Harald Quedenfeldt

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Harald Quedenfeldt (born August 17, 1905 in Düsseldorf , † November 21, 1944 in Neuwied ) was a German painter, set designer and theater man in the resistance against National Socialism .

Life

Harald Quedenfeldt, son of the photographer Erwin Quedenfeldt and Emma Quedenfeldt, née Rohde, daughter of a coffee importer, spent his childhood and youth in the house at Rosenstrasse 28 in Pempelfort . He completed his art studies in 1923 with Hans Rilke . His father went to Austria in 1923 after a personal crisis. His best friend, the actor Willy Schürmann-Horster , who was taken in by his family like a foster son, also lived in his parents' house .

From 1928 to 1930 Quedenfeldt worked at the Bad Godesberg theater . In 1929 he became a member of the Association of Revolutionary Visual Artists in Düsseldorf and maintained contacts with the KPD . Quedenfeldt made numerous posters for poetry readings by Erich Mühsam , Ernst Toller and Bertolt Brecht, among others . He wrote songs for agitprop troops and accompanied them on the piano. From 1930 to 1932 tour with the "Truppe des Westens". Stage designs for Friedrich Wolf's “Sailors from Cattaro” (1930) and “ Cyankali ” (1929/1930), as well as for the play “Anarchy in Sillian” by Arnolt Bronnen . The first arrest and imprisonment took place in 1934.

In 1937 he moved to Berlin with Schürmann-Horster, where he had contact with the “ Rote Kapelle ” resistance group . At Christmas 1941 Quedenfeldt supplied the set for the operetta “ Die Fledermaus ” in Constance, where Schürmann-Horster had a position as dramaturge and advertising manager. At the beginning of 1943 Quedenfeldt went to Holland with the Rheinisches Landestheater . Almost at the same time in 1943, the Rote Kapelle resistance group was discovered, Schürmann-Horster was arrested in Constance and executed in September 1943. When Quedenfeldt returned to Germany, he was arrested in the Rhineland and on November 21, 1944 in a detention cell in Neuwied , where he committed suicide while awaiting the death sentence.

The archive of the Berlin Academy of the Arts contains a collection of twenty-two stage sets by Harald Quedenfeldt for productions by the “Truppe des Westens”.

literature

  • Between distress and resistance: graphics and paintings from 1933 to 1945 from the Gerd Gruber Collection , p. 214, p. 359–360
  • Susanne Seelbach: Theater people in the resistance, Willy Schürmann-Horster and Harald Quedenfeldt , essay in Bilanz Düsseldorf '45: Culture and society from 1933 to the post-war period. Grupello, Düsseldorf, 1992, ISBN 3-928234-06-4

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rosenstrasse 28: E (= owner) Quedenfeldt, Emma, ​​Frau (2nd floor), Schürmann-Horster, W., director (2nd floor); Quedenfeldt, Harald, Maler (3rd floor) , in the address book of the city of Düsseldorf, 1927
  2. ↑ Photo stage design: Anarchy in Sillian / Arnold Bronnen, Bb: Harald Quedenfeldt , Photo Collection-Theater 1833, on archiv.adk.de
  3. ^ Advertisement for Rheinisches Landestheater shows comedy operetta "The Four Optimists", set design: Harald Quedenfeldt , in Deutsche Zeitung in the Netherlands, no. 226, January 20, 1943 (PDF, last page, bottom left)
  4. ↑ 22 sets by Harald Quedenfeldt in the Willy Schürmann-Horster estate , in the information database of the Federal Archives, on nachlassdatenbank.de
personal data
SURNAME Quedenfeldt, Harald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, set designer and theater man in the resistance against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH 17th August 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf
DATE OF DEATH November 21, 1944
Place of death Neuwied