Otto Plattner

Façade painting by Otto Plattner at the "Güldihaus", Heinrich Strübin's parent house in Liestal

Otto Plattner (born June 29, 1886 in Liestal ; † October 20, 1951 in Stein am Rhein ) was a Swiss painter , graphic artist and heraldist .

biography

Otto Plattner came to Liestal ( Canton Basel-Landschaft ) on June 29, 1886 as the son of the merchant Wilhelm Plattner and Marie Plattner born. Strübin to the world. He completed courses at the general trade school in Basel and was sponsored by Fritz Schider . He then did an apprenticeship as a decorative painter at the École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva . In 1910 Plattner was in Paris with Hermenegildo Anglada Camarasa and in Munich with Moritz Heymann .

In 1912 Plattner founded his own studio on Eichenstrasse in Basel. In the same year he married Frida Lüdin from Liestal, the daughter of the bookseller Friedrich August Lüdin.

In addition to his free work and wall paintings, it was especially graphics and glass painting, as well as the occasional schnitzel banks , that preoccupied him. He soon became a sought-after lantern painter for the Basel Carnival.

Study trips took him in 1922 to Italy to Sicily, 1926 to Tunis, 1933 to Italy and Cologne, 1935 to Upper Bavaria and another trip to Hungary.

In the mid-30s he took up residence in Liestal.

Gravestone in the Liestal cemetery

Every year Plattner presented his friends and business partners with New Year's cards at the turn of the year. In the Second World War and in the immediate post-war period , they propagated perseverance and confidence, but also defensiveness and federal patriotism , which he also documented with his signature (last name abbreviation and Swiss flag ).

Otto Plattner died on October 20, 1951 in Stein am Rhein, he was buried in the Liestal cemetery. Karl Aegerter held the funeral speech on October 23, 1951. Thanks to a donation from the artist's daughter, Stefy Plattner, the majority of the estate is kept in the Liestal Poet and City Museum.

plant

In 1911, together with Burkhard Mangold , he restored Wilhelm Balmer's facade paintings on Basel City Hall . Plattner and Mangold immortalized themselves as the two faces behind bars.

On behalf of the Kunstkredit Basel-Stadt , Plattner created two frescoes for the main entrance of the Basel armory from 1923 to 1925 .

Plattner took the motifs for his pictures primarily from local history. Paintings were created in Basel for the facades of the Haus zum Großes Konstanz in Pfluggässlein (1924/1925), for the house of Emanuel Weiss at Falkenstrasse 33 (1929), at the house of Tuch AG at Barfüsserplatz, at the Haus zum Strytgärtli  with its former owner Hans Waeffler he was friends (1932) at the Drei Rosen restaurant (1934) and in the bowling alley of the Holbein-Stube on Dufourstrasse.

In Liestal, Plattner created historicizing wall paintings on the Upper Gate (1912/1913 and 1949/1950). The colored design cardboard for the four-and-a-half-meter-wide and eight-meter-high mural painting Excerpt to St. Jakobl in the atrium of the town hall (1939/1940) on a scale of 1: 5, painted in tempera technique on a lime background , later became the property of Jakob Probst , who also owned one Had made death mask by Plattner and had been encouraged by Plattner to go to Paris. The dominant equestrian figure on the mural shows Henman Sevogel .

He and Emilio Müller created a three-part mural on the front wall of the Liestal District Administrator's Hall, symbolizing agriculture, industry and trade. For the Banntag a frieze sstube in the restaurant "Neuhaus" painted it in oil painting and messenger room of the hotel "Engel" a mural with the messenger car, as well as the 1946 perfect facade painting on Güldlihaus . Plattner also created a mural in the entrance to the editorial office of the Basellandschaftliche Zeitung .

Upper city gate in Liestal

In Waldenburg and Laufen , Plattner created a mural for the community buildings and the facade painting for the Laufen Baslertor (1949).

For Reichenstein Castle near Arlesheim , he designed the ceiling frieze in the tower room with the representation of a knightly military campaign . In 1925 Plattner created a facade fresco for the facade of Berhard Windler's inn in Stein am Rhein .

