Karl Gmelich

Journeyman's certificate of the Stuttgart Chamber of Commerce 1902

Karl Gmelich (born December 10, 1875 in Heilbronn ; died August 27, 1955 in Göppingen ) was a German drawing teacher and art pedagogue .

Career

Gmelich was born the son of an art carpenter. After attending elementary school and boys' middle school in Heilbronn, he completed the vocational training school from 1889 and at the same time completed a year of arts and crafts training in a Heilbronn studio. In 1892, at the age of 17, Gmelich entered the Stuttgart School of Applied Arts, where drawing teachers for commercial and high schools were trained. After graduating in 1896, Gmelich worked for a short time as a draftsman in Dresden, Düsseldorf and Darmstadt, only to devote himself to art studies after a year: from 1897 to 1900 Gmelich attended the private Académie Colarossi in Paris , which many foreign students made their first connections in the international art metropolis of the Belle Époque . The three-year stay in Paris was followed by a brief position as a teacher at the Darmstadt School of Applied Arts . Gmelich then worked as a freelance designer in 1901 and 1902 in what was then the stronghold of Art Nouveau in Germany.

At the end of 1902 Gmelich got a job as a drawing teacher at the secondary school in Göppingen . Gustav Kolb , a former student colleague from the Stuttgart School of Applied Arts, who had already come to the school before the turn of the century, probably helped him to the position . The former elementary school teacher was to become an important figure in the art education movement in Württemberg in the following years . At the beginning of his time in Göppingen together with Kolb, Gmelich published a fundamental set of tables entitled "From the plant to the ornament" which tried to convey the optimistic mood of Art Nouveau in drawing lessons in schools. In contrast to Kolb, Gmelich stayed in the background as a reform pedagogue and then concentrated on his teaching activities in Göppingen. In 1925 he was appointed a teacher. His retirement in the war year 1941 was postponed due to a lack of teachers and Gmelich continued to do school work until 1945. On August 27, 1955 Gmelich died in Göppingen without apparently having seriously mourned the artistic ambitions of his youth.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ From the plant to the ornament, ed. by Gustav Kolb and Karl Gmelich, Göppingen: Illig & Müller 1902. The picture panels should "provide guidance for the conscientious, objective study of the plant" in order to "recognize its growth and formation laws and typical basic forms clearly and represent them with the simplest means". Kolb was in contact with the Tübingen art historian Konrad Lange , one of the initiators of the 1st Art Education Day in Dresden on September 28 and 29, 1901.
2. ↑ State Archives Ludwigsburg, inventory E 203 I (ministerial department for secondary schools: personal files of teachers), Büschel 2448 (Gmelich, Karl; Studienrat in Göppingen, 1941–1946)
3. ↑ The Göppingen City Museum in the "Storchen" organized the exhibition "Carl Gmelich and Gustav Kolb. Two Göppingen artists and drawing teachers" from July 7th to September 11th, 2005. See also the series "Göppinger Köpf" of the city archive on the website of Göppingen .