Irma Lang-Scheer

Irma Lang-Scheer (born June 17, 1901 in Brüsau-Brünnlitz , Sudetenland - today Březová nad Svitavou in the Czech Republic; † February 5, 1986 in Pillnitz Castle - Dresden) was an academic painter and artist of classical modernism in the field of oil -, watercolor and fresco painting and the creation of sacred stained glass windows.

biography

education

From 1919 to 1920 Irma Lang-Scheer attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and studied figure and head studies, ornament, anatomy, performing geometry and art history. She deepened her studies from 1920 to 1923 at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, today the University of Applied Arts Vienna under Franz Cizek, and expanded them into abstract painting and graphics; she also dealt with nature studies. The first exhibitions of her work in the Berlin Sturm Gallery attracted attention. From 1926 to 1928, Irma Lang was at the art academy in Leipzig, today the University of Graphic and Book Art Leipzig , as a master student of Georg Alexander Mathéy , in the subjects of graphics, decorative drawing and figure painting. Between 1928 and 1934, as a master student of Paul Horst-Schulze , who recognized her talent for monumental wall painting, she also devoted herself to this type of painting for three semesters using the fresco buono and fresco secco technique (painting on fresh or dry, re-moistened lime plaster) .

She stayed at the Leipzig Academy until 1934 and also dealt with ornamental designs, plant studies and landscapes, still lifes and portraits. In addition, she learned the techniques of woodcut , copperplate engraving , etching and lithography. From 1930 to 1932 she was Willi Geiger's master class student .

Family and further life

Irma Lang-Scheer and her brother Victor came from the Lang family, who owned stone quarries and stonemasonry in Brünnlitz, Brünn, Wildenschwert / Bohemia and Mrakotin / Moravia. In addition to the local sandstone, foreign types of stone such as Carrara marble were also used for sculpting and artistic components of state and church buildings in Vienna, Brno and Budapest. Around 1900, the replica of the Gothic choir of the Augustinian Church (Basilica of the Assumption of Mary) in the Abbey of St. Thomas (Old Brno) for Brno was carried out in Brno.

After her youth in the Sudetenland, Irma Lang-Scheer lived in Vienna from 1924 to 1926 (arts and crafts school) and from 1926 to 1939 in Leipzig.

On May 16, 1939, Irma Lang and the dramaturge Götz Scheer married . He was the son of a pastor in Hinterhermsdorf (Saxon Switzerland). From this year the couple was able to move into an apartment at Pillnitz Castle near Dresden. They often spent the summer on the Baltic Sea between Heiligenhafen / Holstein and Hiddensee. There Irma Lang-Scheer belonged to the circle of artists around Anna Muthesius , Hermann Muthesius and their children. The youngest daughter Renata (* 1914) was one of her models until the post-war period.

Numerous watercolors and pictures bear witness to her travels to the Baltic Sea, Mecklenburg, Holstein and repeatedly to Bavaria, including Murnau am Staffelsee, where Gabriele Münter lived . The picture from 1939 in the Belvedere Wien See in the high mountains shows the Walchensee not far from Murnau. She also traveled to Scandinavia and Rome, as an exhibition brochure from 1976 at Pillnitz Castle shows.

With the Dresden painter and draftsman Ernst Hassebrauk - a fellow student of Willi Geiger -, his wife Charlotte and his circle of Dresden artists she and her husband were lifelong connected. Later they were almost neighbors in the Dresden district of Loschwitz and Pillnitz Castle. Ernst Hassebrauk had already portrayed Götz Scheer twice in 1929.

The marriage remained childless. In an accident on black ice on January 12, 1986, the artist suffered a fractured upper arm and collarbone, was bedridden, refused to eat and died on February 5, 1986. She was buried on February 11, 1986 in the Dresden-Hosterwitz cemetery. Gottfried Scheer, born August 5, 1903, died on March 21, 1994 in Dresden-Pillnitz. He was also buried on March 28, 1994 in the cemetery of the Maria am Wasser church in Dresden-Hosterwitz. The graves of Irma and Götz no longer exist.

Artistic work

Exhibitions in Vienna, Milan and Leipzig are mentioned. In the 1940s she was a sought-after portraitist in prominent circles from art and the intellectual world, doctors, art historians, lawyers, philosophers and theologians. In addition to a Catholic bishop ( Wilhelm Weskamm ), there were also personalities (e.g. Hermann Schwarz (philosopher) and Karl Friedrich Suter ) whose worldview the apolitical and religiously oriented artist did not share during World War II.

During the Nazi dictatorship and then again in the GDR dictatorship, she did not participate in general art exhibitions. Your friend Ernst Hassebrauk's current private exhibition with the almost complete early work was lost in the air raids on Dresden on February 13, 1945 in the fire of the art exhibition in Kühl . It can be assumed that Irma Lang-Scheer also exhibited there. This cannot be verified in the archive of the gallery, which has been in existence since 1929, which was damaged by war destruction.

Irma Lang-Scheer did not adapt to any zeitgeist, with her individualistic attitude she stayed away from politics. In the period after 1945 she did not seek any connection with the numerous associations of GDR artists. Of it is neither a member of the Cultural Association of the GDR , the Association of Artists of the GDR , in the list of groups of artists of Fine Arts in Dresden or the Academy of Arts of the GDR lockable; not even in the German Association of Artists . Although she had lived in Pillnitz Castle since 1939 and housed the Dresden Museum of Applied Arts there , she did not exhibit portraits until 1976 under the direction of Günter Reinheckel (1933–2010). There is a description of this period as the “Dresden Years” in Gerhard Richter's biography. It can be assumed that the young judge and Irma Lang-Scheer met in Pillnitz. And neither of them could know about each other, although both were doing murals. Much like a young Michael Uhlig from the "Weinbergschänke", who for 30 pfennigs a bucket often dragged the coals for heating into the apartment on the top floor of the Wasserpalais and whom she "1979 - a few days after my 19th birthday - Götz said to me that I should come over again, his wife would like to paint a portrait of me. The Scheer's were very grateful for my help. "(Michael Uhlig)

As a result, her pictures have not been noticed in the art and culture scene to this day and have not come into the art trade, apart from a few watercolors. A situation that is comparable to that of other artists, such as Paula Modersohn-Becker , Clara Rilke-Westhoff and others, whose works were only recognized posthumously. Some of the pictures from her estate that have never been shown to the public can be seen today in the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere under Collection - Digital Belvedere. They went to Vienna, their actual artistic home. Others are privately owned.

In a press release from the Belvedere on February 10, 2011 about an exhibition, Irma Lang-Scheer was named among the well-known students of Franz Cizek alongside Otakar Kubín , Frantisek Kupka , Fernand Léger and others. a. who joined the post-war European avant-garde in the 1920s. Her well-founded training made it possible that after 1945 she mainly turned to fresco painting and the design of sacred glass windows and their clients to earn a living. The artist described the commission for the “Last Judgment” created in 1947 in fresco buono painting in the Christ Church in Rostock as her life's work .

Works (selection)

Frescoes

• 1947 “The Last Judgment”. Frescoes in the Christ Church in Rostock, which was destroyed by blowing up in 1971 . The photographs from the possession of Irma Lang-Scheer and the archives of the parish of the New Christ Church are the only things that remained after the destruction.

It represented the "Last Judgment" on a wide inner arch of the chancel and the 6th and 7th Trumpet Angels from the Revelation of St. John on the adjacent walls of the apse, as a preliminary stage to the Last Judgment, 15 m high in 100 m² painted area. There is also a 5-page handwritten description with the artist's signature.

The recently created Madonna gives an impression of how the “Last Judgment” looked in color.

"The Christ Church in Rostock, built in 1909, received a colossal fresco on the pointed triumphal arch wall by Ms. Irma Lang-Scheer in 1947, which can be addressed as one of the largest frescoes of recent times and in the Russian occupation zone (now GDR) Caused a stir. The artist interwoven the apocalyptic images with her experiences in bitter nights of bombing, in which the Christ Church was hit in 1944 and claimed victims ... "

- Verlagsgruppe Schnell and Steiner “Das Münster” Munich 1949, year 2

The scenes Apok. 9, 13 and 6,16 are shown on the side walls of the choir room.

“Since 1938 Irma Lang-Scheer has been constantly busy with fresco painting and since 1952 with glass window designs. It is interesting that the artist works directly on the wall without cardboard. Among her numerous creations, a sensational apse painting was made between 1947 and 1950 with the depiction of the 'Last Judgment' in the Christ Church in Rostock. With monumental, flaming force, Christ appears as the judge of the world above the clouds, and the two trumpet angels on the sides leave nothing to be desired in sublimity. Strong echoes of El Greco's painting can be felt, and yet one can speak of the artist's personal design and a strong point of view. This work shakes up from a cozy security .....
The sea foams over the banks, the damned rise with tortured, grief-stricken, sometimes stubborn faces; the blessed gradually and hopefully turn to Christ. Each individual figure has symbolic value. Since the Christ Church, which was destroyed by the bombing in 1944, was rebuilt by a Jesuit priest, the artist also painted the portrait of the founder of this order: Ignatius von Loyola. In the main aisle of the Christ Church in Rostock, a way of the cross in the form of a frieze with the 14 stations of Christ was created, also designed by the artist. "

- Daily newspaper Die Union Dresden, autumn 1954

An early fresco from 1928 "St. Elisabeth of Thuringia" is on the left side altar of the church in Deutsch-Bielau near Brüsau.

• 1946/1950: Way of the Cross on the side walls in the main nave of the Christ Church in Rostock - also sunk.
• 1951: in the apse of the cath. Church in Boizenburg / Meckl. two figural side altar compositions;
• 1951: The apse painting in the catholic church of Neuhaus / Elbe "Assumption of Mary"
• 1952: Decoration of the apse and two side altars St. Christophorus and St. Michael in the cath. Church in Damgarten / Meckl.
• 1954: "Immaculata" in the apse of the cath. Church in Levitzow / Meckl.
• 1961/1968: A 40 m², symbolic way of the cross was created in the fresco secco technique in the village church "Maria Himmelfahrt" from the years 1749 to 1753 in Brehme-Eichsfeld / Thür.
• 1963/1964: two plaster mosaic figures, 3.25 m high, in the side altar niches also in the church in Brehme-Eichsfeld: "Maria with the Christ Child" and "St. Josef as a carpenter ”.
• 1966: In Geisma / Rhön a Way of the Cross was created in the Catholic Church, oil tempera on strong chipboard. The church burned down to the ground in 2003.
• 1968: Irma Lang-Scheer used the same technique in the lower church in Brehme-Eichsfeld / Thür. several paintings from: "Resurrection of Christ", "Angel with the Golden Book" (St. John's Revelation), above the altar shrine "St. Spirit ”and above the door to the sacristy“ Transfigured Crown of Thorns ”.

Oil paintings, watercolors and drawings

In the years 1940–1950 in particular, she mainly created larger oil landscapes, still lifes with flowers and portraits, and numerous watercolors of the beach.

Stained glass (selection)

In the 1950s, Lang-Scheer created several sacred glass windows.

• 1953: Window wall in the catholic church in Perleberg / Meckl. "The Three Rosaries" and "Christ and Mary's Monogram" as well as "Assumption of Mary"; 3 × 0.80 × 3.20 m
• 1954: apse of the cath. Church of the Assumption in Dresden-Striesen.
• 1955: four 5 m high windows in the Catholic Church of St. Michael in Weißenborn-Lüderode / Thür. "Evangelists". (sign. ILS) - Sights.
• 1960: Radibor / Sa. Wall of the main nave (church unspecified), four large windows with depictions of saints: Apostle James the Elder. Elderly, St. Michael, St. Isidor and St. Joseph with the Christ child;
• 1966: Appenrode b. Nordhausen, a window, 2 m high, in the Protestant church, "Resurrection of Christ".

The cath. Church paid tribute to Irma Lang-Scheer in 1976 for her sacred work on the occasion of her 75th birthday. Pope John Paul VI awarded her a diploma and the Bishop of Meissen presented her with a letter of thanks.

reception

“But Irma Lang-Scheer is not only a leader in al fresco art, her stained glass window designs also reveal her ability. This begins with the careful choice of the panes, which are lined up in a well-balanced color tone. Recently arose in the cath. Church in Dresden-Striesen a glass window with the depiction of the journey of Mary and two particularly great devotees of Mary: the holy Cistercian abbot Bernhard von Clairvaux and - recorded for the first time - the currently living Pope Pius XII. The panes shine with a unique luminosity and become wonderful, color-spraying light sources. "

- Die Union magazine , Dresden, autumn 1954

reference

• Irma Lang-Scheer, Pillnitz Castle: own presentation of her career and her work from Christmas 1970, including letters, compiled by Emma Jandera (†).
• Emma Jandera, Würzburg, was the chronicler of Brüsau. She had lifelong contact with the artist as far as this was possible due to the division of Germany.
• Contribution "A woman paints mural: Irma Lang-Scheer"
• Josef Schuster, Sulzbach-Rosenberg (formerly Brüsau-Brünnlitz). Article about Brünnlitz in issue No. 169, Jan. 1966 of "Schönhengster Heimat". P. 166/7 (Verlag Seemann Leipzig 1956)
• Michaela Pappernigg: Art of the 20th Century. Inventory catalog of the Austrian Gallery of the 20th Century, Vol. 3: L – R, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere (Ed.), Vienna 1997, p. 10.

Web links

• Official website of Irma Lang-Scheer
• Works in the Belvedere Vienna: Irma Lang-Scheer - artist

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Der Sturm (magazine) by Herwarth Walden
2. ↑ Irma Lang-Scheer . March 9, 2012.
3. ↑ Anna Muthesius' husband, the architect and founder of the Muthesius Art College in Kiel, Hermann Muthesius , had a fatal accident in 1927.
4. ↑ Source: Archives of the art exhibition Kühl in Dresden.
5. ↑ Special catalog on the estates of Ernst and Charlotte Hassebrauk PDF file (119 pages); on slub.de (Saxon State Library - Dresden State and University Library) Correspondence with private persons: Pages 75/119, 2678-2679 Scheer, Gottfried (Götz) and Irma Lang-Scheer Pages 23/119 Photo # 217 Irma Lang-Scheer drawing in their apartment i. Pillnitzer Schloß Page 39/119 Portraits: 542 (1) Scheer Götz 1929, (2) Scheer Götz undated (see under Ernst Hassebrauk - Weblinks)
6. ↑ Beate Hohlfeld Ev.-Luth. Parish "Maria am Wasser" Dresden-Hosterwitz-Pillnitz and Michael Uhlig
7. ↑ Source: Exhibition brochure from 1976 on portraits 1976
8. ↑ https://www.gerhard-richter.com/de/biography/the-dresden-years-3
9. ↑ (see web links)
10. ↑ kunstaspekte.de: DYNAMICS! - Cubism / Futurism / Kinetism
11. ^ Georg Diederich: Church under dictatorships: Chronicle of the Catholic communities in Mecklenburg. Heinrich Theissing Institute, 2006, ISBN 3-981-0169-20 , p. 478.
12. ↑ Georg M. Diederich: The Destruction of the Rostock Christ Church 1971. Temmen, ISBN 3-86108-703-0 .
13. ↑ Elisabeth Schnitzler : Contemplation of the frescoes in the Christ Church Rostock 1946/47. Archive of the Christ Congregation. see web links
14. ↑ The Frescom painter .
15. ↑ Petra Dittmer: “Assumption of Mary” in Neuhaus, A moving story…. “On September 6th, the painter Irma Lang Scheer begins with the picture. It's almost ready by the end of October. The altar painting represents “the bodily acceptance of Mary into heaven”. “….
16. ↑ http://www.dorfkirchen-in-mv.de/content/Version_1/detail_sum.php?Reg_Nr=175&bild=8638&wid=1156 dorfkirchen-in-mv.de
17. ↑ Brehme . October 23, 2004.
18. ↑ The works that were important to her were only transferred from the estate to the Belvedere in Vienna in accordance with the legacy of 1989 from husband Götz Scheer.
19. ↑ The glass painter .
20. ↑ schoenhengstgau.eu: see last paragraph .
21. ↑ Emma Jandera: A woman paints a wall painting: Irma Lang-Scheer. Article for “Schönhengster Jahrbuch 1978” p. 58ff.