Gottlieb Löffler

Gottlieb Samuel Löffler (born January 14, 1868 in Korntal , † April 5, 1946 in Ludwigsburg ) was a German painter and art teacher. He had been trained as a drawing teacher by Albert Kappis in Stuttgart . Around 1905 he contributed to the reform of art education. His main creative period was between 1908 and 1923 in Heilbronn , where his works were shown in several exhibitions.

Life

Löffler was born as the son of the housefather of the Korntal children's home, Gottlieb Wilhelm Löffler and his wife Wilhelmine. The mother was a teacher and after the early death of the father continued the children's home. Gottlieb already had artistic inclinations as a child, but initially he also chose a teaching profession and attended the teachers' seminars in Eßlingen am Neckar and Nürtingen . In Nürtingen he also received his first painting training from the landscape painter Julius Kornbeck (1839–1920). After the first official examination for the teaching profession, Löffler worked as an assistant and substitute teacher at various Württemberg schools, including in Korntal, Kleinbottwar , Göttelfingen , Schönbühl , Bonlanden , Neckartenzlingen , Plochingen , Untereisesheim and Obertürkheim . After the second service examination, Löffler attended the Royal Art School in Stuttgart, where he studied landscape drawing with Albert Kappis . Study trips took him to Italy and Corsica.

In Obertürkheim Löffler married Elise Regine Keller in 1896 (born March 24, 1876 in Obertürkheim; † March 31, 1970). In October of the same year Löffler came to Altnuifra as a permanent teacher , where his son Walther Theodor Löffler was born on March 11, 1898 . In October 1898, Löffler resigned from school to become a specialist drawing teacher at the Stuttgart School of Applied Arts. Because of his previous studies and the quality of his submitted work, he was waived a year of training, so that he passed the subject teacher examination in the spring of 1901. He received his first specialist teaching position in the autumn of 1901 in Böblingen . In 1904 he moved to Schwäbisch Hall . There he occupied himself with the reform of the teaching of drawing, which he pushed forward with a paper published in 1906 on outdoor art lessons. Löffler advocated promoting the creative power and the imagination of the students through careful observation and careful presentation. His endeavors mark the academic departure from history painting .

In 1908 Löffler became a senior high school teacher and went to Heilbronn , where he gave drawing lessons at the high school and high school. With the support of the city of Heilbronn and the state of Württemberg, Löffler was a participant and reporter at the 4th International Congress for Art Education, Drawing and Applied Arts in Dresden in 1912 . Löffler's main work was created in Heilbronn in the form of numerous drawings with motifs from Alt-Heilbronn and the wider area. There were several exhibitions of his works, and his motifs were also sold as postcards. In 1916/17 he organized a school drawing exhibition in Heilbronn for the benefit of war welfare, which caused a sensation because of its high-quality exhibits and because of which Löffler was proposed to the Württemberg ministerial department for higher education to be awarded the title of professor. With regard to further candidates, he was denied the title, nevertheless he was to be awarded the Charlotten- or Wilhelmskreuz , which later was not done due to the course of the war.

From 1922/23 he had to stop drawing because of health problems; He suffered from severe osteoarthritis of the hip and movement disorders in his right arm. In 1924 he was promoted to the university advisor, and on November 1, 1925, he took early retirement due to health problems.

In 1926 he moved to Stuttgart Strasse 91 in Ludwigsburg , where he was able to at least resume painting with oil and tempera after two longer courses. In November 1927 there was a larger exhibition of the Swabian Alb Association with its newer works, which showed motifs from the area around Ludwigsburg.

His son Walther Theodor Löffler had meanwhile become an architect and assistant to Heinrich Tessenow , but then committed suicide in 1938 together with his wife Gertrud Hermann (* 1894) in 1938 after the couple had come into the crosshairs of the Gestapo because of the support of a Jewish student . The Gestapo also searched the apartment of Gottlieb Löffler, who was almost unable to walk due to his hip problem. Grandson Thomas Löffler was drafted into the SS during World War II and later went missing on the Eastern Front.

After the end of the war, Löffler's apartment was occupied by the Americans for a few months. Löffler died on April 5, 1946 of larynx cancer.

plant

Most of Löffler's work includes landscape and city views. In the period around the First World War, detailed drawings with motifs from Heilbronn, Ludwigsburg and the surrounding area were created that are of historical value today. His style of representation is shaped by his teacher Albert Kappis, but in contrast to Kappis, Löffler's works rarely show people or animals. After he switched from drawings to oil and tempera paintings due to illness in the 1920s, he created other landscape paintings with motifs of the Swabian landscape, including scenes from the Swabian Alb and Lake Constance, where Löffler stayed during summer stays in the late 1920s. While his sketches on site are often carried out in strong and almost impressionistic colors, the pictures executed afterwards have a rather reserved color scheme. In his later years, due to his illness, he only made studio pictures, including flower pictures and paintings based on older sketches.

literature

• Ulrich Kull: Gottlieb Löffler - a Swabian painter . In Ludwigsburg history sheets 34/1982