Hans Adolf Bühler

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Hans Adolf Bühler (born June 4, 1877 in Steinen ; † October 19, 1951 at Sponeck Castle near Jechtingen ) was a German painter and National Socialist cultural politician .

Life

After an apprenticeship as a painter and house painter, Bühler continued his training at the arts and crafts school and later as a master student of Hans Thoma at the Karlsruhe Academy . There he took over a professorship for painting in 1914. His son Engelhard Bühler became a doctor and was a race researcher with Eugen Fischer at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin during the National Socialist era .

The painter

Bühler practiced a representational style of painting and, in addition to portrait painting, dealt with topics from the Germanic world of legends.

From 1909 to 1911 he created the “Prometheus fresco” in front of the auditorium in the college building of the University of Freiburg , from 1935 to 1939 the last public commission was the mural “Der getreue Eckart”, also in the college building of the University of Freiburg, which was destroyed in the Second World War.

In 1917 he acquired Sponeck Castle on the westernmost foothills of the Kaiserstuhl , where many of his pictures were taken with a view of the Rhine and nearby Alsace . His picture das Deutsche Stromland (1935) was exhibited as a German contribution to the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris and received a Grand Prix. The portrait of his teacher Hans Thoma in old age was widely used in Baden. Julius Bissier was one of his students .

The cultural politician

Bühler belonged to the ethnically -minded, anti-Semitic Kampfbund for German culture and in 1930 became chairman of the Karlsruhe branch. In 1932 he became director of the Karlsruhe Baden State Art School and one year later he was also the director of the Badische Kunsthalle . After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , he carried out the reorganization of the art school ordered by the NSDAP and dismissed Professors Babberger , Dillinger , Gehri , Hubbuch , Schnarrenberger , Scholz , Speck and van Taak as well as the specialist teachers Gilles, Schick and Winkler from their offices. He became deputy director of the Deutsche Kunstgesellschaft Karlsruhe and in this function also the "main editor" of the monthly magazine Das Bild , in which all important exhibitions during the Nazi era were reviewed. In the same year he organized one of the first two "Chamber of Horrors" exhibitions in Karlsruhe under the title Government Art from 1918 to 1933 , which anticipated what would happen again in Munich in 1937 , namely the defamation of modern art as part of the Nazi exhibition "Degenerate Art" . Paintings by German impressionists , academy professors on leave, by members of the former artist group “Rih” as well as works by Marées , Munch , Karl Hofer , Emil Bizers , Adolf Erbslöhs , Franz Xaver Fuhrs , Rudolf Großmanns and Alexander Kanoldts , as well as Lovis Corinth , Max Slevogt and Max Liebermann were branded there.

Sponeck Castle - owned by Hans Adolf Bühler since 1917

There was strong opposition between Bühler and the members of the Baden Secession . This was mainly of an artistic nature, and opponents of modernism such as Bühler should be chalked up because this group of artists was forcibly dissolved by the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts in 1936 . The same applies to the German Association of Artists , from which he left before 1936.

In 1937 he finally defamed Max Liebermann, who died in 1935, again in his essay Die bildende Kunst im Third Reich : “Liebermann, the greatest enemy of Germany, knew how to poison German art life to such an extent that it without the National Socialist renewal with German peculiarity and German character would have come to an end quickly ”.

Bühler became an honorary citizen of Steinen in 1937. In 2011 the requested revocation of honorary citizenship and the renaming of a street named after him were rejected in the municipal council.

Publications

  • The inner law of color. An artistic theory of color. Horen-Verlag, Berlin 1930.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Benno Müller-Hill : Deadly Science. The singling out of Jews, Gypsies and the mentally ill 1933–1945 . Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1984 pp. 148–151, conversation with Dr. Engelhard Bühler
  2. ^ Rüdiger Hoffmann: Hans Adolf Bühler - the cultural politician, the painter. In: The Markgräflerland. Issue 2/1988, p. 146.
  3. ^ Rüdiger Hoffmann: Hans Adolf Bühler - the cultural politician, the painter. In: The Markgräflerland. Issue 2/1988, p. 150.
  4. ^ A b Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 78.
  5. ^ Ernst Klee: The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 78 also mentions Corinth, Slevogt and Liebermann.
  6. ^ Full members of the German Association of Artists, 1936. In: 1936 forbidden pictures. Exhibition catalog for the 34th annual exhibition of the German Association of Artists in Bonn. Deutscher Künstlerbund, Berlin 1986, pp. 98–99.
  7. ^ Quotation from Ernst Klee: Das Kulturlexikon zum Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 78.
  8. ↑ Robert Bergmann: A difficult question of honor. In: Badische Zeitung of April 21, 2011.
personal data
SURNAME Bühler, Hans Adolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and national socialist cultural politician
DATE OF BIRTH June 4, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Stones
DATE OF DEATH October 19, 1951
Place of death near Jechtingen