Jutta Balk

This article deals with the painter and doll designer Jutta Balk. For the archaeologist, see Jutta Meurers-Balke .

Jutta Balk (born July 9, 1902 in Riga , Latvia ; † August 9, 1987 in Magdeburg ) was a German painter, puppet designer and co-founder of the Magdeburg municipal puppet theater .

Life

In her native Riga, Balk first studied painting and art history with Selma Plawneek , Susa Walter and at the academy with Kramareff. Initially, Balk worked as a painter. One of her works was bought by the Riga Art Museum . She later worked in the arts and crafts and designed bath toys. In 1941 she moved to Magdeburg as a so-called Volksdeutsche , where she completed a course in marionette making at the adult education center with Xaverschichtl . She then began to work as a freelance doll designer and developed a malleable and durable material for doll head design. Since 1945 she has performed doll revues in her apartment with self-made dolls. She was committed to founding a professional puppet theater in Magdeburg.

In 1958 the city council followed their insistence and founded the municipal puppet theater, which still exists today. Until 1967 she worked at the theater under the management of Gustav Möller and remained an honorary member even after she left. She also worked as a translator and translated, among other things, the standard work "My Profession" by the important Soviet puppeteer Sergej Obraszow from Russian and the novel "Quartier ohnenummer" by Gunārs Cīrulis and Anatols Imermanis from Latvian. In 1972 she became an honorary member of UNIMA .

Their final resting place is in the Westfriedhof Magdeburg .

The city of Magdeburg named the Jutta-Balk-Straße near the puppet theater after her.

literature

• Elke Schneider: Balk, Jutta. In: Guido Heinrich, Gunter Schandera (ed.): Magdeburg Biographical Lexicon 19th and 20th centuries. Biographical lexicon for the state capital Magdeburg and the districts of Bördekreis, Jerichower Land, Ohrekreis and Schönebeck. Scriptum, Magdeburg 2002, ISBN 3-933046-49-1 .
• Elke Schneider: Balk, Jutta . In: Eva Labouvie (Hrsg.): Frauen in Sachsen-Anhalt, Vol. 2 A biographical-bibliographical lexicon from the 19th century to 1945. Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2019, ISBN 978-3-412-51145-6 , p. 61 -62.
• Martin Wiehle : Magdeburg personalities. Published by the Magistrate of the City of Magdeburg, Department of Culture. imPuls Verlag, Magdeburg 1993, ISBN 3-910146-06-6 .