Frieda Thiersch

Frieda Thiersch (* 2. July 1889 in Munich , † 10. July 1947 ibid.), Full name Bertha Frieda Maria Thiersch, was a German Kunstbuchbinderin, cover designer and graphic artist who instrumental in the development of the German book art movement after the First World War involved was. As head of the Bremen bindery , she was responsible for the design and execution of almost all of the covers for the Bremer Presse .

Life

Frieda Thiersch was born on July 2, 1889, the third of eight children of the renowned Munich architect Friedrich Maximilian Ritter von Thiersch and his wife Auguste. The author Berta Thiersch was her sister, the architect August Thiersch her uncle and the director and reformer of the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art in Halle , the architect Paul Thiersch , her cousin.

Youth and education

Frieda Thiersch grew up in an environment determined by the most varied of artistic influences. Anton Ažbe's painting school was located in a garden house on his parents' property, the Russian Pavilion , until 1905 , where artists such as Fanny Countess zu Reventlow  and Wassily Kandinsky studied. Frieda's parents attached great importance to her artistic upbringing and encouraged her talent for drawing from an early age. She was also involved in her father's artistic work; In 1905, when she was barely 16, she stood as a model for the Lower Bavarian sculptor Hans Drexler for the statue of Pallas Athene on the Maximiliansbrücke, which was newly built according to a design by Friedrich von Thiersch .

After finishing school, Frieda Thiersch studied from 1907 to 1910 at the Royal School of Applied Arts in Munich . An affair with her piano teacher, the chamber singer Ludwig Hess, resulted in an unwanted pregnancy at the end of 1909. Under pressure from her family, she left Munich and gave birth to her son Ernst Thomas on August 17, 1910 in Étrembières, France, near Geneva. She then handed the child over to relatives in Switzerland and traveled to London in November 1910 to learn the bookbinding trade in the newly founded workshop of the former head of the Doves Bindery , Charles McLeish. In November 1912 Frieda Thiersch returned to Germany and took a job with the Leipzig art bookbinder Carl Sonntag jun. to deepen their knowledge. In October 1913 she moved to Berlin and opened her first own workshop at Kurfürstenstraße 50.

The First World War

After a short time in Berlin, Frieda Thiersch got to know Willy Wiegand and Ludwig Wolde , the founders of the Bremer Presse , who asked them to take over the management of the press bookbinding shop, which was previously managed by PA Demeter , which she did the following year. The year the war began in 1914 brought hard blows of fate for Frieda Thiersch. Her younger sister Marie (* 1891) died on January 15, 1914, and her brother Heinrich died on the Western Front on October 22 . Together with her father, Frieda Thiersch also went to the Western Front, where she reported as a Red Cross nurse. Throughout the First World War , she stayed in military hospitals on various fronts.

The Bremen press

After a four and a half year break, Frieda Thiersch resumed her work in 1919. She first set up her workshop in her parents' villa, then on the first floor of the aforementioned summer house, the Russian Pavilion , Georgenstrasse 16a. Willy Wiegand acquired the house in 1921 and moved with the Bremen press, which was then based in Thomas Mann's former country house in Tölz , to the ground floor of the two-story wooden house.

In the production of its works, the Bremer Presse adhered to uncompromisingly extreme quality standards. Only classic works in literary relevant revisions were published. All of the printed letters were drawn by Willy Wiegand, cut by the die cutter Louis Hoell and by the Bauer type foundry in Frankfurt / M. cast for hand typesetting. The title and initials were drawn by hand by Anna Simons , a student of Edward Johnston, and also hand-cut in boxwood by the printer Josef Lehnacker. Was printed on specially handmade for the press papers on a hand press . Finally, the simple, almost strict bindings of the Thiersch workshop gave the publications of the press a dignified outer shell.

A partial edition of each work in the press was bound in full leather, a further part in full parchment and some remaining pieces in simple cardboard volumes, which enabled future owners to have their copy individually bound by a bookbinder of their choice. Frieda Thiersch used a number of recurring techniques that gave the entire series a unique, recognizable and extremely high-quality appearance. In order to preserve this appearance, Frieda Thiersch filed a lawsuit at the Munich district court in early 1922. She sued her former colleague Gustav Keilig, master bookbinder and member of the Association of Masters of Binding Art , for omission. Keilig had made parchment volumes that were very similar in their craftsmanship to those of the Bremen bindery. Frieda Thiersch then set six features which, in combination, were only allowed to come together on their bindings. Although it was all about classic bookbinding techniques, she was right in so far as Keilig had to undertake never to combine more than five of the listed features in one cover.

The high quality of the Bremen press had its price. The prices of the five-volume Bible edition from 1927 were between 85 RM and 425 RM per volume, depending on the type of cover and the type of gilding - based on today's purchasing power between 1400 euros and 7000 euros for all five volumes. Even the issue in the interim cardboard book cost 1250 RM (4150 euros). Due to the worsening economic situation, these prices were hardly realizable, and other orders were also missing. In 1934 the Bremen press was shut down and Frieda Thiersch was forced to dismiss a large part of her employees. In search of new sources of income, she founded a school for bookbinders in which she trained daughters from wealthy families for several years. Willy Wiegand completed some commissioned works from other publishers until 1939, then the Second World War completely ended the activities of the press.

