Friedrich Eckenfelder
Friedrich Eckenfelder (born March 6, 1861 in Bern , † May 11, 1938 in Balingen ) was a German impressionist painter . The talent of the artist, who comes from a humble background, was recognized early on, so that he was able to begin an apprenticeship as a painter and then train at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich . There he became one of the founding members of the Munich Secession . A specialization in his choice of motifs became apparent early on. As early as 1878, at the end of his basic training, he was referred to in a Balingen document - not disparagingly - as an "animal painter". The social and artistic upheavals after the end of the First World War led Eckenfelder to retreat to his Swabian homeland. Above all, his “Plowing Horses”, but also his city views in front of the recurring panorama of the Swabian Alb made Eckenfelder, who was appointed honorary citizen in 1928, to the Balingen native painter. This is still true today, as emphasized by the street named after him in 1931, a gallery set up in 1978 in the town's local history museum and the ballroom of the Balingen town hall named after him.
Friedrich Eckenfelder was a member of the German Association of Artists .
Life
Adolescent years
Friedrich Eckenfelder was born as the second child of the household helper Rosina Vivian and the shoemaker Johann Friedrich Eckenfelder. His father had moved from Balingen to Basel as a shoemaker's journeyman in 1859, where the couple met. From there they moved to Bern. When Rosina became pregnant again in 1865, the couple moved to Balingen in 1865 and got married there on July 18, 1865. The children were declared legitimate by marriage and, like their mother, became citizens of Württemberg.
The boy's talent for drawing was discovered at school and further training was recommended. He received this from 1875 in the painting class of Professor Oskar Hölder in Rottweil. At the same time, Christian Landenberger was also in training there.
In Rottweil, the fourteen-year-old boy was cared for in the home of his teacher as well as by the family friends of the chief forester Junginger. There he got to know Marie Junginger, who was fourteen years his senior and who worked as a portrait painter after an apprenticeship with Hölder. Together they went to Munich in 1878, where Eckenfelder began his studies at the art academy in October . At the end of December 1878, Maria became pregnant. Their son Friedrich Junginger was born on September 19, 1879 in Munich. The Eckenfelders family tried to hide the "misstep". He grew up from the age of six months - as if he were their late-born child - with his grandparents in Rottweil. The paternity of Eckenfelder, with whom he had had a more fraternal relationship until then, was revealed to him late and he was very affected by it.
The Munich time
Marie Junginger and Friedrich Eckenfelder lived in close proximity to each other in Munich, sometimes together. However, Eckenfelder's biographer Walter Schnerring notes an increasing alienation. In 1899 the son got a job as a bookseller in Stuttgart. Marie Junginger moved in with him and also brought her now widowed mother to join him. From 1904, when Marie moved out of this community, contact between Eckenfelder and her broke off. The contact with the son, who later opened a bookshop in Arosa , remained until his death in 1927.
Eckenfelder lived in Munich in what was then the artists' quarter, the Maxvorstadt , in the immediate vicinity of other artists. He initially shared the apartment with Bernhard Buttersack . Christian Landenberger lived at Brienner Straße 32 in the stairwell opposite. Paul Burmester , Georg Jauß , Richard Winternitz and Gino von Finetti were also part of the environment, as was the so-called "Schwabenburg", the studio house of the Biberach painters Anton Braith and Christian Mali . The common meeting point was the “Arzberger Keller”.
At the time of Eckenfelder at the Munich Art Academy, Carl Theodor von Piloty , Wilhelm von Diez , Ludwig von Löfftz and Wilhelm von Lindenschmit the Younger were the main teachers. In addition, Eckenfelder was Heinrich von Zügel's first private student . This was also a student of Hölders. The relationship “... was a mixture of teacher / student / friendship and father / son relationship.” Eckenfelder also had family connections on excursions to open-air painting in the Dachauer Moos or during the autumn stays in Zügel's home in the Wolkenhof near Murrhardt . When Zügel started his academy activity, Eckenfelder was not part of the class. The intensive master-student relationship only happened at private gatherings and encounters. Zügel also took care of Eckenfelder's economic situation. The effort to get him a professorship at the academy failed because of Eckenfelder's introversion. Both painters were members of the artist society Allotria and in 1892 founding members of the Munich Secession . At the founding exhibition, Eckenfelder was represented with two pictures of horses. The same applies to the exhibitions in 1896, 1899, 1903, 1906 and 1911.
