Harald Schmahl

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Harald Schmahl (born June 30, 1912 in Elberfeld , † August 9, 1964 in Wuppertal ) was a German sculptor .

Life

Wanderer with Lute from 1954
Memorial plaque for Eugen Langen, builder of the Wuppertal suspension railway from 1956
Uthmann monument from 1957, in the north park Wuppertal-Barmen
Heinrich Heine monument in Von-der-Heydt-Park from 1958

Harald Schmahl received his technical training in the workshop of his father Ewald Schmahl . He studied from 1929 to 1931 at the Kunstgewerbeschule Elberfeld under Erich Cleff , from 1931 to 1935 also at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf under Alexander Zschokke . Schmahl broadened his horizons through study trips to Spain, France and Italy.

In the 1960s, Schmahl was involved with courses and seminars for the next generation of artists in the House of Youth in the Barmen district of Wuppertal . Schmahl was a member of the Bergische Kunstgenossenschaft ; As a member of the Ring of Visual Artists Wuppertal , he was represented in numerous exhibitions in the Bergisches Land .

On August 9, 1964, he died of a heart attack in Wuppertal at the age of 52.

plant

The spectrum of Schmahl's work extends from fountains to monuments and memorial plaques to figure and portrait sculptures. After the Second World War , he made numerous portrait busts showing, among others, the mayor of Wuppertal Robert Daum , the Nobel Prize winner Gerhard Domagk , as well as director Ludewig, the doctors Schröder and Vaverowski and the Wülfrath rector Julius Imig.

A total of ten works by Harald Schmahl are in the possession of the Wuppertal Von der Heydt Museum , including, in addition to the woman's mask and the woman's head, above all portrait sculptures related to Wuppertal. They show, for example, the singer Ernst Walter (1880–1964), the painter Georg Röder (1867–1958), the boxer Herbert Runge , or the balloonist Hugo Kaulen . The writer Karl Otto Mühl was portrayed by Schmahl when he was eleven years old. The footballer Horst Szymaniak was also portrayed by Schmahl. Schmahl's last work was created in 1964 and shows the artist Franz Krause .

Some of Schmahl's works can be viewed in public spaces, such as the four of eight stone reliefs made in 1939 together with Richard Striebeck at the entrances to the buildings of the Colmar barracks in Wuppertal. In 1951, two stone reliefs were created for the stairwell of the trade union building in Wuppertal- Unterbarmen on the subjects of "Destruction" and "Construction", about a year later a memorial plaque for those who died in the Vonzumhoff company in Wuppertal-Elberfeld. On July 31, 1954, his 1.84 m high bronze statue "Wanderer with Lute" was unveiled above the roundabout at Sandhof. The occasion for the commissioned work was the 25th anniversary of the city of Wuppertal. The memorial plaque made by Schmahl in 1956 for the builder of the Wuppertal suspension railway , Eugen Langen , hangs in the suspension railway station at the main train station on Döppersberg . A supplementary plaque created by Harald Schmahl was attached to the war memorial in Cronenberg in 1956, “The Dead of World War 1939-1945”. The memorial plaque for Gustav Adolf Uthmann in Nordpark Wuppertal , which was destroyed by the National Socialists in 1933 , was inaugurated on October 27, 1957 with a new bronze plaque made by Schmahl and donated by the German Workers' Association . The Heinrich Heine monument erected in 1958 in Von-der-Heydt-Park in Wuppertal also comes from Schmahl's workshop . The sculptor used three shell cuboids from the rubble of the Barmen town hall, which was badly damaged in the Second World War . The approximately 2.50 m high and 1.20 m wide war memorial for the comrades of the Beyeröhder Turnverein 1893 eV who died in World War II was made by Schmahl in 1961 from red sandstone. In 1962 Schmahl restored the Hans Georg von Arnim memorial, originally created by Emil Cauer the Younger in 1912, on Görlitzer Platz on Liegnitzer Strasse in Wuppertal.

Schmahl's 1.30 m high bronze plaque war memorial by the company C. Blumhardt Fahrzeugwerke (1950, lost since 1986), the relief portrait of the memorial plaque of the Reich Colonial Association in memory of the lost colonies (1934, destroyed by air raids on Wuppertal in 1943) and the stone fountain with a frog in the courtyard of the school on Geranienstraße in Wuppertal- Ronsdorf (1952/1953, removed after the schoolyard was paved in 1974/75) and the stone fountain with a polar bear in the courtyard of the Cronenberger Straße school in Hahnerberg (1952/1953, removed in 1962 due to school expansion) do not exist more.

Awards

  • 1955: Dr. Ludwig Lindner Prize

rating

Companions described Schmahl as "a thin man with big, burning eyes - as an eternal seeker of beauty who was open-minded and tolerant, but could also react sensitively when it came to his work".

Web links

Commons : Harald Schmahl  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Von-der-Heydt Museum Wuppertal, Eva Rowedder: Skulpturensammlung , Wuppertal 1987, ISBN 3-89202-004-3 , p. 237
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h Martina Thöne: Sculptor Harald Schmahl: Memories of the eternal soul seeker. In: Westdeutsche Zeitung of June 29, 2012
  3. ↑ a b c d Udo Garweg: Wuppertaler Künstlerverzeichnis, Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal 2000, p. 346
  4. ↑ a b c d e Ruth Meyer-Kahrweg: Monuments, fountains and sculptures in Wuppertal (biographies of the participating artists). Born-Verlag, Wuppertal 1991, pp. 135-137.
  5. ↑ Andreas Boller: Looking for a place for a bronze bust. In: Solinger Tageblatt of December 11, 2014.
  6. ↑ Ruth Meyer-Kahrweg: Monuments, fountains and sculptures in Wuppertal (biographies of the artists involved). Born-Verlag, Wuppertal 1991, p. 351.
    In: Jan Niko Kirschbaum: Wanderer mit Lute from June 12, 2011
  7. ^ A b Jan Niko Kirschbaum: Heinrich Heine Monument (1958) from April 9, 2011.
  8. ↑ Jan Niko Kirschbaum: Cronenberg War Memorial of February 26, 2010
  9. ↑ Jan Niko Kirschbaum: Gustav-Adolf-Uthmann Monument from February 27, 2013
  10. ↑ Jan Niko Kirschbaum: War memorial for the comrades of the Beyeröhder Turnverein 1893 eV who died in the Second World War from July 24, 2011
  11. ↑ Jan Niko Kirschbaum: Hans Georg von Arnim memorial from November 13, 2011
  12. ^ Jan Niko Kirschbaum: War memorial of the company C. Blumhardt Fahrzeugwerke from October 7, 2014
  13. ↑ Jan Niko Kirschbaum: Memorial plaque of the Reichskolonialbund in memory of the lost colonies of June 10, 2013
personal data
SURNAME Schmahl, Harald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH June 30, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Elberfeld
DATE OF DEATH August 9, 1964
Place of death Wuppertal