Günter Hildebrand

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Günter Hildebrand, self-portrait

Günter Hildebrand (born January 14, 1911 in Breslau ; † October 16, 1994 in Tübingen ) was a German, displaced painter and printmaker. As a consequence of the Second World War , he had to leave his early artistic existence behind with his early works in Breslau and Dresden . He built up a new artist existence from 1946 in Tübingen and from 1969 in Kirchentellinsfurt . Hildebrand was married to the teacher Elisabet Hildebrand , who also painted in her free time. The Kirchentellinsfurt municipal council decided on March 29, 2012 to accept the artistic legacy of Günter Hildebrand (and his wife Elisabet). Since then, the community has been organizing exhibitions that make the work of both artists accessible to the public again.

life and work

Günter Hildebrand grew up in Wroclaw during the First World War and the Weimar Republic as the son of a student councilor and reserve officer. He spent his youth fishing and scouting in the woods along the Oder. However, since the father's death in 1926, the family lived under increasingly difficult circumstances. In addition to his passion for the animal world, Hildebrand was particularly fascinated by drawing during his school days. This earned him a first exhibition at school. After graduating from high school, Hildebrand prepared for her studies at the art academy in the painting school of the late impressionist portrait and landscape painter Artur Wasner . As a result of personal and artistic differences with Wasner, Hildebrand attended courses and corrections at the Breslau adult education center from 1932. He also did watercolors with the book illustrator and caricaturist Hans-Günther Strick in front of the city.

Early artistic phase and professional ban

Due to the closure of the Breslau State Academy for Arts and Crafts , Hildebrand applied to the Academy of Fine Arts Dresden in March 1933 , where he attended drawing lessons with Richard Müller and Herrmann Dittrich from the summer semester . Hildebrand received further lessons in the painting room from Ferdinand Dorsch before he had to do the six-month labor service in 1935 . In the summer semester of 1936 he became an individual student with Wilhelm Rudolph . As the art academy and student body were increasingly brought into line , Hildebrand quickly came into conflict with the National Socialist rulers. When he was making a woodcut by Maxim Gorki , charges of espionage were brought against him and Rudolph. Rudolph recalls:

"I meet Hildebrand, he says a lapse had happened to him. The little woodcut was inspired by a photo in the Sunday paper of the Dresdner Anzeiger. [...] In fact, an audience comes together trying to accuse me of being espionage [...] ] First I say that the accusation of espionage must be rejected. Gorky is a world-famous poet, and that is why he was honored in the Dresdner Anzeiger, then I say: You do not want to suspect the Anzeiger of espionage. "

Hildebrand got away with a reprimand, but was increasingly under observation. When he and fellow students lodged a complaint against the National Socialist student leadership at the academy in autumn 1936, criminal proceedings were initiated against him. He was portrayed as a "rebel and public enemy": "[...] the student body would immediately calm down if he were removed from the academy." Günter Hildebrand was forced to de-register before the end of the year. Now he was being observed as an opponent of the regime and should be retrained as a road builder. Hildebrand was only able to evade this access by being economically independent from odd jobs and renting different studios. He took courses in commercial graphics at the Breslau Master School of German Crafts . Contact with Rudolph also remained. However, Hildebrand's pictures were removed from exhibitions on instructions. In September 1939 Hildebrand was called up for military service in the artillery. Until 1945 he was deployed in France and Russia and reached the rank of corporal . After the end of the war he was a prisoner of war in France until the summer of 1946.

After his release, a return to the destroyed Breslau was no longer possible. Hildebrand's early work in Dresden and Breslau had already fallen victim to the flames. Having lived through World War II and two post-war periods as well as the loss of his early work, Hildebrand's biography shows parallels to other artists of the lost generation , such as that of his fellow painter Georg Alfred Stockburger in Tübingen . Such a biography is probably the deeper reason why Hildebrand could not and did not want to become an artist on a national level. In the early post-war period Hildebrand received the art of the twenties that had been valued and devalued as “degenerate”. He gradually developed from an artist of expressive realism to an artist of abstract post-war modernism. From the graphic imprint he developed a multitude of independent picture concepts, which have the dark lines of the ink drawing in common. Hildebrand's work in its contradicting versatility reflects his biography with its war-induced breaks.

