Gottfried Reichel

Gottfried Reichel (born May 31, 1925 in Pobershau ; † October 2, 2015 in Marienberg ) was a German carver .

Life

Gottfried Reichel grew up in the Erzgebirge village of Pobershau. His ancestors were miners and artisans. As a child he got to know the carving tradition of his homeland. As a high school student he was influenced by National Socialist ideology and volunteered for the front in 1944. He came to England as a prisoner of war. There he found out about the crimes committed in the name of the German people, made contact with Christian families and came to appreciate British democracy. Reichel returned to Pobershau in 1948 as a committed Christian and convinced democrat. Full of ideals, he began as a new teacher, but was dismissed without notice in 1949. Unemployed and depressed, he began to carve: miners, candlesticks, cribs, like others in the village. But people from the post-war period stood at his nativity scene. Under the influence of Käthe Kollwitz and Ernst Barlach , he found his own style, which he retained into old age.

Reichel worked as an accountant and carved in his spare time. After his marriage to Erika geb. Hertwig had their children Wolfram, Maria and Anne. Reichel was involved in the parish as a youth leader, amateur actor, poster designer and amateur filmmaker. In his youth group he discussed the stories of the Bible, the Nazi past and the GDR present. His thoughts took shape in the wooden sculptures. An example of this is the group “Deportation to Babylon”, in which the biblical story and the journey of the Jews to the German concentration camps are presented at the same time. Figures from this group were donated to the Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem in 2003 .

Reichel went unnoticed for a long time because he was not wanted in regional carving exhibitions. In 1974 the first exhibition was in the village church of Burkhardswalde near Meißen, followed by 40 other exhibitions in churches, after 1990 also in town halls, hotels and museums, and finally also in the Netherlands and in northern and southern Germany.

In 1996 a house was built in Pobershau for Gottfried Reichel's life's work: “Die Hütte”. At the center of the gallery is the largest group, “The Warsaw Ghetto”. These figures differ in style from the others, because they are carved in detail from photos of people from the ghetto.

After that, Reichel continued to carve for almost 15 years. This late work is on the way in Germany as a traveling exhibition entitled “Biblical History in Wood” and has been shown in over 30 locations. Gottfried Reichel died at the age of 90.

Works (selection)

• Deportation to Babylon
• The Warsaw Ghetto
• The dance around the golden calf
• Concentration camp group (tree, gas chamber, Kortzak with children)
• Abraham, Sarah and Hagar
• Mary with child
• Joseph and his brothers
• Escape from Sodom

Exhibitions (selection)

• From 1995 "Die Hütte", Pobershau
• From 2005 Daetz-Centrum Lichtenstein
• 1974: Dresden, Kreuzkirche
• 1991: Hanover , Marktkirche
• 1994: Schneeberg, Museum of Mining Folk Art
• 2001: Erfurt , Augustinian monastery
• 2004: Beeskow , Marienkirche
• 2006: De Lier (Netherlands), Museum "De Timmerwerf"
• 2012: Anklam , City Hall
• 2014: Beeskow, Marienkirche
• 2016/17: Käthe-Kollwitz-Museum Berlin

Literature and films

• This wood lives. The life's work of the carver Gottfried Reichel, Marienberg 2005, ISBN 9783931770259
• Gottfried Reichel. My message is: remember! DVD, ars vivendi film 2008
• Work report - arts and crafts in the area of ​​the church, issue 160, 1985
• idea spectrum No. 26, June 30, 1999
• New Germany - ND on the weekend, February 1, 2003
• Exhibition catalog “Sprekend Hout”, De Lier (NL), 2006

Web links

• Literature by and about Gottfried Reichel in the catalog of the German National Library
• Kunstverein Max Christoph and Gottfried Reichel e. V.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The carver Gottfried Reichel - life data . Retrieved May 23, 2017.
2. ↑ This wood is alive ( Memento of the original from July 4, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.