Georg Alfred Stockburger

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Georg Alfred Stockburger 1961

George Alfred Stock Burger (* 12. May 1907 in Wankheim (now a district of Kusterdingen ); † 5. April 1986 in Tübingen ) was a German painter , draftsman and graphic artists of Expressionism . As a graphic artist, he used the printing processes of lithography , woodcut and copper engraving or etching . He could only be artistically active in his spare time. He was a doctor by profession . Stockburger's works are counted as modified expressionism or expressive realism .

life and work

youth

Georg Alfred Stockburger was born as the fifth and last child of the teacher Johann Georg Stockburger (* November 12, 1864 - November 18, 1947) and his wife Anna Maria geb. Strobel (born November 8, 1868 - December 15, 1925). In order to ensure the children the best possible educational opportunities, the family moved first to Böblingen in 1909 and then to Tübingen in 1913. In Tübingen Stockburger attended the upper secondary school there (today's Kepler grammar school ).

Training, studies and professional bans

Georg Alfred Stockburger: Young self-portrait 1925

In the summer semester of 1925, Stockburger began studying medicine at the University of Tübingen at the request of his father . In this first semester he also took a course at the university's drawing institute. The young self-portrait from 1925 was created at this institute. It is the oldest surviving picture by Stockburger. The university drawing teacher Heinrich Seufferheld recognized his talent for painting and encouraged him to do his first work. In the autumn of this year, at the decisive advocacy of his mother and against the promise made to his father that he would go to school as a teacher after completing his artistic training, he switched to the Stuttgart Art Academy . Here he studied with Hans Spiegel , Robert Breyer , Alexander Eckener and Gottfried Graf, among others . The Swiss painter Heinrich Altherr , who was also director of the Stuttgart Academy for some time, became his mentor and most important role model of this time. In 1928, on the recommendation of the jurors Karl Hofer and Emil Nolde, pictures by Georg Alfred Stockburger were exhibited in an exhibition of the German Association of Artists in Hanover . Stockburger was a member of the Stuttgart Secession , since 1929 also the Stuttgart New Secession and the so-called "Stuttgart Jury Free". Stockburger pictures were exhibited several times in Stuttgart and Berlin. In the same year he broke off his art studies, went to Berlin and tried to establish himself as a freelance artist there. Here he followed his role models Käthe Kollwitz , Ernst Barlach and above all Edvard Munch , whose strongly emotionally charged expressionism corresponded to his own artistic desire.

The difficulties in establishing himself as a freelance artist in Berlin, health problems and the social and political upheavals after Adolf Hitler's seizure of power in Berlin led to the decision to go back to Stuttgart in 1934. Stockburger persistently refused to enter the National Socialist, harmonized Reich Chamber of Culture . Against the Nazi cultural program, which called for a propagandistic, heroic pseudo-classicism, Stockburger determined his artistic task as follows: "I have a leitmotif in my will: Duty to truth, because truth is beauty." As an opponent of National Socialism, he also lost in Stuttgart all work and exhibition opportunities and was disqualified as a degenerate artist . Due to the prevailing political situation, Stockburger gave up painting as a profession and at the age of 27 continued his medical studies in Tübingen and temporarily in Munich . As an artist, Stockburger went into internal emigration, unlike Reinhold Nägele , who was well known to him as a colleague in the secession and who emigrated to the USA in 1939 .