As early as 1883 he took part in the international art exhibition in the Glaspalast with the work “Flood in Neckarthal” . In 1888, Prince Regent Luitpold of Bavaria acquired the painting “Horses in front of the plow”, created in 1883, and Eckenfelder was first mentioned in the specialist press on this occasion. The Prince Regent took an active part in the art work in Munich and supported young painters through such acquisitions not only financially, but also through the corresponding reputation. He often visited painters in their studios. When he visited Eckenfelder for the first time on a cold day, he worked masked and in thick winter slippers. This embarrassed him so much that he got used to painting in day shoes and in a suit without a work smock. A habit that he kept into old age. In 1909 he received the second class gold medal for the painting “ In der Schwemme ”. One reviewer: “Friedrich Eckenfelder's 'Schimmel in der Schwemme' prove how not everything needs to be painted in dependence on the rein school in order to still have effect and strength.” In 1913 he was at the “ Horse Market ” "International Art Exhibition" represented in the Glass Palace. He was also represented at exhibitions in Berlin, Frankfurt, Wiesbaden and Stuttgart. Acquisitions by King Wilhelm II of Württemberg further increased its market value. His pictures caught the taste of the times and he sold well, partly through Munich dealers, but also through Goldschmid in Frankfurt, Hermes in Wiesbaden, Schaller and Fleischhauer in Stuttgart and dealers in Mainz, Düsseldorf and Berlin. Sometimes he also sold for cash, right away from the easel .
In the nineties, when more and more of his painting colleagues were moving away from Munich, Eckenfelder decided to spend the summer in Balingen and on the Swabian Alb. Sketches and paintings were then transported to Munich in autumn to be presented to friends, colleagues and customers. It was the time of his greatest artistic independence.
Local painter in Balingen
His final move to Balingen in 1922, on the other hand, is viewed by his biographer Schnerring as a resignation. The collapse of the monarchy and the deposition of his friend Zügel as director of the academy by the Munich Soviet Republic left their mark on the sixties, who were in poor health. He did not find himself in the “New Secession” or in the “ Blauer Reiter ”.
He settled in Balingen for a comfortable retirement home. He was cared for by his sister Rosine Wagner, whose domestic regime he fully submitted. He enjoyed a good reputation in his hometown. With long-established families, it was considered good form to own one of his pictures:
- In the horse picture in the parlor you could see your own embedding in the Albheimat and your own character of a deep, straight and steady type of person plowing through life, condensed in a timeless way, as a simple elder might have suspected, but could not have expressed as this painter.
He had his local patrons, was well known because he was often found painting in prominent places, always in a good suit. A retrospective exhibition was dedicated to him from July 5th to 15th, 1924 in the then newly built sickle school gym. In 1928 he was made an honorary citizen. He gave the city his self-portrait and the city bought two panorama pictures, which show Balingen in front of the Alb backdrop from Hohenzollern to Schalksburg and from Lochenhörnle to Plettenberg . All three pictures are now in the "Eckenfelderzimmer" of the Balingen town hall, which is used as a wedding room. In 1931, on his seventieth birthday, a street was named after him. As a thank you, he gave the city a choice of twelve pictures at a special price. When making their selection, the recipients noted that “the pictures from earlier times are significantly more valuable than those from now”.
The painter, who became famous for his honorary citizenship, was brought in by the National Socialists for their purposes. The motifs of his paintings could easily be reinterpreted in terms of their blood-and-soil ideology . For the municipal council election on December 9, 1928, Eckenfelder signed a joint call for elections by the savings association and the NSDAP, although he was not a member of either organization. The National Socialists had a more conservative orientation in what was then Württemberg and also formed coalitions at the local level with bourgeois groups that only focused on special issues. Friedrich Eckenfelder, whose monarchist worldview had been badly shaken by the Munich Soviet Republic and who was affected by the effects of inflation , could certainly identify with the content of the appeal. As a figurehead he headed the joint list of the NSDAP and the Sparerbund, but apparently even the voters did not believe this commitment. He received significantly fewer votes than candidates listed after him. In 1933, as the contemporary painter representing Balingen, he was commissioned by the city administration to paint three pictures as honorary gifts for the three new honorary citizens of the city, Hitler , Hindenburg and Murr . He received an order from the NSDAP district headquarters to make a portrait of Hitler.
