Hermine Overbeck-Rohte
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Hermine Overbeck-Rohte (born January 24, 1869 in Walsrode as Hermine Rohte ; † July 29, 1937 in Bremen ) was a German painter and wife of the painter Fritz Overbeck .
Life
Early years
Hermine Rohte was the youngest of the six children of the leather manufacturer Karl Heinrich Rohte and his wife Elise. As a student in Walsrode, she received private painting lessons and from an early age wished to become an artist , which the family did not agree to. Her mother and her eldest brother - the father had died in 1881 - sent the fourteen-year-old Hermine to one of her sisters in Itzehoe to learn housekeeping. Then she trained as a nurse at the deaconess institution in Hanover . She bowed to the wishes of the family, but in her free time she continued to paint and attended the painting courses of the Hanoverian landscape painter Paul Koken (1853-1910). He recognized her talent and advised her to deal with the new medium of photography and to go to the women's academy of the artists' association in Munich . However, at the request of her family, she accepted a position as a teacher with the Prof. Bürkner family in Göttingen .
Hermine Rohte prevailed at the age of twenty-three and moved to Munich in 1892. There she studied landscape painting and still life at the women's academy of the female artists' association until 1896 , among others with the Austrian landscape painter Tina Blau . In the art association of Hanover she took part in the annual art exhibition in 1892 and 1893 and sold one of her pictures there.
turn
The annual international art exhibition in Munich's Glaspalast in 1896 marked the turning point in Rohte's artistic and private life. She discovered the landscape art of the Worpsweder . She was particularly impressed by Fritz Overbeck's evening in the moor . She decided to take painting lessons from Fritz Overbeck with her painter colleague Marie Bock (1867–1956). Then both traveled to Worpswede that same year .
On October 13, 1896, she became engaged to Fritz Overbeck. During the one-year engagement period, an intensive correspondence ensued between Fritz Overbeck and Hermine Rohte. She expressed her concerns about her future role as a painter: She wanted to continue to be an independent artist, but saw very clearly that there would be little time left for her own art practice.
At the end of 1896 she wrote to her fiancé:
- "... how happy you make me! Could I always make you so happy and could I always be as much as I want to be to you! Your sweetheart, your friend and college (you mustn't take the latter as presumption, you also know how it is meant). ... I think my painting will be pretty much over; because you can't deal with art every now and then like a Sunday afternoon plaizier, it's too big and too heavy for that. Besides, I would measure myself against you and see over and over again that I would always lag behind you infinitely, and since we are one, it would be foolish if one half wanted to do what the other half would do so much better can make. I also have the feeling that you are secretly convinced that it wouldn't be a shame if I gave it up. "
Move to Worpswede
Hermine Rohte and Fritz Overbeck married in 1897; the first married artist couple in the village moved into a house in Worpswede for eight years. Both had their own studio here - it was Overbeck-Rohte's most productive period. Most of her oeuvre was created in the period from 1896 to around 1900. In the following years she devoted herself more and more to her family. The son Fritz Theodor was born in 1898, the daughter Gerda in 1903.
The couple maintained close contact with Paul Schroeter and his wife Grete as well as Otto Modersohn , with whom they traveled to the World Exhibition in Paris in June 1900 to visit Paula Becker . After the unexpected death of Otto Modersohn's first wife Helene, they returned on the third day.
In 1904 Hermine Overbeck-Rohte fell ill with pulmonary tuberculosis . Long cures in the lung sanatorium of Oberkaufungen as well as during a cure with her sister in Itzehoe rarely allowed her to be artistically active. In order to still be able to paint, Fritz Overbeck constructed a special easel with which she could also work lying down.
Move to Vegesack
In July 1905 the Overbecks moved away from Worpswede. The artist community had broken up due to differences of opinion and for some time Fritz Overbeck had turned to new landscape motifs. Fritz and Hermine Overbeck bought a house in Bröcken, which was north of Bremen near the then still independent town of Vegesack (part of Bremen since 1946), and converted it. In Hermine Overbeck-Rohte's work, house and garden are repeatedly found as artistic motifs.
Another outbreak of pulmonary tuberculosis forced Hermine Overbeck-Rohte to go to a second sanatorium , from September 1908 to June 1909 in Davos . Again Fritz Overbeck encouraged his wife to paint. She was released as cured that summer, but the loss of a lung severely constrained her for the rest of her life. Three days after her return to Bröcken, on June 8, 1909, her husband died of a stroke at the age of 39.
Last years
Hermine Overbeck-Rohte took great care to preserve her husband's artistic estate . Only during the holidays with her children on Föhr , on Sylt and in the Rhön did she find time and leisure to paint.