Second World War

Georg Alfred Stockburger: Three Russian women, 1950s

After Hitler Germany began the war against Poland on September 1, 1939 , Stockburger was drafted as a medical sergeant shortly before completing his doctorate and studying medicine . During a special holiday in winter 1939/1940 he finished his medical studies in Tübingen and received on 23 December 1940, his license to practice as a doctor . In June 1940 he was stationed in the Metz area during the western campaign . There he got involved with the French population and set up an epidemic hospital. On September 18, 1941, he married the Tübingen photographer Lore Eppensteiner, born Henke. On January 21, 1941, he received his doctorate with the dissertation The Satisfaction of Vitamin Requirements through Food . Ten days later he was posted to the Eastern Front in northern Russia as a doctor in a pioneer unit . Here he accompanied this unit as it marched into the Tikhvin area and saw the indescribable suffering that was inflicted on the civilian population at the time. "During this time he looked after many sick Russians, in whom he saw not enemies, but defenseless people." "The senselessness of war never got out of his head, and until his death he was mainly fascinated by one person: an old, blind Russian with a wooden leg, with whom he was quartered, and who was shot by the German soldiers on the retreat. ”He recorded this endless suffering in numerous fleeting sketches. After this unit was disbanded, he was given medical command of a hospital train until the end of the war . He transported wounded soldiers from the front back to the German Reich . After emergency operations, amputations or the issuing of death certificates, he often retired to his compartment for a few hours and carved impressive figures of Russian women and men out of the wood of railway sleepers, as he could not paint on the train. The war in Russia became Stockburger's trauma that accompanied him throughout his entire life as an artist and also in his biographical life.

On May 2, 1945 Stockburger fell into French captivity in Hard near Bregenz and was interned in Lindau . He stated that as a German military doctor, a military hospital for 600 seriously wounded and sick prisoners of war French furnishings and have found 36 French medical professionals to treat patients "under his command". A colonel doctor in the French army who had previously been involved recognized Stockburger. He was then released from captivity on June 21, 1945.

With regard to the war effort forced upon him, Stockburger announced the following in a letter in May 1941: “I don't feel like spring. I take [...] the posture like an animal preparing to hibernate. I just don't go along with it, because I should be happy about the green of the trees and the meadows, but I don't want to. I strike in protest against the life forced on me. "

post war period

Georg Alfred Stockburger: Justice / Church (woodcut, 1984)

Released from captivity, Stockburger, accompanied by his wife, returned sick to the Bläsibad near Tübingen, where his wife had found accommodation. In September 1945 he received permission to practice as a doctor in Hirrlingen . In 1952 the family (Stockburger with his wife Lore and meanwhile three daughters, Anna (* 1943), Katrin (* 1947) and Cornelie (* 1948)) moved to Tübingen. Here Stockburger set up living rooms and a doctor's practice in a three-and-a-half-room apartment on Neue Straße . He was even able to exhibit his pictures in a modern art exhibition organized by the French occupiers and Carlo Schmid , the head of the constituent assembly in Bebenhausen , in the old botany of the University of Tübingen . These hung next to the pictures of other “forgotten people” such as Manfred Henninger , Gerth Biese , Heinrich Wägenbaur and Erna Ley-Dix . “The 'forgotten', as the ostracized artists from the Third Reich were later called, [...] all had a hard time gaining a foothold after 1945: Democracy had indeed been decreed, [...] but the attitude was with many Contemporaries [...] the old one remained. […] In this way, the “forgotten” experienced a second punishment: after the boycott and professional ban, they were now disregarded by the general public. ”Sometimes this art was then based on the motto:“ That's smear and not art ”by Parts of the public defamed. The art historian Rainer Zimmermann later established the term "missing generation of artists".

As a representative of this lost generation, Stockburger could not live his painting as a profession, but at least as a calling: In the evening his consulting room became his studio. His patients could follow the creation of new pictures on the easel standing there. Here he converted his Russian sketches into pictures. Works such as Russian Peasants in the Snow , The Gravedigger or Three Russian Women , who depicted the suffering of the Russian population in the war, were created.

Stockburger in space and time

Georg Alfred Stockburger: The (first) Stuttgart gas boiler, 1934

Returning from Berlin to Stuttgart in 1934, Stockburger was accidentally and unintentionally given a municipal studio on Heidlesäcker behind Villa Berg in the immediate vicinity of the Stuttgart gas boiler for almost a year . He was fascinated by this large-scale technical facility in his immediate vicinity. He integrated them into a landscape. Houses and trees in the foreground of the picture "dwarf" against the steel monster. The studio was taken from him a little later because he did not enter the Reich Chamber of Culture and did not make a public commitment to the Third Reich. The picture "Schwäbische Landstrasse" dates from 1945 to 1952 as a country doctor in Hirrlingen and shows in an expressionist way a Swabian fruit tree avenue. Since 1952 Stockburger has been working on lithographic and general printing techniques in Mönch's workshop in Unterjesingen under the guidance of his school friends Ugge Bärtle and Erich Mönch , the luminary of lithography par excellence . After moving to his new house on Hartmeyerstraße in Tübingen in 1963, he set up a printing studio there. The doctor's office remained on Neue Straße . According to the art historian Axel von Criegern, the repeatedly revised versions of the woodcut "Commuters on the Tübingen Neckar Bridge" reveal Stockburger's typical trait of never being able to lock and always being on the go, as well as lifelong artistic preoccupation with the human Suffer. After giving up his practice in 1972, the 65-year-old Stockburger devoted himself fully to painting. During this time he was allowed to travel to the Mediterranean south (Ischia, Tunisia, Sardinia). Her artistic output were colorful pictures such as the port of Ischia (1970) or the lithograph Couple with a Green Goat (1976), which depicts a Tunisian Bedouin couple with a green goat.

