Hans Ralfs

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Self-Portrait (1926)

Hans Christian Ralfs (born August 28, 1883 in Preetz (Holstein); † April 21, 1945 in the sanatorium and nursing home Obrawalde ) was a German expressionist painter and graphic artist .

Life

Hans Ralfs - son of a post office clerk - began studying art at the Grand Ducal Saxon Art School in Weimar after attending a high school in Kiel in 1902 . The course lasted until 1907. His teachers were Hans Olde , Ludwig von Hofmann and Theodor Hagen . In 1903 Ralfs met Edvard Munch , who was in Germany, in the circle of art lovers around Harry Graf Kessler in Weimar ; and he made the acquaintance of Max Beckmann and Marcus Behmer . In 1913, Hans Ralfs worked as a character actor in the Ilmenau actors' troupe.

During the First World War , Ralfs was a soldier from 1914 to 1918. After his return he was able to exhibit in the Kunsthalle Kiel in 1918 . In this exhibition with the title The Triumph of Death , borrowed from Dante , Ralfs showed his watercolors , which were created under the impact of the war. In 1919 he continued his artistic work. Ralfs quickly became known through further exhibitions of oil paintings and graphics in Kiel and in the Kunstsalon Bock, Hamburg . However, he kept a critical distance from the Kiel Expressionist circle around Friedrich Peter Drömmer , Heinrich Ehmsen , Otto Lange and Karl Peter Röhl . Ralfs published his critical reflections on Expressionism in the Schleswig-Holsteinische Volkszeitung , whose freelance feature section he was from March 1919 to December 1921.

In 1919 Ralfs founded his own painting school in Kiel. His student and lifelong friend was Friedrich Karl Gotsch . In the summer of 1919, Hans Ralfs and Edvard Munch met in Norway. The encounter with Munch's more recent pictures resulted in a stylistic change for Ralfs, which was followed by an extremely productive creative period. On the occasion of a further exhibition in the Kunsthalle (1919), the Schleswig-Holsteinische Volkszeitung emphasized his brightly colored contrasts and the two-dimensional application of paint , with which he had broken new painterly territory , after the gloomy war images . The whereabouts of the eighteen paintings created in Norway is unknown, just as the majority of his work has disappeared or is in unknown private collections.

In 1924 a friendship began between Hans Ralfs and Ernst Barlach , which lasted until Barlach's death in 1938. Both artists exchanged woodcut cycles. The Kunsthalle Kiel acquired a number of woodcuts for its graphic collection, including the cycle of images based on Joseph Haydn's The Creation .

The aftermath of the experiences of the First World War, quarrels with his family and the human lack of understanding for an artist existence led Ralfs to inner disruption. In 1922/23 it required a first inpatient stay in the neurological department of the Kiel University Clinic. The engagement with Dorothea Ehrich from Neumünster ended in 1924 . In the years of his unsteady lifestyle - interrupted by hospital stays - Hans Ralfs made a living through manual and journalistic activities as well as lectures. In 1924 he worked as a painter in Hamburg and as a church debt collection agent in Kiel.

Rudbeckia (1936)

In 1935, due to National Socialist ordinances, Ralfs was forced to attend the Neustädter Provincial Sanatorium at the time because of "peculiarities of his character" . The intellectually completely clear artist created further pictures there, provided that the forced labor, such as basket weaving, gardening facilities, made this possible. This is where the series of pictures Irrenhaus II was created , in which he took up a theme that had already been designed in 1923. In the institution he made the acquaintance of Friedrich Schröder Sonnenstern . During outdoor walks in Neustadt, Ralfs obtained the necessary painting material from a glazier. Ralfs received financial support from Friedrich Karl Gotsch, Ernst Barlach and the Kiel businessman Heinrich Wieben.

