Hans Dieter
Hans Dieter (* 14. January 1881 in Mannheim , † the 30th December 1968 in Tuttlingen ) was a German landscape painter of Impressionism , an art teacher and poet.
Life
The son of a military musician and trumpeter , Hans Dieter was born on January 14, 1881, as one of five siblings in Mannheim. In the same year he moved with his parents to Radolfzell and then in 1882 to Konstanz , where he spent his youth and school years. His artistic disposition and talent in drawing became apparent at an early age, and he and his siblings were all raised primarily musically.
From 1895 in Gengenbach and from 1897 in Karlsruhe , he attended teacher seminars, but remained without academic training and was mostly self-taught as a drawing teacher. In 1900 he began teaching drawing in the schools in Mönchweiler , Durmersheim , Schwanenbach and Sankt Georgen . During this time he also met his partner Lydia Schneider (d. 1956), whom he married in Mönchweiler. With her he had a son in 1919 who devoted himself to architecture . Before the First World War he had the opportunity to attend the Grand Ducal Badische Kunstschule Karlsruhe , but he turned down this offer on the grounds that foreign teaching would only put him off. As an autodidact, he took the exam as a drawing teacher for secondary schools in the spring of 1915.
During the war he was used as a soldier at the front from 1914 to 1918. As a painter and draftsman, he was once commissioned by a division commander to draw a painting of Champagne for Grand Duke Friedrich II of Baden (1857–1928) . Because of an injury, he experienced the end of the war at the convalescent company in Villingen .
After returning from the war, Dieter turned down a teaching position at the Pforzheim School of Applied Arts . His friend Hans Thoma (1839–1924) advised him to work as a freelance artist instead. After a short time in Littenweiler , Dieter settled in Meersburg on Lake Constance in 1919 . In the Old Castle Meersburg his works were shown in a permanent exhibition. In Meersburg, his son, as a former student, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Paul Schmitthenners (1884–1972) built a studio house.
According to his judgments chamber file in the Freiburg State Archives , Dieter joined the NSDAP as early as 1932 , temporarily resigned in 1933, then rejoined the party in 1934 or 1935 and remained a party member until 1945. The investigative committee of the district of Überlingen first assigned him to group II (“incriminated”) because of his early entry into the party and because he was considered “ the painter of National Socialism ”. Dieter, who described himself as “completely apolitical” in his attempt to exonerate himself, was imposed a heavy fine in the form of property levies and a pension cancellation in 1946. At the end of the appeal proceedings, Dieter was finally denazified by the judges' chamber in Freiburg in 1948 as a “ fellow traveler ” (Group IV) without any further expiatory measures; however, he was denied the right to stand as a candidate .
Dieter worked almost exclusively in a studio in the old castle in Meersburg. Until the end of the 1930s, however, he still stayed at his actual place of residence, in Freiburg im Breisgau , over the winter . He held other studios in Karlsruhe, Munich , Berlin and Paris , which he could use on his travels. He also used the winter months to study art in many different museums, art halls and art schools and to develop his own style and art techniques. Dieter was also a musician and played the violin.
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/ff/Hans_Dieter_%28Grab%29_%282010%29.jpg/220px-Hans_Dieter_%28Grab%29_%282010%29.jpg)
In 1950 he co-founded the Bodensee Club and in 1954 he joined the community of German artists. In old age he suffered a creeping eye disease that eventually forced him to have an operation. In 1956 he was made an honorary citizen of Meersburg. After his wife died in 1956, he married the piano pedagogue and pianist Johanna Maier from Tuttlingen in 1959, who nursed and cared for him after the operation and almost complete blindness in 1962. He was still able to finish his last painting, Warm Light . Now that painting was no longer possible, he devoted himself increasingly to poetry.
Hans Dieter died on December 30, 1968 shortly before his 88th birthday in Tuttlingen. He was buried in the Meersburg cemetery. On the tombstone, after the title of one of his better-known pictures, there is the inscription: "One who went his way".
Act
The closer and wider landscape of Lake Constance played a special role in Dieter's artistic work, resulting in a large number of landscapes of Lake Constance and its surroundings, inspired by the view from his seat at Meersburg Castle. Accordingly, he was generally called the “Lake Constance painter”. Dieter was considered a very versatile painter; He created figurative pictures that are connected to Lake Constance and its adjacent landscape, purely figurative, humorous compositions, but also numerous other landscape paintings - Baarjura , Black Forest , Rhine plain - and city views of Meersburg.
Exhibitions of his paintings in Konstanz, Freiburg, Baden-Baden and Karlsruhe made him so well known that he was mentioned in many art magazines of his time. During the Second World War he also sent reproductions of his pictures to soldiers at the front. Dieter enjoyed the appreciation of the National Socialist Reich Chamber of Fine Arts and numerous public corporations and art print publishing houses, which printed a large number of his paintings and also distributed Dieter's pictures of Germany and his homeland abroad.