Towards the end of his life, Stockburger, who suffered from cancer in the jaw area, began redesigning his own works more and more frequently. He painted over a not inconsiderable number of his pictures and also erased the individual facial features of some of his Russian wooden figures. “We didn't like to see it, and we haven't understood it until today.” Says daughter Katrin Stockburger. Stockburger died on April 5, 1986 in Tübingen from cancer.

legacy

Georg Alfred Stockburger: Schwäbische Landstrasse 1945

“As a doctor, Stockburger was very popular with his patients. As an artist, he sold almost nothing. He gave his works to people who were important to him, who understood him or who had done him a favor. ”In this way, for example, the Tübingen judge Burkhardt Stein obtained from his long-time family doctor, with whom he often discussed art for a long time and / or entertained his war experiences, some wood and copper engravings, including “Justice / Church” from 1984. In 2014, Stein donated his collection of 27 Stockburger pictures to the community of Kusterdingen in order to return the “most important forgotten artist of Expressionism” for the Bring the public into focus. Most of the pictures and sculptures left by GA Stockburger are kept by his daughter Katrin Stockburger in Tübingen.

Stockburger has always created harmonious, life-affirming images, “but depicting the horrors of war remains his outstanding achievement. Many artists have dealt with the war. However, there are certainly not many who so emphatically refused to take part in their own warring country and identified themselves with the enemy. ”The exclusive depiction of the victims - Stockburger almost never painted a soldier - negates those responsible for the war. Everything is drawn and painted into the need and suffering of the victims. Stockburger thus brought “love for the enemy” to the Russian civilian population, first as a doctor and then throughout his life as an artist in impressive works. "This may make Stockburger really unique."

Exhibitions

Georg Alfred Stockburger: Two Reclining Girls (lithograph, 1950s)
  • 1928 Participation in the exhibition of the German Association of Artists (in Hanover, on the recommendation of the jurors Emil Nolde and Karl Hofer )
  • 1929 Participation in the exhibition of the Stuttgart Secession and the Munich New Secession (6th exhibition of the Stuttgart Secession; March 30 to May 9, 1929, Neues Kunstgebäude am Schloßgarten, Stuttgart)
  • 1930 Participation in the exhibition of the "Stuttgarter Juryfrei" (in Stuttgart)
  • 1930 Participation in a special exhibition of the German Association of Artists (in Stuttgart)
  • 1932 Participation in the collective exhibition of the Stuttgart Secession (7th exhibition of the Stuttgart Secession; May 14 to June 25, 1932 in the New Art Building in the Schloßgarten, Stuttgart)
  • 1947 Participation in the first exhibition of the newly founded Stuttgart Secession (October 4 to November 1947 in the rooms of the Württemberg Art Association in the Künstlerhaus Sonnenhalde, Stuttgart)
  • 1948 Participation in the exhibition of the Tübinger Künstlerbund (in Calw)
  • 1980 Exhibition of graphics and drawings by Georg Alfred Stockburger (July 1980, Galerie Altes Schlachthaus Tübingen)
  • 1987 exhibits by GA Stockburger in the exhibition "Essential Works of the Stuttgart Secession from 1923 to 1947" (in Böblingen)
  • 1988 Stockburger: Memorial exhibition. (November 25, 1988 - December 11, 1988 in the town hall of Kusterdingen)
  • 2015 Georg Alfred Stockburger. Against forgetting. (April 12, 2015– May 17, 2015 in Kusterdingen-Jettenburg; end of exhibition postponed from May 10 to May 17.)

