Karl Stauffer-Bern

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Self-portrait

Karl Stauffer , called Karl Stauffer-Bern (born September 2, 1857 in Trubschachen , † January 24, 1891 in Florence ), was a Swiss painter , etcher and sculptor .

Life

Karl Stauffer was born as the son of the assistant pastor Eduard Stauffer and Luise Stauffer-Schärer, a sister of the psychiatrist Rudolf Schärer , who had worked as an educator in England. Like many gifted children, Stauffer was bored in school. So at the age of nine he came to the city orphanage in Bern, a boarding school for pastors and citizens' children from the country. Stauffer was expelled from grammar school and was sent to Munich to do an apprenticeship with a decorative painter. He only stayed there for a short time and returned to Bern. Soon afterwards, from 1876 to 1880, he studied on a scholarship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich . His teachers were Wilhelm von Diez , Ludwig von Löfftz and Johann Leonhard Raab . Stauffer wrote several letters to Raab during his subsequent years in Berlin.

This was followed by a steep portraitist career in Berlin in Anton von Werner's studio . During this time Stauffer also made a name for himself as an eraser and copperplate engraver , developing the technique to perfection with the support of his artist friend Peter Halm . His portrait of his friend, sculptor Max Klein , presented at the international art exhibition in Berlin in 1881 , won the 24-year-old painter the favor of the nobility and the upper classes. Stauffer has already acquired photography, which has become an indispensable tool in his work - as a substitute for the living model. Until 1886 he also taught at the ladies' academy . As a teacher he taught a. a. Käthe Kollwitz , Hedwig Weiß , Dorothea Arnd al Raschid and Clara Siewert .

In 1886, at the height of his career as a portrait painter and engraver and knowing that he was not really a great painter, Stauffer, who was a great admirer of Greek sculpture, dealt with sculpture in Berlin. Stauffer's first plastic experiments were made in the studio of Ernst Waegener , a student of Reinhold Begas .

When his school friend Friedrich Emil Welti and his wife Lydia Welti-Escher wanted to create a collection of modern works of art, Stauffer helped them select suitable paintings for the collection. In 1886 he received a letter from Henriette Feuerbach , in which she informed him that the painter Marie Röhrs wanted to sell the painting Das Gastmahl des Agathon by Anselm Feuerbach . On December 2, 1886, Stauffer wrote a letter to Röhrs, informing her that he would like to buy the painting from her for an unnamed friend and his intended art collection. A short time later, Stauffer and Lydia Welti fell in love, which caused the company to fail. Shortly thereafter, the painting came into the possession of the gallery of the Grand Duke of Baden, whose director was Wilhelm Lübke .

In 1887 he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, where he became friends with Valentin Walter Mettler . With the financial support of Lydia Welti-Escher and Friedrich Emil Welti, Stauffer traveled to Rome in 1888, accompanied by the Eschers , to learn sculpture . There Stauffer met Max Klinger and began working on the Adorant plant , which was intended for the Belvoirpark at Escher's residence in Zurich. The sculpture found its first great admirer in Adolf von Hildebrand .

Grave of Karl Staffer (1857-1891) in the Protestant cemetery Cimitero Evangelico agli Allori near Florence. Drawn by Ernst Linck, Bern
Grave of Karl Staffer in the Protestant cemetery Cimitero Evangelico agli Allori . Drawn by Ernst Linck , Bern

Lydias Escher's father-in-law and Federal Councilor Emil Welti and his assistant in Rome, the Swiss envoy Simeon Bavier, unofficially intervened against the love affair between Escher and Stauffer that had begun in Rome. The result was that Lydia Escher was admitted to a psychiatric institution and Karl Stauffer was sent to prison. After his release from prison, Stauffer worked in Adolf von Hildebrand's studio in Florence on the competition design for the Bubenberg monument in Bern, for which Max Leu was ultimately commissioned.

In Bern, Stauffer makes his first suicide attempt in the botanical garden . A few months before his death, he asked to be accepted as a friar in the southern German Benedictine Abbey of Beuron (with an attached religious art school). In 1891 he died by suicide with an overdose of medication, almost a year later Lydia Escher killed herself with gas.

