Karl Kothe

Kothes ceramic mural
"
City coat of arms Coswig Jungfrau with sundial" on the town hall of Coswig

Painting “Party veteran Gustav Schlichtholz”,
exhibited in 1953 in the III. German art exhibition

Franz Karl Kothe (born March 11, 1913 in Coswig (Anhalt) , † August 15, 1965 in Dessau ) was a German painter , sculptor and graphic artist .

Life

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Kothe was born as the son of the pottery manufacturer Franz Kothe and his wife Henriette Luise (née Strauchenbruch). In 1916 his father died in the First World War . From 1920 to 1929 Kothe attended elementary school and secondary school in Coswig. He then completed an apprenticeship as a painter with the painter Kühne in Dessau . It should serve as the basis of the artistic profession he aspires to. At the beginning of the 1930s, Kothe began a university education at the Nordic Art Academy Bremen , which later became the Bremen Art Academy . Its director and his sponsor was Fritz Mackensen , the former director of the Weimar Academy of Art .

On January 25, 1935, Kothe was "voluntarily" expelled from the Bremen Art College because of discrepancies between students and teachers about the artistic direction of the college. Among other things, he did not accept the appointment of the painter Carl Horn , Rudolf Hess's father-in-law , to the management of the Nordische Kunsthochschule Bremen. A further thirteen students who expressed their solidarity with him were banned from studying at all German universities. In 1939 Kothe was called up for military service with the Luftwaffe's ground personnel . From April to December 1945 he was an American prisoner of war.

At the beginning of 1946, Karl Kothe joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and in the following years performed various functions, primarily in cultural policy . At the end of 1952 he founded the painters' brigade "Lukas Cranach" in Halle and in this group worked with a further 18 painters to achieve socialist realism in art. He participated in various exhibitions where he repeatedly received art awards. Around 1955, together with Manfred Butzlav , he founded the Coswig Ceramic Museum, today's city ​​museum in the cloister courtyard in Coswig, and created a wall frieze for it . He also created wall ceramics for the company polyclinic of the Piesteritz nitrogen plant .

Kothe was a member of the Association of Fine Artists of the GDR . His artistic studio was in Coswig in his parents' former pottery factory at Berliner Str. 6.

Private

In 1952 Karl Kothe married the director of a Coswig high school, Gertrud Masurath (1922–2007). The couple have five children.

plant

Memorial stone for the 200th birthday of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
in Coswig / Anhalt with the inscription "Spiritual unifier of the German Goethe educators on humanity and freedom of personality in responsibility to society"

In 1953 Karl Kothe created the oil painting Die Fahne by Krivoy Rog on behalf of VEB Mansfeld Kombinat Wilhelm Pieck , which thematized the handover of the flag to the Red Army . It is known as his most famous work and is considered lost. In the same year, Kothe took up this motif in a modified form for an oversized mural in Dessau's main train station, which bore the working title “Hammer, sickle, book and rifle forward to socialism”. It has been covered by an advertising panel since 1993.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s until his death, Karl Kothe devoted himself primarily to building art . In 1954 he was chairman of the jury for the exhibition of works by visual artists in the Halle district in the Moritzburg State Gallery , in which Kothe himself also appeared as an artist. Among other things, Kothe was represented with designs for a mural for the two-year school in Eisleben .

criticism

Kothe and his political activities for the SED are not without controversy in the literature. Wolfgang Hütt calls him a “very mediocre painter and an even more willing SED functionary”, who reported the work of his colleagues as “decadent” if they showed a “deviation from life and life negation”. In the course of the formalism dispute in 1953, Kothe primarily attacked the painter Hermann Bachmann , who then left his hometown Halle and the GDR.

Exhibitions

GDR - Art in Architecture : Ceramic relief by Karl Kothe from 1960 on a residential building in Roßlau , near the shipyard

• 1953: German art exhibition in the Albertinum in Dresden. Party veteran Gustav Schlichtholz
• 1954: Exhibition, State Gallery Moritzburg, Halle

Mother Borowski - sample work for mural for the two-year school Eisleben

The flag of Krivoy Rog - draft for a wall painting for the two-year school in Eisleben

Portrait of Julius Kühn

• 1957: Connected to our new life - guest exhibition on the 10th anniversary of the GDR , Academy of the Arts, Berlin

Party veteran Gustav Schlichtholz

• 1960: Contemporary Art , Moritzburg State Gallery, Halle

Boar hunting

• 1969: Architecture and fine arts , Halle district

Wall design in the TH Merseburg - plaster ceramics with Karlheinz Wenzel

Selection of works

• 1949 Memorial stone on the occasion of the 200th birthday of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Wittenberger Straße in Coswig
• 1953 Oil painting The Krivoy Rog flag for the Mansfeld Combine
• 1958 mural cloud moves in front of the sun on both sides of the Coswig cemetery hall
• 1962 Ceramic mural in the Käthe Kollwitz School (?) In Lutherstadt Wittenberg
• 1962 Ceramic mural in the Merseburg University
• 1962 ceramic plaque for the 775th anniversary of the city of Coswig
• 1964 ceramic mural city ​​coat of arms Coswiger Jungfrau with sundial
• 1964 Memorial stone against fascism at the entrance of the Coswig City Palace, today's Schlossstrasse

literature

• Karl Kothe . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 3 : K-P . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1956, p. 103 .

Web links

Commons : Karl Kothe  - Collection of Images

• Karl Kothe in the picture atlas Art in the GDR

Individual evidence

1. ↑ General artist lexicon online. 1956. Category: Artists with paintings in museums. Vol. 3: 103.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Helmut Höge. 2009. The mining and processing combine Krivoy Rog . blog.taz.de caretaker blog
3. ↑ Horst Rose (text), Robert Trösch (speaker): "Flag of Kriwoi-Rog", ed. District leadership of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany VEB Mansfeld Kombinat Wilhelm Pieck (record recording from Radio GDR).
4. ↑ Ilka Hillger: An artist in the mirror of his time . In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung of May 6, 2013
5. ^ Exhibition catalog of the Association of German Visual Artists, Halle district. 1954.
6. ^ Sabine Meinel: Karl Völker - Life and Work . Ph.D. Dissertation, Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, 2008, pp. 220–221.
7. ↑ Wolfgang Hütt: Shadow light. A life in a divided Germany. Fly head, Halle 1999, ISBN 3-910147-42-9 , p. 125.
8. ^ Website of the city of Halle
9. ^ Exhibition catalog of the Association of German Visual Artists. 1954.
10. ^ Exhibition catalog of the Academy of Arts and the Association of Fine Artists. 1959.
11. ^ Exhibition catalog of the Association of German Visual Artists. 1960.
12. ^ Exhibition catalog of the Halle District Council in cooperation with the Association of German Visual Artists and the Association of German Architects. 1969.