Individual evidence

Georg Alfred Stockburger: The Slain Russian (lithograph, 1983)
Georg Alfred Stockburger: Surrender (lithograph, 1950s)
  1. ^ Georg Alfred Stockburger. Against forgetting . Some sources use the wrong order of the first name "Alfred Georg" or only the middle name "Alfred". In early reviews from the 1920s, the first name "Jörg" was used instead of "Georg".
  2. ↑ Anna Latz (née Stockburger, eldest daughter of GA Stockburger), mail from April 17, 2015 to the Wikipedia author
  3. ↑ Anna Latz in an email from May 22, 2015 to the Wikipedia author
  4. ↑ It is about the "Stuttgarter Juryfrei", founded in 1930 according to the concept of the Juryfrei Kunstschau Berlin (JKB) , which had around 150 members from all over Württemberg and had held three exhibitions on the Stuttgart Interimstheaterplatz by 1932 (based on: Interview by Brigitte Reinhardt with Georg Alfred Stockburger and catalog for the exhibition Stuttgarter Neue Sezession 1929–1933 , pp. 3–5)
  5. ↑ Stockburger fell ill with typhus in Berlin and was unable to receive treatment or received treatment too late due to financial problems. "[...] that was all terrible. Sometimes I sold two or three oil paintings so that I could afford lunch again. ”(Interview Brigitte Reinhardt asked Georg Alfred Stockburger, p. 11)
  6. ↑ CF Drewitz 1934: The culture editor CF Drewitz of the Stuttgart NS-Kurier calls on young artists who are not loyal to the line to comment on their artistic intentions. In this article, Rudolf Müller and Georg Alfred Stockburger respond to the questions asked. The copy of the article by Georg Alfred Stockburger (without a specific date) bears the handwritten note Stockburger “Drewitz / NS Kurier, afterwards professional ban”. The quote reflects the core message of the Stockburger statement.
  7. ↑ The complete Stockburger statement is reproduced here: Stockburger in the Stuttgart NS-Kurier 1934 .
  8. ↑ cf. Günther Wirth: Verbotene Kunst 1933–1945 , p. 191, there a brief description of Georg Alfred Stockburger's decision to reorientate his career
  9. ↑ Reinhold Nägele emigrated very late in 1939 through the mediation of his sponsor, the industrialist and patron of the arts Hugo Borst (1881–1967, commercial director of the Robert Bosch company) and Robert Bosch , who was involved by him , because he was with a Jewish woman, the doctor Alice Nördlinger was married. The Nägele family had previously been subject to an extensive ban on contact by the National Socialists. GA Stockburger and a few other painter colleagues still kept in touch with the Nägele family. Stockburger describes Nägele as a rather apolitical person and then characterizes him in terms of his relationship to his wife and children: "[...] he was decent enough not to get divorced from his wife and three children." (Interview with Brigitte Reinhardt asks Georg Alfred Stockburger, p. 17)
  10. ↑ Conversely, against the background of the ban on contact imposed on him and his family by the National Socialists and the emigration that took place in 1939, Nägele says that he has heard nothing more from many of his former painting colleagues with the exception of the Tübingen painter Alfred Stockburger, who is now a doctor, and the Stuttgart painter Tell Dude , whom he counts among his closest friends. After: Brigitte Reinhardt, Reinhold Nägele, Dieter Hannemann: Reinhold Nägele, 1984, ISBN 3806202966 , page 191