The new beginning in Tübingen

Hellerloch (2014). The two-story garden house is in the Ammertal in the Tübingen district in the Hellerloch district. It has been owned by the city since 1931. Hildebrand lived here during his time in Tübingen.

Until 1950, Hildebrand initially stayed with his school friend Hugo Kuhn in Tübingen. In December 1950 he married Elisabeth Herrmann. From 1951 to 1965, Hildebrand was a member of the "Notgemeinschaft Tübingen and Reutlingen Artists" and the artist group "Ellipse" significantly involved in the rebuilding of cultural life in Tübingen . The works of this period show an engagement with artists such as Pablo Picasso , Henri Matisse , Paul Klee , Max Beckmann as well as with Art brut and Art informel . “On trips to Paris (1948, 1953) and with the support of the state curator Dr. Rieth, Hildebrand caught up with international modernism. ”In the 1950s, Hildebrand lived with his wife in a former field ranger's house in Gewann Hellerloch in front of Tübingen's western town. This house on the edge of the Schönbuch , which at that time was still remote from Tübingen , became a popular meeting place for the Tübingen artist group "Ellipse", of which Hildebrand was a co-founder. Hildebrand developed his abstract formal language on the hilly landscape of the area. The highlights of the Tübingen time are Hildebrand's exhibition at the Tübinger Kunstverein in 1958 and participation in an exhibition at the Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart in the same year.

The late phase in Kirchentellinsfurt

Memorial to those who fell in World War II, Nehren cemetery chapel (Baden-Wuerttemberg), mosaic by Günter Hildebrand, 1964.

In 1969 Hildebrand and his wife Elisabet bought a house in the Neue Steige in Kirchentellinsfurt . The picturesque location of the place on the slope with a view of the Neckar valley , the nearby quarry pond and Einsiedel (Kirchentellinsfurt) let Hildebrand's gaze wander through the window. From now on, the Neckar valley, the local quarry pond and the Einsiedel played an outstanding role as art motifs for Hildebrand. The surprisingly idiosyncratic, figurative late work from the Kirchentellinsfurt time cannot easily be connected to the previous life's work. In a certain way it is monolithic in contrast to this. Nevertheless, this late work shows parallels to Critical Realism and southwest German painting of the 1970s.

As a member of the SPD, Hildebrand was politically active against environmental pollution and for the preservation of the "original state" of the landscape. His work experienced a tremendous intensification in the political controversy against the traffic project "New B27" from Tübingen to Stuttgart. He painted the large poster for the citizens' initiative "Never 6-lane through the Neckar Valley". He also addressed the topic of landscape conservation in two large linocut prints. One of these prints shows the view from Kirchentellinsfurt to the industrially built-up Echaztal , on the other print the view to the vineyard (Swabian: Wengert) at Einsiedel over the structurally alienated Neckar valley is the theme. When some buildings had to give way at the beginning of the 1980s as part of the redevelopment of the town center of Kirchentellinsfurt, Hildebrand developed a special technique of "documentary drawing". In drawings like “Orstkernsanierung”, he secured buildings that, like the old Kirchentellinsfurt schoolhouse, had to give way to new times. "While construction workers and excavators [...] are already beginning their work, Hildebrand [...] arches a protective bell over the church and village."

Hildebrand took up the motifs of the Kirchentellinsfurt quarry pond at a time when it was still an industrial site. He artistically documented the renaturation of this body of water in the 1980s. In the oil paintings you can see “a bottle-green waterhole framed by loamy strips of shore, on the banks of which the first anglers and bathers come.” Hildebrand also made the subject of the angler a theme in his prints. The grin of the anglers as well as their appearance as a type shows the clear influence of Otto Dix 's New Objective Verism .

Appreciation

Günter Hildebrand died on October 16, 1994 as a result of a stroke in a hospital in Tübingen. On March 29, 2012, the Kirchentellinsfurt municipal council unanimously approved the acceptance of the artistic legacy of Günter and Elisabet Hildebrand. The extensive estate, which in addition to paintings and graphics also includes painted objects and ceramics as well as diaries and documents, was archived and cataloged by the art historian Johannes Krause. With a permanent exhibition of works by both artists in the new town hall and an online presentation, the Kirchentellinsfurt community has made the work of Günter and Elisabet Hildebrand accessible to the public since summer 2014.

