Josef Plenk

Josef Plenk (born April 27, 1886 in Vienna , † June 6, 1967 in Frankfurt am Main ) was an Austro-German artist and university professor .

Life

Josef Johann Baptist Plenk was born in Vienna in 1886 as the son of the postal supervisor Josef Plenk. He was baptized and raised Catholic. Plenk was a student of Franz Jaschke in Vienna . In May 1910 he received his doctorate as Dr. phil. in Vienna. In the winter semester of 1910/11 he entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich . There he studied with Ludwig von Herterich and Angelo Jank until 1914 . Until 1929 Plenk was a painter in Munich.

On April 1, 1929, he was appointed to succeed Albert Hartmann (1868–1928) as associate professor for free drawing and painting at the TH Darmstadt .

Plenk was described as technically incompetent in a memorandum written by Karl Lieser in the spring of 1933. In the aftermath of the so-called "Lieser Affair" at the TH Darmstadt , he was dismissed from the service of the People's State of Hesse on November 30, 1933 at the age of only 47 according to Section 6 of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service .

After his release, Plenk joined the SA in December 1933 , which he left a year later. From 1934 he lived in Frankfurt am Main, where he worked as a history , decoration and nude painter. In November 1933 he was appointed to the Werkkunstschule Offenbach (today: Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach am Main ). He gave up this position at the end of March 1945. In October 1945, Plenk applied to be able to return to his previous position at the TH Darmstadt. The TH rejected this on the grounds that the professorship was already occupied by Hermann Geibel .

In 1950, Josef Plenk applied to receive the venia legendi at the TH Darmstadt again. The faculty agreed to this, but no concrete steps were taken in this direction. Only in March 1955 did Josef Plenk receive confirmation that his venia legendi was valid again. At the end of the winter semester 1954/55 he had already been finally retired . Plenk reappeared in the course catalog from the winter semester 1955/56, but did not give any more courses.

Josef Plenk is one of the unknown painters of a generation of expressive representational artists from the interwar period.

Josef Plenk had been married to Elisabetha Emma Pauline Helferich since July 1912. He died at the age of 81 in June 1967 in Frankfurt am Main.

Works

• 1914: Saint Martin (oil on canvas, signed, dated, 95 × 81 cm)
• 1920: dreaming.
• 1920: Nudes in a landscape.
• 1920: Three bathers at the pond.
• 1920: Bath of two Amazons (signed, dated)
• 1921: Niobids
• 1922: Farewell.
• 1922: At the mountain lake.
• 1923: Amazon in the equestrian fight.
• 1931: Portrait of a seated young woman in a striped sweater
• 1937: Portrait of the poet and painter Ernst Meister (writer) .
• 1941: Two nudes of young girls in the dunes.

Plenk created a fresco for the hall of the master school in Offenbach . There is a ceiling painting in Munich. Plenk's works are owned by the Free State of Bavaria and the Städtische Galerie in Munich .

Literature and media

• BR TV report on a Josef Plenk plant
• Melanie Hanel: The Technical University of Darmstadt in the “Third Reich”. Dissertation, Darmstadt 2013.
• Isabel Schmidt: The TH Darmstadt in the post-war period (1945-1960) , dissertation, Darmstadt 2014.
• Christa Wolf and Marianne Viefhaus: Directory of professors at TH Darmstadt. Darmstadt 1977, p. 159.

Web links

• Plenk, Josef Johann Baptist Peregrin. Hessian biography. (As of April 27, 2019). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).