Comeback under National Socialism

Before that, Frieda Thiersch had mainly, but not exclusively, worked for the press. Her high-quality bindings had earned her international recognition. In 1930 she was commissioned to produce a copy of the Missale Romanum (Verlag der Bremer Presse / Maria Laach Verlag) for the personal use of Pope Pius XI within just one and a half days . to bind and received a personal letter of thanks from the Pope. Her books have been featured in highly regarded exhibitions, such as the First Edition Club in London (1929), the World Exhibition in Barcelona (1929) and the Milan Triennale (1930, 1933, gold medal 1936). In 1937 she received the coveted gold medal at the Paris World Exhibition.

Borne by this fame, it was increasingly given state contracts during the Nazi era . With the remaining employees, she produced document folders, guest books, photo albums, cassettes and representative gift bindings for those in power in the Nazi regime. Many of her orders were created directly for Hitler's private needs. She achieved dubious prominence through the award certificates and portfolios for the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, which were created under the direction of Gerdy Troost . Gerdy Troost was the widow of the architect Paul Ludwig Troost , who developed the monumental style of National Socialism, and was personally patronized by Hitler. She secured the lucrative exclusive contract and had the Thiersch workshop carry out certificates and binding work. Franziska Kobell, a student of Anna Simons, wrote the certificates by hand on parchment, the bindings were designed and executed by Frieda Thiersch, and for the rich gilding of the patterns drawn by Frieda Thiersch (usually swastika variations intertwined in a meandering manner ) he drew Munich jeweler Franz Wandinger responsible.

The end of the Thiersch workshop

In 1944 the Russian pavilion at Georgenstrasse 16a was hit by an aerial bomb. A large part of Willy Wiegand's and Frieda Thiersch's book collections, as well as almost all documents, binding materials and tools, were destroyed by flames. Frieda Thiersch, meanwhile already suffering from lung cancer, set up a small workshop in Grassau im Chiemgau with the remaining funds , where she made patterns for lace blankets and carpets as well as small leather items such as purses and braided belts. Shortly after the end of the war, she moved again to an apartment in Munich, where she worked alone for another year. On June 11, 1947, she succumbed to cancer.

Of the few books and valuables that remained, ten copies were confiscated under mysterious circumstances by an alleged member of the American occupation forces. The remainder of Thiersch's inheritance came to the United States with her son. The first pieces from the estate came to American auction houses and museums as early as 1947. The remains of the property, mainly items of purely documentary or personal value, were sold to a militaria auctioneer in 2002 by Ernest Thiersch's daughter-in-law.

reception

The fascination for Frieda Thiersch's work has remained unbroken to this day. Not least because of its bindings, the Bremer Presse is often referred to as "the queen of the German presses", based on an essay by Josef Lehnacker. Works from the Atelier Thiersch are sought-after collector's items, and the document portfolios in particular are so highly traded that large amounts of forgeries are in circulation. Both in terms of style and content, Frieda Thiersch's works are divided into two phases, which are also of interest to two completely different groups of collectors: On the one hand, the bibliophile works from the time of the Bremen press , which carry on the handcrafted legacy of the Doves Bindery in Germany and are highly popular among bibliophiles Stand on course; on the other hand, the representational works after 1933, which pay homage to the monumental style, which despite all their technical perfection can be classified as artistically largely insignificant and which are very popular with collectors of Nazi paraphernalia .

What Frieda Thiersch personally felt about National Socialism is not known. What is certain, however, is that she used the system at least very uncritically and enjoyed being able to draw on the full potential of her work. Her long-term collaboration with Gerdy Troost , a close confidante of Winifred Wagner , who was notorious for her unconditional admiration for Hitler , suggests that Frieda Thiersch will not distance itself from National Socialist ideas either.

literature

• Fritz Krinitz: Frieda Thiersch and her manual binding. Stuttgart, Max Hettler Verlag 1968
• Josef Lehnacker (ed.): The Bremen press. Queen of the German private press. Typographic Society, Munich 1964.
• Marion Janzin / Joachim Günter: The book from the book. 5000 years of book history. Hanover, Schlütersche Verlagsanstalt 1995. P. 364f.

Web links

• Wortwelle blog: Frieda Thiersch, Auchbuchbinderin.
• Wortwelle blog: The parchment ribbon by Frieda Thiersch, by Paul Kersten.
• boingboing.net: Hitler's Bookbinder , by Michael Shaughnessy
• Literature by and about Frieda Thiersch in the catalog of the German National Library

References and comments

1. ↑ The date of death is that of the tombstone (Waldfriedhof Munich); differs from Krinitz's book
2. ↑ Auguste and Friedrich Thiersch: Memories of Marie Luise Thiersch: geb. on May 4, 1891 in Munich; died on Jan. 15, 1914 in Wiesbaden. Munich, Meisenbach & Riffarth 1914.
3. ↑ Auguste and Friedrich Thiersch: Memories of Heinrich Ernst Thiersch. Born on May 6, 1894 in Munich, wounded on October 13, 1914 near Chaulnes, died on October 22, 1914 in Marché le pot.Munich , Meisenbach & Riffarth 1915.
4. ↑ Dirk Heisserer: In the magic garden: Thomas Mann in Bavaria. Munich, C. H. Beck 2005.
5. ↑ Paul Kersten: The parchment volume of Frieda Thiersch. Onion Fish, Volume XIV, Issue 1 - 3, Ss. 14 - 18. Munich, Hans von Weber 1922.