When Eckenfelder returned to Balingen, he met Elsa Martz, who was 18 years his junior. The contralto and piano teacher from the affluent town hall in Balingen would have liked to go to the opera in her youth, which was not befitting enough for her family. Despite, or because of, many marriage offers in her youth, she had remained single. She had a platonic love with Eckenfelder. People wrote love letters “per you”, there were studio visits and visits to Haus Martz, walks together and the exchange of gifts. He gave her a self-portrait and a picture " Steinach with Endingen and Plettenberg ". She called the picture the brook of my love. The relationship was ignored by many in Balingen - even by Eckenfelder's relatives - because it was perceived as embarrassing. Elsa Martz stayed away from Eckenfelder's funeral.
Friedrich Eckenfelder died of pneumonia on May 11, 1938 after a three-week hospital stay. He was buried on the south side of the Balingen cemetery church. The studio apartment in his parents' house was set up as a small museum with the pictures bequeathed to the city. It was initially looked after by his nieces. After their death, the city inherited the building. After its demolition, the pictures were exhibited in the Zollern Castle in Balingen . Today they are in the "Friedrich-Eckenfelder-Galerie" in the "Zehntscheuer."
The artistic work
The following classification and descriptions go back to Walter Schnerring, who created an extensive monograph on the occasion of a traveling exhibition for the painter's 125th birthday.
Education and 1880s
The pictures show the influence of his teachers Löffitz and Diez. In the sense of genre painting, people are still given the same attention as animals: They are happy when they return home, struggle with feeding, or rest like their horses. The interest in people is also evidenced by several portraits. Suggestions from other artists are also visible in the motifs: donkey carts (Braith), flocks of sheep (reins).
Here you can already find the iconographic types for his later work: "Resting horses in harness", "Ride out or home", or "Zollernschloss".
Schnerring describes the style as still searching, erratic and experimental, but nevertheless sees some of its most dignified images in this phase.
Funny ride, 1886/87
Farmer feeds his horses, 1886
Lunch break in front of the hut, 1888
Portrait of an old man, around 1884
Mules on the cart, 1887
Sheep in the pen, 1887
Zollern Castle, around 1884/85
Balingen with Heuberg, 1893
1890s
Here the impressionistic painting rules, especially with regard to the lighting, come into play more and more clearly. The warm direct light, for example from direct sunlight with its red tones, the partially cold light of the shadow zones with its blue tones and the purple transition zones.
His plowing horses become more monumental and pathetic, but thanks to the special light they remain integrated into the landscape.
Small-format, often seemingly unfinished landscapes and landscape studies in the style of the “ paysage intime ” are very common during this period . Nature is romanticized in the process. Eckenfelder viewed everything technical with suspicion. He never drove an automobile in his life, nor did he own a camera. During this time, Eckenfelder was referred to in the specialist press not only as an animal painter , but also as a landscape painter and “ minor master ”.
During this time he also created a large number of portraits of citizens of Balingen.
Oak forest in early spring, 1894
Returning from the hay, around 1895
Wayside shrine on a tree, 1890
Portrait of Frieda Jetter, 1898
Turn of the century to 1918
The reference to Zügel reveals the weaknesses of Eckenfelder. The larger formats of the “grand gestures” cannot be transferred to the introverted nature of the artist. Schnerring would have wished him the self-knowledge of a Spitzweg, who probably knew why he kept the small format.
The main motifs of this period are plowing horses (see below), portraits from photographs, rides home and cityscapes (see below). The representation of water in floodplain and ford images also emerges. The animals look brilliant and well-dressed and hardly show the tiredness of the hard-working creature as in the early years. Man steps back into the picture, but is only an extra that the horses allow to hold the reins.
