Otto Engelhardt-Kyffhäuser

Otto Engelhardt-Kyffhäuser (born January 5, 1884 in Artern as Otto Engelhardt ; † June 7, 1965 in Göttingen ) was a German painter and art teacher. He was a member of the NSDAP.

Life

Otto Engelhardt, who comes from the Prussian province of Saxony - he later took his nickname because of his place of birth near Kyffhäuser at the suggestion of Max Liebermann in 1910 - completed his training at the art academies in Kassel from 1901 to 1907, and also in Berlin and Weimar , where he Was a member of the Etching Association in Weimar. In 1914 his work was exhibited at the Kunstverein Darmstadt.

First World War and Weimar Republic

During the First World War he was a Oberfeldjäger in the Reserve Jäger Battalion 4 and a war painter in the fighting troops. Engelhardt-Kyffhäuser published his war experiences and numerous pictures taken during the First World War in 1935 in the book “Vorn - Documents of German Front Comradeship in Sketches, Studies, Image and Word”. From 1919 to 1939 he worked in Görlitz , became a teacher for art education at the Luisenschule there (today Joliot-Curie-Gymnasium ) and went public with numerous pen drawings, etchings and paintings. In 1928 several murals designed by him were ceremoniously unveiled in the auditorium of the Görlitz Luisenschule. In 1930 he was a co-founder of the Rotary Club of Görlitz.

Time of the Nazi regime

He joined the NSDAP and SS , came to terms with contemporary progapanda needs, drew numerous war images and portrayed several national socialist greats. In January 1940, Engelhardt-Kyffhäuser accompanied a trek of ethnic Germans at Himmler's request . These were resettled from Galicia and Volhynia , which belonged to the Soviet-annexed Eastern Poland, to the Warthegau . 120,000 Poles had previously been deported to create settlement space here. Engelhardt-Kyffhäuser documented the journey through numerous sketches and drawings that were exhibited in Berlin on March 30, 1940 and published as a book in the same year. Engelhardt-Kyffhäuser published “The Book of the Great Trek” together with Alfred Karasek , the area plenipotentiary in the resettlement staff, and Heinrich Kurtz from the Kraków governor general. SS-Obergruppenführer Werner Lorenz contributed a foreword . The pictures served as a template for the Nazi propaganda film " Heimkehr " by Gustav Ucicky , the creation of which Engelhardt-Kyffhäuser also documented. The film in turn inspired him to take more pictures.

Exhibitions

Engelhardt-Kyffhäuser participated with his works in several propaganda art exhibitions until 1944, e.g. B.

• the Great German Art Exhibition 1938, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944 in the House of German Art in Munich,
• Exhibition "Repatriation of the Germans from Galicia" from February 2 to 12, 1940 in the Cracow Kunsthalle (it was the first exhibition by a German artist in occupied Poland and the first exhibition on the resettlement campaign).
• A separate exhibition of his pictures was opened under the title The Great Trek 1940 in the Görlitz Ständehaus .
• In 1941 the exhibition With man and horse and car ... followed in the Görlitz Luisenschule.
• 1941 Exhibition Flanders and the Netherlands: People and Landscape , Saarbrücken, organized by the VDA Gauverband Westmark and the Saar-Palatinate Association for Arts and Crafts.
• At the exhibitions “Painter on the Front” (Berlin, April 2nd to 27th, 1941) he showed the picture “English rubble on the beach of Dunkirk”, German artists and the SS in 1944 in Breslau the picture “Before the Departure” and in Salzburg the pictures “Trek rolls over the bridge near Przemysl” and “A tank destroyer of the SS-Pol.-Div.”.

Post-war period 1945–1965

Towards the end of the Second World War, Otto Engelhardt-Kyffhäuser left Görlitz for West Germany and found a new home in Göttingen . Here he was mainly active as a portrait artist. Engelhardt-Kyffhäuser died on June 7, 1965 in Göttingen.

Works by Engelhardt-Kyffhäuser can be seen today in museums in Görlitz and Bautzen. There is a wall painting of him in the Artern Town Hall. Engelhardt-Kyffhäuser was married to Dorothea (née Weise).

Works (selection)

• Cairo, Mosque, 1955 Oil on Bristol cardboard

Fonts

• (Eve). Bridge and riverside. Walkers in the moonlight , Weimar: self-published by the etching association, 1907
• Pictures from Champagne and the Aisne . Second episode. With photographic images and illustrations from O. Engelhardt-Kyffhäuser. Published by the Champagne War Newspaper, VIII Reserve Corps, Cologne, Du Mont Schauberg, 1916
• Front - documents of German comradeship from the front in sketches, studies, pictures and words , Görlitz-Biesnitz: Kunstverlag CA Starke, 1935
• The book from the great trek , 1940 (contribution "From my diary", pp. 30-48)
• Up Wedder See! Painters' journey through Flanders and the Netherlands , Berlin: Border and Abroad, 1942.

literature

• Otto Engelhardt-Kyffhäuser (1884–1965). A painter from Görlitz between the world wars; Special exhibition from 2.5. until October 31 , 1993 , exhibition catalog. Görlitz: Kulturhistorisches Museum, 1993
• Otto Engelhardt-Kyffhäuser 1884–1965. Oil paintings. Watercolors. Monotypes. Drawings. Osnabrück Cultural History Museum . March 28–5. April 1976 . Exhibition catalog, Osnabrück, 1976
• Wilhelm Fielitz: The stereotype of the Volhynian German resettler. Popularizations between language island research and National Socialist propaganda , Chapter 4, Marburg, 2000.
• Wilhelm Fielitz: The Görlitzer painter Otto Engelhardt-Kyffhäuser and the war image , in: Görlitzer magazine. Contributions to the past and present of the city of Görlitz and its surroundings. Volume 13, Görlitz Zittau: Oettel, 1999
• Otto Engelhardt Kyffhäuser visited resettlers in the Warthegau. In: Wartheland, magazine for construction and culture in the east. Volume 1, issue 7, August 1941. p. 31
• Gerald Trimmel: The National Socialist feature film "Homecoming". Strategies of manipulation and propaganda , Krems 2003 (note 65, p. 30)
• Otto Engelhardt-Kyffhäuser: The big trek. Return of the ethnic Germans from the Baltic countries and Russia . in: Leipziger Illustrirte Zeitung, No. 49–50 of May 30, 1940, pp. 385–387.

Web links

• Literature by and about Otto Engelhardt-Kyffhäuser in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Günter Meißner : Engelhardt-Kyffhäuser, Otto . In: AKL 34 (2002), 40.
2. ↑ Andreas Bednarek, The Rotary Club Görlitz and its history - Festschrift for the 10th anniversary , Görlitz, 2002 full text ( Memento from May 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
3. ↑ Engelhardt-Kyffhäuser. In: Great German Art Exhibition . Retrieved February 14, 2018 .