"The complete works of Günter Hildebrand can be interpreted as a reflection of the development of art in the 20th century, especially the discourse on abstraction." It has "taken influences from Impressionism , Cubism , Surrealism , abstract Expressionism and, last but not least, the New Objectivity and placed them in a fruitful relationship."

Works in public space and art in buildings (selection)

  • Tiled course of the Kepler-Gymnasium , Tübingen, 1958 (demolished in 2008)
  • Mural in the Physiological Institute , Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, 1959
  • Fallen memorial and concrete glass window, Würtingen cemetery chapel, 1962
  • Mural in the Hügelschule , Tübingen, 1964 (painted over before 1998)
  • Memorial to the fallen , concrete glass windows and lattice gates, Nehren cemetery chapel, 1964
  • Concrete glass window, Ofterdingen cemetery chapel, 1970
  • Concrete glass window, Pliezhausen-Gniebel cemetery chapel

Exhibitions (selection)

  • Works by Tübingen artists (participation), Kulturwerk Calw, Rathaussaal, 31.10.-21. November 1948
  • Exhibition of artists in need of Württemberg (participation), art building Tübingen, December 1948
  • Reutlinger-Tübingen artist (participation), University Library Tübingen, December 1949 (Christmas exhibition , as in the following years)
  • Ellipse , Southwest German Travel Agency Scheible Uhlandstr. 5, Tübingen, 1951
  • R. Dykerhoff and G. Hildebrand , Kunsthaus Fischinger, Stuttgart, March 1953
  • Ellipse artist group , Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, December 1953
  • Contemporary art of the German East (participation), traveling exhibition of the Künstlergilde eV, 1953
  • Old University, Freiburg, February 1954 (with the ellipse )
  • Günter Hildebrand , shop window of the city of Tübingen, 1956
  • Günter Hildebrand: paintings, graphics. Kunstverein Tübingen eV, Technical Town Hall, 31.05.-17. June 1958
  • XIV. Singen Art Exhibition (participation), Ekkehard School Singen, 05.-27. August 1961
  • Spendhaus, Reutlingen, July 1962 (with the ellipse )
  • Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, August 1965 (with the ellipse )
  • Exhibition group Tübingen artists (participation), Kurhaus Freudenstadt, July 1967
  • Tübingen artists exhibit (participation), Böblingen City Celebration Room, 05.-19. November 1967
  • Painted postcards and letters from German artists (participation), Bürgerhaus Gießen, 17.06.-08. July 1972
  • Pictures and posters (participation), Open Sunday of the SPD, Kirchentellinsfurt parish hall, March 28, 1976
  • Artists from Kirchentellinsfurt exhibit (participation), Kirchentellinsfurt parish hall, March 1985
  • Günter Hildebrand - Drawings , Künstlerbund Tübingen, June 1991
  • Günter Hildebrand - Painting , Gallery 5 / Haus Geiselhart, Reutlingen, 26.06.-20. July 1991
  • The artists of the Ellipse , City Museum and Ugge-Bärtle-Haus, Tübingen, December 15, 2001 - February 10, 2002
  • On the trail of Hildebrand , tour and exhibition, Kirchentellinsfurt Castle, March 14, 2014
  • Günter and Elisabet Hildebrand , Kirchentellinsfurt Town Hall, permanent exhibition since July 18, 2014

