Ludwig Gies

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Ludwig Gies (born September 3, 1887 in Munich , † January 27, 1966 in Cologne ) was a German sculptor , medalist and university professor .

Gravestone for Hans Böckler in the Melaten cemetery in Cologne

life and work

1887 to 1918

Ludwig Gies grew up as the older of two sons of the married couple Philipp Gies and Johanna Gies, née Grieb, in Munich. A third child of the Gies family died in childhood, the father died in 1915.

Ludwig Gies' schooling is poorly documented. It is uncertain whether he attended secondary school or just eight-year elementary school. Gies did not attend a grammar school.

His further training is also not completely comprehensible. According to an exchange of letters with Bruno Paul , he attended the municipal trade school in Munich from 1902 to 1904. Study sheets can be dated to this time, sometimes even earlier, which suggest a sign of a (preliminary) course. In addition to the school was Gies apprentice at the company Winhart & Co., where he at Johann Vierthaler the chasing learned. At the same time he attended evening and Sunday courses in modeling and wood carving . In the late 19th century, historicism also had an impact on metalworking, but at the beginning of the 20th century it was replaced by the influences of Art Nouveau or “South German tendencies”. The Winhart & Co. company pursued progressive approaches from both directions, which brought Gies into contact with Richard Riemerschmid and Bruno Paul at an early stage .

After Ludwig Gies had finished the municipal trade school halfway through his training with Winhart & Co., he attended the Royal School of Applied Arts in Munich until July 1907 , where he chiseled, enamelled and carved with Fritz von Miller , Anton Pruska , Maximilian Dasio and Heinrich Waderé as well as ornamental and figurative modeling . The influence of Waderé, who brought him into contact with the art of medals, was particularly formative .

After Gies in the summer of 1906 completed his training at the School of Applied Arts and Winhart & Co. and a few months in Mindelheim spent to specifically in the bustle of copper formed, he continued working for Winhart & Co. until 1908 as a chaser. In May 1908 he enrolled at the Munich Art Academy . Gies probably studied sculpture there for four semesters until 1910. The reasons for dropping out of his studies are uncertain. There is evidence that he worked again at Winhart & Co. in 1909 and returned there as a freelance draftsman in 1912. In the years up to 1914 he began a stylistic self-discovery and won several prizes, which were mainly advertised to promote the new development of medals. A collaboration with the Porzellanmanufaktur Nymphenburg expanded his possibilities to include ceramics such as majolica . A ceramic stove was created, which attracted attention at the Bern National Exhibition in 1914 . Shortly afterwards, the First World War broke out, in which Gies did not take part as a soldier for health reasons, but was drafted into the labor service. In his works he distanced himself from patriotism during this time and portrayed the suffering of war, which led to a partial censorship of his works.

1918 to 1945

On August 28, 1917, Bruno Paul, the head of the teaching facility at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin , went on a business trip to Munich to view various sculptures. After Joseph Wackerle left the school, a position was vacant that had dealt specifically with the art of medals. During this trip Paul met Gies. Why exactly this meeting led Paul Gies to call the teaching institution in the following has not been finally clarified: It is possible that Bruno Paul had already received the recommendation in advance to take a closer look at Gies, especially since Munich's medal art was a particularly good one Reputation and that he came across him through publications in this field. Theoretically it would be conceivable that Paul Gies still remembered the time when he himself worked for Winhart & Co. (around 1902), which, however, in view of the shortness of the time and the years that lie between the two events, as rather unlikely.

In Berlin he headed the class for die cutting and modeling for goldsmiths and chiselers and from 1924 at the United State Schools for Free and Applied Arts (today Berlin University of the Arts ) the class for plastic .

After the National Socialists came to power , Gies accepted an order for the exhibition The Miracle of Life (March 23 to May 5, 1935 in Berlin) and designed the opening monumental relief Das Führerprinzip as a reference to the National Socialist Führerprinzip . He also created an imperial eagle with an oak wreath and a swastika made of light metal for the extension of the Reichsbank built between 1935 and 1939.

On the other hand, he came under pressure because of his loyalty to dissident and Jewish students; In 1937 he was forced out of the Prussian Academy of the Arts , and in 1938 he was dismissed from the teaching post. Eleven of his works were confiscated by the National Socialists. His crucifix in Lübeck Cathedral, originally commissioned by the Lübeck Museum Director Carl Georg Heise for Lübeck's Marienkirche , was already condemned as "overexpressionist" and " culture-Bolshevik " at the time of its creation (1922 for the German Trade Show Munich ) and was later one the objects of hate from the exhibition Degenerate Art 1937 in Munich and ostentatiously on display in the stairwell to the first floor. It was then probably destroyed. The crucifix was previously the victim of an attack in Lübeck Cathedral in March 1922 , in which the head of Christ and one of the rays were professionally cut off. The head was found in the nearby mill pond and the sculpture was reconstructed.