When the sanatorium was rededicated as a hospital because of the high number of war victims, a batch evacuation began in 1942. Together with other patients, Hans Christian Ralfs was brought to the Obrawalde (Meseritz) asylum on June 1, 1942, where euthanasia was carried out: the medical staff killed patients with lethal injections, the preferred method of killing in the Obrawalde murder house , Ralfs said in his report for the Red Army . She freed the patients at the end of January 1945. Hans Ralfs, suffering from typhoid and malnutrition, only survived a few months. Research puts the total number of victims in Obrawalde in five digits.

The artist's few belongings left behind, including a poetry manuscript, were handed over to his friend Gotsch in St. Peter-Ording.

The numerous pictures taken in the Neustädter Anstalt remained in the possession of the staff at the time after they were transferred to Obrawalde, unless Ralfs had given them away to external friends beforehand. A part is from the son of one of the treating doctors under the title Hans Ralfs. Neustädter Bilder was published in 1999. The few still existing or known pictures can be enough to place the artist Hans Ralfs as an equal at the side of the great representatives of the first generation of Expressionists.

Exhibitions

  • 1918: Kunsthalle Kiel, The Triumph of Death , watercolors
  • 1919: Kunsthalle Kiel, graphics on the display table
  • 1919: Kunsthalle Kiel, oil paintings
  • 1920: Kunsthalle Kiel, graphics
  • 1924: Galerie Erfurth in Dresden, group exhibition of the Expressionists
  • 1988: Kunsthalle Kiel, we are all strangers on earth. Expressionism graphics - literary correspondence , (group exhibition)
  • 1992: Stadtgalerie Kiel, Kunstwende - the Kiel impulse of Expressionism 1915–1922 , (group exhibition)
  • 1998: North Frisian Museum Husum and State Library in Kiel Castle , Hans Ralfs - the fate of an artist in Schleswig-Holstein , (solo exhibition)
  • 2003: Hans Ralfs House for Art and Culture, Neustadt / Holst., Hans Ralfs - Land + Meer (loans from the North Sea Museum Husum)
  • 2003: Neustadt (Holstein), Hans Ralfs - Evangelium Johannis. Neustädter woodcuts by Hans Ralfs and Ernst Barlach
  • 2003/2004: Husum, Tønder , Lübeck, Nordkunst. Schleswig-Holstein in the 20th century (group exhibition)
  • 2005: Hans Ralfs House for Art and Culture, Neustadt / Holst .: Hans Ralfs - on the 60th anniversary of the artist's death (works from private collection)
  • 2010: Hans Ralfs House for Art and Culture, Neustadt / Holst .: Hans Ralfs - Cycles and Landscapes (loans from the NordseeMuseum Husum and Schloss Gottorf Schleswig)
  • 2015: North Sea Museum Husum, Hans Ralfs (1883-1945). Memorial exhibition on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the painter's death (solo exhibition)
  • 2019: Stadtgalerie Kiel (Heinrich Ehmsen Foundation), Kiel artists in the Weimar Republic and during National Socialism (group exhibition)
  • 2019: Hans Ralfs House for Art and Culture, Neustadt / Holst., Neustadt from all angles. Yesterday - today - tomorrow (group exhibition)

