Cologne Institute for Religious Art

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The Cologne Institute for Religious Art was founded in the early 1920s by the theologian and art historian Fritz Witte .

Initially, it was closely linked to the Museum Schnütgen am Hansaring in Cologne, both spatially and personally . In October 1926 it was assigned to the Cologne factory schools based on Ubierring .

The work of the Cologne Institute for Religious Art was extremely successful. Although it was only a small section of the Werkschulen, it sometimes generated half of the school's income. Cologne became a center for ecclesiastical artists. The institute, which had the rank of an art college , provided painters for church paintings and supervised these projects. There were large paintings, for example, in the Cologne-Ehrenfeld Church of St. Mechtern ( Peter Hecker ), in the Church of the Exaltation of the Cross in Wissen (Peter Hecker) and the Cologne Church of St. Peter ( Hans Zepter ). A very professional way of working was achieved, as they did not want the wall paintings supervised by the institute ( expressionist church painting ) to be viewed as the work of students.

The end of the institute came in 1933. The then head (since 1926) Jakob Eschenbach did not want to accept the institute's compulsory membership in the Reich Chamber of Culture (law of September 22, 1933). In order to be protected from National Socialist influence by the Concordat , the advice center for religious art was founded at the Archdiocesan Museum in Cologne, but in the anti-clerical National Socialist zeitgeist such art no longer had a chance.

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