Hermann Degkwitz

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Hermann Degkwitz (born August 29, 1921 in Munich , † December 8, 2007 in Hohenfelde , Steinburg district ) was a German graphic artist and graphic designer , known for his covers for the magazine Der Spiegel . He also worked as a journalist and university lecturer.

life and work

Hermann Degkwitz was born in 1921 as the son of the pediatrician Rudolf Degkwitz (senior) in Munich and grew up in Hamburg . His brother was the psychiatrist Rudolf Degkwitz (junior) .

After graduating from the Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Hamburg, Hermann Degkwitz studied from 1938 to 1941 at the Hamburg Art Academy and at the university. In 1940 he was one of the founders of the “ Musenkabinett ”, a group of artists, intellectuals and students to which opponents of National Socialism also belonged. In 1941 Degkwitz was arrested by the Gestapo for "statements that degrade the military strength". From September 1941 until the end of the war he did military service in the Wehrmacht. Then he devoted himself to political caricatures (he “after the millions of dead in the war and in Auschwitz thought it was no longer possible to just do l'art pour l'art”).

Between 1947 and 1949 Degkwitz was the third secretary of the KPD in Schleswig-Holstein. This phase of life ended in 1949 when he was expelled from the KPD. Afterwards Degkwitz worked for many years as a painter, graphic designer for advertising art , illustrator , cartoonist and journalist. Since the mid-1960s he worked as a freelancer for Spiegel-Verlag in Hamburg . In 1967 his first cover picture for "Spiegel" appeared. From 1974 Degkwitz was professor of graphics at the University of Design in Bremen .

Since 1947 he was married to Annemarie Degkwitz, a politician and later long-time district president of the Steinburg district in Schleswig-Holstein . In December 1949 the Degkwitz family moved from the city of Hamburg to the Hohenfelde community.

In 1972 some of his works, the cover pictures of the magazine " Spiegel ", were shown at Documenta 5 in Kassel in the department Parallel Imagery: Social Iconography .

Literature and Sources

  • Documenta 5. Survey of Reality, Imagery Today. 2 volumes (Vol. 1: Material, the presentation of the visual worlds and the artists. Volume 2: List of the exhibited works, the presented situations, the expected events, their nature, their manufacturers and owners, their organizers. General bibliography. Guide through the Exhibition. ). Documenta ua, Kassel 1972, ISBN 3-570-02856-9 (in ring binder).
  • Roland Nachtigäller , Friedhelm Scharf, Karin Stengel (eds.): Resubmission d5. A survey of the archive on Documenta 1972 (= series of publications of the documenta archive. Vol. 8). Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2001, ISBN 3-7757-1121-X .
  • Obituary in: Der Spiegel, No. 51, 2007, p. 182
  • Hermann Degkwitz: Lithografien, in: die horen 26 (1981), 2, p. 5 ( The roots of prosperity ), 50 ( The progress ), 162 ( The scourge of time ) and 164 (Biography)

Web links

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hermann Degkwitz. In: die horen 26 (1981), 2, p. 164
personal data
SURNAME Degkwitz, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German graphic artist and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH August 29, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH December 8, 2007
Place of death Hohenfelde , Steinburg district