Heinrich Barth (painter)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Barth's tombstone in the cemetery in Sonthofen
Fresco on the former shoe store Übelhör from 1937
Barth's villa at Südstrasse 1 in Sonthofen

Heinrich Barth (born November 24, 1881 in Aalen ; † March 12, 1956 ) was a German painter and author.

Life and works

Heinrich Barth was the son of a train driver. After attending the weekday school in Aalen, where he was born, he completed an apprenticeship as a painter in Rottweil and then moved to Stuttgart . There and in other large cities he worked as a painter's assistant and practiced drawing a lot , as he did during his two-year military service in Nuremberg . His father complied with his wish for a better education by financing him to attend the municipal painting school in Munich ; the city of Munich presented Barth with an award in his second semester. With a brief interlude as managing director of a painting company in Metz , Barth worked mostly in Munich until 1906; then he moved to Sonthofen , where he opened his own shop and in 1907 married Berta Lutz. The marriage resulted in at least two daughters.

In 1907, Barth received an award at the painting exhibition in Darmstadt .

He renovated the paintings in the town church of Sonthofen and designed the facades of the Gasthaus zum Löwen there, the Dausch house and the town hall. In 1912, Barth, who also had his villa built at Südstrasse 1 in Sonthofen during this time, received special permission to study in Munich. Martin Feuerstein became his teacher . Barth completed his studies in the winter semesters, while he continued to run his painting business in Sonthofen in the summer. In 1913 he painted the newly built Protestant church in Sonthofen.

During the First World War Barth was a member of the mountain artillery in Austria and the Balkans; In 1917 he was commissioned to document the battlefield in the Romanian mountains with drawings.

In the interwar period, Barth designed numerous other facades in Sonthofen, including those of the hospital and beneficiary building and the Hirsch brewery and that of the district savings bank in Hochstraße (1932). He created the fresco on the shoemaker's house in Übelhör on Marktstrasse in 1937. In Schützenstrasse, he designed a fresco on the house of Soyer. Barth also designed the vaults in the Bräustüble and in 1930 painted the furniture for the baroque parlor in the Sonnenalp. In a biographical summary that Gunther le Maire published about Heinrich Barth in 2007, however, it is criticized that he was burned out after the First World War and only painted “nice” pictures, whereas after his academy studies he had “excellent portraits and still lifes, among the best Abstraction ”.

The Traube inn, where Barth's drawing school was located

Heinrich Barth, who had already published his practical calculations for the painting trade in 1910 , was not particularly successful economically. In 1925 he had to sell his house. His drawing school for the unemployed existed from around 1930 to 1933 and was located in the Traube inn. From 1932 to 1935 he worked as a freehand drawing teacher at the community school. In 1938 he suffered serious injuries in a car accident, and in 1952 he handed over his painting business to a successor.

Heinrich Barth, who was born in Sonthofen by choice, designed a costume for Sonthofen, was involved in the Alpine Club and the design of the cemetery, among other things, and wrote a guide from Alpe Egg to Elbigenalp ; In 1935 his guide from Sonthofen and the surrounding area appeared . He was part of the chairmanship of the Liedertafel, the ski club and a Schuhplattler group. In 2000 an exhibition of his left work was shown. The art teacher and artist Franz Meier, who is also based in Sonthofen, collected and restored these works, which he then donated to the city of Sonthofen. This meanwhile owns 71 paintings by Barth. In 2013, the so-called Baderhaus next to the Church of St. Michael was redesigned on the occasion of the city's anniversary to become an exhibition space for the city museum's possessions. One of the rooms was dedicated to Barth's work.

Heinrich Barth's tomb has been preserved in the cemetery in Sonthofen, which has existed since 1583.

Individual evidence

  1. Entry in the matriculation book of the Academy of Fine Arts Munich  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / matrikel.fafalter.de  
  2. a b Gunther le Maire, Facades and a costume for Sonthofen , in: Oberallgäu-Kultur , May 19, 2007 ( digitized version )
  3. Gertrude Goldner, The "good room" becomes the "Belle Etage" , in: Kreisbote , August 25, 2013 ( digitized version )
  4. Open Monument Day in Sonthofen , on: www.heimatdienst.de