Hans Gabriel Jentzsch

Hans Gabriel Jentzsch (born November 26, 1862 in Löbtau ; † October 24, 1930 in Munich ) was a German graphic artist , illustrator and caricaturist who worked, among other things, for the satirical magazine Der Wahre Jacob .

biography

Hans Gabriel Jentzsch: Blutenburg in Munich, 1905

Jentzsch comes from a family of carpenters and learned porcelain painting . From 1881 to 1887 he studied at the Dresden Academy with Alfred Hildenbrandt and Ferdinand Pauwels , where he went public for the first time in 1885 with history painting and genre painting . He achieved initial successes with the public and won a gold medal for his fall into sin , which is described as follows: Eve , who is resting on the rose-strewn floor, hands Adam, who is seated at her side, the apple that has been plucked from a hanging branch. (quoted in Ege 1992).

In 1890 Jentzsch moved to Munich and exhibited his painting there. He participated with panel paintings such as After the Rain and The Honeymoon at the annual exhibitions in the Glass Palace , where he was so successful with the public that he was able to sell lithographs of his works.

From 1891 he worked as an illustrator for Der Wahre Jacob , where he drew socially critical and later also political satiricals on the Wilhelmine nobility, the upper middle class and the politics of the European great powers. He worked for the magazine for almost 30 years, was the most productive draftsman of the paper alongside Otto Emil Lau and was considered the most popular caricaturist among readers. Around 2000 graphics were created in this way by 1923. Individual caricatures also appeared in Fliegende Blätter .

Jentzsch's illustrations are characterized by a particularly ingenious spatiality, in which the plot is distributed over the foreground, middle and background. Often he also uses the stylistic device of a kind of proscenium in front of the actual "stage" of the picture. With objects that seemed to protrude from the pictorial space, Jentzsch succeeded in capturing the viewer more intensively. He was also known for the so - called two - layer space, in which the foreground and background are contrasted with no intermediate gradation. The background can then help characterize the person shown in the foreground.

In 1899, 1904 and 1915 Jentzsch created three series of dances of death . The so-called Russian Dance of Death originated during the First World War and defamed hostile Russia by portraying the Russians as barbaric and violent.

Book illustrations

• (Anonymous): About someone else's guilt. Novel. Stuttgart u. a .: Union Dt. Verl.-Ges. 1890 (W. Heimburg's illustrated novels and short stories, New Series Vol. 2)
• A picture book for children of all ages . 4 vol .: 1893, 1894, 1895, 1899
• Svatopluk Cech: songs of a slave. Free translation into German by Jan Koutek. Stuttgart: Dietz 1897
• William Morris : Nowhere Lore: A Utopian Novel . Edited by Wilhelm Liebknecht. Stuttgart: Dietz 1900
• A new dance of death in 18 pictures . Stuttgart: Dietz 1904
• Deutsches Knabenbuch, 20. A yearbook of entertainment, instruction and employment for our boys. With contributions by Graf Bernstorff, B. Clement, E. Halden, H. Hartenstein, Ms. Hornig, R. Weitbrecht and a. Stuttgart, Thienemann [1906]. With numerous text drawings and four colored drawings on art print boards and a. by Fritz Bergen, Joh.Gehrts, Hans G. Jentzsch , C. Liebich and A. Wald,

literature

• Klaus Pohl: Allegory and Workers. Image agitation didactics and representation of the SPD 1890 to 1914. Osnabrück 1986
• Konrad Ege: Caricature and pictorial satire in the German Empire: The "True Jacob", Hamburg 1879/80, Stuttgart 1884-1914; Media history, employees, editors-in-chief, graphics. Lit, Münster and Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-88660-807-7