In earlier pictures with back views of horses he managed to draw the viewer into the picture - similar to a Caspar David Friedrich . Now the view seems rather confrontational. In the pictures of the "peasant resting while plowing" he succeeds in taking the first look again:
- The farmer, who seems to be at one with nature and identifies with it in “contemplating his home country”, becomes a role model for the observer who leads him into the landscape.
At this time, Eckenfelder was a recognized artist in Munich with some important contributions to Munich Impressionism. With the end of the world war and the end of the monarchy came a deep turning point in Eckenfelder's life.
- He has made his actual statements up to this point, after which he falls back more and more on himself.
Returning home in the evening, 1899/1900
Two white horses in the flood, 1909
White horse team with a funny peasant company in the car, around 1920
Lunch break while plowing, before 1900
Late work
It is mainly commissioned work: portraits of citizens of Balingen, city views, flocks of sheep and horses. Horses in front of the smithy, in front of the hay cart, in front of the mail wagon, in front of the carriage, in the pasture, during breaks, at horse shows, in the market ...
Eckenfelder complained about the poor quality of the oil paints after the First World War. In particular, the yellow for warm summer light on the fur of the mold no longer met his requirements.
In the old work, compositional weaknesses become clear. The motif is not in the format, roadsides cut corners, roads and clods are poorly worked through, so that the animals with their strict lines fall out of the picture.
Flock of sheep in front of the dog's back, around 1920
Balingen with fog, from the north, 1922
Eckenfelder's main themes
City views of Balingen
There are about 30 general views of the city of Balingen. In addition, there are further pictures with market scenes, individual houses - these clearly recognizable as commissioned work - and the section on the Eyach with Zollern Castle, water tower and weir. In addition, the silhouette of the Balingen Mountains serves as a background for many of the horse motifs. Many of the foregrounds on which horses plowing at Eckenfelder can be seen were opened up after the Second World War and turned into residential areas.
Zollern Castle in Balingen, before 1895
Balingen from the west, 1900
Two teams in front of the “Hirsch”, 1922
The core town of Balingen - Eckenfelders Balingen - offers a mountain panorama on three sides. The Heuberg rises directly behind the city, although it only has a height difference of 70–80 meters, but at a distance of less than 500 meters from the city center it is an impressive backdrop. Less than 5 kilometers away, the Swabian Alb rises in the east and south, with a difference in altitude of 350-480 meters. The panorama in the east stretches from the Hohenzollern (855 m) to the Schalksburg . Separated from the prominent cut of the Eyach valley , the so-called Balinger Mountains rise in the south from the Lochen with Lochenhörnle (956 m), Lochenstein (963 m) and Schafberg (1000 m) to Plettenberg (1002 m). These formats can only be displayed as an image if the width is compressed and the heights are exaggerated. The trick is to make the characteristics of the mountains recognizable. He did not always succeed in doing this with some of his later works. The panorama from Zollern to Plettenberg is 170 °. Eckenfelder never dared to try this format. Eckenfelder only exceeded the width of 200 cm in two paintings that are now hanging in the wedding room of the Balingen town hall.
| East panorama | Image in the public domain in Germany fell victim to the URAA deletion in Wikimedia Commons . | |
|---|---|---|
| South panorama |
|
Plowing horses
Eckfelder presented landscapes, animal studies and portraits individually. With the development of the image construction for the diagonal arrangement of objects, Eckenfelder achieved an optimal representation of the teams. The distance between man / plow and the horses was naturally shortened, and the rear horse could also be brought to full advantage.
