Leo meter

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Leopold Longin "Leo" Meter (born on August 7, 1909 in Cologne ; died on July 26, 1944 in Racewo, rural community of Sidra ) was a German book illustrator .

Life

Leopold August Longin Meter came from a socialist family and through his father he had early contact with the Cologne Opera . He studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy with Heinrich Campendonk . From 1932 he worked as a set designer at the Junge Volksbühne in Berlin. After the handover of power to the National Socialists in 1933, the ensemble members were arrested, and Meter was imprisoned in the Brauweiler concentration camp for a few months and was then banned from working. Meter fled to the Netherlands in 1934, where he stayed for the first two years as an illegal immigrant. In 1936 in Brussels he married the music teacher Elisabeth Plaut (1906–1987), who had fled Germany as a racially persecuted person, her daughter Barbara Meter was born in Amsterdam in 1939 and later became a filmmaker.

Letter to the daughter (Easter 1943, black and white reproduction)

Meter worked in Amsterdam for the Atelier Co-op 2 founded by Paul Guermonprez , from which he received orders for book illustrations. In 1937 he illustrated the Dutch edition of the children's book Die Kiste with the big S. written by his wife Richard Plaut's brother . After the German occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940, the couple was forced to divorce due to the Nuremberg Race Laws . The daughter Barbara survived the persecution as a toddler in a Dutch foster family, Elisabeth Plaut survived in various hiding places in the Netherlands.

Leo Meter was arrested by the Gestapo in 1942 and transferred to the Wehrmacht for military service . He was deployed on the Eastern Front and fell in 1944 a few days before his 35th birthday in the Polish town of Racewo, southwest of Grodno .

In 1943 he wrote a total of eight field post letters that he addressed to his daughter and in which he told illustrated stories. These were first published in 1988 and translated into several languages.

Works (selection)

Book illustrations
  • Sinclair Lewis : I wasn't born here . Translation by JH Pauls. Illustrations Leo Meter, Otto Treumann . Amsterdam: van Holkema & Warendorf, 1936
  • Paul Guermonprez (Ed.): Adam's vijfde rib. Schoonheden van het zwakke en zwakheden van het schone schlacht . Illustrations Leo Meter. Amsterdam: Bigot en van Rossum, 1936
  • Richard Plaut : The kist met de grote S. A novel for kinderen . Translation by Chris E. van den Bergh-Marcus. Illustrations Leo Meter. Rotterdam: Brusse, 1937
  • Paul Guermonprez (Ed.): Eva's jongste butter: schoonheden van het zwakke en zwakheden van het schoone geslacht . Illustrations Leo Meter. Amsterdam: Bigot en Van Rossum, 1938
  • Martín Luis Guzmán : In de schaduw van den Leider . Translation by J. Slauerhoff , GJ Geers. Illustrations Leo Meter. The Hague: Boucher, no year
  • Benjamin Cooper : Een reis met de diligence door het tijdperk der tanks, auto's en flying machines . Illustrations Leo Meter. Amsterdam: Holland, 1939
  • Jean Giono : Weer een lente . Translation of Antoon Coolen . Illustrations Leo Meter. The Hague: Boucher, no year
  • Neerland's zones Neerland's heroes: oude songs behave in prijzende het leven van menig dapperen strijder voor zijn vaderland . Dispatched in advance by T. Guermonprez [sic!], Geïllustreerd by L. Meter en van een voorwoord voorzien by JWF Werumeus Buning. Zeist: Dijkstra, 1942
  • Jan Hell: Spiegelje. A moralizing revue, van heinde en ver bijeenendet tot Heil, Troost en Vermaak van Flierefluiters en Zwartkijkers in Hemelse, Aardse en other zaken - In 5 bedrijven . Illustrations Leo Meter. Amsterdam: Contact, 1948

literature

  • Kurt Löb : Leo Meter. A German illustrator in exile in the Netherlands , in: Dagmar Ottmann (Hrsg.): Poetry as an order: Festschrift for Alexander von Bormann , Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2001 ISBN 3-8260-2131-2 , pp. 185–193
  • Zlata Fuss Phillips: German Children's and Youth Literature in Exile, 1933–1950. Biographies and Bibliographies . Munich: Saur, 2001, ISBN 3-598-11569-5 , p. 151f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Death certificate no. 4087 from September 17, 1947, registry office Cologne I. In: LAV NRW R civil status register. Retrieved November 13, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Data sheet from Leopold Longin Meter. In: volksbund.de. Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e. V., accessed on November 13, 2018 .
  3. ↑ a b c Both parents had fled from the Nazis to Amsterdam , at SWP, January 27, 2018
  4. ↑ Elisabeth Plaut is a sister of the writer Richard Plaut, who later called himself Richard Plant .
  5. ↑ Barbara Meter in the Internet Movie Database (English)
personal data
SURNAME Meter, Leo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Meter, Leopold Longin (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German book illustrator
DATE OF BIRTH August 7, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH July 26, 1944
Place of death Racewo, rural municipality of Sidra