After the First World War , she lost her cash wealth due to inflation and secured her family's livelihood by renting rooms. Hermine Overbeck-Rohte only drew once more after the war. Her son Fritz Theodor Overbeck , who later worked and lived as a botanist in Hanover, asked her for illustration panels for his book Mittelgebirgsflora . It was not about art as his mother understood it. The task required to reproduce the plants exactly from nature.
Hermine Overbeck-Rohte died at the age of sixty-eight on July 29, 1937 in a car accident.
artist
Role as artist's wife, housewife, mother and artist
The path in life of Hermine Overbeck-Rohte can exemplify many women in art at the turn of the century who equally felt the desire to become artists. There were always obstacles in their way. They had to convince their families - not only of their talent, but also to pay for the expensive training, because the lessons at the women's academies were far more expensive than at the state academies.
Marrying an artist did not necessarily mean the beginning of a career as an artist. The Worpswede artist couple constellations are particularly good examples of the different relationship structures between man and woman, teacher and student, artist and artist at that time. The Overbeck, Modersohn and Mackensen couples show different relationship patterns that are symptomatic. Herta Mackensen renounced her career in favor of her husband, while Paula Modersohn-Becker was ready to put her marriage at risk for art. Hermine Overbeck-Rohte moved between these two poles. She hoped for so much understanding and encouragement from her husband in order to be able to pursue her own painting further, but also largely accepted the additional roles of housewife, mother and artist wife.
One focus of the intensive correspondence was the technical discussion about the paintings on which Fritz Overbeck was working. The opinion and judgment of his future wife were very important to him. However, not the artist Hermine took part in these discussions, but the artist colleague “Hermann”. Which of the two, the fictional character "Hermann" invented, can no longer be ascertained; they both assumed.
Excerpts from letters show how important it was for Hermine Overbeck-Rohte to have an intensive discussion about artistic matters and by no means just about her husband's. The inner struggle between the artist and the future wife can be read in her letters. But she was ready to compromise to subordinate her own artistic work to that of her husband.
Hermine Overbeck-Rohtes fears came true. Even her children no longer perceived her as an artist. In Worpswede, too, she did not go public with her art. Fritz and Hermine Overbeck maintained contact with the other artists in Worpswede, but in some cases they kept a critical distance from them and avoided socializing. For example, they did not join the Barkenhoff circle around Heinrich Vogeler and Rainer Maria Rilke . A few references to Hermine Overbeck-Rohte can be found in Paula Modersohn-Becker's letters and notes . But she does not describe Overbeck-Rohte as an artist, but solely as the wife of the painter Fritz Overbeck. Hermine Overbeck-Rohte also did not take part in the exhibition of some studies by Paula Modersohn-Becker and Marie Bock in the Bremen Kunsthalle in 1899. This can be taken as a further indication of their personal and artistic retreat.
plant
Love for Worpswede
Both Hermine Overbeck-Rohte and Fritz Overbeck found their motifs in the Worpswede landscape and on the Weyerberg . She also preferred to use oil paint to record her impressions in numerous studies on cardboard directly in the great outdoors. For Hermine Overbeck-Rohte, the focus was on studying and depicting the landscape. The human being plays a subordinate role in her work.
The first studies by Hermine Rohte, which date from the early days of Worpswede, such as Drying Laundry or At the Crossroads , already show a sure feeling for the composition of the image and a nuanced working through of the light and shadow zones. Worpsweder's preferred colors - subdued brown, gray and dark green - find their way into her pictures, but are characterized by more luminosity. She contrasts them with stronger colors - such as the white of the drying laundry.
Concentration on one main subject
Her first canvas work - Der Hohlweg - was not created until after the wedding , which occupies a special position in her oeuvre. It is the only picture with “H. Overbeck Rohte ”signed and dated“ Worpswede 99 ”. At 78 × 92 cm in size, it remained her largest picture. A landscape in early spring is shown. The ravine runs between a high-rise slope overgrown with individual trees and a narrow, gently rising strip of grass on the left. In the background of the picture it disappears behind a bend. The painter concentrates the viewer's gaze, coming from a slightly elevated perspective , entirely on the ravine through the lateral boundary of the slope and the green strip. The picture clearly shows one of her compositional elements in the landscape rendering: She moves a motif more into the viewer's eye, selects the landscape section more narrowly and restricts itself to one main motif.
