Karl Knappe

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Relief sculpture above the main portal of the New Parish Church of St. Martin in Moosach, Munich.

Karl Knappe (born November 11, 1884 in Kempten (Allgäu) , † March 20, 1970 in Munich ) was a German sculptor who mainly created works from natural stone .

Life

Knappe attended grammar school in Bamberg until 1903. He studied at the Munich School of Applied Arts from 1904 to 1909. From 1909 to 1911 he worked as a sculptor, primarily in Dresden and Berlin . In 1911 he was awarded the Rome Prize for his work . Between 1922 and 1928 he worked on the war memorial for the fallen soldiers of the First World War in the city of Munich. In 1926 he was appointed professor by the Free State of Bavaria . In 1930 he received a teaching position for "plastics" from the Technical University of Munich . The Nazi regime outlawed his sculptural activity in 1933. Knappe was banned from working.

In 1948 he received the promotional award for fine arts of the state capital Munich . In 1949 he became an honorary member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich . He had a lifelong friendship with his colleague Josef Oberberger . In 1951 he became a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts . For his artistic work, he was awarded the Bavarian Order of Merit in 1959 and the Great Federal Cross of Merit in 1964 . In 1969 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Munich .

plant

The focus of Knappes Werk was sculptural work in all sculptural materials, especially in stone. But he also worked with bronze , wood, brick , concrete , glass and made numerous mosaics . He painted, forged iron, molded plaster of paris for concrete castings, cut glass for colored windows, molded portraits in clay, modeled medallions in wax, worked wood with an ax and mastered the techniques of stone carving perfectly. The motifs, content and thoughts of his work were also diverse. Most of them were reliefs as building sculptures. He worked in a highly abstract and symbolic way.

He was one of the most versatile sculptors of his time in southern Germany. The phrase that characterizes his life and work comes from Knappe: "The fact that one can be a sculptor is a grace in life."

Works in public space

The lost sculpture “Hagar” (1923) was found with ten other sculptures by other artists in 2010 during civil engineering work for a new subway line at the Berlin sculpture found in front of the Rotes Rathaus in Berlin. It was part of the confiscation campaign as part of the National Socialists' Degenerate Art exhibition . Shortly afterwards, the finds were presented to the public in the Greek courtyard of the Neues Museum on Berlin's Museum Island . In May 2013 a cast of the "Hagar" was installed in the Christophorus Church in Berlin-Siemensstadt .

Working in stone

More work

Mosaic in the Odeonsplatz underground station from 1970, executed by the Mayer'schen Hofkunstanstalt
  • Bronze:
    • beggar
  • Painting:
    • Betrayal
  • Brick cut:
  • Tombstones:
    • Heidelberg : President Friedrich Ebert (cubic block with eagle motif), in the mountain cemetery
    • Munich :
      • Gravestone “Butz”, stele with relief “Dance of Death”, North Cemetery, Section 54
      • Gravestone for his family, three-part group with relief "Angel with a kneeling woman", North Cemetery, Section 57
      • “Minor graves”, group of 6 horizontal diabase stones, forest cemetery, section 146
      • Gravestone "Konrad Weiß", forest cemetery, section 95
Hall of Honor in Heilbronn, wall mosaic work by Karl Knappe

New Munich City Hall memorial room

Fonts

  • Konrad Schmidt (ed.): "The fact that you can be a sculptor is a grace in life". Letters to a sculptor. Nuremberg 1973.

Web links

Commons : Karl Knappe  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

  • Christian Tümpel (ed.): German sculptors 1900-1945. Degenerate. Langewiesche, Königstein im Taunus 1992, ISBN 3-7845-7180-8 .
  • Squire, Karl . In: Supreme Building Authority Munich (Hrsg.): Bildwerk Bauwerk Artwork - 30 years of art and state building in Bavaria . Bruckmann, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-7654-2308-4 , p. 154, 156-157, 242-243 .
  • Squire, Karl . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 3 : K-P . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1956, p. 68 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Max-von-Gruber-Brunnen in the list of monuments of the city of Munich
  2. ^ Julius Fekete , Simon Haag, Adelheid Hanke, Daniela Naumann: Stadtkreis Heilbronn . (= Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany , cultural monuments in Baden-Württemberg, Volume I.5.). Theiss, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-1988-3 , pp. 118 .
  3. ↑ Helga Pfoertner: Living with history. Vol. 1, Literareron, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-89675-859-4 , p. 140 ( PDF; 1.1 MB ( Memento from April 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive ))
  4. ^ Karl Knappe wall mosaic: Into the new WHG. In: www.unser-bogenhausen.de. February 23, 2018, accessed March 24, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Squire, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH November 11, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Kempten (Allgäu)
DATE OF DEATH March 20, 1970
Place of death Munich