Helmuth Schepp

Helmuth Schepp (born March 7, 1894 in Neuhaus (Oste) , † September 16, 1982 in Aachen ) was a German sculptor and university professor.

Life

The son of the Siegen district administrator Ernst Rudolf Schepp was born in Neuhaus and, after the early death of his father, spent his youth with his four siblings in their grandparents' house in Freiburg im Breisgau . His maternal grandfather, August Weismann , was a zoologist and pianist , which is where Schepp's affection for music originated. After his humanistic Abitur in 1913, Helmuth Schepp first studied electrical engineering at the TH Darmstadt and at the same time worked in a technical company as a student trainee in 1913/14. From 1914 to 1918 he was deployed in the war, during which he was wounded by a knee shot in Verdun .

After the First World War , in addition to his technical studies, Schepp played music in the Freiburg and Basel orchestras until 1921 and made friends with the art historian Helmut Lütgens (* 1893) and with Jewish intellectuals such as Dr. Szilasi on. After Schepp had passed his pre- examination in mechanical engineering and electrical engineering at Darmstädter TH in 1921 , he then studied technical physics and art with Th. Georgi at TH Munich until 1923 . Finally, he trained as a sculptor with the studio operators of the sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand, who died in 1921, in Munich and at the same time set up his own studio in Berlin , which he ran until 1928. Then he moved to Aachen and built a new studio in Roetgen .

After an initial study visit to Rome in 1933, the Technical University of Aachen offered Schepp a substitute chair in the subject of plastics . At the same time, apparently for career reasons, he joined the Sturmabteilung (SA) , whereupon he was appointed official lecturer for plastic (modeling) from December 1, 1934 to 1950 and was in charge of the plastic collections and workshops of the TH. He also took part regularly in the annual exhibitions of Aachen artists from 1933 to 1938. During this time Schepp refused a proposed membership in the NSDAP as well as an activity as an art appraiser.

After almost 70% of the TH had been destroyed due to the war, the final evacuation to Dillenburg took place on September 11, 1944 by order of the district leader Rudolf Schmeer , the Reich Defense Commissioner Josef Grohé and the incumbent rector Hans Ehrenberg , whose apartment was also joined by Schepp and atelier in Aachen and Roetgen had already been bombed out. In this way he escaped the pursuit of Ehrenberg, who had several university colleagues who had defied these orders and preferred to evade to neighboring Belgium to get into the hands of the approaching Allies arrested before they fled. Schepp, who was now also politically persecuted as a member of the Anthroposophical Society, fled to his family , who had already been evacuated to Tyrol, and was interned in Austria after 1945 .

In the later appraisal of the involvement of university members during National Socialism , Schepp only left the image of a university professor who on the one hand did not care too much about politics, but on the other hand also knew how to protect himself on all sides. On September 28, 1946, he was listed in the list of politically persecuted professors and lecturers at the TH Aachen .

After his release, Schepp returned to Aachen and began to reorganize the chair. From 1949, as an associate professor for the field of sculpture and modeling, he was significantly involved in the reconstruction of the TH, and particularly in the expansion of the artistic subjects in the architecture department. Here he worked until his retirement and was also active as a freelance artist. In the meantime his family had moved from their self-chosen exile and Schepp moved into a house on Muffeter Weg in Aachen, where he also set up a new studio in 1960.

Before that, in 1947, Helmuth Schepp was one of the co-founders of the Aachener Künstlerbund and, together with Carl Schneiders and Anton Wendling, of the Aachen session . In 1951, Ewald Mataré , Anton Wendling, Kurt Schwippert and Peter Mennicken took part in the 4th International Summer Vacation Course Art and Technology at RWTH. Between 1952 and 1960 Schepp undertook numerous other study trips to England, France, Italy, Austria and Switzerland as well as through Germany and, accompanied by Professor R. Steinbach from RWTH Aachen University, to Greece, Egypt and Turkey. In addition, between 1960 and 1961 he took part in the conferences of art professors in Munich and Berlin and was one of the jury members with Mataré at various sculpting competitions.

Schepp remained true to his musical inclination in spite of all professional and political difficulties and then founded the Aachen University Orchestra in 1952 and was active with it as academic director, cellist , violist and first concertmaster .

family

Helmuth Schepp was married to Margarethe C. Kötscher, who gave birth to their daughter Astrid in 1936 and their son Johannes in 1938, as well as their daughter Lilli Angelika in 1949. His son Johannes Schepp , a master student of Bruno Goller , also works as a sculptor and painter in Borgholzhausen . Father and son Schepp appeared in a joint exhibition in the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum in 1965 and in 1980 in Galerie 3A in Ascona .

