Hugo Meier-Thur

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Hugo Meier-Thur (born October 26, 1881 in Elberfeld ; † December 5, 1943 in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp , real name Arthur Hugo Meier) was an expressionist graphic artist and painter . In the period 1910 to 1943 he taught at the School of Applied Arts in Hamburg, in the NS time in Hansische Academy of Fine Arts has been renamed. After denunciations because of his statements against the Nazi regime , he was taken into " protective custody " in 1943 after a defeated charge at the People's Court and murdered by the Gestapo after severe torture .

Life

Meier-Thur was a son of the Bamberg-born master tailor August Meier and his wife, the tailor Anna Barbara, nee. Eder. He grew up with two brothers and a sister. Following elementary school, he did an apprenticeship as a precision mechanic and electrician until 1899. After working in Wetzlar and Nuremberg , he settled in Hamburg , where he and Lina Charlotte, born in 1906 Wagner was married and had two sons and a daughter.

Main building of the University of Fine Arts

From 1908 to 1910 he studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule am Lerchenfeld in Hamburg with Carl Otto Czeschka . After graduating, he was hired as a teacher and taught graphics and typography with a focus on writing, perspective, drawing, nature studies and later also watercolor painting .

Since 1915 he took part in the First World War as a soldier and in August 1918 was wounded in both feet by an artillery shell with the rank of private . He then struggled to be employed again at the arts and crafts school, but was ultimately able to assert himself despite the reservations of his former teachers. Since January 3, 1919 he was again active at the arts and crafts school as a teacher, from 1927 on with the rank of professor. He joined the Association of German Commercial Graphic Artists.

According to information in the Kolafu memorial book , the Stolpersteine ​​project and a press release from the Hamburg University of Fine Arts in 2009, Meier-Thur had a doctorate , although it remains unclear when he received his doctorate .

Despite hostility and complaints about his teaching methods from his colleagues Czeschka and Paul Helms (1884–1961) with the then director Richard Meyer and hostility from the Association of German Commercial Graphics, which he was only able to dispel after a successful exhibition in the early 1930s, he remained in office .

time of the nationalsocialism

After the National Socialists came to power, unpopular teachers from the arts and crafts school, including the Jewish professor Friedrich Adler and Karl Schneider, were dismissed due to the law to restore the civil service . Paul Helms, an advocate of naturalistic painting, became rector of the college.

There are contradicting information about Meier-Thurs's activities during the time of National Socialism and his death. Meier-Thur remained in office and initially suffered from harassment from his colleagues. According to Maike Bruhns, the conflict primarily concerned his teaching methods and artistic aspects, since Meier-Thur, as a representative of modernism, was opposed to the "folk art" promoted by the Nazi regime. The number of his students declined because Helms and Czeschka only sent the less gifted students to Meier-Thur's classes and claimed the most gifted students for themselves.

A conflict with the Nazi regime began to emerge in 1935, when 15 copies of his 1922 expressionist illustrations of Welt-Wohe appeared. A black and white play in marble etchings to a poem by August Stramm as " degenerate " has been removed from the Erfurt collection of the Angermuseum . In 1937, eight more copies of “Welt-Wehe” were confiscated from the Hamburg Art School and later destroyed. His graphic cabinets were searched several times in his absence, whereby Meier-Thur suspected Gestapo activities behind them.

According to the Kola-Fu memorial book , he was banned from exhibiting and publishing, but remained as a professor at the Hanseatic University of Fine Arts. Meier-Thur, who was already an opponent of National Socialism in the Weimar Republic but had not belonged to any party, nevertheless became a member of the NSDAP in 1938 so as not to endanger his position as a professor.

Especially during the Second World War , he found a friend in Walter Funder. Like Meier-Thur, he rejected the Nazi regime and had already taken clear positions against National Socialism in his newspaper Der Zeitungshändler in the 1920s . Both tried to differentiate themselves from the predominantly National Socialist teachers and wrote joint essays. In 1941 Funder wrote a commemorative publication on the occasion of Meier-Thurs's 60th birthday, Hugo Meier-Thur on his 60th birthday on October 26, 1941 / published by his friends , which he had both printed as a manuscript and also self-published. In addition to anti-Nazi opponents, Nazi cultural officials such as Adolf Ziegler , who played a key role in the removal of so-called degenerate art from Hamburg's museums in 1937 , also congratulated . In February 1943, Meier-Thur thanked his friend with a letter on Funder's 50th birthday, which he published himself.

After Meier-Thurs's son Hans Hugo was killed in Lithuania on June 25, 1941 and his wife Lina was hit by a tram in December 1942 and had a fatal accident, he was summoned to the Gestapo, where he was told that he was expecting his immediate arrest must if he continues to speak out against the National Socialist conception of art. He should understand the death of his wife as a "tangible call to order". From these threats, he concluded that her death was not an accident.

