Fritz Schulze (painter)

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Memorial stele for Fritz Schulze and Eva Schulze-Knabe in Dresden-Plauen

Fritz Schulze (born April 14, 1903 in Leipzig , † June 5, 1942 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a German painter and resistance fighter against National Socialism . Schulze was married to the painter Eva Schulze-Knabe . His undestroyed work comprises around 750 pictures and woodcuts. Still celebrated as a great talent at the Dresden Academy as a master student of Robert Sterl and Max Feldbauer, from 1933 an economic existence in Germany became almost impossible for him. His artistic work was initially influenced by the Late Impressionists, later by abstract art, the New Objectivity and probably also politically motivated by Soviet art of the 1920s and 1930s.

Life

education

Schulze was the son of a trade teacher and after graduating from high school in 1923 he went to the Academy for Graphics and Book Trade in Leipzig . Here his friendship with Hans Hartung and Eva Knabe developed, whom he later married. In 1925 he moved to the Dresden Art Academy , where he studied until 1930. There he was first a student of Ferdinand Dorsch and Max Feldbauer , then a master student of Robert Sterl . During these years Schulze made trips to the North Sea (1926) and Finland (1927). In 1928 he traveled through Spain with Eva Knabe .

Time of the Weimar Republic

Fritz Schulze and Eva Knabe were founding members of the Association of Revolutionary Visual Artists (ASSO) Dresden, an association of artists close to the KPD. Both were friends with Hans and Lea Grundig and the writer Auguste Lazar , among others . Schulze joined the KPD in 1930 . In addition to his agitation work, he also worked as a supporter in the Marxist Workers' School (MASCH). Together with artists, his wife and friends of the KPD-affiliated Naturfreunde opposition, he undertook some spectacular actions with leaflets and banners at the Dresden Semperoper and above the Plauen reason .

Fritz Schulze and Eva Knabe married in 1931 and in the same year they moved into a studio they had set up on Hohen Stein in Dresden-Plauen .

National Socialism, Resistance and Death

From 1932 Fritz Schulze intensified his political activity. After the takeover of the Nazi party , he continued to work in the underground. After the SA besieged the studio, the couple fled to Leipzig in 1933, but were arrested a few months later. They came to the Hohnstein concentration camp near Pirna, from which they were released in 1934 after an acquittal. Material problems due to a lack of orders and an exhibition ban subsequently made the artist couple's economic existence more difficult.

From 1936 Fritz Schulze, together with Karl Stein and Albert Hensel, built a resistance group that collected money and distributed materials for comrades in need, for Spanish fighters in the International Brigades and for underground fighters . In 1940 Fritz Schulze was drafted into the Wehrmacht . However, when the Gestapo tracked down the resistance group with its extensive network and recognized Fritz Schulze as a communist resistance fighter, he was arrested four weeks after his wife in February 1941. After more than a year in custody, the People's Court sentenced him to death in March 1942 in a high treason trial together with Karl Stein and Albert Hensel. The sentence was carried out on June 5, 1942 in Plötzensee ; his cenotaph is in the grove of honor of the Heath Cemetery in Dresden. His wife Eva Schulze-Knabe was sentenced to life imprisonment, but was released from Waldheim prison in 1945 .

plant

Fritz Schulze painted oil paintings, watercolors and sometimes made large-format wood and linocuts . Around 750 works have been preserved.

His best-known work is probably the woodcut cycle “Constitution of the German Reich”, published in an election brochure for the 1932 Reichstag election, in which he compares the texts of the Weimar constitution with the realities of life at the time.

Against the background of the Spanish Civil War and shaped by impressions from his trip to Spain in 1928, he created oil paintings and woodcuts with Spanish motifs in 1935, for example the cycle "Something from Spain" (1935/1938), which contains a total of 12 woodcuts, or "Spanish Road Workers" ( 1936). Schulze thus committed himself to the fight against the later fascist dictator Franco.

Memorial exhibitions

Honors

The company holiday camp of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR in Schneckenmühle (near Pirna) was named "Fritz Schulze" from 1972 to 1990. Eva Schulze-Knabe was present for the naming ceremony in Schneckenmühle.

In 1945, in Radebeul-Oberlößnitz , König-Albert-Strasse was rededicated to the name Fritz-Schulze-Strasse, which is still valid today.

literature

  • Wolfgang Balzer & Eva Schulze-Knabe: Fritz Schulze, artist and fighter / Fritz Schulze. With an introduction by Wolfgang Balzer and a portrait of the artist by Eva Schulze-Knabe. Dresden 1950
  • Hans Dieter Grampp: The work of the proletarian-revolutionary painter and graphic artist Fritz Schulze (1903-1942) in the anti-fascist struggle in Dresden between 1929 and 1942 as a contribution to international art progress. Greifswald 1976
  • Foundation of Saxon Memorials to Remember the Victims of Political Violence (Ed.): Drawn: Art and Resistance. The Dresden artist couple Eva Schulze-Knabe (1907–1976) and Fritz Schulze (1903–1942). , edited by Birgit Sack and Gerald Hacke, Dresden 2005, ISBN 3-934382-17-7

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e. V. (Ed.): “Don't let my pictures die.” Artist portraits. Kassel 2010. p. 22

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Schulze, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and resistance fighter against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH April 14, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH June 5, 1942
Place of death Berlin-Plötzensee