Helmut Nitzsche

Helmut Nitzsche

Helmut Nitzsche (born January 22, 1914 in Oelsnitz / Vogtland , † July 20, 2002 in Fulda ) was a German visual artist and glass painter .

Life

Nitzsche studied from 1928 to 1933 at the state art school in Plauen in the painting class of Wilhelm Heckrott and Otto Lange . Both professors were Expressionists of the Dresden Secession Group in 1919 , a continuation of the artist group "Brücke" . His time in the master class at Lange had a decisive influence on his artistic development. During this time Nitzsche designed the St. Catherine's Church in Eichigt .

After the National Socialists came to power, by order of Gauleiter Mutschmann, the school was closed, the teachers arrested, the students refused their diploma and the "Degeneracy Commission" banned them from any artistic activity. After completing an apprenticeship, Nitzsche worked as a decorative painter, mainly while traveling through southern Germany. On the recommendation of a civil engineer, he came in 1939 as a draftsman in the General Building Inspectorate for the Reich capital. The general building inspector Albert Speer hid a whole group of individualists behind the task of a study for the monstrous dome building of the planned congress hall for the world capital Germania .

Nitzsche was called up for military service in 1942 and spent four years in Soviet captivity, from which he was not released to West Berlin until 1949 . From 1950 to 1955 he continued his training with a degree at the Werkakademie Berlin-Charlottenburg in the class for applied arts (focus: art in architecture) with a diploma. During the reconstruction phase of West Berlin, he received many orders in the field of art in architecture. The most important works from this creative period include a large mural in the entrance hall of the Berlin-Spandau tax office and a three-dimensional mural in the Heerstrasse post office .

As a result, he became more and more interested in the material glass with the melting process, the charm of creation in the sense of the "conditionally predictable artistic experiment". In the following years, he has been living in an old farmhouse in Schwarzenfels in the Hessian Vorderrhön since 1974 and created more than 30 church windows , mainly in Berlin . These include 1984 Heavenly Jerusalem in the Catholic Church Mater Dolorosa in Berlin-Lankwitz and 1993 Creation of the World , Eucharist Bread and Wine and Moses Window in the Parish Church of the Holy Family in Berlin-Lichterfelde .

The church windows were joined by numerous glass works, in which handicrafts and free work flow into one another. Among the best " The battered Planet I and II (1991), " Filigree Glaskollage " and " Glaskollage with molten threads ". In the free artistic work he devoted himself next to the tempera painting and other painting techniques, such as acrylic painting, plaster mosaics as well as surfacing and gauze techniques.

Works (selection)

• The calamity heralds itself
• Still life
• Weber houses
• Gelnhausen Jewish cemetery
• Horses in the paddock
• Urfisch
• Mushroom variations
• Oil spill in the Gulf
• Baptism and Last Supper (choir window) and ceiling lamps in the Protestant church in Schwarzenfels

Helmut Nitzsche's life's work was recognized in exhibitions in Kleinsassen, Schlüchtern and Fulda.

literature

• Catalog Kunststation Kleinsassen: Helmut Nitzsche - Color. Fire . Light - Discover - Abstract - Merge , 1992
• Lutz Hergert: Lifelines in glass and color ..., life paths from Oelsnitz via Berlin to the Rhön. Free press, 8./9. August 1998
• Karl Ulrich: High art of glass painting - Helmut Nitzsche is 85 years old today. Main-Kinzigtal-Nachrichten, January 22, 1999
• Ronny Hager: Biographical calendar sheet (78) . In: Stadtanzeiger. , Oelsnitz, No. 7, from July 27, 2012, p. 3

Web links

Commons : Helmut Nitzsche  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ursula Storck: Himmlisches Jerusalem , Mater Dolorosa (Berlin-Lankwitz) , accessed on March 16, 2017