Two horses at the plow, around 1886/89
Two white horses plowing, 1899/1900
Two molds on the harrow, around 1900
Two plowing browns near Dachau, 1908
The motif of the “plowing horses in front of the Balingen background” then appears in the older work. Well over a hundred variations on the same theme are created. In his catalog of works, Schnerring has abandoned the purely chronological listing for this motif within the category in order to still allow a distinction between the paintings. He differentiates between:
- Number of horses and colors
- Mixed teams, teams of three, trains of four, several teams, teams in front of the harrow
- Two white horses in front of the plow
- Two black horses before plow
- Directions of action
- left to right
- from right to left
- Landscape in the background
- Hohenzollern Castle to Eyachtal
- Eyachtal to Plettenberg
- Dotternhausen to Heuberg
- Stettberg to Engstlatt
| Rappen | Mould | other direction | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Balingen and Eyachtal | In Germany, public domain image in Wikimedia Commons fell URAA deletion victim | ||
| Balingen and Lochenberge | In Germany, public domain image in Wikimedia Commons fell URAA deletion victim | In Germany, public domain image in Wikimedia Commons fell URAA deletion victim | In Germany, public domain image in Wikimedia Commons fell URAA deletion victim |
| Balingen and Zollernberge | In Germany, public domain image in Wikimedia Commons fell URAA deletion victim | In Germany, public domain image in Wikimedia Commons fell URAA deletion victim | In Germany, public domain image in Wikimedia Commons fell URAA deletion victim |
It is these “plowing horses” with which Eckenfelder is most identified. Since 1922, the quality of the presentation has declined.
- “The teams that were initially integrated in terms of color and form are now gradually blocking the landscape. They have only become smaller again in the last few years, but the painter is no longer able to link them with the surroundings to form a unit. "
literature
- Eckenfelder, Christian . In: Ulrich Thieme (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists from Antiquity to the Present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 10 : Dubolon – Erlwein . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1914, p. 319-320 ( Text Archive - Internet Archive ).
- Eckenfelder, Christian . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 2 : E-J . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1955, p. 7 .
- Walter Schnerring: The painter Friedrich Eckenfelder. A Munich impressionist paints his Swabian homeland . Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 1984, ISBN 3-8062-0337-7 .
- Christian Hornig: Eckenfelder, Christian . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 32, Saur, Munich a. a. 2002, ISBN 3-598-22772-8 , p. 75.
Web links
- Literature by and about Friedrich Eckenfelder in the catalog of the German National Library
- Friedrich Eckenfelder Gallery in Balingen
Individual evidence
- ↑ kuenstlerbund.de: Ordinary members of the German Association of Artists since it was founded in 1903 / Eckenfelder, Friedrich ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed on March 6, 2016)
- ↑ The curious on Wikisource
- Walter Schnerring: The painter Friedrich Eckenfelder: A Munich impressionist paints his Swabian homeland . Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 1984, ISBN 3-8062-0337-7 .
- ↑ Schnerring, p. 18
- ↑ Schnerring, p. 26
- ↑ Schnerring, p. 73
- ↑ Schnerring, p. 75
- ↑ Schnerring, p. 78
- ↑ Schnerring, p. 77
- ↑ Schnerring, p. 79
- ↑ Schnerring, pp. 83 and 119 ff.
- ↑ Schnerring, p. 120.
- ↑ Schnerring, p. 125.
- ↑ Mayor Rommel and City Councilor Roller quoted from: Schnerring, p. 131.
-
↑ Schnerring, p. 130 and p. 289. The election results of List 3 (Sparerbund and NSDAP): Eckenfelder (193), Kiener (299), Dreher (285), Landerer (438), Dandler (161), Seemann (87 ), Widmaier (167), Beck (64).
The following were elected: Willy Günther (citizenship, 859), Wilhelm Kraut (citizenship, 832), Frühwald Delling (citizenship, 787), Ernst Ehmann (citizenship, 783), Jakob Beutter (SPD, 731), Christian Jetter (SPD, 655) , Josef Schlienz (Catholic voters' association, 478), Louis Landerer (Sparerbund and NSDAP, 438) - ↑ Schnerring, p. 130 f.
- ↑ Schnerring, p. 129.
- ↑ Schnerring, p. 132.
- ↑ Schnerring, p. 155 ff.
- ↑ Schnerring, p. 121.
- ↑ a b c Schnerring, p. 190.
- ↑ Schnerring, p. 191.
- ↑ a b Schnerring, p. 217
- ↑ Schnerring, p. 218
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Eckenfelder, Friedrich |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 6, 1861 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Bern |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 11, 1938 |
| Place of death | Balingen |