Georg Karl Rohde

Georg Karl Ernst Rohde (born August 30, 1874 in Oldenburg ; † March 4, 1959 in Bremen ) was a Bremen-based glass painter .

Life

Rohde was born on August 30, 1874 as the son of the magistrate actuary Christian Wilhelm Rohde in Oldenburg. There he learned the painting trade. In 1896 he was with his friend Heinrich Wilhelm Roß at the Oldenburg School of Applied Arts. After an apprenticeship with the church painter Lauterbach in Hanover, he soon turned to glass painting , which he acquired without formal training. In 1901 he moved to Bremen and worked as an artist in Hinrich Schnaars' glazier, his first public contracts came in (glass wall in the Ratskeller, 1902), and in 1903 he proved himself in the painting of two Priölken in the Bremen Ratskeller. In the same year Franz Schütte pushed through the award of the Bremen cathedral windows to Rohde against the resistance of the interior designer Hermann Schaper . He also fitted out the Bremen hall with glass windows at the 3rd German Applied Arts Exhibition in Dresden in 1905 . In 1906 he opened an independent studio, which at times employed up to 16 people. In 1906/07 he became a partner in the Ross and Rohde company in Wiesbaden. He is said to have been awarded at the World Exhibition in Brussels in 1910. Rohde was a member of the German Werkbund . In 1912 he presented 42 designs and executed glass painting in the Oldenburg Museum of Applied Arts . Later he added the reverse glass painting, which is based in southern Germany, to his technical repertoire in order to be able to differentiate colored fields more strongly and also to be able to bring writing into the windows. In 1918/19 he created a staircase with coat of arms windows in the Schütting in Bremen , as well as further glass windows in many cities in northern Germany, including in Oldenburg in the Protestant cemetery chapel, in the Israelite cemetery chapel and in the synagogue. The extensive inventory of his commissioned work in the sacred area included the entire northern German area between Hamburg and Emden with southern expansion to Braunschweig and a constant focus in Bremen, here also in public secular buildings (hospitals, schools) and in the private sector.

In February 1921 he gave up the Wiesbaden stake.

The studio was completely destroyed in the Second World War. After 1945, Rohde set up another workshop in his Bremen home in Dobben , now primarily to restore war damage, including on his own factories. Around 1950, together with his son Werner, photographer and later glass painter in Worpswede, he created a second version of the Bremen cathedral window and the rose window for the west facade of this church. In the following year, the almost eighty-year-old was still doing restorative work for war-damaged sacred buildings in the Bremen and Hamburg areas.

meaning

Stained glass, which had rapidly lost importance with the end of the Middle Ages, only gained new clients with the neo-Gothic of the 19th century. Many works of this era were the implementation of painterly drafts that did not always take into account the technical and formal requirements of this glass art. Rohde, in whose person artistic will and craftsmanship was united, tried, however, to use the properties of the material aesthetically, to "revive the spirit of the Middle Ages" and "to paint with colored light", as contemporary critics praised. In his more stylized works after the First World War, an influence of the glass painter Jan Thorn Prikker can be observed.

plant

In Rohde's oeuvre, the often extensive glass paintings for North German churches predominate. He also provided public buildings, especially in Bremen, with colored windows. Occasionally he took on orders for decorative paintings.

His work in the secular construction sector showed a wide spectrum of new pictorial possibilities of the old craftsmanship and its contemporary design language, which became more linear and expressive after 1918 , especially before the First World War . While preserving the surface structure of a few colors, he set lead bridges as a linear framework more strict and angular, creating crystalline surface structures from which slightly pathetic figures emerged.

His small-format reverse glass paintings were aimed more at private buyers. Many stained glass windows did not survive World War II. The windows that are still preserved are preferably included in the following chronological lists.

Murals

• two Priölken in the Bremer Ratskeller (with HWRoß) 1903 (one preserved, restored in 2010/11, depiction of St. Urban; the other probably destroyed or covered over because of a quotation from Heine during the Nazi era)
• Wildeshausen, St. Alexander Collegiate Church, 1911 (not preserved)
• Bockhorn, St. Cosmas and Damian

Sacred window

• Bremen-Vegesack, Stadtkirche , 1903 and 1904
• Oldenburg, synagogue (1904–1905)
• Wiesbaden, Kurhaus, Wandelhalle, together with Roß, 1907 (restored in 2007)
• Wildeshausen, Alexander Church , 1909
• Braunschweig, St. Jakobi, 1911
• Bremen-Osterholz, main chapel of the cemetery, around 1920
• Oldenburg, mourning hall at the Easter castle Jewish cemetery , 1921
• Lesum, Ev. Parish Church of St. Martini, 1930
• Hemeln, Evangelical Lutheran Church, 1937
• Bremen, St. Josephstift, chapel, 1948
• Bremen, Bremer Dom , Westrose, 1950 and choir window 1951
• Bremen-Grambke, 1954
• Bremen-Oberneuland, 1957

