Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach

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Diefenbach in front of his house in Capri

Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach (born February 21, 1851 in Hadamar ; † December 15, 1913 in Capri ) was a German painter and social reformer .

Diefenbach is regarded as the "forefather of the alternative movements" and one of the most important champions of life reform , nudism and the peace movement . His rural commune Himmelhof in Vienna Ober Sankt Veit (1897–1899) was the model for the reform settlement Monte Verità near Ascona, founded by his student Gusto Gräser , which is also known as the “Grail of Modernity”. As a painter he is an independent representative of symbolism .

Life

Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach was a son of the painter and drawing teacher at the Hadamarer Gymnasium Leonhard Diefenbach . He attended the Munich Art Academy and was impressed by Arnold Böcklin and Franz von Stuck . His paintings received attention and recognition early on. His right arm was crippled by severe typhoid fever and an operation. Since he believed that he had saved his life with naturopathic methods , he became an apostle of the natural way of life under the influence of the naturopathic practitioner Arnold Rikli and Eduard Baltzer , the founder of the Vegetarian Association in Germany. Around 1881 he left the church and became a member of the free religious movement .

He announced his apprenticeship in Munich in a robe and sandals. His ideas (living in harmony with nature, rejecting monogamy , turning away from any religion, exercise in the fresh air and practicing nudism , as well as a meat-free diet as a vegan ) were taken as an opportunity by his contemporaries to call him a "kohlrabi apostle “To mock and persecute. After the police had suppressed his meetings, Diefenbach withdrew to an abandoned quarry near Höllriegelskreuth . A small commune emerged that lived according to the teachings of Eduard Baltzer. There the young painter Hugo Höppener became his helper and disciple. Diefenbach called him Fidus , which became Höppener's stage name. The magazine Die Schönheit (from 1901) published works by Fidus, who became an icon of the nudist movement. The large frieze Per aspera ad astra was created in a joint effort . An exhibition of his paintings in Vienna in 1892 was a sensational success and made him famous, but he lost all of his works as a result of frauds by the management of the Austrian Art Association.

He fled to Egypt , where he designed huge temples. In order to win back his pictures, he went back to Vienna in 1897, planned the publication of a magazine Humanitas and organized a large exhibition. A group of friends, to which the pacifist Bertha von Suttner , whom he met for the first time at a peace congress in Vienna in 1891, and the journalist Michael Georg Conrad belonged, supported his ventures. During this time, a community of up to 20 students or disciples gathered around him. In 1897 he founded the artist community “Humanitas” with them in the house of the former restaurant “Am Himmel” at Himmelhof in Ober Sankt Veit , which became the nucleus of the early alternative movement or life reform . At times it included the painters Franz Kupka , Constantin Parthenis , Paul von Spaun and Gusto Gräser, as well as the later animal rights activist Magnus Schwantje . The "Humanitas" was a forerunner for the famous alternative settlement Monte Verità near Ascona. The standards Diefenbach applied to himself and to his followers were quite different; if he lived in at least two relationships with women at the same time, he demanded chastity and absolute obedience from his followers, whose mail was personally checked by him. The artist commune went bankrupt and Diefenbach moved to the island of Capri, where he gained success and prestige, while he was forgotten in Germany. He died there in 1913 at the age of 62 from the consequences of an intestinal obstruction .

Diefenbach was married to Magdalena Diefenbach geb. Atzinger, with whom he married the daughter Stella. von Spaun (1882–1971) had. In 1898 he met Wilhelmine (Mina) Vogler, whom he married, but primarily lived with her sister Marie (or in a kind of marriage of three).

Estate, exhibitions and honors

You Shall Not Kill , 1903

After his death in 1913, his estate remained hidden and left to decay for half a century. Since the 1960s, his grandson Fridolin von Spaun (1901-2004) has been collecting and researching Diefenbach's estate in his large family archive in Dorfen near Wolfratshausen . Von Spaun recognized early on through his origins, his childhood experiences with Diefenbach, the encounters with various propagandists of the life reform as well as his participation in the migratory bird movement on his richly experienced life, the great cultural and historical importance of his grandfather. He helped create the public museums for Diefenbach's works on Capri and in his hometown Hadamar.

From October 29, 2009 to January 31, 2010, his work was made accessible again to the German public in an exhibition at the Museum Villa Stuck in Munich. An exhibition at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt from 2015, which was subsequently shown in the National Gallery in Prague, sees him as the ancestor of a number of artist prophets, from Gusto Gräser, Franz Kupka and Egon Schiele to Joseph Beuys and Friedensreich Hundertwasser . His written estate is now in the archive of the German youth movement at Ludwigstein Castle .

In 1927 Karl-Wilhelm-Diefenbach-Gasse in Vienna- Hietzing was named after him, in 1945 Diefenbachstraße in Munich - Solln .

On November 25, 2015 an asteroid was named after him: (6059) Diefenbach .