He was buried in the bombing of the art college in late July 1943 ( Operation Gomorrah ), but survived with minor injuries and permanent hearing damage. In the same week, his apartment on Wagnerstrasse was bombed out. Almost all of his works and the art collection that he had stored in the basement were burned. Then he moved, together with his assistant and fiancé Malve Wilckens and his bombed-out friend Funder, into the apartment of Funder's partner, the archivist Gerda Rosenbrook-Wempe (1896-1992, daughter of Gerhard D. Wempe ) in Klein Borstel .

Gestapo imprisonment and death

Stumbling stone before Meier-Thurs's last apartment on Wagnerstrasse
Stumbling stone in memory of Meier-Thur in front of the Hamburg University of Fine Arts

On August 1, 1943, Funder and Meier-Thur made negative comments about the Nazi regime when they visited a mutual acquaintance and neighbor, Alexander Freiherr von Seld. This heard from Seld's son, who was on leave from the front . When they left the house, he followed them with a rifle. Malve Wilckens was an eyewitness when the men were arrested on the street and taken to the Gestapo quarters on Johnsallee in a Tempo car , initially on suspicion of being parachuted "English agents".

At the beginning of September, Meier-Thur and Funder were transferred to the People's Court , where they were able to see their partners again who had followed them to Berlin. Both detainees had been ill-treated and looked starved. Meier-Thur made many drawings during his detention in Berlin-Moabit . Since he was supposed to answer for his art-philosophical teaching methods, he wrote a justification "Vom Denk" in which he distanced himself from Nazi ideology with philosophical arguments. While Funder received an indictment, Meier-Thur was brought to the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp as a “ protective prisoner ” in October 1943, without being charged, for allegedly violating the “ Heimtegesetz ”. Despite an opinion from the university rector Paul Helms on November 9th and several sureties from students at the art college who stood up for him, he was still at the mercy of the Gestapo and was murdered on December 5th, 1943 during interrogation after severe torture.

After the body had been handed over to the relatives for burial, his artist colleague Emma Gertrud Eckermann and Martin Irwahn , who wanted to remove the death mask, saw traces of severe abuse and a blue head, which indicated that Meier-Thur had been suffocated after the torture was. A few days later, Malve Wilckens received permission from the Gestapo to collect his estate with letters, documents and drawings from his imprisonment in Moabit.

Whether Meier-Thurs's opponents at the art college were complicit in his arrest and death can no longer be traced. An indisputable fact, however, is that almost all of Meier-Thurs's documents remaining in the art college were burned by the teachers during his detention in Moabit.

Since 2019: Memorial stone Hugo Meier-Thur / Walter Funder, Sophie-Scholl-Ehrenfeld, Ohlsdorf cemetery

Walter Funder, who had been arrested together with Meier-Thur, was released from prison in March 1945, but as a result of the torture he had suffered, he was severely handicapped and his health was ruined. Together with Malve Heisig, he campaigned for Meier-Thurs's rehabilitation after the end of the Second World War . In an obituary he wrote:

"In the development of his feeling for art, Hugo Meier-Thur was inspired by an impressive fearlessness of the temporal consequences of the Völkischimus and the racial professorism of the Nazi period."

Meier-Thurs's grave is located in the Ohlsdorf cemetery . The grave site AB 37 (385) is near the entrance to Kornweg between chapel 6 and chapel 9. You can recognize the grave by the small pillow stone with the name "Familie Meier und Schütz".
In memory of Meier-Thur, both in front of his apartment in Wagnerstr. 72 (now Wagnerstrasse 60) and 2 stumbling blocks in front of the University of Fine Arts on Lerchenfeld . Since 2019, a new memorial stone for Hugo Meier-Thur and his friend Walter Funder has been located near the Bramfeld entrance in area BO 73 of the Ehrenfeld of the Geschwister-Scholl-Foundation, independent of the grave (see photo).

plant

description

Meier-Thurs's artistic focus was on graphics which, according to Maike Bruhns' analysis, had been designed as "expressive, monumental" and "urban" since 1919. The two "Ornamental Books of the Lerchenfeld Workshop" from the 1920s showed him stylistically close to Karl Schmidt-Rottluff as an "expressive wood cutter [...] who combines writing and figuration".

His illustrations for August Stramm's poem “Welt-Wohe”, which appeared in 300 numbered copies in Hamburg's handprints and were also published in Der Sturm magazine , were “artistically differentiated, sophisticated marble etchings” that were later branded as “degenerate” under National Socialism were. In 1930 Wilhelm Niemeyer wrote in: Imprimatur I about the Hamburg hand prints and this work:

"Stramm's expressionist poetry, a rhapsody of concentrated verbs and incidents bursting with verbs [...] was so strangely related to this graphic symbolism that the combination of both fantastic creations, the poem etched calligraphically by the artist, resulted in a genuine work of expressionist spirit."

