Otto Jahn (painter)

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Otto Jahn (born March 14, 1900 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary , † March 1945 ) was an Austrian portrait , landscape and war propaganda painter . After the annexation of the Republic of Austria to the National Socialist German Reich from 1938 to 1945, he played an important role as organizer of some of the particularly notorious Nazi propaganda exhibitions.

life and work

Little is known about the painter Otto Jahn's biography; as a painter he has hardly left any traces in the history of Austrian visual arts. His range of activities lay beyond academic painting and above all in the design of exhibitions for economic purposes and in particular for Nazi propaganda.

In 1931 he was elected to the advisory board in the Austria regional group of the World Theater Association. In the same year he worked at the Hygiene Museum in Dresden , where he probably designed a large wall-filling display board: "The hygienic folk instruction aims to lead to a healthy life through education and upbringing". He also designed wall decorations for an exhibition of the Burgenland government. In 1932 he was involved in plans for the conversion of the Femina . It is documented that he was accepted as a full member of the Vienna Künstlerhaus on April 12, 1933 .

In 1933 he was involved in two "advertising exhibitions". For the 10th Austrian Katholikentag in Vienna in 1933, he made several pictures, some or all of which were incorporated into an anthology in 1934. In 1934 he designed an exhibition “Weekend of the Viennese”.

In 1935 Jahn belonged to the Austrian Institute for Image Statistics (today: Austrian Society and Economic Museum ), a museum project founded after Otto Neurath's expulsion and redesigned by Austrofascism , and designed an exhibition for the Austrian insurance industry.

Otto Jahn: LMG troop jump forward! (Colored chalk, approx. 290 × 250 cm), 1940 (in today's Army History Museum in Vienna, since when is unknown)

The only other publicly known picture of Jahn is a Nazi propaganda picture from 1940 - his monumental colored chalk drawing LMG-Trupp Sprung-Vorwärts . It is now part of the holdings of the Vienna Army History Museum (HGM) and is exhibited in Hall VII. The head of the art department of the HGM assumes a four-digit number of objects by the propaganda painters that the museum has collected and is in the process of being restored so that they can be used for relevant exhibitions.

With the beginning of the Second World War he was drafted as a non-commissioned officer and war propaganda painter in 1939 . In the same year he exhibited his casein picture Kärntner Volksfest in the exhibition of the Viennese artist house Berge und Menschen der Ostmark . Jahn made the above-mentioned colored chalk drawing for the war propaganda exhibition on Heldenplatz in Vienna, organized by the then Army Museum in 1940, entitled The Victory in the West . Since the annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany , Jahn has been entrusted with the artistic direction of a number of large propaganda exhibitions. They were developed by the Institute for German Cultural and Economic Propaganda in Berlin, which had already supervised the two traveling exhibitions Degenerate Art and the Great Anti-Bolshevik Exhibition in 1937, and the Institute for Exhibition Technology and Image Statistics in Vienna. The President Hugo Fischer of the Institute for German Cultural and Economic Propaganda was also the chief of staff of the Reich Propaganda Leadership of the NSDAP.

As artistic director, Jahn was involved in the design at least in the following cases, in which, in addition to ethnic affiliation enthusiasm, militarism and Nazi war successes, aggressive anti-Semitism and anti-communism also formed the content of the exhibition. With that he was completely in line with the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda :

  • 1938 - Immediately after the annexation of the republic to Nazi Germany in Vienna the anti-Semitic exhibition The Eternal Jew , which "stirred up hatred of everything Jewish".
  • In June 1939 in the exhibition halls at the Berlin Radio Tower the pompous show "mountains and people of the East mark " with propaganda images that allude symbolically to the "connection".
  • September to October 1940 - Special exhibition of German soldiers and their opponents in the Army Museum in Vienna (now the Army History Museum ).
  • 1942 - the touring exhibition The Soviet Paradise , organized by the Reich Propaganda Headquarters of the NSDAP , was a “propaganda exhibition” whose “artistic” poster as a children's shock showed “the face of a Mongolian soldier with a knife between his teeth”, “from which blood was dripping ".

