Johannes Ilmari Auerbach

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The patron Botho Graef and the 15-year-old Johannes Ilmari Auerbach ( Ernst Ludwig Kirchner : "Graef und Freund", 1914).

Johannes llmari Auerbach (born May 24, 1899 in Breslau ; † February 7, 1950 in Oxford ) was a sculptor, painter, craftsman and writer persecuted under National Socialism. In Germany he was called Johannes Ilmari-Auerbach, in France Jean or Joannès Ilmari, in England John Ivor Allenby.

Family and life

Johannes Auerbach's father was the Breslau pianist Max Auerbach (1872–1965), his mother the teacher Käthe Auerbach (1871–1940). Johannes had three younger siblings, Cornelia (Cora), Klaus and Günter. In 1898 the family converted from Jewish to Christianity. After the parents separated in 1906, the mother went to Jena with the two youngest sons , while Johannes and Cornelia stayed with their father for the time being. The childless uncle, Felix Auerbach , professor at the University of Jena, soon became the surrogate father of all children. Johannes Auerbach met Reinhard Sorge , Eberhard Grisebach and Botho Graef in the Jena house of his uncle . With the latter he was immortalized in 1914 by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in the picture “Graef and Friend”.

After traveling to Germany with his mother until 1915, he graduated from high school in 1917 and attended lectures in Strasbourg before he was called up to serve in France. Lying in the hospital after a short combat mission due to bronchitis , he was the only survivor of an otherwise worn machine-gun company. In 1918 he joined the Communist Party of Germany and agitated against the “stuffy” bourgeoisie of his family. He studied with Richard Engelmann at the University of Fine Arts in Weimar until 1919 and then as one of the first students at the Weimar Bauhaus . This is how Walter Gropius met Auerbach's uncle Felix, who became his patron and client. In Weimar, John Auerbach also made friends with the Biosophen Ernst Fuhrmann and his disciple Hugo Hertwig to, with whom he in a communist settlement project in 1920 (see: Max Schulze-Sölde ) in the manner of a kibbutz , namely in Kleve at the Lindenhof Wilster , moved . After personal and financial differences, Auerbach attempted suicide on September 21, 1921, which he processed into literary form shortly afterwards in his grotesque »The Suicide Competition«.

He returned to Berlin and Jena and was commissioned to build the tomb of Karl Ernst Osthaus in Merano in 1921 . In 1922 he married his childhood sweetheart Ingeborg Harnack, the daughter of the Jena painter Clara Harnack and sister of the later resistance fighters Arvid and Falk Harnack , and moved with her to the Kranichstein hunting lodge near Darmstadt, where their son Wulf was born in 1925.

In 1924 Johannes Auerbach made friends with the painter Paul Bollmann (1885–1944) in Hamburg and went to Paris with the support of the art patron Franz Pariser. Here he met Charles Despiau and Aristide Maillol and became friends with artists Moissey Kogan and Otto Freundlich (who were described as "degenerate" during the Nazi era) . In 1926 the son Claus was born. From 1925 to 1928 Auerbach was presented in exhibitions in Paris and received a number of prizes, but had to make ends meet as a bricklayer and casual worker, as the financial success failed to materialize.

Memorial plaque for Johannes I. Auerbach's sister Cornelia Schröder-Auerbach in Berlin-Steglitz

In 1930 his marriage was divorced, and his ex-wife Ingeborg Harnack returned from Paris to Berlin with their older son Wulf. Ingeborg met his former teacher Gustav Havemann through the husband of Auerbach's sister Cornelia (1900–1997), the composer and violist Hanning Schröder (1896–1987), who had worked for radio and film in Berlin since 1927 . She married him in 1931 and was henceforth Ingeborg Havemann-Harnack. Auerbach was also unable to look after his son Claus alone in Paris, and so both sons eventually grew up with the Havemanns, were educated in Nazi schools and later served in the Luftwaffe (Wulf) and Navy (Claus, †), while hiding their Jewish descent. 1944) of the Wehrmacht . Gustav Havemann's son from his first marriage, Wolfgang Havemann (1914-2004), on the other hand, was influenced less by his father and stepmother Ingeborg, who was loyal to the regime, and more by their brother Arvid Harnack and later became a resistance fighter for the Rote Kapelle organization in the Navy High Command .

