Johannes Mühlenbruch

Johannes Mühlenbruch (born August 1, 1855 in Naugard , † November 10, 1932 in Strasbourg ) was a history painter .

Live and act

Mühlenbruch family grave

Mühlenbruch was a student in the studio of the history painter Wilhelm Lindenschmit , who had worked in Munich since 1863. In 1879 Mühlenbruch settled in Berlin and initially worked as a retoucher. Later he was also employed as a painter at the Royal Porcelain Manufactory .

In 1886 he won - completely surprising - the first prize in the competition announced by the magistrate for the painting of the main staircase of the Red City Hall in Berlin. The endowment of 15,000 marks provoked severe criticism from the Berlin society. The art historian Adolf Rosenberg wrote several times in the "Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst" on the subject of town hall pictures. Despite all the challenges, Johannes Mühlenbruch received the order a year later to execute the pictures, which were to take up a total wall area of ​​250 square meters and which he had to complete in eight years according to the contract, which he did not, however, manage. A painting was created for the Bürgersaal in 1887 that showed a Berolina. Anna Sasse, a former flower seller in Berlin, was the model for this painting. She had already been a model for Reinhold Begas and Adolph von Menzel , and later Emil Hundrieser for the Berolina he created .

The city hall pictures did not survive the aerial warfare and, like all other wall paintings during the reconstruction of the city hall in the 1950s, were not reconstructed . In addition to the frescoes in the town hall, Johannes Mühlenbruch created another monumental painting in Berlin. In 1888/89 he painted the dome of the recently newly built baptistery of the Trinity Church . The rotunda was also a victim of the Second World War and with it Mühlenbruch's work of art.

The painter lived in his country house at Wangenheimstrasse 45 from 1897.

literature

• Wolf-Rüdiger Bonk: 125 years of the Grunewald villa colony . Berlin 2016.

Web links

• Johannes Mühlenbruch in the register of the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich
• Website: Central Institute for Art History : Mural in the Rotes Rathaus.