1945 to 1966

After the end of the Second World War , Gies worked as a freelancer in Berlin. From 1950 to 1962 he was professor of sculpture at the Cologne factory schools and since 1953 honorary member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich .

Between 1959 and 1962 Gies designed the windows of the choir in Essen Minster and received the Great Art Prize of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia .

In 1957, the avowed Catholic, received from the hands of the Federal President Theodor Heuss , the Federal Cross of Merit and in 1959 the Cornelius-Price of the city of Dusseldorf.

Ludwig Gies was buried in the Melaten cemetery (hall 44) in Cologne.

Act

Federal eagle , so-called fat hen , on the front wall of the plenary chamber of the German Bundestag in the Bundeshaus Bonn , 1955

Ludwig Gies' works are characterized by flat and recessed, often bizarre cut reliefs and a partly cubist, partly late expressionist style. Gies also emerged with small sculptures made of clay and medals in bronze.

Gies was best known for two sculptures: He created the crucifix in Lübeck Cathedral (1921), a wooden figure, as a memorial for those who died in the First World War. Soon after the establishment of right-wing circles, it was called a work of so-called degenerate art . The figure's head was cut off and thrown into the River Trave . His best-known work is the Federal Eagle (1953), which - popularly known as Fette Henne - was and is to be seen in all the plenary halls used by the Bundestag, including in a modified form in today's plenary hall of the Berlin Reichstag .

Gies is considered to be the founder of the Rhenish Medal School. The last master student of Gies was Wolfgang Reuter, Gies' successor in teaching was Hans Karl Burgeff . His students, including Agatha Kill , Lucia Maria Hardegen and Ulrich Görtz, are the third generation to work at this school.

Honor

The Letter Foundation awards a grant for sculptors and sculptors called the Ludwig Gies Prize for Small Sculpture .

Ludwig-Gies-Strasse in Cologne-Seeberg is named after him.

See also

literature

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ernsting / Wedewer 1989, p. 7 and p. 19, note no. 8.
  2. ↑ Ernsting / Wedewer 1989, p. 8 and p. 19, note no. 14: A personal form completed in 1932 indicates the Realschule (archive of the Akademie der Künste Berlin, Gies file), while Bruno Paul speaks of eight years of primary school education ( Draft letters 1917, archive of the University of the Arts, Berlin, files U la Vol 7).
  3. ↑ a b Archive of the University of the Arts, Berlin, files U la Vol 7
  4. ↑ Ernsting / Wedewer 1989, p. 8
  5. ↑ Kunst und Handwerk , year 1905/1906, no. 56, p. 340 ff.
    Ernsting / Wedewer 1989, p. 19, note no. 22
  6. ↑ Ernsting / Wedewer 1989, p. 11
  7. ↑ Patrick Rössler : Mediatization of everyday life in Nazi Germany. Herbert Bayer's imagery for the propaganda exhibitions of the Reich. In: Maren Hartmann, Andreas Hepp (Ed.): The mediatization of the everyday world. Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2010, p. 216.
  8. ↑ Hans Wilderotter (Ed.): The house on the Werderschen market. Jovis, Berlin 2000/2002, ISBN 3-931321-20-7 , p. 101 f.
  9. ^ A b Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 183.
  10. ^ Stephanie Barron (ed.): Degenerate Art. The fate of the avant-garde in Nazi Germany. Hirmer, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-7774-5880-5 , p. 49.
  11. ↑ Howoldt (1968), p. 170.
  12. ^ Cornelius Prize 1959: Prof. Otto Dix (painter), Hemmenhofen; Prof. Ludwig Gies (sculptor), Cologne , in the administrative report of the state capital Düsseldorf from April 1, 1959 to December 31, 1960, p. 154
  13. ^ Josef Abt, Johann Ralf Beines, Celia Körber-Leupold: Melaten. Cologne graves and history. Greven, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-7743-0305-3 , p. 180.
  14. ^ Grave of Ludwig Gies. In: knerger.de. Retrieved December 24, 2017 .
  15. ^ Heinrich Lützeler: Christian visual art of the present. Herder-Verlag, Freiburg 1962, page 10, figure 11.
personal data
SURNAME Gies, Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, sculptor and medalist
DATE OF BIRTH September 3, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH January 27, 1966
Place of death Cologne