Helmut Schepp was buried on September 21, 1982 in Aachen's Westfriedhof II .

style

Phoenix, 1962/63

Helmut Schepp's figural works demonstrate his engagement with the problem of space - volume. Adam C. Oellers reports that Schepp carefully studied Adolf von Hildebrand's works and “ his great idea of ​​structuring shape and its perception. He also knows about the "relief", the clear, layered structure of the various views of a sculpture, which can only develop its total volume in space through the mental merging of the viewer. Hildebrandt's concept of the "architecture" of a sculpture will have given Schepp's life's work, which increasingly also turned to "art in architecture", a basis early on. "

Since 1924, his Berlin works have been freely dealing with form. The basis is the traditional, classic image of man. He reduced the body shape to block-like, abstract geometric representations. “ The influence of the classic Berlin sculpture school also leaves its mark: the figures gain inner volume, posture and gestures become more extensive, the surfaces begin to move and to submit to the play of light and shadow (e.g. in the portrait Lili Szilasi ). “His early works fell victim to the war. From 1928 in Aachen, his works were dominated by classical counter post and the reproduction of emotions in the form of the posture of the head and the powerfully modeled, moving surface design. The image of man in his works illustrates his own body image in relation to the artist and the viewer. “ And so it is understandable that this bodily experience between attraction and vulnerability could never serve Nazi art, which only viewed and used the human body as an object of exploitation. "

His work of the 1930s and the post-war period illustrate his efforts to shape the inner dynamics in the outer form. Similar to the way in which the artists make the brushstroke visible in painting, Schepp shows the traces of processing with a chisel. In addition to this stylized work process, there are polished works of art. Resting closed figures and reliefs can be seen alongside expansive representations.

After 1955 there was a change in his memorial works. He worked out the figure of the individual monument in full plastic. His works of art on the building, on the other hand, claimed a flatness, linearity and stylization of the ornaments. Contemporary architecture inspired the artist to new forms of design. Its dancers and the threefold structure are a contemporary continuation of the art in and on construction as it is in the Aachen cityscape, for example. B. occurs on the entrance reliefs of the Elisabethhalle . Typical developments such as B. Cubism can be seen in his works. Both the spatial - architectural discussion and the content - thematic Schepp. His black polished phoenix symbolizes the rise from the ashes.

The process of creating one of his works included numerous elaborations in the form of sketches and bozetti . Helmuth Schepp was an analytical sculptor. In part, his works have a soft, rounded physiognomy. His various material treatments cannot be reduced to one common denominator.

Subject

In his works he dealt with portraits, ancient mythology , monuments to fountains, war memories, history , folklorism , allegory , symbolism and Goetheanism . From 1933 to 1992 his works were on view in six solo exhibitions and 14 group exhibitions.

