Otto Soltau (artist)

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Otto Soltau (born March 27, 1885 in Rendsburg ; † May 27, 1915 in Jarosław , Poland) was a German painter who grew up in Arnis . Like August Macke, he was one of many young artists who died in the First World War .

Life

Hanoverian fibula with a pupil in front of the silhouette of the city of Hanover , signed by Soltau;
dated “09”, 40th edition posthumously in 1920, publisher: Lehrerverein Hannover-Linden

Otto Soltau grew up in the former ferry house on today's “Neuer Damm” in Arnis - the house belonged to Captain Wilhelm Luth, the brother-in-law of Soltau's parents. The town of Arnis, which was affected by the decline of sailing ships at the time, tried to establish itself as a resort around 1900, which also led to a number of painters visiting the small town on the Schlei. He was inspired by one of these painters, a landscape painter from Hamburg, and at the age of 15 went to Hanover for an apprenticeship as a decorator . With a scholarship he was able to study at the local arts and crafts school for a year.

Otto Soltau volunteered for military service after the outbreak of war. Like so many others, he saw war as an elemental force that attracted him. At the front he had to experience that in reality death is not as sublime as he had partially imagined in his works, but can be dirty and "hideous". In 1915 he was wounded during an officer training course on the Eastern Front and died shortly afterwards.

The family stones Soltau and Luth still stand in the Arniss cemetery today, not far from the entrance to the Schifferkirche . Otto Soltau is listed on a memorial stone at the church as one of the fallen in World War I. Since 2018, it has been possible to call a spoken life story on a mobile phone using a QR code in the cemetery.

plant

At the beginning Soltau painted portraits as well as naturalistic animal pictures. In addition, caricatures were created that impaled the military worship of the bourgeoisie, which was widespread at the time. From 1909 to 1912 he lived in Munich and turned to symbolist content in his painting. a. Issues of antiquity and the Bible took up. The result was the painting The Centauress Playing with Her Child and the lithograph David (1910), which was distributed as a calendar sheet in 1913. After moving to Berlin , he concentrated on Nordic mythology, which he had already learned from the stories his mother told him in Arnis. The main reason for this reorientation was probably the contact with the folk-minded Karl Storck, a musicologist, and the writer Lulu von Strauss and Torney .

The most famous work, the painting The Philosopher , is now at Gottorf Castle .

Exhibitions

literature

  • Dr. Friederike Weimar, Otto Soltau 1885 - 1915, in: Catalog for the exhibition Glowed Dreams , Berlin 2014, p. 69
  • Nicolaus Schmidt, Otto Soltau, in: Nicolaus Schmidt, Arnis 1667-2017 , Kiel 2017, pp. 165f.

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nicolaus Schmidt , Arnis 1667-2017, Kiel 2017, p. 166
  2. ↑ Speaking stones Arnis: Otto Soltau - audio file, accessed on February 17, 2019
  3. ↑ Nicolaus Schmidt , Arnis 1667-2017, Kiel 2017, p. 165
personal data
SURNAME Soltau, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH March 27, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Rendsburg
DATE OF DEATH May 27, 1915
Place of death Jaroslaw