literature

  • Views - Insights. Tübingen city views from 1850 to today, exhibition catalog of the Tübingen City Museum. City Museum, Tübingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-941818-01-9 .
  • Self-portraits in the mirror of a collection. Graphics from the Rieth collection. Exhibition catalog of the Tübingen Municipal Collections. Attempto, Tübingen 1989, ISBN 3-89308-040-6 .
  • University of Fine Arts Dresden (ed.): Dresden: from the Royal Art Academy to the University of Fine Arts (1764-1989). The history of an institution. VEB Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1990, ISBN 3-364-00145-6 .
  • Barbara Lipps-Kant ao: The artists of the ellipse. Kulturamt, Tübingen 2001, ISBN 3-910090-45-1 .
  • Ernst Müller: The Tübingen ellipse. In: Tübinger Blätter. Volume 41, 1954, pp. 39-45. Digitized
  • Martin Schmidt: Wilhelm Rudolph. In the light and darkness of life and nature. Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 2003, ISBN 3-364-00436-6 .
  • Adolf Rieth: Monument without pathos. Death marks of the Second World War in South Württemberg-Hohenzollern, with a historical introduction. Ernst Wasmuth, Tübingen 1967.
  • Johannes Krause, Kirchentellinsfurt municipality (editor): Günter Hildebrand and the landscape around Kirchentellinsfurt, booklet accompanying the exhibition in the town hall of Kirchentellinsfurt from July 18, 2014 to September 29, 2016, Kirchentellinsfurt 2016
  • Kirchentellinsfurt parish (publisher): Great atmosphere and colorful seriousness. Tübingen city views by Günter Hildebrand (flyer for the exhibition), Kirchentellinsfurt 2016
  • Hildebrand art collection, Kirchentellinsfurt municipality (publisher): Postcard set "Günter Hildebrand (1911-1994)" (five art postcards with works by Günter Hildebrand), Kirchentellinsfurt 2016
    • Dorfstrasse Kirchentellinsfurt, 1970s
    • Angler on the lakeshore, undated
    • Tübingen old town, 1960s
    • Bursagasse Tübingen, around 1955
    • Neckar section Tübingen, around 1960

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Günter Hildebrand compiled the memories of his early 1990s in Wroclaw in a richly illustrated manuscript, which is now in the Kirchentellinsfurt Hildebrand Collection. This also contains the data mentioned.
  2. ^ Artur Wasner, 1887-1939. Wrocławski impresjonista, Wrocław Impressionist (exhib. Cat. Muzeum Sztuki Mieszczańskiej). Edited by Maciej Łagiewski . Muzeum Miejskie, Wrocław 2007, ISBN 9788389551436 .
  3. ^ Christa Seifert: Directory of the students of Professor Richard Müller between 1900 and 1935. In: Rolf Günther: Richard Müller. Life and work with the list of prints. Neumeister, Dresden 1995, p. 251.
  4. ^ Martin Schmidt: Wilhelm Rudolph. In the light and darkness of life and nature. Life and work. Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 2003, ISBN 3364004366 .
  5. ↑ a b Gertrud Thiele: The Academy under the Rule of German Fascism 1933-1945 (Chapter VII). In: University of Fine Arts Dresden (Hrsg.): Dresden. From the Royal Academy of Art to the College of Fine Arts (1764-1989). The history of an institution. VEB Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1990, ISBN 3364001456 , pp. 354–356.
  6. ^ Martin Schmidt: Wilhelm Rudolph. In the light and darkness of life and nature. Life and work. Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 2003, ISBN 3-364-00436-6 , p. 77-78 .
  7. ↑ Helmut Hornbogen: View into the studio: The desire for transformation. The painter and graphic artist Günter Hildebrand is 80 years old in Kirchentellinsfurt today. In: Schwäbisches Tagblatt . January 14, 1991.
  8. ↑ Johannes Krause, Kirchentellinsfurt Community (editor), 2014
  9. ↑ Johannes Krause, Kirchentellinsfurt Municipality (editor), 2016, there the picture “Ortskernsanierung”, oil on wood, 1979-1984
  10. ^ Johannes Krause, Kirchentellinsfurt community (editor), 2016
  11. ^ Johannes Krause, Kirchentellinsfurt community (editor), 2016
  12. ↑ Johannes Krause, Kirchentellinsfurt municipality (editor), 2016, there the linocut “Angler”, 1970-1980
  13. ^ Minutes of the negotiations of the municipal council of March 29, 2012 , pp. 66–67. Website of the Kirchentellinsfurt community. Retrieved February 27, 2016.
  14. ↑ Raphaela Weber: Make the estate accessible. Hildebrand expert Johannes Krause is writing a doctoral thesis on the artist and his wife Elisabet. In: Reutlinger Generalanzeiger , January 9, 2016, accessed on February 27, 2016.
  15. ^ Exhibition of the works of art "Hildebrand" in the town hall. Website of the Kirchentellinsfurt community. Retrieved February 27, 2016.
  16. ^ Johannes Krause, Kirchentellinsfurt community (editor), 2016
personal data
SURNAME Hildebrand, Günter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH January 14, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH October 16, 1994
Place of death Tübingen