Hermann Hirsch (artist)

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Hermann Hirsch , self-portrait, mid-1920s

Hermann Hirsch (born June 4, 1861 in Rheydt , † March 1, 1934 in Göttingen ) was a German painter and sculptor . He was born as the seventh child of a Jewish family in Rheydt, today Mönchengladbach. His creative period extended from 1880 to 1933.

Life

Hirsch attended a high school in Cologne until 1874 before starting an apprenticeship as a wood draftsman and engraver with Richard Brend'amour in Düsseldorf. The Brend'amour Xylographic Institute was one of the leading wood printing companies in the German Empire. She supplied high-circulation magazines.

From 1881 to 1885 Hirsch was trained at the Royal Academy of Arts in Berlin . In 1886 he attended the Düsseldorf Art Academy for one semester . There were Julius Roeting and Eduard Gebhardt his teachers. He left the Düsseldorf Academy “because of lack of funds”. From 1880 to 1914, Berlin was again the center of his life. There he was a member of the Association of Berlin Artists until 1914 .

Preserved works from this period mainly show members of the extensive Jewish Hirsch family. From 1893 to 1914 Hirsch was repeatedly represented at the great Berlin art exhibitions , but his pictures were not recognized by the public. From this period (1880–1900) come illustrations for magazines that Hermann Hirsch made for the Berlin branch of Brend'amour.

First trips took him to Italy in the 1890s. From 1901 to 1909 he was a full member of the German Artists' Association in Rome . In his own family he was considered well traveled, but only the motifs of his pictures provide references to his stays in Switzerland, Greece and Capri.

In 1918 Hirsch moved to Bremke , a small village near Göttingen . Artistically, he oriented himself to Göttingen, where he took part in the exhibitions of the Göttinger Kunstfreunde Association in the 1920s. These exhibitions and especially his portraits of Göttingen academics (e.g. of the later Nobel Prize winner Max Born ) established his reputation as a leading portraitist and landscape painter in the region.

In 1933, Hirsch fled Bremke to Göttingen from the palpable anti-Semitism . The city offered a certain anonymity, but had been a stronghold of National Socialism since the mid-1920s. As early as March 28, 1933, a good month before Hirsch moved, there were violent riots against Jewish residents and their businesses in downtown Göttingen. Hermann Hirsch held out in this atmosphere for ten months before he put an end to his life at the age of 73. In the obituary of the liberal Göttinger Zeitung it was stated that he was "broken by the hardship of fate."

plant

Hermann Hirsch's work included paintings, graphics, drawings and sculptures. Only a small part of it is localized. In Germany only the Göttingen Municipal Museum houses works by Hirsch, apart from a graphic in the Museum Schloss Moyland Foundation . The majority of his works are privately owned, the smaller part in Germany, the larger part of Hirsch's relatives who have emigrated to Great Britain, South Africa and the USA.

Hermann Hirsch concentrated largely on portrait and landscape painting. In the course of his career, a sequence of stylistic developments is not necessarily recognizable. What is more characteristic of Hirsch's oeuvre is the juxtaposition of different design modes.