In March 1945 Jahn was drafted in the course of the final phase mobilization. He did not return for unknown reasons, was initially missing and pronounced dead in 1950.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Welttheater-Bund , Der Wiener Tag , December 29, 1931
  2. ^ Sabine Schulte: The German Hygiene Museum in Dresden by Wilhelm circle. Biography of a museum of the Weimar Republic. Bonn 2001 (Diss.), P. 216 f. [1] .
  3. ↑ Active Art, a production cooperative of artists , The Hour , December 2, 1931
  4. ^ Femina rebuilt , The Hour , August 27, 1932
  5. ↑ Wladimir Aichelburg : Künstlerhaus Wien - List of Members >>  Letter “J” >>  Jahn Otto. In: wladimir-aichelburg.at. 2014, accessed September 11, 2019 .
  6. ↑ http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=std&date=19331107&seite=4&zoom=33&query=%22Ausstellung%22%2B%22Otto%2BJahn%22&ref=anno-search
  7. ↑ http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno-plus?aid=bue&date=1933&page=1309&size=45&qid=Q7OSOVEK7K0S7NEQ2AJ2P8LJWG8JNR
  8. ↑ on albertina.at , accessed on August 28, 2017
  9. ↑ http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=kvz&daten=19340508&seite=6&zoom=33&query=%22Ausstellung%22%2B%22Otto%2BJahn%22&ref=anno-search http: // anno .onb.ac.at / cgi-content / anno? aid = nwj & datum = 19340411 & page = 7 & zoom = 33 & query =% 22Exhibition% 22% 2B% 22Otto% 2BJahn% 22 & ref = anno-search
  10. ↑ https://books.google.de/books?id=l-3nAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Otto+Jahn%22+Bildstatistik&dq=%22Otto+Jahn%22+Bildstatistik&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwism-r-t7DkAhVwMewKHcjEILjQ
  11. ↑ Nina Schedlmayer, the first World War: Propaganda painting in the trenches, in: profile, March 7, 2014. See also: [2] .
  12. ^ Heinrich Fuchs: The Austrian painters born in 1881-1900. Vienna 1976, Volume 1, p. K 115.
  13. ^ Christoph Zusatz: "It is a training exhibition". The precursors and stations of the exhibition “Degenerate Art” , in: Stephanie Barron (Ed.): Degenerate Art. The fate of the avant-garde in Nazi Germany (exhibition book) , Munich 1992, pp. 83-105, see also: [3] .
  14. ^ Christoph surcharge, "Degenerate Art". Exhibition strategies in Nazi Germany, Worms 1995, p. 223.
  15. ↑ Hans Seiger, Michael Lunardi, Sabine Plakolm-Forsthuber: In the realm of art: the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and the fascist art policy ... , Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, 1990, p. 292
  16. ↑ Wolfgang Benz: "The Eternal Jew" , Berlin 2010, p. 62.
  17. ↑ Wolfgang Benz / Brigitte Mihok (ed.): Events, Decrees, Controversies , In: Handbuch des Antisemitismus , Vol. 4, Berlin / Boston 2011, p. 116.
  18. ^ Anthony D. Kauders / Tamar Lewinsky (1945–1970), New Beginning with Doubts, in: Richard Bauer, Michael Brenner (eds.), Jewish Munich. From the Middle Ages to the Present, Munich 2006, pp. 187–208, here: p. 190.
  19. ^ Wilhelm Deutschmann (Hrsg.): Hundert Jahre Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien , catalog for the special exhibition in the Wien Museum May 21 to August 30, 1987, self-published. d. Museums d. City of Vienna, Vienna 1987, p. 124.
  20. ↑ In the realm of art. The Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and Fascist Art Policy , conference publication ed. Association of Critical Social Science and Political Education on behalf of the Austrian Students' Union at the Academy of Fine Arts, Publishing House for Social Criticism, Vienna 1990, ISBN 978-3-85115-130-5 , pp. 279, 292
  21. ↑ Liselotte Popelka : Eyewitnesses - witnesses of suffering - forgotten. Austrian visual artists at war . In: Helga Litschel (Ed.): From call to obituary. Catalog for the Upper Austrian State Exhibition 1996 . 1st edition. Veritas (in the Upper Austrian State Publishing House ), Linz 1996, ISBN 3-85214-658-5 , p. 130-139, especially p. 138 .
  22. ↑ Christoph Kivelitz: The Propaganda Exhibition in European Dictatorships: Confrontation and Comparison: National Socialism in Germany, Fascism in Italy and the USSR of the Stalin Era , Bochum 1999, pp. 233, 272.
  23. ↑ Reinhard Müller (ed.), “Death stands on laughter!” Austrian whispering jokes in the Third Reich, Innsbruck / Vienna / Bozen 2009, p. 150.
  24. ^ Elisabeth Schulz-Semrau : Search for Karalautschi. Report of a childhood in Königsberg , Verlag Rautenberg, Godern 2014, ISBN 978-3-7921-0451-4 , p. 69.
  25. ↑ Wladimir Aichelburg : Künstlerhaus Vienna - The victims 1938-1945 Otto Jahn. In: wladimir-aichelburg.at. 2014, accessed September 12, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Jahn, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian portrait, landscape and war painter
DATE OF BIRTH March 14, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH March 1945