Karl Hapke

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Karl Hapke (also: Carl Hapke ; artist's signature C. Hapke ; * September 21, 1876 in Hersfeld ; † April 28, 1955 in Hanover ) was a German painter and professor who was best known as the "painter of old Hanover".

ancestors

Karl Hapke was the great-great-grandson of the tailor's apprentice Conrad Anton Hapke from Gehrden , who presented his masterpiece to the “Praiseworthy Tailoring of the Old and New Town of Hanover ” on May 12, 1746 , and in 1762 he bought the house at 61 Neuen Straße in Hanover . This great-great-grandfather came from a widespread shepherd family from the northern foothills of the Deister . Younger ancestors of Karl Hapke were craftsmen such as tailors, joiners and bricklayers in Hanover. Karl Hapke's grandmother, widowed and remarried at an early age, ran a small business in the Rösehof .

Life

childhood

Karl Hapke's father Friedrich went on a journey as a journeyman bricklayer and met Hapke's future mother, Marie Magdalene Hild, in Hersfeld, where Karl was born. Karl Hapke moved to Hanover with his parents and brother Christian in 1878, initially with his grandmother, and soon afterwards to the neighboring Johannshof . Karl Hapke had a total of eight siblings.

Hapke left his first painting exercises as titled charcoal drawings or chalk paintings on sidewalks and on house walls. After the father got a job as a stage worker in the Hanover Opera House , the company moved to the then more elegant Osterstraße . Inspired by his father's place of work, Hapke became a ballet student and still fondly remembered his performance as the “solo frog” when he was old.

Training, military, studies

At the age of 14, Hapke began an apprenticeship as a decorative painter at Lüdemann & Clasen in Rautenstrasse . In 1884 he passed the assistant examination at the crafts and arts and crafts school with the grade "very good". Two years later, in 1896, he volunteered for two years of military service in the Hanoverian 73rd Infantry Regiment . His former teachers provided Hapke with a scholarship from the city for the Werkkunstschule Hannover , which enabled Hapke to take part in daytime classes for the last six semesters. It was here that professors Otto Hamel , Wilhelm Fettköter and Ernst Jordan in particular shaped the young artist.

Special achievements brought Hapke a further scholarship to the Dresden Art Academy , where he “graduated with brilliant certificates” after four semesters.

Working life from 1898

Between 1898 and 1905 Hapke worked in Hildesheim , Celle and Danzig .

In Hanover, Hapke was on the paintings of the New Linden City Hall (possibly under Otto Hamel), the Neustädter Church and the Künstlerhaus , "possibly as an employee of Otto Wichtendahl ."

Among three offers from the arts and crafts schools in Hamburg , Hildesheim and Essen , Hapke opted for the latter: From 1905 until his retirement in 1933, Hapke taught "decorative painting" at the Essen trade school (the later Folkwang School ), interrupted only by his participation as a soldier from 1914 until 1918 in the First World War in Flanders , France and Russia , which brought him a permanent and severe rheumatism disease. Hapke had previously married Magdalene Gipkens, who was three years younger and was born in Calenberger Neustadt , in the Neustadt church in 1907 , and whose parents had originally moved from the Kleve area .

During the three decades in Essen, Hapke taught "freehand drawing, watercolor painting, stylization, decorative painting, nude and portrait drawing", his most famous students there were Georg Sluyterman von Langeweyde and Josef Pieper . Hapke regularly spent his vacation weeks with his parents on Grosse Duvenstrasse in Hanover.

Hanover 1934–1945

Due to his rheumatism, Hapke took early retirement at the age of 58 and in 1934 moved with his wife into an apartment on Oesterleystrasse in Hanover. Together with his childhood friend Theodor Schrader (1876–1953), who was only a few days younger and who added "literary interpretations" to drawings by Hapke in the Hanover daily newspapers, Hapke kept tracking down new motifs in Hanover.

However, an artistic friendship with the city archivist Karl Friedrich Leonhardt became more important , who gave him the inspiration for a series of works with city views of Hanover, which, according to Leonhardt, result in "a pictorial reconstruction of the street scene [...] between 1700 and 1800". In 1944 Friedrich Lüddecke called these works "not pictures of the free imagination, but reconstructions according to historical scientific criteria under the critical supervision of an excellent expert on the city's history".

Hapke received a commission for a series of watercolors from the Hannover City Archives . The reason for the works created between 1937 and 1939 was a publication for an intended exhibition to mark the city's anniversary, which, however, did not materialize due to the beginning of the Second World War . The commission inspired Hapke to study the clothing of the Hanoverians in earlier centuries. Georg Schnath described the works of this time in the obituary for Leonhardt as “a unique pictorial work, which the painter Hapke put together essentially according to Leonhardt's information and his research, a pictorial reconstruction of the streetscape of the old and new town of Hanover for about the period between 1700 and 1700 1800, which was to allow all buildings that have since disappeared, moved or changed to be rebuilt in front of the eye of the beholder, an attempt which had probably never been made in this form and which, together with the artist, only one researcher of Leonhardt's outstanding knowledge of the old streets and could dare houses of the city. "