  • Hermann Hirsch, early 1920s, portrait of his great-nephew Julius Philippson

  • Hermann Hirsch, 1932, portrait of the stone carver Heinrich Rappe from Bremke

  • Hermann Hirsch, Port of Terracina

Exhibitions

  • 1892: Exhibition by the Berlin Academy of Arts (hereinafter: AdK): Hirsch with 2 works in the oil painting department: "Strike", "Evening"
  • 1893: Big Berlin art exhibition of the AdK: Deer with 3 works in the dept. Oil painting: "A frost fell in the spring night", "Autumn day in the market", "In summer", "Motif from Danzig"
  • 1894: Great Berlin art exhibition of the AdK: Deer with 2 works in the department. Paintings: "In the park", "Spring dance"
  • 1897: Great Berlin art exhibition of the AdK: Hirsch with "Evening Peace" in the painting department
  • 1902: Participation in an exhibition of the German Art Association in Rome
  • 1905: Great Berlin art exhibition of the AdK: Deer with an etching in the "German Black and White Exhibition"
  • 1909: Exhibition of the German Artists' Association in Rome - Deer with an Italian landscape
  • 1911: Great Berlin art exhibition of the AdK: Deer with “dancer”, bronze
  • 1912: Participation in an exhibition of the Berliner Künstlerbund with 6 works, "The Young Man", "Female Nude" (drawing), "Upper Grindelwald Glacier", "Boat", "Harbor", "Female Nudes"
  • 1912: Great Berlin art exhibition of the AdK: Deer with three sculptures - "Young man's head", "female bust", "Young Siegfried"
  • 1913: Great Berlin art exhibition of the AdK: "Bust of the painter Gaede", sculpture
  • 1914: Great Berlin art exhibition of the AdK: Deer with “Jüngling”, bronze
  • 1926: Association of Göttinger Kunstfreunde - exhibition of paintings and graphics Hermann Hirsch-Bremke u. a.
  • 1926: Christmas exhibition of the Göttingen Art Friends Association, portraits
  • 1927: Christmas exhibition of the Association of Göttinger Kunstfreunde with many portraits a. a. Images of deer
  • 1930: Solo exhibition at the Bleßmann art dealer in Göttingen in December 1930
  • 1932: Christmas exhibition of the Göttingen Art Friends Association

After Hirsch's death

  • 1961: Commemoration event and exhibition on the occasion of Hermann Hirsch's centenary birthday in the Pavilion Pro-Art, Archeology and Folklore, “Bitan” in Safad, Israel
  • 1989: You were and are our neighbors. Traces of Jewish life in Mönchengladbach. An exhibition of the Mönchengladbach City Archives - Burgvögtin Obermüller von Mühlheim
  • 2009: Hermann Hirsch (1861–1934) - A Jewish painter in Göttingen. Exhibition by the Göttingen Municipal Museum, August 30, 2009 - January 10, 2010

literature

  • Hirsch, Hermann (1861) . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 17 : Heubel – Hubard . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1924, p. 131 .
  • Hirsch, Hermann (1861) . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 6 , supplements H-Z . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1962.
  • Joachim Busse: International manual of all painters and sculptors of the 19th century: Busse directory. Wiesbaden 1977.
  • Rainer Driever (ed.): Hermann Hirsch (1861–1934) - a Jewish painter in Göttingen. Accompanying volume for the exhibition at the Göttingen Municipal Museum from August 30, 2009 - January 10, 2010, Göttingen 2009. With contributions by Ernst Böhme, Thomas Noll and Rainer Driever.
  • Rainer Driever: Hermann Hirsch - The creation of an exhibition. Research on the life of an unknown painter. In: History Association for Göttingen and Environment eV (Hrsg.): Göttinger yearbook. Volume 57, 2009, pp. 151-160.
  • Ernst Böhme, Rainer Driever, Rainer Rohrbach: “Bought from the estate of the banker Max Frank”. "Aryanized" cultural property in the collection of the Municipal Museum. In: History Association for Göttingen and Environment eV (Hrsg.): Göttinger yearbook. Volume 57, 2009, pp. 141-150.
  • Rainer Driever: Hermann Hirsch (1861–1934) - catalog raisonné. Publishing house Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 2010.
  • Rainer Driever: Hermann Hirsch . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 73, de Gruyter, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-023178-6 , p. 333.

Web links

Commons : Hermann Hirsch  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. No. 5740 in the finding aid 212.01.04 Student lists of the Düsseldorf Art Academy , website in the archive.nrw.de portal ( North Rhine-Westphalia State Archive )
  2. ^ Friedrich Noack : The Germanness in Rome since the end of the Middle Ages. Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1927, Volume 2, p. 265
  3. ↑ Uta Schäfer-Richter and Jörg Klein, The Jewish Citizens in the Göttingen District 1933–1945. Wallstein Verlag 1922, 2nd edition 1993, p. 96, ISBN 3-89244-048-4 .
personal data
SURNAME Hirsch, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH June 4, 1861
PLACE OF BIRTH Rheydt
DATE OF DEATH March 1, 1934
Place of death Goettingen