Olaf Gulbransson

The title of this article is ambiguous. Further meanings are listed under Olaf Gulbransson (disambiguation) .

Olaf Gulbransson, portrayed by Eduard Wasow in 1929

Olaf Gulbransson, caricature by his pupil Hans Pfannmüller (1954)

Olaf Leonhard Gulbransson , also Olaf Leonhard Gulbranson , but mostly just Olaf Gulbransson (born May 26, 1873 in Christiania (later Oslo ); † September 18, 1958 at the Schererhof near Tegernsee ), was a Norwegian painter , graphic artist and caricaturist . He gained international fame as a draftsman for the satirical magazine Simplicissimus . He is the father of the architect and church builder Olaf Andreas Gulbransson .

life and work

Olaf Leonhard Gulbransson was born in 1873 as the second of four children of the book printer Edvard Gulbransson and his wife Olava, née Caspersen, in Christiania, later Oslo. Gulbransson's grandparents were Swedish immigrants. From 1885 to 1893 he attended the Kongelige Kunst- og Haandverksskole (Royal Art and Craft School) in Christiania. From 1890 he sporadically published political caricatures in Norwegian satirical magazines (Pluk, Tyrihans, Trangviksposten, Paletten, Fluesoppen) and drew his first book illustrations. In 1894 he did military service. On July 27, 1897, he married his first wife Inga Liggern. The two daughters Liv (1898) and Inga Lisa (1901) emerged from the marriage. In 1899 Gulbransson had his first exhibition of portrait caricatures in Christiania. At the turn of the century he traveled to Paris and studied at the Académie Colarossi .

Simplicissimus, Munich and Berlin Secession

In 1902 Gulbransson accepted an invitation from the Simplicissimus founder Albert Langen and moved to Munich to work on the satirical magazine that was newly founded in 1896. Langen, looking for new talent, found out about Gulbransson through his father-in-law, the Norwegian writer Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson . In the reception room of the Simplicissimus , Gulbransson met the poet Margarethe "Grete" Jehly and fell in love. During this time a close friendship developed with Josephine Rensch , who was in a very similar situation with Albert Langen as Grete did when she fell in love with the still married Olaf. Gulbransson divorced his first wife Inge and married Grete on August 14, 1906. They lived at Keferstraße 10 and in the immediate vicinity, Keferstraße 11, the sculptor Bernhard Bleeker . They later became close friends. Gulbransson's first caricatures in Simplicissimus appeared in December 1902 and quickly made him known in Munich artistic circles; so he designed in 1912 a. a. the setting for the play Sklavin from Rhodus by Gustav Meyrink and Roda Roda in the Munich Schauspielhaus and designed the figures for a Lohengrin parody by Friedrich Huch for the artists' puppet theater at an exhibition at the Munich Secession . In 1914 Gulbransson was accepted into the Berlin Secession , where he closed a. a. Friendships with Max Liebermann , Paul Wegener or Heinrich Zille . Jakob August Heer created a portrait bust of Gulbranson. On January 23, 1916, Olaf and Grete Gulbransson's son Olaf Andreas Gulbransson was born; in the same year Gulbransson was temporarily drafted into the military, then in 1916 seconded to the “propaganda service” at the Foreign Office in Berlin. In 1917 he became a full member of the Berlin Academy of the Arts .

Between Munich and Berlin

Towards the end of the war Gulbransson returned to Munich. In 1922, after differences with his wife Grete, he left the shared house in Schwabing called “Kefernest” and moved with his friends Richard von Below and Herbert von Richthofen to a hut near Partenkirchen for a while ; in the same year he traveled to Copenhagen to draw "famous Danes" for the newspaper Politiken . The increasingly difficult artist marriage with Grete was divorced in 1923. After separating from Grete Jehly, he married Dagny Björnson, the granddaughter of the writer Björnstjerne Björnson and daughter of Einar Björnson and Elsbeth Langen, the sister of Albert Langen . The newly wed couple went on a long trip to Gulbransson's homeland, Norway. To finance it, he drew the series Famous Norwegians for the Oslo daily newspaper Tidens Tegn . In 1924 he got an exhibition at the Berlin Academy of the Arts, which was shown in special shows in Dresden and Leipzig . At the request of Max Liebermann, Gulbransson was given a state studio on Berlin's Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse .

In 1925 Gulbransson received, together with Edvard Munch, honorary membership of the Academy of Fine Arts Munich and took over a professorship at the Royal School of Applied Arts in Munich , which is affiliated to the Academy . His master students included Johannes Matthaeus Koelz and the painter Hans Geistreiter, who was honored by the city of Regensburg .

In the following years the draftsman participated in several exhibitions at the Berlin Academy; illustrations for Thäumlieschen and other fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen were created . In 1927 Gulbransson traveled back to Munich to celebrate Thomas Theodor Heine's 60th birthday. Gulbransson stayed in Munich and lived there for two years. In 1929 he took over the professorship from Franz von Stuck at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts and acquired the Schererhof on Tegernsee , for which Josef Oberberger made freely designed glass painting windows. Oberberger was a master class student and friend of Gulbransson until his death and was given his own professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts on August 12, 1952.

