Maria Keller
Maria Keller (* 1905 in Stuttgart ; † 1998 in Löffingen ) was a German artist who became known for her terracotta sculptures.
Life's work
Maria Keller lived her motto "Healing by doing" in a consistent way and became groundbreaking for many people. Her concern was to find new ways and ideals, both in social interaction and in the treatment of diseases, in a critically questioning examination of the world she experienced as one-sidedly materialistic. In this way she tried to responsibly bring Christian values into harmony with everyday life and consciously connect heaven and earth. In her school “Healing in Doing” she was later able to implement the epistemological and educational conception of social sculpture and to create a living organism for everyone. Anthroposophical thought work was combined with artistic activity. All arts were included: painting, sculpting, singing, choral speaking, acting - and last but not least cooking together. Like Beuys, she realized the therapeutic aspect of the artistic and increased it to newly designed rituals in the celebrations of the Christian annual festivals.
biography
Maria Keller was born as Maria Heiss. The father died in 1914 at the beginning of the First World War . The mother died of exhaustion that same year after a famine. Maria and her five siblings have been put up for adoption. In this way she and a brother came to a parish household in the Swabian Alb, where she came into contact with the migrant bird youth movement in her youth. During puberty she got into serious arguments with her adoptive parents due to her violent character. At the age of 18 she began training as a housekeeper, infant carer and nurse, as well as training in singing and courses at an arts and crafts school. In 1930 she married the art teacher Hans Keller. From her marriage to him she had five children.
After her husband's death in World War II , the then 39-year-old was completely on her own with the children. Since her husband was a member of the party as a teacher and the dead were finally denazified, she was not given a widow's pension. In order to survive, she worked in her own small ceramic workshop and earned a living for her family by selling dishes.
During this time she received an impulse that would determine her future through her encounter with Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy . From 1974, in close proximity to the Achberg International Cultural Center , she developed her own approaches to humanize and heal the social organism of people through her own life practice and in her own social experiment. At the age of 75 she founded the “Free School for Healing in Action” in Löffingen in the Black Forest. Up until her death in 1998, she taught many young people their connection with nature and their abilities to heal out of nature.
plant
Maria Keller created an estimated 500 terracotta sculptures , for which there is only a rudimentary catalog of works.
literature
- Norbert Carstens (Ed.): Maria Keller, Dem Engel gegen FIU-Verlag, Wangen / Allgäu 2006, ISBN 978-3-928780-64-3 .
- still available: https://fiu-verlag.com/dem-engel-entgegen/
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Keller, Maria |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German artist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1905 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Stuttgart |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1998 |
| Place of death | Loeffingen |