Works

Girl sculpture, replica

Threefolding

Tympanum with coat of arms of North Rhine-Westphalia

• Lili Szilasi , portrait
• Sculpture father and son, entrance area to the auditorium of the Heinrich-Heine-Gymnasium Oberhausen
• Girl sculpture, first casting Aachen, 1930; owned by the Suermondt Ludwig Museum. There is a replenishment on the Burtscheider Mark in Aachen- Burtscheid .
• 1921/25 crouching , missing
• 1930 nude drawing
• around 1935/38 Standing boy , plaster / bronze
• 1936 Johannes and Maria , wooden sculptures
• 1937 Little Strider , bronze
• before 1938 Two portrait reliefs , Übach-Palenberg , former City Hall Übach, war loss (?)
• 1946 mother and child , bronze relief
• 1948 Portrait of Mrs. K. , Stein
• 1948 Participation in the competition for the redesign of the Elisenbrunnen
• 1948 Participation in the Heine Monument competition in Düsseldorf
• 1948/49 Standing female nude , plaster, dest.
• before 1949 war honor , Mainz-Amöneburg
• 1949 Supraporte relief , Deutsche Edelstahlwerke in Krefeld
• 1949 Female nude , garden figure, stone
• 1950 memorial . Schleiden-Gemündener military cemetery
• 1950 Cenotaph for the fallen, Blaustein grave slab , Wassenberg military cemetery, removed
• 1951 Hochkreuz , Kall-Steinfeld, Steinfeld Monastery Military Cemetery
• 1951 Two dancers , 2 separate cast stone reliefs, the two life-size females. Nudes are located to the right and left of the entrance to the central box on the first floor in the Aachen City Theater . The tympanum relief and Les Demoiselles d'Avignon inspired Schepp to create these typical works of art under construction.
• 1951 Sandal-maker , shell limestone relief on the outer front, Karlsgraben 31 (in front of the shoe shop), Aachen
• 1951 grave slab , bluestone, Inden pier, cemetery, memorial for the fallen
• 1952 The four elements
• 1952 Ascending Christ , wood relief
• 1953 Bockreiter fountain monument, Herzogenrath , Ferdinand Schmetz Platz
• 1953 War memorial stone with Michael relief , Alsdorf-Begau
• 1953 Female portrait head , clay-fired
• 1953 Tympanum with the state coat of arms of North Rhine-Westphalia , state authority building (former government building), Theaterplatz 14, Aachen. Schepp depicts the coat of arms, extracts the common figures and repeats them in a reversed arrangement as a horse and source figure with which he surrounds the coat of arms. The black relief overlaps the light tympanum field in several places.
• 1954 Memorial for the fallen , Aldenhoven-Freialdenhoven cemetery
• 1954/55 (?) Hochkreuz , Jülich , war graves
• 1955 sheep , relief, pit ditch, former textile engineering school, today Aachen University of Applied Sciences .
• 1955 Helios , charioteer at Klever Gymnasium, brick design in bronze
• n.1955 Heinrich Heine monument
• 1955 fountain figure , Bielefeld
• 1956 teacher - pupil plastic , food
• 1956/62 recumbent , fountain figure Bielefeld, indoor swimming pool at Kesselbrink
• 1957 Bärenbrunnen , Emmerich, grammar school
• 1957 The cycle of life or water carriers , brass band relief, Sparkasse Aachen (formerly Kreissparkasse)
• 1958 Pallas Athene and the Falconist , steel band relief at Schleidener Gymnasium
• 1959 Rossebändiger , competition design (plaster model) for the design of a sculpture in front of the large lecture hall building of the TH Aachen (Audimax), corner of Turmstrasse / Wüllnerstrasse
• 1959/60 The threefolding , polychrome (blue, red and white) natural stone relief made of sandstone with the representation of four figures (a reader / writer for the mind, a mother with child for the body and a man on the lookout for the psyche), Peterstraße in Aachen (formerly the city library) is supposed to be the basis of Rudolf Steiner's thesis of the human being as being made of body, soul and spirit.
• 1960 girl seated , bronze
• 1960 Daphne , plaster of paris
• 1960 Daphne , draft drawings
• Man and angel burned in clay
• 1961–1964 Flying Swans / Nils Holgersson , Duisburg- Buchholz, elementary school, Sittardsberger-Allee

RWTH:

• 1951/52 4 relief columns , foundry institute, Intzestrasse
• 1952/53 band relief , portal of the foundry institute, Intzestrasse
• 1953/54 History of chemistry / attempting a new technique , five brick reliefs, chemical institutes
• 1962/63 Phoenix , Schinkelstrasse in front of the Reiff Museum

literature

• Helmuth Schepp: Chair for Sculpture and Sculpture Studio. in: Aachen. The Rheinisch Westfälische Technische Hochschule. Edited by Anton Kurz. Stuttgart: Brief 1961 (= monographs of the building industry, volume 22.)
• Adam C. Oellers, Roland I. Rappmann: Helmuth Schepp. 1894 - 1982. Plastic. Drawings. An exhibition in the Sparkasse Aachen headquarters at Friedrich-Wilhelm-Platz April 19 - May 6, 1994. Stercken, Aachen 1994. With literature (selection).
• Margarethe Schepp: The sculptor Helmuth Schepp. Heidenheim: AmThor, 2002
• Ulrich Kalkmann: The Technical University of Aachen in the Third Reich (1933–1945) . Verlag Mainz, Aachen 2003, ISBN 3-86130-181-4 , ( Aachener Studien zu Technik und Gesellschaft 4), (Simultaneously: Aachen, Techn. Hochsch., Diss., 2000), pp. 375-377 and others.

Web links

Commons : Helmuth Schepp  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Place of birth according to the source Ulrich Kalkmann
2. ↑ Short biography of Johannes Schepp
3. ↑ Oellers, p. 27.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Oellers, p. 6.
5. ↑ Oellers, p. 7.
6. ^ Sculpture father and son in Oberhausen
7. ↑ Oellers, p. 9.
8. ^ Ulrich Kalkmann: The Technical University of Aachen in the Third Reich (1933–1945) ; Mentions of Helmut Schepp