Karl Barlach

Karl Georg Barlach (born March 3, 1878 in Neumünster ; † April 1, 1968 there ) was a German lawyer and notary .

Life

Karl Barlach was a son of the secret medical councilor Carl Richard Barlach (1846–1918) and his wife Katharina Wilhelmine Dorothea Bartram. The artist and writer Ernst Barlach was one of his cousins .

Barlach attended the Kiel School of Academics , which he left with the final exam. He was interested in art and originally wanted to study architecture, but at his father's request he pursued a legal career. In 1905 he got a job as a lawyer in his hometown. On May 12, 1906, he married Katharina Wilhelmine Dorothea Bartram (1881–1966) here, with whom he had a daughter.

In Neumünster Barlach worked as head of the city council and belonged to the citizenry. In the building committee he tried to save characteristic structures from demolition. He was also involved in the committee for nature conservation. He co-founded the Kulturbund Neumünster and took over its chairmanship. In 1936 he took over the office of nature conservation officer in the Neumünster district.

Working in the artistic field

Karl Barlach painted pastels . As motifs he chose landscapes from Schleswig-Holstein, later also pictures from Upper Germany and South Africa, where he had traveled. The art salon Bock from Hamburg showed mostly pictures from the Lower Elbe at an exhibition in 1914. He also wrote novels and short stories, which he did not publish.

Together with his nephew Ernst Barlach and his brothers, Karl Barlach repeatedly spent the summer holidays in his parents' house in Neumünster. From 1914 a close friendship developed. In the summer of 1925 they spent time together at the Hotel Zum Riesen in Miltenberg am Main . Karl Barlach collected a total of 126 letters written by his cousin, which he wrote between January 1914 and May 1938 and which were included in the complete edition of Ernst Barlach's poetic oeuvre.

After Ernst Barlach's death in 1938, Karl Barlach founded a “Circle of Friends”, which included Leo von König , Gerhard Marcks and Hermann Fürchtegott Reemtsma . Karl Barlach took over the chairmanship of this organization, which took care of Ernst Barlach's left works and protected them from the National Socialists . In 1960 Barlach's book Mein Vetter Ernst Barlach was published .

In 1957, Federal President Karl Barlach awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon for his services in the cultural field.

literature

• F. Dross: Barlach, Karl . in: Schleswig-Holstein Biographical Lexicon . Volume 1. Karl Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 1970, pp. 59-60