Fritz Körner (glass artist)

Fritz Körner's grave in the north cemetery in Jena

Art glass window by Fritz Körner in the choir room of St. Michael in Jena

Fritz Körner (born July 8, 1888 in Leipzig , † April 6, 1955 in Jena ) was a German painter and glass designer.

life and work

Fritz Körner was born as the eldest son of the furrier and fur trader Paul Körner and his wife Clara Elise, b. Hopfe, born in Leipzig. He attended the König-Albert-Gymnasium . From 1909 to 1911 he first studied camera science at the University of Leipzig . At the same time, he began studying art as a visiting student at the Royal Academy for Graphic Arts and Book Trade with Walter Tiemann . From 1911 to 1912 he studied at the Dresden Art Academy with Johannes Raphael Wehle and Robert Sterl and from 1913 to 1914 at the Grand Ducal Saxon University of Fine Arts in Weimar with the Austrian monumental painter Albin Egger-Lienz (1868-1926), who was Fritz Körner's most important teacher and became a role model. In 1913 and 1914 Fritz Körner and 11 other students from Albin Egger-Lienz stayed in Klausen (South Tyrol) as the "Association of Egger Lienz Art Schools".

After participating in the First World War (1915 to 1918, on the Eastern and Western Fronts, Russian prisoner of war, forced labor in the coal mine), Körner, who now lived with his father in Jena, did arts and crafts with lithographs and etchings and held courses for economic reasons Landscape painting and printing techniques at the adult education center and discovered his love for glass and glass painting. He became a member of the Reich Economic Association of Thuringian Artists and its honorary board member as well as a member of the German Werkbund . In 1929 he created six stained glass windows for the south school in Jena, which were well received by experts; the drafts have been preserved. In order to thoroughly grasp the technical and artistic principles, he worked in several German glass processing workshops. He then studied glass painting and glass cutting in Munich and Cologne with Carl Sattler and Jan Thorn Prikker . When he returned to Jena, he founded in 1932 together with his wife Grete, nee. Heilbrunn, a glass art studio in the Volkshaus Jena . Grete Heilbrunn (1907 to 1983), who Fritz Körner married in Eschwege in 1932 , was the daughter of the Jewish cattle dealer Ferdinand Heilbrunn and his wife Klara. Within a few years, numerous sacred or profane architecture-related works were created, such as the windows of the burial chapel in Bad Köstritz in East Thuringia in 1934 . He often combined traditional glass painting with glass cutting.

The seizure of power by National Socialism interrupted Körner's artistic development. His Jewish wife was banned from working in 1935 and Körner was also banned from the profession in 1938 because he did not divorce her. He had previously been excluded from the Reichskunstkammer . After Körner passed the master's examination for glass painting and glass cutting in Ilmenau in 1939 , he was able to bypass the ban as a master craftsman. Friends of the architects ensured that orders were carried out anonymously several times. On March 22, 1942, the son Friedrich was born, who grew up with foster parents in Neumühle / Elster from 1943 to 1945 in order to remove him from the Nazis, whose functionary a brother of Fritz Körner lived in the same house. In 1942 Fritz Körner fell seriously ill. With a medical certificate referring to a surviving major operation, deportation to the Organization Todt's work camp in Weißenfels, a branch camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp for Aryan spouses from mixed marriages, was prevented in 1944 . In January 1945 Fritz Körner was forced to do heavy physical labor, among other things, in the heating plant in the Jena district of Winzerla . After receiving the deportation order, his wife made an unsuccessful suicide attempt and was then deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto for gassing .

After the liberation of the concentration camp by the Red Army , the wife - albeit ill - and the son Friedrich returned to Jena at the end of May 1945. Clara and Fritz Körner were able to reopen the atelier for glass art in Jena in summer 1945 and hire two employees. Marked by severe illness ( tuberculosis ) and the harassment of the Nazis, after the end of the war in Jena, Körner created, among other things, the three choir windows of the Friedenskirche in 1947 and of the St. Michael Church in Jena in 1955, as well as the monumental glass cut images in the Jena town hall in 1947 (town hall, plenary hall, council area ). In 1948 Fritz Körner received the order from the Thuringian Ministry of Education to set up and lead a class for glass art at the Erfurt School of Applied Arts; but he had to refrain from teaching due to his illness. In the GDR , Fritz Körner had to submit his works and drafts to the State Commission for Fine Arts before they could be published. In 1952 he was banned from working. After a long and serious illness (tuberculosis, flu, heart failure), Körner died in 1955. He could no longer complete his work on the glass windows for the Ernst Abbe library in the Volkshaus Jena . His grave is in the north cemetery in Jena . A memorial plaque at Erfurter Straße 14 has been a reminder of his former home since 2010.

With the architecture-related glass works as well as with his glass pictures, Fritz Körner played an original role in the comprehensive revival of glass painting. As early as 1938, the art historian Richard Klapheck Fritz Körner was one of the four most important artists in his field in Germany. Körner created works in Jena and the surrounding area ( Friedenskirche , Stadtkirche , Rathaus , Volkshaus , restaurants "Ratszeise" and "Zur Schweiz" in Jena, "Green Tree for the Nightingale" in Cospeda , several buildings of the Friedrich Schiller University such as the Chemical Institute in the Humboldt-Straße / Steiger and Physikalisches Institut at Max-Wien-Platz, and in other public and private buildings), glass windows in other Thuringian churches ( Katharinenkirche in Altenburg-Rasephas , St. Gangolf in Unterwirbach , St. Peter in Dorndorf , St . Wenzel in Rothenstein , St. Barbara in Golmsdorf and St. Trinitatis in Beutnitz ) as well as glass windows of secular buildings in Jena (town hall), Greußen (town hall), Göttingen (movie theater), Zwickau (train station), Weimar (medical center), Poznań (town hall ) and Wrocław (train station).

literature

• Jakobson, Peter: I couldn't get rid of this material - the Jena glass painter Fritz Körner. Jena 2009.

Web links

• Traveling exhibition "Buntes Licht", Golmsdorf, 2018, leaflet (1.65 MB, accessed October 01, 2018)
• Literature by and about Fritz Körner in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ König Albert-Gymnasium (Royal High School until 1900) in Leipzig: Student album 1880-1904 / 05 , Friedrich Gröber, Leipzig 1905
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Frank Döbert: Honor for persecuted artists. Memorial plaque at Erfurter Straße 14 commemorates Fritz and Grete Körner . In: Ostthüringer Zeitung . July 10, 2005.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Walter Herbert: In memory of the artist Fritz Körner . In: People's Watch . July 6, 1955.
4. ↑ Jens Henning: The time to forget is over. First exhibition in the Golmsdorf Church: works by the painter and glass artist Friedrich Körner are shown in a traveling exhibition . In: Thüringische Landeszeitung and Ostthüringer Zeitung . September 6, 2018 ( otz.de ).