The time of National Socialism

At the time of seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933 an exhibition on Gulbranssons 60th birthday was held at the Academy of Arts in Berlin, which was shown following in the City Gallery in Munich, however, two days after the opening of the Reichsleiter of the NSDAP was closed . The reason given was a Simplicissimus caricature by Gulbranssons from 1930 after the Reichstag election in 1930 , on which simple-minded-looking National Socialists were shown in front of clumsy inflammatory Nazi slogans: "Rise of the gifted - you shouldn't deny them the formation of a government - some kind of education is necessary man finally have! "

The days of the political satire of Simplicissimus were numbered: The radical democratic Franz Schoenberner and Thomas Theodor Heine wanted to continue the magazine's critical course against the NSDAP. As a Jew, Thomas Theodor Heine was eventually forced out of the editorial office. Schoenberner, too, did not conform to the NS's opinion when it was brought into line. Both had to flee after a violent intervention by the storm department in the premises of the Simplicissimus. Gulbransson was later accused by Schoenberger and Heine of having initiated the SA action. Ever since Hitler came to power, Gulbransson has been uncritical of the NSDAP. In the same year Gulbransson had also - together with Richard Strauss among others - taken a stand against Thomas Mann's “European” Wagner conception ; Gulbransson saw in it the negation of the “national way”. Because of his stoic opportunism towards the National Socialists, many friends and acquaintances accused him of being a collaborator and distanced themselves from him. Gulbransson himself said of himself: “I'm not really a political illustrator. I draw the motif that I get between my fingers. "

Up until the outbreak of the Second World War , Gulbransson published other publications: Once Upon a Time (1934) and Proverbs and Truths (1939). In the following year, his home country Norway was occupied by the Wehrmacht . During the war years, mainly caricatures were made against the "enemy states", especially against Winston Churchill . In 1941 Gulbransson became an honorary member of the Association of Berlin Artists and in 1942 of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna . In 1943 he celebrated his 70th birthday, the well-wishers included Albert Windisch , Oskar Kokoschka and the exiled Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria , on the occasion of his birthday he was awarded the Goethe Medal for Art and Science ; the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich retired him as a professor. In 1944 the music professor and Nazi follower Gunnar Graarud presented him with the Norwegian State Culture Prize for his life's work, and in the same year the Simplicissimus ceased publication.

Later years and death

Gulbransson's tomb

In the post-war period Gulbransson lived withdrawn on the Schererhof. He was able to be won over to work on Simpl , the successor version of Simplicissimus (1946–1950), and worked on various illustrations and publications: Dear Olaf! Dear Franziska! and resurrection by Max Dingler (1950). In 1953 his complete works were shown in the Wilhelm Busch Museum in Hanover . The city of Munich awarded him the promotional award for fine arts of the state capital Munich (1955).

In 1958 the city of Nuremberg awarded him the Joseph E. Drexel Prize ; Gulbransson published his last works this year. On September 18, 1958, Olaf Gulbransson died after a stroke at the Schererhof at the age of 86. He is buried in the cemetery of the Church of the Resurrection in Rottach-Egern , district Egern.

Works (selection)

• 24 caricatures , Christiania (Oslo) 1901
• Famous contemporaries , Munich 1905
• From my drawer , Munich 1912
• Once upon a time , Munich 1934
• Dear Olaf! Dear Franziska! , Munich 1950

style

Gulbransson's early works are still conventional and are based on Nordic Expressionism and the woodcut-like compositions of Art Nouveau and Art Nouveau . During his time at Simplicissimus, the artist developed his own precise-linear style, which is characterized by a delicate filigree ductus and achieves strong expressiveness through minimal representation. The colored works of Gulbranson are mostly characterized by striking, delimited colored areas without shading and the use of capital letters. The unmistakable manuscripts of Gulbransson and Th. Th. Heine predominantly shaped the style of the publications of the Simplicissimus publishing house.

estate

The Olaf Gulbransson Museum Tegernsee shows a large pool of caricatures, drawings and paintings in a permanent exhibition.

The written estate came to the German Art Archive in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in 1996 as a bequest from the artist's widow .

See also: Olaf Gulbransson Prize

literature

• Ludwig Thoma , Olaf Gulbransson: Rascal stories. Piper 1966.
• Olaf Gulbransson, Eugen Roth : Olaf Gulbranson . Bruckmann, Munich 1959.
• Friedrich Ahlers-Hestermann:  Gulbransson, Olaf Leonhard. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 7, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1966, ISBN 3-428-00188-5 , p. 300 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Dagny Björnson Gulbransson: The Olaf Gulbransson Book . Langen Müller , Munich 1977 (2nd revised edition 1977), ISBN 3-7844-1655-1 (further editions 1983 and 1986).
• Veit Ludwig (editor): Olav Gulbransson 1873–1958 ( works and documents ; NF 2). Prestel, Munich 1980, ISBN 978-3-7913-0530-1 .
• Claus Pese: More than just art. The archive for fine arts in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum (=  cultural-historical walks in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum , vol. 2). Ostfildern-Ruit 1998, pp. 91-94.
• Lars Fiske, Steffen Kverneland (text and drawings): Olaf G. Avant Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-939080-26-8 (comic).
• Hans Maier : The hundred year old Gulbransson (article from 1973). In: Hans Maier: Culture and Political World. CH Beck, 2008, chap. IV / 24.

Web links

• Literature by and about Olaf Gulbransson in the catalog of the German National Library
• Olaf Gulbransson Museum
• Olaf G., comic biography from the point of view of Norwegian cartoonists
• Olaf Gulbransson in HeidICON illustrations in Der Simpl

Individual references and sources

1. ↑ Gulbransson's letters to Bleeker. Some letters are printed in Simplicissimus on the occasion of Gulbransson's death in 1958: Simplicissimus, vol. 1958, no. 40, October 4, 1958, pp. 635–637, 642f.
2. ↑ Portrait bust of Gulbranson
3. ↑ Volume 35, No. 28, October 6. 1930, http://www.simplicissimus.info/index.php?id=6&tx_lombkswjournaldb_pi1
4. ↑ quoted from Björnson: Werdenfelser Künstlerlexikon ; 2003
5. ^ Olaf Gulbransson, Works and Documents, p. 130, Prestel-Verlag, 1980