Profane glass windows

• Bremen-Vegesack, former Villa Fritze (local office), two windows in the stairwell
• Two windows in the foyer of the Kurhaus in Wiesbaden, 1907 (preserved?)
• Brussels, World Exhibition 1910, eight female figures for the “wedding room” in the German pavilion
• District Court in Nordenham, 1913
• Bremen, former Biermann Villa, now Focke Museum Bremen, 1913 (?)
• Mourners , glass picture, lead glazing, various techniques, Art Nouveau (?), Signed: R. u. R. Wiesb., Ca.1913
• Madonna , glass picture, lead glazing, various techniques, Art Nouveau (?), Signed: Rohde, approx. 1913

Evaluation of his work

In the monthly issues for German art and decoration (vol. XXIV of April 1909, pp. 34–35) there is an evaluation of the work of Georg K. Rohde by Dr. Carl Schäfer: “One of the most outstanding artistic forces that Bremen has today is the glass painter Georg K. Rohde. The time when people loved the colorful splendor of stained glass for its own sake is over. The spatial concept of the present demands imperiously - and rightly - that the window should fit into the overall meaning of the wall and ceiling; And in this interaction, the colorful, mostly very sophisticated glass painting of the time, as was customary around 1890, absolutely no longer fits. Its application today requires much more tactful caution; its colors, its material, its lines must be developed much more strongly from the entire organism of the wall, its structure and color. And Rohde has just shown a certain talent for this. The putti, intended to represent the five senses, of which three are shown here, are inserted as colored means (dots) into the colorless panes of the high lattice windows that lead from the dining room of the Strauch house to the garden. For the Ratskeller window, which is intended to be viewed at close range and at leisure, the artist has sometimes fed up with funny old and new motifs, sometimes only looking like a yellowed hand drawing and as if placed randomly between the old panes, combined into a very amusing sheet of images . Its greatest advantage - an advantage that can hardly be seen in the pictures - is the economical and highly effective selection and use of the material; To achieve rich effects with just a few color tones, to bring out the beauty and luminosity of the colored glass and to control the solid, large lines of the lead contours in their decorative effect, that is the essence of this elegant material style. "

literature

• Paul Westheim: The glass painting as an architectural link, in: German art and decoration 24 (1909) 7, pp. 46–51.
• EH: A modern glass painter, in: Architektonische Rundschau 27 (1911) 9, pp. 97–100, plate 90.
• Theodor Raspe: The glass painter Georg K. Rohde, in: Journal for old and new glass painting and related areas 1 (1912), pp. 28-30.
• Gustav Brandes: Georg K. Rohde, a modern glass painter, in: Niedersachsen 19 (1913), pp. 28–32.
• Gustav Brandes: The glass painter Georg K. Rohde, in: Niedersachsen 30 (1925), pp. 357–365, four color illus. Before 341, 357, 373, 405.
• Wilhelm Lührs (edit.): Bremische Biographie 1912–1962 . Bremen 1969, p. 416f.
• Erhard Remmert: Art Nouveau Windows in Germany, Weingarten 1984, pp. 10, 66, 67, 138, 139, 163, 164, 165, 166, 199 (only fig.).
• Holger Maraun: Reforms of the arts and crafts in Bremen, in: From folk art to modernity - arts and crafts in the Elbe-Weser region 1900–1930, Landscape Association of the Former Duchies of Bremen and Verden, Stade 1992, (on Rohde: see p. 184 -195).
• Bernd Küster: Rohde, Georg Ernst Karl, glass painter. In: Hans Friedl u. a. (Ed.): Biographical manual for the history of the state of Oldenburg . Edited on behalf of the Oldenburg landscape. Isensee, Oldenburg 1992, ISBN 3-89442-135-5 , pp. 602-603.
• Peter Strotmann: The portraits of women by Georg K. Rohde from the years 1901 to 1914 , historical glass pictures from Bremen-Schwachhausen , annual calendar 2017, calendar manufacturer Verden.
• Peter Strotmann: The Rohde'schen Putten , Schwachhauser magazine for Bremen, No. 33, 2013, pp. 30–35.
• Peter Strotmann: Die Rohde'schen women , Schwachhauser magazine for Bremen, No. 34, 2013, pp. 38–44
• Peter Strotmann: The Rohde'schen birds , Schwachhauser magazine for Bremen, No. 35, 2013, pp. 54–58.
• Peter Strotmann: The Rohde'schen caricatures , Schwachhauser magazine for Bremen, No. 36, 2014, p.56-60.

1. ↑ German Art and Decoration 24 (1909). Heidelberg University Library, accessed on March 15, 2018 .  
2. ↑ German Art and Decoration 24 (1909). Heidelberg University Library, accessed on March 15, 2018 .