Otto Andreas Schreiber

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Otto Andreas Schreiber (born November 30, 1907 in German Cekzin , West Prussia province ; † February 27, 1978 in Dormagen ) was a German painter and draftsman who campaigned for the recognition of Expressionism under National Socialism in the 1930s .

Life

Otto Andreas Schreiber was born the second of eight children to a teacher. He attended grammar school in Konitz until the family was expelled from the Polish corridor and then graduated from high school in Deutsch Krone . Between 1927 and 1931 he studied painting at the art academies in Breslau , Königsberg and Berlin , among others with Oskar Moll , Otto Mueller and Alexander Kanoldt .

Working under National Socialism

Otto Andreas Schreiber, a member of the NSDAP since 1932 , tried on June 29, 1933 in a speech at the rally “Youth fights for German art” to consider the Expressionists , the painters of the Brücke and the Blauer Reiter as the art of the “new Germany” established and thus rejected the provincialism of Alfred Rosenberg's previous cultural policy , which was mainly supported by the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur .

Together with Fritz Hippler and Hans Weidemann from the National Socialist German Student Union , he organized the exhibition 30 German Artists with Pictures by a. a. Emil Nolde in Ferdinand Möller's Berlin gallery. The exhibition was closed after 3 days by Reich Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick , the organizers Hippler and Schreiber were excluded from the NS student union. After an intervention by Walther Funk with Joseph Goebbels , the exhibition was reopened a few days later. The NS student union was no longer allowed to act as an organizer. A fierce expressionism debate between the different currents of the NSDAP was the result.

Schreiber was editor of the journal Kunst der Nation , he was dismissed in 1934 and the journal discontinued in 1935. After his release from the Art of the Nation , Schreiber worked for the organization Strength Through Joy .

In the following years he organized over 2,000 so-called “factory exhibitions” in which moderate expressionist art could be shown under the protection of “trade secrets” despite the verdict of the Nazi cultural policy. At almost the same time, one of his works was on view at the “Degenerate Art” exhibition in Munich in 1937; however, Schreiber was not involved in the major German art exhibitions . He supported Emil Nolde, who has meanwhile been ostracized as "degenerate", by donating material.

Schreiber represented a color-restrained expressionism like Max Kaus , which was quite successful after 1945. But after 1945 he stayed away from the art scene and lived in seclusion.

After the war

After the war he moved with his family to Westphalia and worked in Vreden as a writer, painter and art teacher before he settled in Dormagen as a freelance painter in 1954.

literature

  • Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 (= The time of National Socialism. Vol. 17153). Completely revised edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-596-17153-8 , p. 493.
  • Konrad Donhuijsen, Rosemarie Donhuijsen-Ant (eds.): Otto Andreas Schreiber. A painter's life 1907–1978 . Wienand-Verlag, Cologne 2015, ISBN 978-3-86832-276-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Janos Frecot: Marginalia on the National Socialist cultural policy. In: Between Resistance and Adaptation. Art in Germany 1933-1945. Edition Peter Wippermann, 1980, ISBN 3-88331-905-8 , p. 80.
  2. ^ "Seen from the coffin" , biographical comments by Otto Andreas Schreiber
personal data
SURNAME Schreiber, Otto Andreas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and draftsman
DATE OF BIRTH November 30, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH German Cekzin , West Prussia Province
DATE OF DEATH February 27, 1978
Place of death Dormagen