literature

  • Chantal Bartolini: Le premier enseignement d'Hans Ralfs à Kiel. In: Sofia Komarova (ed.): Friedrich Karl Gotsch. La seconde generation expressionist. Genève 2011, p. 34 ff.
  • Chantal Bartolini: Ralfs, Munch, Die Brücke, Kokoschka: quelles influences sur Gotsch? In: Sofia Komarova (ed.): Friedrich Karl Gotsch. La seconde generation expressionist. Genève 2011, pp. 40-43.
  • Helmut Duve: Hans Ralfs as an artist and a person. In: Kieler Zeitung, March 1, 1931.
  • Riewert Ehrich: Hans Christian Ralfs - a forgotten Holstein artist. In: Schleswig-Holstein, H. 7 (1987), pp. 13-15.
  • Riewert Ehrich, Johanna Gotsch: On the poetry of Hans Ralfs. In: Klaus Lengsfeld: Hans Ralfs (1883–1945) - the fate of an artist in Schleswig-Holstein. Husum 1998, p. 73 ff.
  • Riewert Ehrich (ed.): Hans Ralfs: Notes on the "degeneration of art" . In: Nordelbingen. Contributions to the art and cultural history of Schleswig-Holstein. Volume 86. Heide 2017, pp. 201–230.
  • Friedrich Karl Gotsch: Tragedy of an Artist. To the Ralfs exhibition in Hamburg. In: Hamburger Freie Presse, October 1, 1947.
  • Will Grohmann: FK Gotsch. Young art series. Leipzig 1924.
  • Jürgen Hacker: From a different point of view: Hans Ralfs' view of the Kiel scene. In: Knut Nievers (Ed.): Kunstwende. The Kiel impulse of Expressionism 1915–1922. Neumünster 1992, pp. 157-163.
  • Jürgen Hacker: Hans Christian Ralfs. In: Knut Nievers (Ed.): Kunstwende. The Kiel impulse of Expressionism 1915–1922. Neumünster 1992, p. 216 f.
  • Uwe Hauptenthal, Friedrich Ernst Struwe: Hans Ralfs - Neustädter Pictures. Husum 1999.
  • Uwe Hauptenthal (Ed.): Northern art. Schleswig-Holstein in the 20th century. Neumünster 2003.
  • Uwe Hauptenthal: Hans Ralfs. Seimograph of emotional shocks . In: Ameos (ed.): 10 years of the Hans Ralfs house for art and culture . Neustadt / H. 2013, pp. 14–16.
  • Martin Henatsch : Hans Christian Ralfs. In: Jens Christian Jensen (ed.): We are all strangers on earth. Expressionist graphics - literary correspondence. Exhibition catalog Kunsthalle Kiel. July 17 - October 2, 1988. Kiel 1988, p. 114.
  • Herbert Henck: The painter Hans Ralfs. In: Ders .: Norbert von Hannenheim's day of death. In: Berlin in the past and present. Yearbook of the Berlin State Archives 2003, p. 126 f.
  • Josef Paul Hodin : Hans Ralfs. In: ders .: FK Gotsch. Oil paintings. Hamburg 1987, p. 39 f.
  • Manfred in der Beek: The triumph of death. In: Deutsches Ärzteblatt, H. 15 (1971) pp. 1135–1142.
  • Klaus Lengsfeld: Hans Ralfs (1883-1945). The fate of an artist in Schleswig-Holstein. Breklumer, Husum 1998.
  • Knut Nievers (Ed.): Kunstwende. The Kiel impulse of Expressionism 1915-1922 . Neumünster 1992.
  • Friedrich Ernst Struwe: Hans Ralfs - ways and wrong ways. Neustadt in Holstein 2003.
  • Friedrich Ernst Struwe, Elisabeth Laur: Hans Ralfs - Evangelium Johannis. Neustädter woodcuts by Hans Ralfs and Ernst Barlach. Neustadt in Holstein 2003.
  • Friedrich Ernst Struwe: Hans Ralfs in Neustadt . In: Ameos (ed.): 10 years of the Hans Ralfs house for art and culture . Neustadt / H. 2013, pp. 17–22.
  • Nicole Suhl: Hans Ralfs, painter and patient. In: Lübecker Nachrichten, April 13, 2005.
  • Ulrich Schulte-Wülwer: Hans Ralfs. In: Ulrich Schulte-Wülwer: Kiel artist. Volume 3: In the Weimar Republic and National Socialism. 1918 - 1945. Heide 2019, pp. 193–220.

Web links

Commons : Hans Ralfs  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Knut Nievers (Ed.): Kunstwende. The Kiel impulse of Expressionism 1915–1922 . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1992, p. 216.
  2. ↑ The Hans Ralfs House for Art and Culture ( Memento from July 18, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
personal data
SURNAME Ralfs, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ralfs, Hans Christian (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH August 28, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Preetz
DATE OF DEATH April 21, 1945
Place of death Sanatorium Obrawalde