Martin Pohle

Gottfried Carl Martin Pohle (born June 16, 1899 in Düsseldorf ; † August 10, 1970 in Sprendlingen , Offenbach district) was a German painter and graphic artist .

Live and act

Martin Pohle was born as the son of the factory owner and businessman Friedrich Pohle. He finished school at the Realgymnasium in 1914 with the secondary school leaving certificate and then completed an apprenticeship in the architectural office Gustav August Munzer in Düsseldorf until 1916 . Due to the war, he then attended business school and worked as a trainee in the commercial department of his parents' company. In July 1918 he was drafted into the military. He took part in the First World War, took an active part in the November Revolution and was discharged from military service in 1919 as one hundred percent incapable of work due to open pulmonary TBC , a disease that later affected him again and again.

From 1922 to 1925 Pohle studied at the State University of Fine Arts in Weimar in the class of Professor Walther Klemm and then worked as a freelance painter in Weimar . In 1925 he joined the KPD and devoted himself increasingly to political work. At the beginning of the 1930s he was one of the co-founders of the Weimar local groups of the Association of Friends of the Soviet Union , the left- wing cartel of intellectual workers and especially in 1932 with Alfred Ahner , Paul Bärmann and Bruno Voigt the Association of Revolutionary Visual Artists in Germany (ASSO) and was their political director. After the organization was banned by the National Socialists in 1933 , he illegally continued anti-fascist work in the Götting group and later, from 1943, in the Wallmüller group . He worked on the publication and distribution of the illegal press organ Der Rebell , accompanied functions in the party apparatus, was a courier and contact point. He was arrested for the first time in 1933 and sentenced to two weeks in prison. In the same year he was sent to the Bad Sulza concentration camp as a protective prisoner , but was released under an amnesty .

In his artistic work, Pohle was exposed to constant harassment with the aim of isolating him and ruining him economically. His work was destroyed during house searches by the Gestapo . From 1938 to 1941 he therefore lived with the painter Arthur Hennig (1888–1945) in Bad Berka . When he was murdered by the Gestapo in Weimar ( Webicht ) in 1945 , he adopted his son Rolf Hennig (1931–2011) as a foster son. In 1937 Pohle was declared unfit for military service and continued the illegal resistance against the Nazi regime as air protection area leader in 1943 . In 1941 he met the Weimar graphic artist and printer Arno Fehringer , with whom he became a close friend.

After 1945, Pohle was a member of the SED from 1946 , until 1955 in various political functions in administration, trade union and culture at municipal, district and state level. In 1946 he was co-founder and chairman of the Association of Visual Artists (later the Association of Visual Artists of the GDR ) in Weimar and in 1953 the association's own sales cooperative Lucas Cranach there . He hardly got any more artistic work. From 1950 he no longer took part in exhibitions. In connection with the formalism dispute , he increasingly messed with the party leadership. In 1957 he became blind in his left eye. In 1958 he left for the Federal Republic of Germany , initially living with his sister in Gelnhausen , until 1965 in Frankfurt am Main and then with his foster son's family in Sprendlingen until his death. In 1959 he was expelled from the SED. Many of his works remained in Weimar and were preserved by Arno Fehringer. As a person, Pohle was an advocate of a liberal socialism in which personal dignity and freedom remain intact, coupled with an obligation to social responsibility.

plant

As a painter , Pohle already counted himself in a modern expressive direction during the Nazi era . He worked in different techniques from drawing (pencil, ink, charcoal, pastel, watercolor) to etching , linocut and oil painting . Little remains of the early work with depictions of impoverished people ( Im Abseits der Großstadt , 1930), of workers' demonstrations ( Aufruhr , 1930), but also of erotic scenes ( New Year , 1930). The graphic work includes the Faust cycle (linocut) and a series of etchings on the dance of death . Around 1940 he created colorful paintings in which he pilloried National Socialism and war with religious depictions ( flagellation , Golgotha , descent from the cross ). From the end of the 1940s, after expressionist pictures ( Salome , Dance macabre bourgeoisie , Traumtier ), formal geometric compositions ( Ships who past in the night , Composition V ) became the focus of his work.

