Ludwig Manzel

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ludwig Manzel

Karl Ludwig Manzel (born June 3, 1858 in Kagendorf in Western Pomerania , † November 20, 1936 in Berlin ) was a German sculptor , medalist , painter and graphic artist .

Life

Ludwig Manzel, portrayed by Fritz Burger (1912)
signature

Ludwig Manzel came from a humble background. His father Georg, born in Neustrelitz , was a tailor and farm worker. His mother Wilhelmine geb. Jakobs was the daughter of a Büdner from Gnevezin and later worked as a midwife . The family first moved to Boldekow and in 1867 to Anklam , where he attended high school. Ludwig Manzel, who was considered highly gifted by teachers and classmates, wanted to study art, but could not be supported by his parents, especially since his father died in 1872.

In 1875 Ludwig Manzel went to the Berlin Art Academy completely penniless . As a drawing teacher at the advanced training school for craftsmen and with orders for the magazines Ulk and Funny Papers , he tried to finance his living on the side. He was a student of Albert Wolff and Fritz Schaper . He achieved his first success with the sculpture group “On the way” and received the Grand Academic State Prize and the travel grant from the von Rohr Foundation . With this one-year scholarship abroad , he went to Paris , where he finally stayed for three years and worked in a large studio.

Self-employed in Berlin since 1889, mainly producing sculptures and models for the arts and crafts. Together with Moritz von Reymond , he published a series of “illustrated accounts of life in Berlin” under the title “Berliner Pflaster”, most of which he illustrated with his own drawings. During these years contact with the imperial couple developed and a number of busts and reliefs were created .

Manzel's breakthrough came in the mid-1890s. From 1894 he was commissioned with the production of figures for the Berlin Cathedral and the Reichstag building. In addition, there were imperial monuments in various Prussian provincial towns. From 1895 he was a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts and from 1896 professor at the Royal Museum of Applied Arts in Berlin . Also in 1896 he received a large gold medal at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition . In 1903 he succeeded Reinhold Begas as head of a master workshop, which he directed until 1925. Among his students was Josef Thorak . From 1912 to 1915 and from 1918 to 1920 Ludwig Manzel was President of the Prussian Academy of the Arts.

After Manzel had established himself as a recognized artist, he first lived in Wilmersdorf on Kaiserallee and later moved to Friedenauer Görresstraße, where many well-known artists lived at the time. In 1908 he had the renowned Berlin architects Heinrich Kayser and Carl von Großheim build a house in the English cottage style in Charlottenburg on Sophienstrasse .

Ludwig Manzel was friends with Kaiser Wilhelm II , which made numerous orders possible. He was also on friendly terms with the department store entrepreneur Georg Wertheim , who came from Western Pomerania like Manzel . After Manzel had made the emperor's coat of arms for the East Prussian summer residence Cadinen out of baked clay , the emperor commissioned him, after the modernization of the Cadiner pottery factory, with designs for majolica production as well as for jugs, vases and jars in Art Nouveau style . The Wertheim department store received the exclusive right to sell Cadiner products.

tomb

In the last years of his life, Manzel devoted himself to painting and made, among other things, several altarpieces for churches in Charlottenburg. After his death he was buried in the south-west cemetery in Stahnsdorf . His tomb is crowned by a woman's head from the early days of his artistic career. The tombstone bears a bronze portrait plaque by Willibald Fritsch , which his students dedicated to Manzel in 1908 on his fiftieth birthday.

family

Ludwig Manzel was born in 1902 with Alice. Tonn († 1951) married, the daughter of a cavalry master from Nakel , who was first married to the sculptor Fritz Heinemann . The marriage resulted in a son and two daughters. Edit from Coler was his stepdaughter.

Works (selection)

Christ relief on the south-west cemetery in Stahnsdorf
Bust of Kaiser Wilhelm II, 1906

The group sculpture The Peace Protected by Weapons dates from 1889 and was cast in bronze as a donation by the Prussian minister of education Robert Bosse in Quedlinburg (destroyed in 1945). In 1894 he created figures of apostles for the Berlin Cathedral and a statue of Emperor Heinrich III for the Reichstag . Monuments designed and modeled by him for Kaiser Wilhelm I were set up in Anklam, Strasbourg and Bernburg . In Stettin , his fountain with the representation of the "Sedina" was inaugurated as the embodiment of the city of Stettin, later called " Manzelbrunnen ". For him, Manzel received the "Great Golden Medal" of the Great Berlin Art Exhibition in 1896. The fountain was melted down in 1942 as part of a metal donation from the German people .

For Wilhelm II's “Monumental Boulevard”, Berliner Siegesallee , Manzel designed monument group 15 with a statue of the Brandenburg Margrave and Elector Friedrich I (1371–1440) in the center, flanked by the side figures (busts) of Johann Graf von Hohenlohe ( left) and Governor Wend von Ileburg. The back seat was decorated with a relief depicting the Electress Elisabeth . The unveiling of the group took place on August 28, 1900.

His most important work is the twelve-meter-wide and two-meter-high monumental Christ relief "Come to me, all of you who are laborious and laden, I want to refresh you" with 24 figures, on which he had worked from 1909 to 1924. It was intended for a Protestant church in Gniezno , the construction of which could not be completed due to the cession of the city to Poland in 1920. Since 1924, like the tomb for Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau created in 1932, it has been in the south-west cemetery in Stahnsdorf , where Manzel also found his final resting place in 1936. The statue “Die Arbeit” in the middle atrium of the Wertheim department store on Leipziger Platz is one of his works, as is the Kaiser Wilhelm statue in the Grunewald King Wilhelm Tower and an equestrian statue of Emperor Friedrich III. for Stettin from 1910. A colossal bust of Wilhelm II (1906) and a portrait of Paul von Hindenburg were distributed in numerous copies all over Germany.

After the takeover of the Nazis , he created a bronze medal with a portrait of Joseph Goebbels . Manzel's idealistically oriented monumental art came in handy for the National Socialists.

gallery

literature

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Plan Südwestkirchhof , accessed on March 12, 2020
  2. ↑ Prof. Ludwig Manzel. Artist. German Society for Medal Art, accessed on November 27, 2015 .
  3. ↑ See also Historical Society for Posen: Communications, First Issue. Publishing house of the Historical Society for Posen, Berlin 1925, p. 79.
personal data
SURNAME Manzel, Ludwig
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Manzel, Karl Ludwig (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sculptor, medalist, painter and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH June 3, 1858
PLACE OF BIRTH Kagendorf , Western Pomerania
DATE OF DEATH November 20, 1936
Place of death Berlin