Gustav Melcher

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Gustav Melcher (born February 4, 1878 in Düsseldorf , † 1966 ) was a German painter from the Düsseldorf School and a pioneer of film , film criticism and film theory .

Life

Gustav Melcher studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy with Peter Janssen and Eduard von Gebhardt . At first he wanted to become a portrait and figure painter, but then he decided to paint landscapes and marine life . Melcher made study trips to England , Scotland , Belgium and France , among others . He became a member of the Düsseldorf artist association Malkasten .

Around 1900 he lived in Friedrichshagen near Berlin for a few years . There he met Amalie Emma Margarethe Landauer, née Leuschner (1872–1908), in 1902/1903. Their wedding took place shortly after the divorce (March 21, 1903) from their first husband, Gustav Landauer . Melcher's wife came from a social democratic working class family. She shared the political convictions of her first husband, which would later have an impact on Melcher's political views. Presumably in Berlin he met the later poet Gottfried Benn , with whom Melcher still had correspondence when he had been living in Düsseldorf for many years, on April 7, 1950. On August 27, 1908, after the death of his wife and the Returning to Düsseldorf, he and his old sports friends Gustav Anger, Franz Hüveler and August Peters invited all fans of sailing and motor sports in the Düsseldorf area to the “Römischer Kaiser” hotel to found the Düsseldorf sailing and motorboat club Ahoi . A few days later, the new Düsseldorf association was entered in the register of associations. The construction of the marina, below what was then Golzheim Island , was the result of his initiative. Many trips to the Rhine were organized by him, e.g. B. 1926 the international Rhine voyage from Oppenheim to Amsterdam .

In lectures and demonstrations, especially in the artists' association Malkasten , he campaigned for the then much ridiculed cinema and made films himself with painters colleagues. He was secretary of the "Society for the Promotion of Photo Art" founded in Düsseldorf in 1909. As such, he is one of the pioneers of film theory . Between 1909 and 1912 he and Hermann Häfker wrote regularly for the magazine Der Kinematograph . In addition to the Lichtbild-Bühne , this magazine was the most demanding journal in cinematography at the time . Today these magazines are of great importance as sources of film history. In 1909, the editor-in-chief of the cinematograph , Emil Perlmann, highlighted Melcher's merits in his brochure Der Kulturwert des Kinematographen : “The artist who first examined this new basis for all the art of representation, the painter Gustav Melcher, also coined the word about visual drama in order to indicate that projection art is no longer tied to a mixture of art and reality, literature, painting and transient life, like stage art, but rather enables an organic connection between the beautiful and the visual arts. ”The brochure is a journalistic defense measure in To be seen in connection with the increasing attacks by the press, police and educators on the Kientöppe .

For the “Society for the Promotion of the Art of Photography” Melcher took over the artistic direction, in particular the stage design, for “fairy tale performances” at the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf , in which “colored slides” were performed. Melcher not only carried a palette and canvas, but also a “lively pen”. In his younger years he wrote art reviews and reviews, short stories and philosophical treatises for Düsseldorf newspapers.

In 1910, as a member of the Düsseldorf Artists' Association , Melcher had a studio in the Künstlerhaus, Sittarder Strasse 5. In 1924, Gustav Melcher was officially registered as a painter in Düsseldorf-Golzheim , Kaiserswerther Strasse 77. In the Düsseldorf address book he was listed under the category of painter. At that time, Kaiserswerther Strasse was under renovation. In 1932 his address was then - after the renovation - Uerdinger Straße 77. Melcher already had a telephone at that time.

From 1955 to 1958 Melcher taught the painter Otto Karl Welbers (1930–2009). Politically, Melcher was active as a member of the “Committee for the Restoration of Historical Truth”. Together with Otto Behnke, Gerhard Ohnesorg and Werner Weber, he wrote the magazine in Hamburg in 1959 with the title “Brandstifter?”. In the German Historical Museum , Melcher is listed as the right-wing radical writer of a “propaganda pamphlet denying Germany's guilt in the Second World War”. In 1939 he lost his friend and colleague Häfker in the Mauthausen concentration camp. Melcher himself died in 1966.

Works

painter

  • Rhine view
  • Cows in the pasture
  • Ducks at the pond
  • Lower Rhine landscape
  • Evening mood on the Lower Rhine
  • Young shepherdess with kids under a willow
  • Sailing ship in the port of Dordrecht
  • Boats in the village harbor
  • Resting cows in a landscape
  • Man with pipe
  • grazing cows on the Lower Rhine with a maid

author

  • Visual acting . In: Der Kinematograph , No. 108, January 20, 1909
  • From living photography and cinema drama. In: Der Kinematograph , No. 112, February 17, 1909
  • The artistic merits of cinematography , In: Der Kinematograph , No. 116, March 17, 1909
  • Direction in the film factory . In: Der Kinematograph , No. 128, June 9, 1909
  • The ways of German cinematography , In: Der Kinematograph , No. 150, November 10, 1909
  • From practice. Society for the Promotion of Cinematography . In: Der Kinematograph , No. 154, December 8, 1909
  • Art film . In: Der Kinematopgraph , No. 169, March 23, 1910
  • The theater system of cinematography . In: Der Kinematograph , No. 235, June 28, 1911
  • Between the pictures . In: Der Kinematograph , No. 238, July 19, 1911
  • The name in cinematography. In: Der Kinematograph , No. 257, 1911
  • World arsonist? “Committee for the Establishment of Historical Truth”, 1965

Web links

literature

  • German Literature Archive Marbach, Neckar, manuscript department, letter from Gustav Melcher to Gottfried Benn
  • Düsseldorfer Stadtarchiv, Bildarchiv-Stammsammlung, 180–390, Melcher, Gustav

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Inventory list , website in the malkasten.org portal , accessed on May 20, 2016
  2. ^ Düsseldorfer Yachtclub eV: History , website in the portal dyc.de , accessed on May 19, 2016
  3. ^ Helmut D. Diederichs: Early history of German film theory. Their origins and development up to the First World War . Habilitation, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main 1996, published 2001, PDF ( Memento of the original from August 16, 2011 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. , P. 21 ff. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / fhdo.opus.hbz-nrw.de
  4. ^ Emil Perlmann: The cultural value of the cinematograph . Düsseldorf 1909, p. 13
  5. ↑ Fairy tale presentation: Thursday, December 16, 1909 , title recording in the portal digital.ub.uni-duesseldorf.de , accessed on May 20, 2016
  6. ^ Norbert Kohnen: Otto Karl Welbers from Emmerich was a pleasure painter . Article from May 21, 2015 in the derwesten.de portal , accessed on May 21, 2016
  7. ↑ Inventory number: Do2 98/813, 1965, Berlin, among other things under the heading "right-wing radicalism"
  8. ↑ World incendiary? - Propaganda pamphlet denying Germany's guilt in the Second World War (inventory no. Do2 98/813) , data sheet in the object database of the German Historical Museum , Berlin, accessed on May 21, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Melcher, Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and author
DATE OF BIRTH February 4, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf
DATE OF DEATH 1966