Participation in exhibitions

• 1946: Weimar artists exhibit , Weimar
• 1947: 1st state exhibition of visual artists in Thuringia , Erfurt ( member of the jury )
• 1948: Künstler Schaffen 1945–48 , Weimar (exhibition management and jury member)
• 1948: Exhibition of Thuringian Artists, Gotha
• 1949: Thuringian Art in the Goethe Year , Weimar (jury member)
• 1949: 2nd German Art Exhibition, Dresden
• 2008: Departure into the modern age , Lutherstadt Wittenberg (Cranach Foundation)
• 2011: Between Tribulation and Resistance , Lutherstadt Wittenberg (Cranach Foundation)

literature

• Christina Ada Anders (Ed.): For the time being I have to stay alive. Alfred Ahner - from the letters and diaries of the Weimar artist (1890–1973) . Georg Olms Verlag , Hildesheim / Zurich / New York 2014, ISBN 978-3-487-08551-7 .
• Wolfgang Thiede: Bruno Voigt, Resistance Art 1912–1988 . AGO gallery, Berlin 1988, ISBN 978-3-927415-00-3 .
• Hanna Brocksieper (Ed.): A similar to A. Parts 1 and 2 . Heinrich Brocksieper letters 1954–1968 to Arno Fehringer, also back. Brocksieper archive, Hagen 1980.
• Andreas Beyer u. a. (Ed.): De Gruyter General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples, Volume 96.De Gruyter , Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-11-023262-2 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Landesarchiv Thuringia - Main State Archive Weimar : State University of Fine Arts Weimar . In: 6-33-9011 . No. 124 .
2. ↑ Udo Wohlfeld, Falk Burkhardt: the network . The concentration camps in Thuringia 1933 - 1937. Geschichtswerkstatt Weimar / Apolda eV, Weimar 2000, ISBN 978-3-935275-01-9 , p. 120 .
3. ↑ Marlis Gräfe et al. a. (Ed.): Sources on the history of Thuringia . The Secret State Police in the NS Gau Thuringia 1933 - 1945. State Center for Political Education , Erfurt 2009, ISBN 978-3-931426-83-5 , p. 459 ff .
4. ^ Landesarchiv Thüringen - Main State Archive Weimar: Personal files from the field of popular education . No. 23495 .
5. ^ Weimar City Archives: Council of the City of Weimar, Department of Culture, personnel records from visual artists . In: 13-771201 / 2230 and 2231 .
6. ^ Sales cooperative for visual artists in the Erfurt district eGmbH "Lucas Cranach", statute . Weimar 1953.
7. ↑ Weimar City Archives: Founding of the "Lucas Cranach" sales cooperative . In: 13/1545 .
8. ^ Landesarchiv Thüringen - Main State Archive Weimar: District Party Archives of the SED Erfurt, district leadership of the SED Weimar . In: IV A / 4.12 / 077/3 . S. 111 .
9. ↑ ^{a b} Marlies Schmidt, Cranach Foundation (ed.): Aufbruch in die Moderne. Early 20th century graphics from the Gerd Gruber collection. Exhibition catalog. Lutherstadt Wittenberg 2008, ISBN 978-3-00-024007-2 , p. 193 and 284 .
10. ↑ ^{a b c} Marlies Schmidt, Cranach Foundation (Ed.): Between Bedrnung and Resistance. Graphics and paintings from 1933 to 1945 from the Gerd Gruber collection . Exhibition catalog. Lutherstadt Wittenberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-00-035926-2 , p. 212, 213 and 358 .
11. ↑ ^{a b} State of Thuringia, regional committee for the Goethe year 1949, in cooperation with the “Fine Arts” section in the FDGB (publisher): Thuringian art in the Goethe year 1949. Exhibition of fine arts . Exhibition catalog. Weimar 1949.
12. ↑ Gert Caden, Karl Kröner u. a .: 2nd German Art Exhibition Dresden 1949 . Landesdruckerei Sachsen GmbH, Dresden 1949.
13. ↑ Martin Pohle: Salome (oil). SLUB / Deutsche Fotothek , 30121053, accessed on October 30, 2019 . 
14. ^ ^{A b c} Council of the City of Gotha and Gotha Action Group of the Kulturbund (ed.): Exhibition of Thuringian Artists July – August 1948 . Exhibition catalog. Gotha 1948.
15. ^ Rolf Rösner: Weimar artists exhibit. Painting, graphics, sculpture, applied arts . Exhibition catalog. Ed .: Fine arts division, FDGB. Weimar 1946.
16. ^ Beyer: 1. State exhibition of visual artists of Thuringia . Exhibition catalog. Ed .: Union 17 (art and literature) in the FDGB. Erfurt 1947.
17. ↑ FDGB Protection Association of Visual Artists, local group Weimar (ed.): Artists creating 1945–48. Summer exhibition of Weimar artists . Exhibition catalog. Weimar 1948.