Later work
Hermine Overbeck-Rohte also moved into her own studio in the Bröcken house. She didn't have much time to pursue her painting, because the family, the house and the large vegetable garden demanded most of her attention. In rare moments she recorded her surroundings in studies, for example in our house entrance on a sunny summer day. The foreground is completely shaded by the trees on the right side of the path. The rays of the sun shine through the foliage and form shimmering spots of light and bathe parts of the house entrance in rolling light. This striking play of light and shadow is already included in her Worpsweder studies.
Landscape studies from Davos, where she stayed in a sanatorium, do not exist by Hermine Overbeck-Rohte. If she painted, it was probably always still lifes . The apple in a clay bowl may come from this time, it is characterized by a particularly reduced representation and concentration on a single object.
Hermine Overbeck-Rohte's life was marked by a tough struggle for artistic independence. Public recognition was less important to her than the opportunity to continually deal with nature in a painterly manner. She left behind an oeuvre that is independent from the work of Tina Blau and Fritz Overbeck. Her diverse work, which was mainly created over a period of twelve years, shows her own artistic style, which she was able to develop despite the family adversities and the self-doubt about her talent.
Aftermath
The Fritz and Hermine Overbeck Foundation was founded in 1990 on the initiative of granddaughter Gertrud Overbeck in Bremen- Vegesack . In 1991, Overbeck-Rohte's works, paintings on canvas, drawings and watercolors were shown for the first time in a solo exhibition. The Sylt Heimatmuseum presented pictures with Sylt motifs by Hermine Overbeck-Rohte and her husband in 2010 under the title Here it is so wonderful! out. The Overbeck Museum in Vegesack, which looks after your estate, showed a retrospective in 2011 under the title Your wife, your friend, your colleague, your everything .
literature
- Overbeck Museum Bremen (ed.): Hermine Overbeck-Rohte. Your wife, your friend, your colleague, your everything. Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern 2011, ISBN 978-3-7757-2790-7 . (Exhibition catalog)
- Bärbel Ehrmann-Köpke: The trousseau of the Worpswede painter Hermine Oberbeck-Rohte. In: Bärbel Ehrmann-Köpke: “Demonstrative idleness” or “restless activity”? Handicraft women in the Hanseatic middle class of the 19th century. Waxmann Verlag, Münster 2010, ISBN 978-3-8309-2368-8 , pp. 234-238; see also pp. 21, 176, 224, 380, 385 ( Internationale Hochschulschriften , Vol. 546; also dissertation , University of Bremen 2009; online at Google books ).
- Hannelore Cyrus: Hermine and Hermann or "... that Mr. Overbeck's pupil does not claim a studio". In: Hannelore Cyrus: Love never stops. Artist couples, love and love for art. BoD, Norderstedt 2010, ISBN 978-3-8391-5561-5 , pp. 13-22. ( online at Google Books)
- Christine Heidemann, Harald Fiebig (eds.): Hermine Overbeck-Rohte and Fritz Overbeck. An exchange of letters (1896–1909). Donat Verlag, Bremen 2002, ISBN 3-934836-53-4 . (Published on behalf of the Friends of the Fritz and Hermine Overbeck Foundation )
- Oldenburger Stadtmuseum (ed.): Fritz and Hermine Overbeck: A Worpsweder artist couple. Isensee Verlag, Oldenburg 2002, ISBN 3-89598-895-2 . (Exhibition catalog)
- Katja Pourshirazi: Overbeck-Rohte, Hermine, b. Rohte. In: Women's story (s). Bremen Women's Museum (ed.). Edition Falkenberg, Bremen 2016, ISBN 978-3-95494-095-0 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Hermine Overbeck-Rohte in the catalog of the German National Library
- Biography: Overbeck-Rohte, Hermine, b. Rohte at the Bremen Women's Museum
- Hermine Overbeck-Rohte: Your wife, your friend, your colleague, your everything on kunstaspekte.de
source
The main source of this article is the exhibition catalog Fritz and Hermine Overbeck A Worpsweder artist couple from Isensee Verlag Oldenburg.
- Oldenburger Stadtmuseum (ed.): Fritz and Hermine Overbeck: A Worpsweder artist couple . Isensee Verlag, Oldenburg (Oldb) 2002, ISBN 3-89598-895-2 (exhibition catalog).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Excerpt from the letter from Hermine Rohte to Fritz Overbeck in Worpswede, Walsrode, 29.11.96
- ↑ Projects of the Overbeck Museum s
- ↑ "Your wife, your friend, your colleague, your everything" (PDF file; 84 kB)
- ↑ Entry at kunstaspekte.de
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Overbeck-Rohte, Hermione |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Rohte, Hermine (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 24, 1869 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Walsrode |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 29, 1937 |
| Place of death | Bremen |