Auerbach stayed in Paris in 1930 and eventually had to flee France on foot because of a death while building his self-built studio house. He arrived in Hamburg on December 29, 1932. After the National Socialists came to power, he belonged to a resistance group for three months, which is why he was imprisoned in a concentration camp several times from April 1933 to the end of 1935. In July 1933, he was placed in solitary confinement, tortured and beaten with clubs. From April 1934 he was in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp , where he was allowed to draw in his cell because of good leadership and was later employed as a draftsman. After his release in October 1935, he was arrested again in November to December for sending a postcard to a comrade in the concentration camp. Due to the political persecution of Auerbach, almost all of his sculptural work has been lost and only survived in photographs.

In 1935/36 he worked in the Jüdischer Kulturbund Hamburg , where he made friends with Rosa Schapire and the painter Kurt Löwengard (1895-1940). He was financially supported by the Kulturbund and held teaching courses. In April 1936 he represented Friedrich Adler at the Franz Rosenzweig Memorial Foundation, and he also took part in the 1936 Reich Exhibition of Jewish Artists in Hamburg. Nevertheless, he couldn't get beyond occasional jobs. In 1936 he married the art historian Ingeborg Fraenckel (born June 27, 1903 in Blankenese), whom he had met through Rosa Schapire. The couple emigrated to England in May 1936 and settled on Capri in June . In 1937 they traveled via Malta to the British crown colony of Cyprus, where they lived almost without income and could not rent a studio. In October 1938 the couple returned to London .

Auerbach's attempts to get his sons from Germany before the war failed due to official regulations. Auerbach served in the British War Office until 1946 . He became a British citizen under the name John Ivor Allenby. From September 1946 he taught sculpture at the Oxford Art Academy . He lived with his wife in modest circumstances in a furnished room.

Auerbach died of a heart attack when he was only 50. An obituary from his students and colleagues testifies to his popularity as a teacher and colleague, his gift for inspiring his students, his ingenuity and unusual skill in the various media of sculpture.

His last works are the sculptures he created between 1947 and 1949 for the medieval church of St. Etheldreda in Horley near Banbury , in particular a rood screen with a crucifixion group and angels made of oak and a portrait of Mary from the local Ironstone .

Exhibitions

For the official opening of the Bibliographia Judaica eV archive, Schwindstrasse 8, Frankfurt a. M. (Dr. Renate Heuer) on May 4th, 1984 a commemorative exhibition of the works of the painter, sculptor and poet Johannes Ilmari Auerbach was shown. In 1989 in the Evangelical City Church Höchst , Frankfurt-Höchst, a commemorative exhibition took place 'Johannes Ilmari Auerbach - Joannès Ilmari - John I. Allenby, 1899–1950', organized by the Bibliographia Judaica eV archive

A double exhibition took place in Jena in 1991: Helene Czapski-Holzman (1891–1968), paintings, watercolors, collages, Johannes Ilmari Auerbach (1899–1950), sculpture, painting, graphics , together with an accompanying symposium: German-Jewish cultural heritage in the 20th Century: Lifetime Achievements, Fates, Humanist Legacy on November 16, 1991.

From August 13, 2016 to October 30, 2016, the Klassik Stiftung Weimar is holding this exhibition in the Haus Am Horn in cooperation with the Friends of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar eV: Inspired by the Bauhaus: the sculptor Johannes Ilmari Auerbach. The exhibition opening is on Friday, August 12, 2016 at 5 p.m. More than 120 exhibits from the artist's early work (1910 to 1935) will be shown, some of which will be on public display for the first time.

Works (selection)

Mausoleum of Karl Ernst Osthaus

Auerbach's preference for sculpture and carving could usually not be realized due to lack of money and space. During his time in the concentration camp, line drawings were created, which are an important historical source, and during his exile in Capri and Cyprus and in England mainly watercolors. Auerbach also wrote numerous writings throughout his life.

  • 1921: Grotesque novella: The suicide competition with etchings by Marcus Behmer , Otto von Holten Buchdruckerei
  • 1922: Sculpture head of Hugo Hertwig on a rock face (destroyed)
  • 1922: The tomb of Karl Ernst Osthaus , which was moved from Meran to Hagen in 1971
  • 1927: 2nd edition of The Suicide Competition with five pen drawings by Alfred Kubin , Darmstädter Verlag, Darmstadt
  • 1932: Boxes with work that Auerbach sent to Hamburg from France were lost
  • 1935: Arabesque, drawn in one line , created in a Nazi solitary confinement
  • 1947 to 1950: Works in St Etheldreda's Church in Horley , 3 miles north of Banbury in Oxfordshire .
  • 1995: New edition of 350 copies of The Suicide Competition (1927 edition) in Fraktur