The “attention to detail … [Karl Hapke] differs… from all his predecessors, such as Osterwald , Kretschmer , Lange and others who painted the cityscape around the middle of the… 19th century. They took the important and outstanding buildings as objects, the churches and the town hall, the castles and monuments, the opera house and the train station . The inconspicuous and small remained a marginal phenomenon for her, for Hapke on the other hand it was the main thing and the essential. "

Between 1939 and 1940, Hapke created around 30 watercolors for a commemorative publication planned by the Hanover brewers' guild . When the painter, who is well known in the streets of the old town, captured such a new motif on paper, there were also critical comments from bystanders, in Hanoverian Low German for example "Se hebbet jäo usen Schosteen forget!" (Translator: "You forgot our chimney." ! "). But the works of this time did not show an exact image of the thirties anyway, but rather that from Hapke's youth, in order to reconstruct an earlier state even with views “according to nature”. These detailed reconstructions silence “any social criticism”, all that remains is “the romantic, transfiguring memory of the environment of a happy childhood that has passed forever”.

In Hanover, Hapke experienced the air raids on Hanover, which soon completely destroyed the old cityscape : after the night of bombing on October 9, 1943, he himself stood in front of the ruins of his apartment on Osterleystrasse . As a result, the childless couple found asylum for the worst time of need first in Bad Nenndorf , then in Berenbostel , then in the Döhren district .

post war period

It was not until 1948 that the Hapke couple were able to move into their own apartment again in the Wülfel district , where a street was later named after Hapke.

The rheumatism had since gotten so worse that Hapke was almost paralyzed and, in particular, could hardly move his right hand. In the end he could only paint an area of ​​around 15 cm², which his patient wife had to turn over and over again according to the artist's wishes. In order to apply the blue of the sky, for example, the sheet always had to be turned with the top half down. At that time, Hapke only painted from photographic and other templates or from memory. As early as 1944, Hapke Friedrich Lüddecke explained his methodology: "Yes, you know, I have stood in front of the individual motifs for so long and so often that I can remember the color of every door and every bar." Only at the age of 76 Hapke gave up painting entirely. According to a description of a friend of the couple, Erna Bues, the deeply religious Karl Hapke is said to have remained an inwardly happy person until shortly before his death, who always gave the respective visitor the feeling with cheerful shouting and flashing eyes that he (the visitor) be the preferred one.

“A few months before his death, the painter donated a complete collection of 109 sepia drawings , about a third of his work, to the Heimatbund Niedersachsen on the condition that this inventory be kept unchanged and not be sold”. In 1954, Karl Hapke became an honorary member of the Lower Saxony Heimatbund .

Karl Hapke died in 1955 at the age of 79 and was buried in the Engesohde city cemetery . Half a decade later, his wife followed him there.

Honors

  • In 1954, Karl Hapke became an honorary member of the Lower Saxony Heimatbund .
  • The Hapkeweg in the Hanover district of Mittelfeld , laid out in 1973, honors the painter with its name.

Works (incomplete)

  • Participation in the painting in Hanover
    • of the Linden New Town Hall ,
    • the Neustädter Church and
    • of the artist house
  • Around 300 Hanoverian works, which have been preserved as watercolors , sepia drawings or pen drawings , were initially kept by the Heimatbund Lower Saxony . Today this estate is in the Hanover Historical Museum . Only two works are known to show the war-torn Hanover;
    • the corner of Schmiedestrasse / Bonehauerstrasse during the fire, and
    • the view from the Calenberger Neustadt to the ruins of the beginning tower and market church .
  • A small number in private ownership: oil paintings , red chalk and pencil portraits of family members and friends, pieces of flowers as watercolor, congratulations in pen drawing
  • Several tiles with views of old Hanover
  • Numerous works by Hapke, e.g. B. from Essen or Hanover, were reproduced in the form of postcards

Exhibitions

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa Helmut Zimmermann: A child of the old town. In: Old Hanover in watercolors and drawings by Karl Hapke , Verlagsgesellschaft Madsack & Co., Hanover 1966, XIff.
  2. ↑ Die Weltkunst , Volume 58 (1988), p. 1338; limited preview in Google Book search
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Helmut Zimmermann: Hapke, (1) Karl (see literature)
  4. ^ Waldemar R. Röhrbein : 1955. In: Hannover Chronik , p. 241
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g Hugo Thielen: Hapke, Karl. In: Stadtlexikon Hannover , p. 269
  6. ^ Herbert Röhrig: Hanover, Herrenhausen and Hapke. In: Old Hanover in watercolors and ... (see literature), p. IX
  7. ↑ a b Helmut Zimmermann: The street names of the state capital Hanover , Verlag Hahnsche Buchhandlung , Hanover 1992, ISBN 3-7752-6120-6 , p. 106
  8. ↑ see section "Weblinks"
personal data
SURNAME Hapke, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hapke, Carl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and draftsman
DATE OF BIRTH September 21, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Bad Hersfeld
DATE OF DEATH April 28, 1955
Place of death Hanover