Dieter himself ironically counted himself among the Expressionists , but his style showed more traits of Impressionism . Through many attempts at representation, he developed the technique of the underpainting process .
After an eye operation and almost complete blindness, he was hardly able to paint. On the other hand, he wrote a large number of poems, which he compiled and published in his two books with photos of his paintings and verses. In 1949, for example, Hans Dieter, the painter-poet on Lake Constance, appeared, Pictures, Verses and Thoughts, and in 1962 One Who Goes His Way. Sense and happy absurdity in verses and pictures .
A poem as an example
A poor poet's testament
You valued me as a poor devil.
As you believed it is undoubtedly true
, you will not inherit a bean from me;
but I leave you a rare crown
of flowers and grass and thorn thread.
I secretly carried them as a stupid child.
I leave you the silver from the edge of the cloud
and give you golden leaves in your hand.
I was really not a braggart in life
and leave you millions of star dollars
in the safest bank on the night firmament.
Now you laugh: "Beigott, what a testament!"
Quotes
"If you can think about your picture, you can give yourself a lot of oil paint and brush strokes."
"Not all ideology, not even all philosophical wisdom and scientific knowledge make an artist, only those who find measure and momentum for totality and detail shoot the bird."
“It is important to paint inspired pictures with natural means and handcrafted thoroughness. The only thing that goes to the soul is a rhythmically clearly structured picture, the building blocks of which are to be taken from nature in continuous study, while the structure takes place in difficult struggle in the quiet workshop. The image rhythm should not only mean the ornamental connection between shapes and colors, but also the inner and outer values of the things in the picture, which are combined to form an order. It creates the inner rhythm of the picture, which the artist calls "poetry in things" without wanting to speak the word to so-called absolute painting or poetry in the picture. "
Honors
On his 75th birthday on January 14, 1956, Hans Dieter was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit with ribbon and the honorary citizenship of the city of Meersburg in the ballroom of the New Meersburg Palace . He also became an honorary member of the Hans Thoma Society and the Badische Heimat regional association .
Works
Paintings (selection)
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Poems (selection)
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literature
- Hans Dieter: Hans Dieter. The painter-poet on Lake Constance . Solitude, Stuttgart 1949, DNB 577133136 .
- Hans Dieter: someone who goes his own way. Sense and happy absurdity in verses and pictures . Rosgarten, Stadler, Konstanz 1982, ISBN 3-7977-0089-X (first edition: 1962).
- W. Blasel: The painter Hans Dieter . In: Rheinische Blätter . tape 18 , no. 2 , 1941, ZDB -ID 565790-8 , p. 91 .
- Guntram Brummer: Hans Dieter defends against his admirers. For the painter's 100th birthday on January 14, 1981 . In: Glaserhäusle. Meersburger sheets for politics and culture . tape 1 , April 1981, ZDB -ID 283372-4 , p. 18-19 .
- Hans Dieter . In: Hermann E. Busse (Ed.): Ekkhart. Yearbook for the Badner Land . tape 6 , 1925, ZDB -ID 1833-8 , p. 19-29 .
- Richard Kreidler: meeting an artist. Birthday visit to Hans Dieter in Meersburg . In: Bodensee-Hefte . Volume 10, No. 1 , 1959, ISSN 0006-548X , pp. 37-40 .
- Richard Kreidler: Hans Dieter . Ed .: Alfred Hagenlocher. Reutlingen 1972.
- Richard Kreidler, J. Dieter: Hans Dieter. Painter and poet from Lake Constance . In: Bernd Wiedmann (Ed.): Art on the lake . tape 14 . Gessler, Friedrichshafen 1985, ISBN 3-922137-27-X .
- Anne Langenkamp, B. Stark: Lake View. German artists on Lake Constance in the 20th century . Stadler, Konstanz 1998, ISBN 3-7977-0411-9 .
- Herbert Rothweiler: Hans Dieter, the painter-poet on Lake Constance . In: Badische Heimat . tape 36 , no. 1 , 1956, ISSN 0930-7001 , p. 11-22 .
- Ludwig Vögely : In memory of the painter-poet Hans Dieter . In: Ekkhart. Yearbook for the Badner Land 1970 . 1969, ZDB -ID 1833-8 , p. 116-124 .
- Dieter, Hans . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 1 : A-D . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1953.
- Illustrated Rundschau . In: Velhagen & Klasings monthly books . tape 36 , no. 1 , 1921, ISSN 0176-9014 , p. 118-119 .
- Painter and poet. Hans Dieter on his 85th birthday . In: Stuttgarter Zeitung . Volume 22, No. 9 , January 13, 1966, ZDB -ID 126271-3 , p. 20 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Hans Dieter in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ↑ See StAF 180/2, No. 122122, digitized version of the Freiburg State Archives, online
personal data | |
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SURNAME | Dieter, Hans |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German impressionist landscape painter and poet |
DATE OF BIRTH | January 14, 1881 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Mannheim |
DATE OF DEATH | December 30, 1968 |
Place of death | Tuttlingen |