literature

  • Renate Heuer, Frank Kind (ed.): Johannes Ilmari Auerbach 1899-1950. An autobiography in letters. Woywod Bad Soden, 1989. ISBN 3-923447-08-6
  • Cornelia Schröder-Auerbach, Maria Schmid: Johannes Ilmari Auerbach. Plastic - painting - graphics . City Museums Jena 1991
  • Cornelia Schröder-Auerbach: A youth in Jena in John / Wahl (ed.), Between Convention and Avantgarde, Weimar 1995
  • Rainer Stamm: Johannes Auerbach (1899–1950), in: Aus dem Antiquariat 5/1999, pp. A 264-A 267
  • Meike Werner: Modernism in the Province: Cultural Experiments in the Fin de Siècle Jena . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2003. ISBN 3-89244-594-X
  • Maike Bruhns: Art in the Crisis , 2nd Edition, Dölling and Galitz Verlag, Munich / Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-933374-95-2 , pp. 42–45.
  • Maike Bruhns: Art in the Crisis , Dölling and Galitz Verlag, Munich a. Hamburg 2001. ISBN 3-933374-94-4
  • Joachim Ret, Egon Sartorius, Helmut Donner, Hans Heininger: Writer of the German Democratic Republic , Central Institute for Libraries (Ed.), VEB Verlag für Buch- und Bibliothekwesen, 1961, p. 67.
  • Hans Coppi, Jürgen Danyel, Johannes Tuchel: The Red Chapel in the Resistance to National Socialism . Edition Hentrich, 1994. ISBN 3-89468-110-1
  • Lilo Fürst-Ramdohr : Friendships in the White Rose . Verlag Geschichtswerkstatt Neuhausen , Munich 1995. ISBN 3-931231-00-3 .
  • Albrecht Dümling: The rise and fall of the violinist Gustav Havemann - an artist between the avant-garde and Nazism . In: Dissonance No. 47 (February 1996) pp. 9-14.
  • Walter Kaupert (Ed.): International art address book: International directory of arts. Annuaire international des beaux-arts. Annuario internazionale delle belle arti , Kaupterverlag, 1958, p.
  • Shareen Blair Brysac: Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra . Oxford University Press, USA 2002, ISBN 978-0-19-515240-1 , pp. 74 and 146.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Inspired by the Bauhaus: Johannes Ilmari Auerbach. In: blog.klassik-stiftung.de. Retrieved August 11, 2016 .
  2. ^ The Jews in Hamburg 1590 to 1990. Scientific contributions of the University of Hamburg to the exhibition "Four Hundred Years of Jews in Hamburg University of Hamburg, Dölling & Galitz, 1991, p. 350.
  3. ^ Ref> Ulrike Wendland: Biographical handbook of German-speaking art historians in exile. Life and work of the scientists persecuted and expelled under National Socialism. Part 1: A – K. KG Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11339-0 , p. 17; Dictionary of Art Historians ; Doctorate in 1932 with Erwin Panofsky .
  4. ↑ John Allenby 24th May - 8th February, 1950 A tribute from Students and Staff of the Oxford School of Art. - available on site in the Library of the Oxford Brookes University (call number OBU / 8/160).
  5. ↑ Gretchen Seiffert: Surprising discoveries in St. Etheldreda in Horley. Works by Johannes Ilmari Auerbach in the English village of Horley. English version: Gretchen Seiffert: Surprising Discoveries at St. Etheldreda in Horley. Works by Johannes Ilmari Auerbach in the English village of Horley.
  6. ^ Symposium on German-Jewish Cultural Heritage in the 20th Century. Achievements / Fates / Humanistic Legacy ( Memento of the original dated December 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.jena.de
  7. ↑ Inspired by the Bauhaus: Johannes Ilmari Auerbach. In: blog.klassik-stiftung.de. Retrieved August 11, 2016 .
  8. ↑ The Hohenhof in Hagen residential building, total work of art and hub of a European cultural network ( Memento from September 7, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ^ Also Edition Sirene, Fürstenwalde / Spree 1995.
  10. ↑ Reza Abedini - When writing becomes image; November 30, 2007 - January 27, 2008 ; When writing becomes image - December 13, 2007
  11. ↑ antiquariat markus wolter
  12. ↑ Johannes Ilmari Auerbach. Plastic - painting - graphics. ( Memento of the original from December 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.jena.de
  13. ^ Google Books .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Auerbach, Johannes Ilmari
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ilmari, Joannès; Allenby, John Ivor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, sculptor and author
DATE OF BIRTH May 24, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH February 7, 1950
Place of death Oxford