Like Arnold Böcklin, Karl Stauffer was buried in the Protestant cemetery Cimitero Evangelico agli Allori near Florence.

reception

The playwright Herbert Meier processed the historical figure of the painter in his play Stauffer-Bern (first performance 1974).

The tone poem An Alpine Symphony by Richard Strauss (premiered in 1915) was originally conceived as a musical portrait of Stauffer-Bern. However, Strauss only realized the musical description of the mountain ascent by the passionate alpinist Stauffer-Bern and dispensed with direct biographical references.

For the 150th birthday of Karl Stauffer, the Kunstmuseum Bern exhibited his works in 2007 .

Works

literature

Non-fiction

  • Hans Trog : Karl Stauffer. In: Schweizer Illustrierte, Vol. 10, 1906, pp. 9-19.
  • Otto Brahm : Karl Stauffer-Bern. His life, his letters, his poems. Stuttgart 1892.
  • AW Züricher (Ed., Introduction): Family letters and poems by Karl Stauffer-Bern. Insel Verlag, Leipzig / Verlag der Süddeutsche Monatshefte, Munich 1914.
  • Fritz Stöckli (Ed.): Karl Stauffer-Bern. Life - work - letters. Hallwag Publishing House, Bern 1942.
  • Matthias Frehner, Brigitta Vogler-Zimmerli (eds.): "Damned guy!" Karl Stauffer-Bern, painter, etcher, sculptor. NZZ Libro, Zurich 2007, ISBN 978-3-03823-362-6 .
  • Bernhard von Arx : Karl Stauffer and Lydia Welti-Escher, chronicle of a scandal. Hallwag, Bern 1969; Zytglogge, Bern / Bonn / Vienna 1991, ISBN 3-7296-0408-2 .
  • Bernhard Echte , Hans Peter Krähenbühl (ed.): Karl Stauffer-Bern: painter, etcher, sculptor. [Accompanying publication to the exhibition "A scheuter Gesell ... Karl Stauffer-Bern 1857–1891" in the Städtische Wessenberg-Galerie , Konstanz, September 15, 2007 - February 24, 2008.] Nimbus, Wädenswil 2007, ISBN 978-3-907142 -23-3 .
  • Melanie Neubert: Robert Binswanger's pathographic study of the Swiss painter Karl Stauffer-Bern. Dissertation. Tübingen 2007 digitized .
  • Willi Wottreng : The millionaire and the painter: the tragedy Lydia Welti-Escher and Karl Stauffer-Bern. Orell Füssli, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-280-06049-4 .
  • Willi Wottreng: Lydia Welti-Escher. A woman in the Belle Epoque. Elster-Verlag, Zurich 2014, ISBN 978-3-906065-22-9 .
  • Paul Schlenther:  Stauffer, Karl . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 35, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1893, pp. 527-529.
  • Erika Billeter: Painting and Photography in Dialog. Benteli Verlag, Bern, 1979, p. 40, ISBN 3-7165-0311-8

Fiction

  • Wilhelm Schäfer : Karl Stauffer's life story - a chronicle of passion. Georg Müller, Munich / Leipzig 1912.

Movie

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Academy of Fine Arts Munich: Karl Stauffer, 1876, register book, Academy of Fine Arts Munich. Retrieved June 12, 2019 .
  2. ^ OG Baumgartner: Letters from Stauffer's Berlin years. In: Wissen und Leben , Vol. 11, 1912, pp. 453-464.
  3. ↑ December 1886, Stauffer's correspondence. The feast of the Agathon.
  4. ^ The sculpture Adorant by Karl Stauffer-Bern
  5. ^ Caesar Menz: Stauffers Adorant. Retrieved October 28, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Swiss Literary Archives: Karl Stauffer. Retrieved October 28, 2019 .
  7. ^ Interpretation by Rainer Bayreuther
  8. ↑ Otto Brahm: His life, his letters, his poems. Retrieved June 12, 2019 .
  9. ^ Wilhelm Schäfer: Karl Stauffers Lebensgang - A Chronicle of Passion. Retrieved June 12, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Stauffer-Bern, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stauffer, Karl Rudolf (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss painter, etcher and sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH September 2, 1857
PLACE OF BIRTH Trubschachen
DATE OF DEATH January 24, 1891
Place of death Florence