On the easel he painted portraits , genre pictures and landscapes , mainly from the Jura . Also stained glass windows are among Plattner's oeuvre. However, he became popular through book illustrations and drawings as well as through his commercial art . Political propaganda and advertising posters , brochures and festival cards, but also coats of arms (for example for the Basel saffron guild ) and certificates (such as the letter of acceptance from the three honorary societies in Kleinbasels ) are based on Plattner's designs.

Plattner created numerous flags as well as many caricatures and illustrations. Otto Plattner put his art of drawing at the service of the political right and, for example, agitated in 1926 against allowances for the unemployed, against municipal housing and against the introduction of unemployment insurance . On behalf of the municipality of Liestal, he drew a poster for the inauguration of the swimming pool in 1934, "which with its bold diagonal composition has become an icon of Swiss poster art".

In 1930 he founded the cantonal art credit Baselland together with the artists Walter Eglin , Jacques Düblin and Ernst Bolens, and in 1944 the Basellandschaftliche Kunstvereinigung, now known as the Baselland Art Association.

On the coat of arms of Baselland , created by Plattner in 1947 , he replaced the originally Gothic decorations on the crosier (crabs) with balls. He also designed coats of arms and flags for the Liestaler Banntagsrotten and for local associations, sets for pageants, carnival lanterns , dishes, medals, postcards and postage stamps and the facade painting at Heinrich Strübin's headquarters . In 1920 a modern dance of death was created as a folder with fourteen sheets.

Illustrated books (selection)

• Karl Weber: Liestal, an old Swiss town in words and pictures. Lüdin, Liestal 1914.
• Lithograph for Emmanuel Stickelberger (Ed.): E Wienachtsmajeli vo dr Liechtete in the Rhyfelderhof. o. O. (Basel) 1919.
• with Theodor Barth : Emmanuel Stickelberger: The Philosopher's Stone. A merchant story from old Basel. Friedrich Reinhardt, Basel 1919.
• Niklaus Bolt : The firefighter and his child. JF Steinkopf, Stuttgart 1927.
• Niklaus Bolt: Christoph's escape. JF Steinkopf, Stuttgart 1930.
• Edi Strübin: Banntag Liestal. The history. 60 years of Banntag memories. 4. Banntagsrotte, Liestal 1955.
• Helene Bossert: Blüemli am Wäg. Poems in the Basel dialect. Self-published, Sissach o. J. (approx. 1973).

literature

• Kaspar Birkhäuser : Plattner, Otto. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Max Tüller: Otto Plattner. The painter Liestals. In: Baselbieter Heimatbuch, Vol. 4, 1948, pp. 7–35.
• Otto Plattner: Memories of Burkhard Mangold . In: Basler Jahrbuch 1952. Basel 1953, pp. 166–175.
• Otto Plattner: The cross in the national banner. Lüdin, Liestal 1953.
• Alfred Reuff: Otto Plattner, 1886–1951. Painter, draftsman, graphic artist, heraldist. Lüdin, Liestal 1986, ISBN 3-85792-148-7 .
• Otto Plattner. 1886-1951. Catalog of the exhibition November 7th to 3rd, 1997. Philipp Mohler, Liestal 1997.

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  Portrait of Plattner and Mangold in the inner courtyard of Basel City Hall

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  Portrait of Plattner

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  Mural for the shoemaker's guild, Liestal

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  Mural, 1939, Battle of St. Jakob an der Birs

Web links

Commons : Otto Plattner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Otto Plattner in the personal dictionary of the canton of Basel-Landschaft
• Part of the estate of Otto Plattner-Lüdin in the State Archives of the Canton of Basel-Stadt

Individual evidence

1. ^ Karl Aegerter: Funeral speech for Otto Plattner. Retrieved November 8, 2019 . 
2. ↑ See the website of the Basler Ruder Club, which is based in the building today (web resource) .
3. ↑ Liestal Tourism: Güldihaus. Retrieved June 15, 2019 . 
4. ↑ See the illustration on the website altbasel.ch (web resource) .
5. ↑ See the images on the website Der Wanderer von Arlesheim .
6. ↑ See the examples available in the database of the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich : (Web resource)  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  
7. ↑ Caption in: Printed matter. Write, set, print, read and archive in the Basel area. In: Baselbieter Heimatbuch 24, (2003), p. 276.
8. ↑ Today in the Im Obersteg collection at the Kunstmuseum Basel (web resource) .