arabesque lines were also influenced by Art Nouveau . After his return to Cologne , Franz Maria Jansen became a member of the German Association of Artists . In 1911 Jansen was one of the founders of the “ Cologne Secession ” and the Gereons Club . In 1912 he became a member of the Berlin Secession . Jansen's own artistic development is essentially determined by his choice of artistic means of expression, etching, and wood and linocut . Although he also tried his hand at oil paintings during this time (including winning the silver medal of the city of Cologne for his panorama picture Am Rhein ), it was mainly his early graphic portfolios and cycles that made him famous. The cycle 6 days from the life of a boy emerged in a short time , then on a trip to Italy that took him to Venice in 1913, the cycle The Black Gondolas , and finally the portfolios Die Industrie and The Iron Rhine . The last two portfolios mentioned were created by Ernst Isselmann, who was a friend and friend of the same age . They were studio neighbors in the bridge tower of the Ruhrort-Homberger Rheinbrücke in Duisburg. Isselmann was an avid sailor and they went on many tours together.

In the First World War he did his military service from 1915 to 1918, in 1917 he married the painter Fifi Kreutzer , whose first name Mathilde he took out of affection as "M." in his artist name. In 1918 he wrote his manifesto On Expressionism . From 1918 to 1925 he had intensive contacts with Franz Pfemfert's magazine Die Aktion . Franz M. Jansen was in close contact with other painters like Carlo Mense and writers like Hermann Hesse . In 1919 he moved to Winterscheid in the Siegkreis , in 1920 he lived in Hamburg for some time .

From 1928 to 1930, Jansen's works were shown at the Deutscher Graphik selections in Paris , Zurich , Amsterdam , Warsaw , Cleveland , Detroit , Chicago and Buenos Aires . In 1934 Jansen moved to Büchel , where he lived and worked until his death.

Under the National Socialist regime, Jansen was not one of the artists who had to leave Germany, such as George Grosz or Franz Pfemfert . Jansen's monumental oil paintings of New Objectivity adapted to these norms early on, and so it was logically shown in March 1933 at a jury-free exhibition in Berlin. His membership in the professional organization of the " Reich Chamber of Culture " was necessary for this participation.

In 1934, Jansen and Jakob Berwanger created the wall paintings in Cologne University under the motto German man in German landscape (figure size 160 cm) after he had received first prize in a competition advertised by the university for his design German races . In 1937 the city of Cologne ordered the oil painting Rhine view for the "State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of the Interior and Reich Sports Leader" Hans von Tschammer und Osten (1887–1943) and in 1940 it bought the Cologne pictures of the cathedral towers and Winter Evening (both oil). Jansen designed the team dining rooms and their outer walls in the barracks of Lüdenscheid in 1937 on behalf of the Wehrmacht leadership with the monumental fresco Soldiers then and now . As in Cologne, the figures were 160 cm in size, the total height of the fresco was 2 m, the length around 30 m. When the Kölnischer Kunstverein dedicated a large solo exhibition to him on the occasion of his 50th birthday in 1935, he was shown in Hamburg at the traveling exhibition “ German Art in the Olympic Year 1936 ” (July 21 - September 20, 1936) and in March at the Taking part in a trade show at the Cologne Spring Fair, the National Socialist rulers remembered his socialist past.

Because of his writings on Expressionism, which were created in the early 1920s, and his woodcuts (especially in the magazine Die Aktion ), 157 works by Jansen were confiscated as " degenerate art ". Jansen was not banned from painting, but at the large exhibition “Degenerate Art” in Munich (July 19 - November 30, 1937), one of his woodcuts from the Wallraf-Richartz Museum was shown in a showcase .

In the following years, however, Jansen could again be seen with regime-compliant art at the exhibitions Kraft durch Freude in the Hamburger Kunsthalle (1938) and From the German West in Cologne (1939).

In the traditional representations it is said that Jansen had to do his military service from 1944 to 1945. In fact, after 1939 he carried out commissions in occupied Poland in accordance with the Nazi concept of art. As part of the "Germanization" of conquered Polish territories aimed at by the Nazi regime, he designed a monumental mural for the former drapery hall on the market square of the town of Przedecz, which was renamed Moosburg (Wartheland) in October 1939. This painting consisted of four main pictures, each 6.5 meters long. In the first picture, Teutonic Knights were shown fortifying the former "Moosburg" during the 14th century. The second picture shows a parade of the guard during the capture of the city by Prussia in 1784. The third picture shows the invasion of the German Wehrmacht in 1939. The last picture shows an apotheosis of the Nazi resettlement programs “Heim ins Reich” - celebrated in the press as “the song of praise for the greatest migration of all times”. There were additional connectors between these main images; they each represented knights and soldiers from the periods shown, including SS and SA men with flag drapery.

The painterly realization of these monumental works was done by Jansen himself and his colleague Heiland. You were evidently released from the usual service obligations for this work. In a biographical compilation of a "study trip" to the "Eastern Territories" in 1943 is mentioned.

After the Second World War , he co-founded the Rheinisch-Bergischer Künstlerkreis in 1946 . A year after his death in Büchel in 1958, some of his works were shown posthumously in 1959 at documenta 2 in Kassel in the graphics department . Various exhibitions in the August-Macke-Haus in Bonn were dedicated to Franz M. Jansen and his wife Fifi Kreutzer-Jansen. A retrospective of his painterly work will be shown here at the beginning of 2008.

Works in museums and public collections

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ kuenstlerbund.de: Ordinary members of the German Association of Artists since it was founded in 1903 / Jansen, Franz Maria ( 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 September 1, 2015)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kuenstlerbund.de
  2. ^ Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 (= The time of National Socialism. Vol. 17153). Completely revised edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-596-17153-8 , p. 254 ( Jansen, Franz. Painter and graphic artist. ).

literature

  • Jansen, Franz M. In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists from Antiquity to the Present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 18 : Hubatsch – Ingouf . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1925, p. 396 .
  • Jansen, Franz Maria . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 2 : E-J . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1955, p. 530 .
  • Jansen, Franz Maria . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 6 , supplements H-Z . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1962, p. 96 .
  • Ulla Heise: Jansen, M. Franz . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 77, de Gruyter, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-023182-3 , p. 325X.
  • Exhibition catalog for documenta II (1959) in Kassel: II.documenta'59. Art after 1945 . Catalog. Kassel / Cologne 1959.
  • Franz M. Jansen: From then until now . Life memories. Edited by Magdalena Moeller, Landschaftsverband Rheinland (Hrsg.), Cologne 1981.
  • Wolfgang Delseit: Franz M. Jansen (1885–1958). In: Rheinische Lebensbilder XIV ; Cologne 1993.
  • Franz M. Jansen, Richard Dehmel: Two = people = pictures. Woodcuts. Compiled and provided with an afterword by Wolfgang Delseit. Cologne / Münster 1996. wodel.de
  • Ulrike Merholz: Franz M. Jansen. The graphic work 1910–1956 . Düsseldorf 1994 (catalog raisonné).
  • Report on the cloth hall in an old German town (author marked: PS). In: Litzmannstädter Zeitung , March 17, 1943. p. 4.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Jansen, Franz M.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jansen, Franz Maria; Jansen, Franz Mathilde; Jansen, Franz Lambert (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH February 4, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH May 21, 1958
Place of death Büchel (Ruppichteroth) , Siegkreis