Ingeborg Magnussen

Ingeborg Magnussen in adolescence

Ingeborg Magnussen (born February 10, 1856 in Rome , † December 16, 1946 in Vechta ) was a German painter and writer.

Life

She was born as the third child of the North Frisian painter Christian Carl Magnussen and his wife Meta geb. Meyer (1829–1865), who came from a Hamburg merchant family, was born in Rome while his father was working for a long time. Among her 14 siblings - the father married Ella Jacobj (1847–1911) in 1867 - were the artists Harro and Walter Magnussen . In 1859 the family settled in Hamburg .

Ingeborg received private lessons with her siblings. As a woman, she was not offered any professional or academic training, but her parents placed great emphasis on developing her musical and artistic talents. Mentally, the parental home was marked by an intense Lutheran piety, especially through Ingeborg's stepmother, who was only nine years older, who was very involved in catechetical and diaconal matters.

In 1875 the family moved to Schleswig to their new house at Erdbeerenberg 28 , which was financed by art patrons. The father opened a carving school . Ingeborg took part in the lessons there and acquired great skills in drawing and watercolors. At the same time she was the director of the choir of the Friedrichsberger Dreifaltigkeitskirche , with which she also performed her own compositions. In the 1880s her father made it possible for her to study in Florence , where she met the Waldensians , and in Paris ; she was also invited to Ireland . However, her attempt to establish her own existence as an art teacher in Hamburg in 1890 failed. In 1891, Pastor Nicolai von Ruckteschell in Hamburg-Eilbek hired her as the leading community nurse. The slander by a younger sister in 1893 led to her leaving the Diakonie. She became a tutor for a few months in Pau in the south of France with the British family Brooke (parents of Field Marshal Alanbrooke ), then for five years a tutor at the Protestant orphanage Giuseppe Comandis in Florence.

In 1899 she returned to her parents' house. The carving school was closed in 1885 and the father died in 1896. The fortune inherited from the grandparents was used up. Ingeborg was able to make a poor living with painting and singing lessons. In 1901, 1903 and 1905 some of her works were shown in exhibitions. After her stepmother moved to Braunschweig in 1903 , Ingeborg lived alone in a small part of the converted and mostly rented house in Schleswig. The loneliness became a heavy burden.

In 1909 she met the painter and writer Momme Nissen (1870–1943), who made a deep impression on her. She moved to Munich to be able to exchange ideas with him. He had converted to the Catholic Church in 1902 and brought it closer to Catholicism. During a trip to Rome in 1910, she converted herself. In 1912 she joined the Third Order of St. Francis . In the following years she wrote and illustrated several biographical works on Catholic personalities. In 1914 she went to Altötting with Momme Nissen . However, human closeness ended when he entered the Dominican Order in 1916. From Altötting, Ingeborg maintained contacts with an extensive circle of friends, including various noble families in Westphalia. In 1927 she moved to live with one of her sisters and her husband in Naumburg.

1920 founded the Dominican Sisters of Ilanz a convent in Vechta and took over the household and the printing and publishing work in the Dominican monastery Füchtel belonging to St. Joseph's Seminary. In 1931 Ingeborg Magnussen moved into an apartment in Vechta, where she received a free meal from the sisters through Nissen's mediation. She participated intensively in the city's church life and continued to be active as a writer and artist. She had a special admiration for her confessor, Father Titus Horten . The 15 years in Vechta were the happiest of their lives. In 1972 a street in Vechta was named after her.

Quote

“One morning in my studio in Schleswig I am organizing my notes on the piano and the four notebooks of the Mother Superior go through my hands. Then it shot through me: The giver wanted to become a Catholic, and I don't know anything about him anymore. And standing there at the piano, in the middle of the studio, I folded my hands and said right from the heart: Please, dear God, don't let it be him! … And there, like lightning and thunderbolt, the answer stood before me: You are Peter and I want to build my church on this rock… - I had to listen to it down to the last syllable, but this time with an authority that did not allow for rejection… It was too awful. Throwing me down like a club. I sat there for an hour without being able to move. But the day came with its demands, they had to be met. It was August 10th. But the day was not over yet ...
That summer, the painter Momme Nissen, well known and valued for his pictures and art essays, spent a few weeks painting in Schleswig. He had used to visit our house occasionally, but only now had I got to know him better and found in him a disciple of Christ like I had hardly met before. I was to spend this evening with him. A very serious subject came up, so he interrupted me: "You mustn't go on talking until I've told you something" - and it was deeply moved: "I am Catholic." Wars possible? Should this terrible church always take away the best? ... With the Frisian Momme Nissen, a man had entered my sphere for the second time, whom I had to fully appreciate, even though he was a Catholic ... "

- Ingeborg Magnussen, My homecoming

Publications

• My homecoming. A commitment . Mönchengladbach 1912
• As we remember you. Field letter from a German woman to our Catholic warriors . Mönchengladbach 1915
• The master of charity. Prelude to the celebration of St. Elisabeth . Munich 1921
• From ill-good to saint . Saarbrücken 1924 (via Brother Joseph Maria von Palermo, Capuchin novice)
• Brother Jörg von Pfronten-Kreuzegg. A German baker who became a saint in Rome. Altoetting 1926
• Friedel. A short young life . Freiburg i. B. 1928 (via her brother Friedrich Magnussen (1879–1900))
• Blessed Franz Maria von Kamporosso, Capuchin lay brother . Altoetting 1929
• Brother Konrad. The Apostle of the example . Munich 1934
• The life stories of the painter Wilhelm Ahlborn, told by himself . Vechta 1935
• My life. Over eighty years of thanks to God and witness to God . Unprinted manuscript, Vechta 1938 (copy in the archives of the Vechta Episcopal Office)

literature

• Silke Bromm-Krieger: Ingeborg Magnussen . In: Schleswig's forgotten daughters. A search for clues . Heide 2004, pp. 40-48
• Silke Bromm-Krieger: Ingeborg Magnussen (1856-1946) and the Romay family of artists . In: Contributions to the history of Schleswig-Holstein , Volume 55 (2010), pp. 77–94.
• Ernst Schlee: Ingeborg Magnussen . In: Contributions to Schleswiger Stadtgeschichte , Volume 34 (1989), pp. 7-17
• Peter Sieve: Article Magnussen, Ingeborg , BBKL XX, 2002 ( online ( Memento from June 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ))
• Peter Sieve: Ingeborg Magnussen . In: Strong women. Life pictures of women from the Oldenburger Münsterland in the 19th and 20th centuries. Accompanying volume for the exhibition of the same name , ed. v. Maria Anna Zumholz. Münster 2010, pp. 140–146
• Maria Wojtczak: Conversion autobiography and habitus. Confessions of Wilhelmine Althaber and Ingeborg Magnussen . In: Habitus and foreign image in German prose literature of the 19th and 20th centuries , ed. v. Ewa Pytel-Bartnik and Maria Wojtczak. Frankfurt am Main 2006, pp. 113–121

Individual evidence

1. ^ History of the college
2. ↑ All biographical information based on Ingeborg Magnussen's unpublished autobiography.
3. ^ Samuel Myerscough ( Obituary 1954 , English)
4. ↑ quoted from Peter Schmidt-Eppendorf : Benedikt Momme Nissen

Web links

Commons : Ingeborg Magnussen  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files