In a solo exhibition in Lübeck at St. Anne's monastery in 1930, Meier-Thurs's works showed, in Maike Bruhns' opinion, "a fantastic, albdruck-like atmosphere" with stylistic similarities to Alfred Kubin .

From around 1930 his graphics became more static and he also began to paint watercolors . In the absence of his own studio, he worked in the family's living room on Wagnerstrasse. During the Nazi era, he mainly painted portraits and landscapes that expressed a depressed mood, such as “Blue Trees of Sorrows”. A surviving portrait of Silvia Wilckens, the sister of his future fiancée Malve Wilckens, from 1941 shows a “naturalistic-new-objective, detailed painting style with a well-designed picture surface”. In addition, he drew political caricatures, such as in 1943 in detention in Moabit, where he depicted the guards with animal heads.

Solo exhibitions

In addition to group exhibitions, the following solo exhibitions have been taken:

Preserved graphic works

In addition to various graphics for Der Sturm , Announcement , Buchbund , Das Plakat and other magazines, as well as some watercolors and drawings, copies of the following volumes designed by Meier-Thur have been preserved:

  • World woe. A black and white play in marble etchings to a poem by August Stramm . Publishing house "Der Sturm", Berlin 1922
  • Nal and Damajanti: an Indian story by Friedrich Rückert . Ornamental book by the Lerchenfeld workshop for the Hamburg Book Association, Hamburg 1926
  • Godescalci versus in laudem Trinitatis . Ornamental book by the Lerchenfeld workshop for the Hamburg Book Association. Self-published, Hamburg 1926
  • Spook and Play: A picture book of strange events, strange characters, strange places and ghostly things . Lerchenfeld workshop, Hamburg 1928

Publications

  • On the 50th birthday of Walther Funder on February 2nd, 1943 . Self-published Hamburg 22, Wagnerstr. 72, 1943
  • Hugo Meier-Thur / Malve Heisig: Against the demon of the 20th century: Texts from the rescued art-philosophical manuscripts. Self-published 1994, 134 pages (posthumously)

literature

  • Maike Bruhns : Art in Crisis. Volume 2. Artist Lexicon Hamburg 1933–1945: ostracized, persecuted - lost, forgotten . Dölling and Galitz, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-933374-95-2 , pp. 285-289
  • Herbert Dierks: Memorial Book Kola-Fu. For the victims from the concentration camp, Gestapo prison and Fuhlsbüttel subcamp . Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial, Hamburg 1987, pp. 31–32 with an illustration of a graphic from 1928: Cigar smokers on the balcony
  • Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , pp. 401-402.

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ a b c d e Maike Bruhns: Art in the Crisis . Volume 2, p. 285
  2. ↑ HFBK press release, Stolpersteine ​​am Lerchenfeld against forgetting
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Carmen Smiatacz: Dr. Hugo Meier-Thur * 1881 , short biography at Stolpersteine ​​Hamburg.de , published by the State Center for Civic Education Hamburg
  4. ↑ Press release of the Hamburg University of Fine Arts from April 17, 2009 online [1]
  5. ↑ a b Herbert Dierks: Memorial Book Kola-Fu. For the victims from the concentration camp, Gestapo prison and Fuhlsbüttel subcamp . Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial, Hamburg 1987, p. 31
  6. ^ Short biography of Helms
  7. ↑ a b c d e f g h Maike Bruhns: Art in the crisis . Volume 2, p. 286
  8. ↑ 1937 Confiscation inventory degenerate art of the Free University of Berlin , listing of 15 copies
  9. ^ A b c d Maike Bruhns: Art in the Crisis. Volume 2 , p. 287
  10. ↑ Compare the evidence in the catalog of the German National Library
  11. ↑ Compare the evidence in the catalog of the German National Library
  12. ↑ Malve Wilckens had previously been the fiancée of Meier-Thurs's son Hans.
  13. ↑ Biography about Gerda Rosenbrook – Wempe at garten-der-frauen.de
  14. ^ Quotation from Herbert Dierks: Memorial Book Kola-Fu. For the victims from the concentration camp, Gestapo prison and Fuhlsbüttel subcamp . Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial, Hamburg 1987, p. 31
  15. ↑ a b c quote Maike Bruhns: Art in the crisis. Volume 2, p. 287
  16. ↑ Quote from Ketterer Kunst , accessed on September 7, 2011
  17. ↑ a b c Maike Bruhns: Art in the Crisis . Volume 2, p. 288
  18. ^ Quote from Maike Bruhns: Art in crisis . Volume 2, p. 288
  19. ↑ Hamburg hand prints by the Lerchenfeld workshop
personal data
SURNAME Meier-Thur, Hugo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Meier, Arthur Hugo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German graphic artist and university professor, victim of National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH October 26, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Elberfeld
DATE OF DEATH December 5, 1943
Place of death Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp