Jakob Friedrich Bollschweiler

Jack Bollschweiler

Gardening

Jakob Friedrich Bollschweiler (born October 9, 1888 in Lörrach ; † April 30, 1938 near Rome ), also known as Jack and Tschagg, was a German animal painter, but the Swiss also regard him as one of their own, as he was already six years old his family moved from Lörrach to Zurich, where his father worked as a silk printer.

Career

Kneeling girl

Since his talent became apparent early on, he was allowed to take drawing lessons from a Chinese at the age of 12. From 1903 to 1907 he completed an apprenticeship as a lithographer and then attended the Zurich School of Applied Arts. In 1907 the 19-year-old sent an oil painting "Schloss Rötteln" to Friedrich II. Grand Duke of Baden on his accession to power and his 50th birthday (the castle is located above Lörrach and has been in the possession of the Margraves of Baden since 1503) and received a three-year scholarship to visit the Karlsruhe Art Academy (including Professors Hans Thoma, Walter Conz and Wilhelm Trübner). After a trip to Italy he studied from 1913 with Professor Peter von Halm at the Munich Art Academy . He then worked in Karlsruhe, Paris, Venice, Florence, Rome, on Capri, in Cologne, Hamburg, Heidelberg, Mannheim and Baden-Baden.

Life

Officially, Bollschweiler lived in Zurich from 1919, where he set up his studio in the small Fluntern church. After two years in Capri he lived and worked opposite the zoo in Berlin, where he soon belonged to the inner circle around Leni Riefenstahl, who opened many doors for him. His goal of not only painting animals, but also of making friends with them, in order to be able to better capture their souls with the brush, was achieved above all with the monkeys and big cats of the Berlin zoo (as his pictures make clear). His death was tragic: He came in a plane crash near Formia (between Rome and Naples) on the way back from the wedding celebrations of the Albanian King Achmed Zogu (with Geraldine, the daughter of the Hungarian Count of Apponyi), to whom he saw an animal picture and his handwritten animal stories -Book gave away, died. Apparently the plane hit a mountain in fog - according to another version it was blown up by the Albanian secret police using a time bomb in order to kill the agent of the Italian general staff Piero Marconi; According to yet another source, an insurance fraud involving the Cartier jewels that had been given to the new queen and that were supposedly on board because of a desired change was to be covered up; Tschagg was buried in the Acatolica cemetery in Rome, stone no. 1058, south side. Bollschweiler remained unmarried.

Works

Poster Summer in Graubünden (1905)

His portraits of prisoners of war of various nationalities are known from the First World War . After initial work on various topics (portraits, still lifes, landscapes), techniques and styles, Bollschweiler established himself primarily as an animal painter around 1925. Most of the time he now worked in pastel, tempera and silver pen. Adolf Hitler acquired his "horse head" at the opening exhibition of the House of German Art in Munich in 1937 in order to give it to Leni Riefenstahl (it shows the head of the white horse "Märchen", on which Riefenstahl shows her riding skills as the Amazon queen for the planned film "Penthesilea" trained.) Most of his works are privately owned, but state museums also bought his pictures. However, like the 21 animal pictures from its last phase in the Museum of Applied Arts in Leipzig, they were probably lost in the Second World War.

Exhibitions

• March 1918: Galerie Moos, Karlsruhe
• August 1921: Mannheim Art Gallery
• December 1921: Galerie Neupert, Zurich
• approx. 1923: Exhibitions in Rome and New York
• January 1935: Reich President's Palace, Berlin
• c. 1936: Comradeship of German Artists, Berlin
• May 1937: Animal art exhibition of the Rosenberg office
• July 1937: House of German Art, Munich
• December 1938: Memorial exhibition of the Prussian Academy of Arts, Berlin (72 works)

literature

• Jürg Bollschweiler: BOLLSCH - Jakob Friedrich Bollschweiler 1888-1928 - pictures, animal stories, biographies. 2001.
• Hanno Trurnit: Bollschweiler - History of a Family / Eine Familiengeschichte. Libri Books on Demand, Hamburg / Norderstedt 1999.

Web links

Commons : Jacob Friedrich Bollschweiler  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Jakob Friedrich Bollschweiler in the catalog of the German National Library