Katharina Heise

Katharina Heise ( pseudonym Karl Luis Heinrich-Salze ; born May 3, 1891 in Groß Salze ; † October 5, 1964 in Halle (Saale) ) was a sculptor and painter .

Life

Heise was born as the daughter of a wealthy farmer who made a fortune by building a factory by selling land in Groß Salze, which today belongs to Schönebeck (Elbe) . She received a higher education and subsequently an apprenticeship in bookkeeping, typewriter and shorthand , but then attended the arts and crafts school in Magdeburg . Her teachers included Adolf Rettelbusch , Richard Winckel and Benno Marienfeld . Then she studied with Ferdinand Dorsch in Dresden, where she got to know and appreciate the young Conrad Felixmüller and had contact with the artist group Brücke .

Between September 1913 and April 1914, she took her sister Annemarie on a study trip to Paris , where they attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the renowned Académie Ranson and took courses with Maurice Denis and Félix Vallotton . In 1914 the sisters traveled to Berlin via Dresden . The outbreak of World War I prevented a return to France, originally planned for autumn 1914.

In Berlin they rented a studio in Berlin's Siegmundshof . Here Katharina Heise published woodcuts for the first time in the magazine Die Aktion . She was supported in particular by Hugo Lederer and had contact with artists such as Adolf Behne , Karl Hofer , Max Liebermann , Heinrich Mann , Otto Nagel , Ernst Niekisch , Max Osborn , Eugen Spiro and Eckhart von Sydow . For Karl Marx's 100th birthday in 1918 , a woodcut portrait she made appeared on the cover of the May issue of Die Aktion magazine . In the same year, Franz Pfemfert dedicated a special issue to her in this magazine. In 1920 the Heise sisters worked on Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt's expressionist magazine Wir aber .

Her studio neighbor, Käthe Kollwitz , also recommended that she become more involved with sculpture . In 1919 she celebrated success with the sculptures praying , kneeling , great striding and Urweib as well as portrait busts of Arthur Nikisch and Max Liebermann in 1931. However, she always hid in public behind the male pseudonym Karl Luis Heinrich-Salze , which she did not discard until 1931.

Heise belonged to the Frauenkunstverein Berlin . At times she was the second chairman and secretary there. She took part in various exhibitions and maintained contacts with the November Group and the trade union movement. Her work received a lot of public attention and was discussed controversially. Heise worked on the magazine resistance of Ernst Niekisch with.

The National Socialists defamed their work as degenerate art . After she came to power in 1933, Heise withdrew from public life, and in 1937 her sister Annemarie died of cancer. In 1942, her apartment in Berlin had been bombed out, she returned to her parents' house in Schönebeck (Elbe) alone. Here she continued her work until the end of her life, after 1945 mainly with small sculptures on often Christian themes. So she created u. a. a ceramic relief for the altar of the church in Nachterstedt . However, it did not succeed in building on the earlier success. In Schönebeck she was exposed to hostility (" Kulak's daughter ").

After the war, the so-called Schönebecker Kreis was formed around Heise , a group of artists whom u. a. Hans Oldenburger , Hans Helmbrecht , Werner Tübke , Christof Grüger and Ewald Blankenburg belonged. In 1959 they organized a personal exhibition for their teacher in Schönebeck. In 1961, on the occasion of Katharina Heise's seventieth birthday , the artists' association presented the artistic work of the two sisters in Magdeburg.

Katharina Heise died of stomach cancer in a hospital in Halle (Saale) in 1964 and was buried together with her sister in the Gertraudenfriedhof in Schönebeck-Salzelmen . The city of Magdeburg named a street ( Heiseweg ) in her honor . Some of their work can be seen in the Salzland Museum. Although she had ordered that her estate should be destroyed after her death, it was scattered among different people and only later found its way into various museums.

Solo exhibitions (selection)

• Action bookstore Alexandra Ramm, Berlin, 1918
• Katharina Heise 1891-1964. Watercolors, pastels, drawings, graphics "Alte Post" Drensteinfurt, 1992
• Katharina Heise (1891–1964) - The (un) forgotten? Salzland Museum, Schönebeck-Salzelmen, 2014

Works (selection)

• expressionist woodcut Karl Marx (1918)
• expressionist woodcut Nude in the forest (1918)
• Plastic child murder , (1919)
• Plastic dance , (1919)
• Plastic The original woman
• Portrait of Anne Frank

literature

• Hans-Joachim Krenzke: Everything can be burned. - In: Das Magazin, Issue 8, August 1989, pp. 35–39.
• Ada Croissant: Memory of Katharina Heise (May 3, 1891 to October 5, 1964): One of the most important sculptors of our century lived in Schönebeck. - In: Volksstimme. Magdeburgische Zeitung , No. 102, Friday, May 3, 1991, p. 22.
• Katharina Heise 1891-1964. Watercolors, pastels, drawings, graphics . Catalog for the exhibition in the "Alten Post", Drensteinfurt, April 5, 1992 - April 26, 1992. Edited by the Art and Culture Association Drensteinfurt eV
• Kai Agthe: Expressionist from salts. Exhibition: The Salzland Museum Schönebeck is reminiscent of Katharina Heise. The painter, graphic artist and sculptor died 50 years ago. - In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung , Wednesday, November 5, 2014, p. 22.
• Jörg-Heiko Bruns / Katrin Gäde: Heise, Katharina, pseudonym "Karl Luis Heinrich-Salze" . In: Eva Labouvie (Ed.): Women in Saxony-Anhalt, Vol. 2: A biographical-bibliographical lexicon from the 19th century to 1945. Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2019, ISBN 978-3-412-51145-6 , p. 212-216.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ An expressionist from Schönebeck. Accessed April 30, 2020 . 
2. ↑ Heise, Katharina. Accessed April 30, 2020 . 

Web links

• Jörg-Heiko Bruns: Heise, Katharina. In: Guido Heinrich, Gunter Schandera (ed.): Magdeburg Biographical Lexicon 19th and 20th centuries. Biographical lexicon for the state capital Magdeburg and the districts of Bördekreis, Jerichower Land, Ohrekreis and Schönebeck. Scriptum, Magdeburg 2002, ISBN 3-933046-49-1 ( article online ).