  11. ↑ To Reinhold Nägele and his family, whom Stockburger often visited privately, he said that he “had to become a doctor again.” (Brigitte Reinhardt: Interview with GA Stockburger, p. 16). Stockburger probably also considered the option of emigrating. “At that time I also sometimes considered emigrating. I was still young and strong, I could have […]. But then I preferred to study medicine. Although it was very hard, you can imagine that […]. ”(Brigitte Reinhardt: Interview with GA Stockburger, p. 18).
  12. ^ Anna Latz: An artist in the shadow . In: Georg Alfred Stockburger. Against forgetting , p. 10
  13. ^ Siegbert Zurheide: An animal that is preparing to hibernate.
  14. ↑ In relation to correspondence with the emigrated Reinhold Nägele, Stockburger described his career in the Third Reich and a resulting misunderstanding with Nägele as follows: “I was a medical officer and started out as a medical soldier and ended up being chief physician [of a hospital train (note Anna Latz :) ], that was battalion commander position after all. And from that he probably concluded that I had become a Nazi […] ”(Interview Brigitte Reinhardt with GA Stockburger, p. 17)
  15. ↑ Brigitte Reinhardt: Interview: with Georg Alfred Stockburger, p. 22
  16. ↑ quoted from: Siegbert Zurheide: An animal that is preparing to hibernate.
  17. ↑ a b Ulrich Hägele's speech: Georg Alfred Stockburger 1907–1986
  18. ^ Rainer Zimmermann: The Art of the Lost Generation. German painting of expressive realism from 1925–1975 , Berlin: Econ Verlag 1980, ISBN 3430199611
  19. ↑ According to statements by his eldest daughter Anna Latz from May 15, 2015 to the Wikipedia author, it was definitely the doctor's office and not the waiting room of the practice as described in some newspaper articles.
  20. ↑ This probably most impressive picture of Stockburger Russia is shown in: Katrin Stockburger: Stockburger… , and Siegbert Zurheide: An animal preparing to hibernate , p. 50
  21. ↑ a b c Ulrike Pfeil: Georg Alfred Stockburger…
  22. ↑ Brigitte Reinhardt: Interview: with Georg Alfred Stockburger, p. 13 f.
  23. ↑ Dropped by the zeitgeist… . In: "Reutlinger Generalanzeiger"
  24. ↑ quoted from: Siegbert Zurheide: An animal that is preparing to hibernate.
  25. ↑ depicted according to Siegbert Zurheide: An animal preparing to hibernate
  26. ↑ Ines Stöhr: Against forgetting ... , In: "Reutlinger Generalanzeiger"
  27. ↑ Burkhardt Stein: Encounters with Dr. Georg Alfred Stockburger . In: Georg Alfred Stockburger. Against forgetting , p. 12
  28. ↑ a b Anna Latz: An artist in the shadow . In: Georg Alfred Stockburger. Against forgetting , p. 12
  29. ↑ According to Anna Latz, there is no picture in which Stockburger depicts a German soldier. (Statement in a tour of the Jettenburg exhibition in May 2015)
  30. ↑ a b c d Hans-Dieter Mück, Harry Schlichtenmaier: Stuttgarter Sezession, 1923–1932 , 1947, Vol. 1, pp. 23, 28, 29, 30
  31. ↑ a b Katrin Stockburger: Stockburger ...
  32. ^ Hans-Dieter Mück, Harry Schlichtenmaier: Stuttgarter Sezession, 1923–1932, 1947, 2 volumes, 1987

literature

Catalogs and monographs

  • Georg Alfred Stockburger. Against forgetting , ed. by the municipality of Kusterdingen, art work group in the town hall of Kusterdingen, catalog for the exhibition in the gallery art room hardening in Kusterdingen-Jettenburg from April 12 to May 10, 2015, Kusterdingen 2015
  • Katrin Stockburger: Stockburger: Memorial exhibition in the town hall Kusterdingen , November 25th to December 11th, 1988, ed. by the municipality of Kusterdingen, art work group in the town hall, Reutlingen 1988
  • Hans Dieter Mück , Harry Schlichtenmaier: Stuttgart Secession, exhibitions 1923–1932, 1947. Edited by the cultural office of the city of Böblingen, Galerie Schlichtenmaier, two volumes, Böblingen, Grafenau 1987, ISBN 3-89298-009-8 .
    • Volume 1, text volume with various mentions of GA Stockburger (participation in exhibitions etc., p. 182 f. Brief vita of GA Stockburger in the artist directory of the catalog, listing of participations in secession exhibitions, compilation of works)
    • Volume 2, illustrated book, pp. 186–190, there five work illustrations by GA Stockburger (two Cubist self-portraits from 1929, woman in front of the mirror 1928, self-portrait 1928, music still life around 1930)

Newspaper articles

  • Birgit Vey: painter of the human. The gallery Kunstraum Haerten in Jettenburg pays tribute to Georg Alfred Stockburger, who died in 1986 . In: “ Reutlinger Generalanzeiger ”, April 15, 2015
  • Fabian Renz: The artist who became a doctor. An exhibition in the gallery Kunstraum Hardening shows pictures by the painter Georg Alfred Stockburger . In: " Schwäbisches Tagblatt ", April 13, 2015
  • Ines Stöhr: Strongly shaped by war experiences, Against forgetting: Working group brings works by the Wankheim painter Stockburger to the hardest . In: “Reutlinger Generalanzeiger”, April 8, 2015
  • Ulrike Pfeil: Georg Alfred Stockburger, An Artist in the Shadow, As a modern he stayed with the representational , in: Schwäbisches Tagblatt, January 21, 2015
  • Ines Stöhr: Against the forgetting of Alfred Stockburger . In: “Reutlinger Generalanzeiger”, October 10, 2014
  • Siegbert Zurheide: An animal that is preparing to hibernate: the suffering and life of the Tübingen painter-doctor Georg Alfred Stockburger . In: “ Tübinger Blätter ”, 76th year, 1989, pp. 49–50
  • Absolutely not free of engagement, the painter Alfred Georg Stockburger in the town hall of Kusterdingen (for the Stockburger exhibition in 1988 in the town hall of Kusterdingen) . In: “ Stuttgarter Zeitung ”, December 7, 1988
  • Axel von Criegern : Dropped by the zeitgeist, In the Kusterdinger town hall: Stockburger exhibition opened . In: “Reutlinger Generalanzeiger”, November 28, 1988
  • Overcoming suffering by painting. Memorial exhibition for Alfred Georg Stockburger in Kusterdingen . In: "Südwest Presse", November 8, 1988
  • Appointment alongside his job, On the death of the doctor and painter Alfred Georg Stockburger . In: "Südwestpresse / Schwäbisches Tagblatt", April 8, 1986
  • CF Drewitz: Württembergischer Kunstverein: artists, art and viewers, attempting a new path to art . In: Stuttgarter NS-Kurier , with statements by the painters Rudolf Müller and Georg Alfred Stockburger, October 1934 (copy without specifying the exact date of publication. The culture editor Drewitz of the Stuttgarter NS-Kurier calls on young artists who are not loyal to the line to comment on their artistic intentions .)
  • Stuttgart Secession - Exhibition opening 1932 . In: Schwäbische Tagwacht , Saturday, May 14, 1932 (with a brief mention of Stockburger; see here .)
  • Karl Konrad Düssel : Stuttgart Secession - Exhibition 1932 . in: Stuttgarter Neues Tagblatt , Saturday, June 11, 1932 (with a detailed review of the Stockburg pictures on display; see here .)
  • Various reviews of Georg Alfred Stockburger's participation in exhibitions from 1928 to the late 1960s, the exact location of which has not yet been clarified: Stockburger reviews in full

Others

  • Ulrich Hägele: Georg Alfred Stockburger 1907–1986 , speech at the opening of the exhibition in the gallery Kunstraum Horien in Kusterdingen-Jettenburg on April 12, 2015
  • Brigitte Reinhardt: Interview with Georg Alfred Stockburger on the occasion of the preparation of an exhibition for the 100th birthday of Reinhold Nägele in the gallery of the city of Stuttgart (today: Kunstmuseum Stuttgart) , edited and with explanatory footnotes by Anna Latz, transcript, 1984. (22 pages In this interview, Georg Alfred Stockburger, who was 77 years old and seriously ill, gives the art historian Brigitte Reinhardt (* 1944) important information about his own as well as information about Reinhold Nägele, who, like Stockburger, was a member of the Stuttgart Secession and the Stuttgart New Secession Career that is not recorded anywhere else.)

Web links

Commons : Georg Alfred Stockburger  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Stockburger, Georg Alfred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stockburger, Alfred Georg; Stockburger, Alfred; Stockburger Jörg Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, draftsman, lithographer, wood cutter, copperplate engraver and doctor
DATE OF BIRTH May 12, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Wankheim (today part of Kusterdingen )
DATE OF DEATH April 5, 1986
Place of death Tübingen