Works

Towards Rescue , around 1900, oil on canvas, 100 × 151 cm, Jack Daulton Collection, Los Altos Hills, California
painting
  • 31 paintings are in the Museo Diefenbach in the refectory of the Certosa di San Giacomo on Capri .
  • Per aspera ad astra . Vienna 1893. A 68 m long frieze , exhibited today in the city museum in Hadamar Castle in Diefenbach's birthplace .
Fonts
  • A contribution to the history of contemporary art care. Vienna 1895.
  • Divine youth. A day from the sunny land. 2 parts. Teubner, Leipzig 1912/1914.

literature

  • Werner Helwig: The thief “Baccho” on Capri. In: Capri, magical island . Frankfurt a. M. 1979, pp. 231-238.
  • Giancarlo Alisio (Ed.): Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach 1851–1913. Dipinti da collezioni private . Electa Napoli. Edizioni La Conchiglia, Naples 1995, ISBN 88-435-5207-4 .
  • Stefan Kobel: Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach. The painter as a total work of art . Unprinted master's thesis, University of Düsseldorf 1997.
  • Michael Grisko (Hrsg.): Nudism and life world. Studies on the prehistory and early history of nudism. kassel university press, Kassel 1999, ISBN 3-933146-06-2 .
  • Diefenbach, Karl Wilhelm . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 221, de Gruyter, Berlin [?]. 2000
  • Janos Frecot , Jonas Geist , Diethart Kerbs : Fidus, 1868–1948. On the aesthetic practice of bourgeois escape movements . Rogner and Bernhard at Zweiausendeins, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-8077-0359-4 .
  • Kai Buchholz u. a. (Ed.): The life reform. Drafts for the redesign of life and art around 1900. Haeusser Verlag, Darmstadt 2001, ISBN 3-89552-077-2 (2 volumes).
  • Geoff Eley, James Retallack (Ed.): Wilhelminism and its Legacies. German Modernities, Imperialism, and the Meanings of Reform, 1890–1930. Essays for Hartmut Pogge by Strandmann . Berghahn, New York 2003, ISBN 1-57181-223-7 .
  • Claudia Hammer: Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach, 1851–1913 per aspera ad astra . Galerie Konrad Bayer, Munich 2003 (catalog of the exhibition of the same name from June 27 to July 26, 2003).
  • Hermann Müller (Ed.): Master Diefenbach's Alpine Hike. An artist and cultural rebel in the Karwendel 1895/1896 . Umbruch-Verlag, Recklinghausen 2004, ISBN 3-937726-00-4 .
  • Paul von Spaun (ed.): On the Diefenbach case. Trieste 1899.
  • Claudia Wagner: The artist Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach (1851-1913). Master and Mission. With a catalog of all known oil paintings . Dissertation from the Department of Art History at the Free University of Berlin 2005 ( digitized version ).
  • Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach: Per aspera ad astra. Shadow frieze and seal "His life's dream & image". 2nd Edition. Umbruch-Verlag, Recklinghausen 2007, ISBN 978-3-937726-01-4 .
  • Michael Buhrs (Ed.): Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach (1851-1913). "Better to die than deny my ideals" . Edition Minerva, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-938832-58-5 . (Catalog of the exhibition of the same name, Villa Stuck , October 29, 2009 to January 17, 2010)
  • Peter Richter : The Jesus of Munich . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung from November 29, 2009, p. 23.
  • Brigitte Fingerle-Trischler (ed.): Nature prophets in Freimann. Gusto Gräser , Bruno Wersig and the effect of Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach “sincere and steadfastly straight ahead” . Mohr-Villa Freimann, Munich-Freimann 2010. (Catalog of the exhibition of the same name in the Mohr-Villa cultural center, January 8 to March 12, 2010)
  • Hermann Müller (Ed.): Himmelhof. Original cell of the alternative movement, Vienna 1897–1899. A history of the “Humanitas” community around Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach in Vienna . Umbruch-Verlag, Recklinghausen 2011, ISBN 978-3-937726-08-3 .
  • Ulrich Schuch (Ed.): Il Gabbiano di capri 55, 2/2013. ISSN  1862-9172 (therein: extensive image material and various essays on KW Diefenbach on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of death).
  • Martina Hartmann-Menz: Encounter on Capri: Salon lion meets kohlrabi apostle . In: Yearbook for the Limburg-Weilburg district 2014, ISBN 978-3-927006-50-8 , pp. 245-251.
  • Pamela Kort, Max Hollein (Ed.): Artists and Prophets. A Secret History of Modernity, 1872–1972. Catalog of the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. Snoeck Verlag, Cologne 2015, ISBN 978-3-86442-116-7 .
  • Katharina Cichosch: First among equals: The Prophet Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach. In: Schirn Magazin 2015. [1]

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Arnd Krüger : There Goes This Art of Manliness: Naturism and Racial Hygiene in Germany. In: Journal of Sport History, 18, 1, 1991, pp. 135-158. Nude picture of Fidus on p. 138 ( digitized version ).
  2. ↑ The Jesus of Munich . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung . November 29, 2009, p. 23.
  3. ^ Hans Dollinger: The Munich street names. 5th edition. Ludwig Verlag, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-7787-5174-3 , p. 58.
personal data
SURNAME Diefenbach, Karl Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Charles Diefenbach
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and social reformer
DATE OF BIRTH February 21, 1851
PLACE OF BIRTH Hadamar
DATE OF DEATH December 15, 1913
Place of death on Capri