Otto von Kursell

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Otto von Kursell
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Otto Konstantin Gottlieb Kursell (* November 15 jul. / 27. November  1884 greg. In St. Petersburg , Russian Empire , † the thirtieth August 1967 in Munich ) one was Baltic German painter and graphic artist , Councilor and member of the Reichstag , Director of the State University of Fine Arts in Berlin-Charlottenburg and Senator of the Prussian Academy of the Arts .

Known as Franz von Stuck's master student , Kursell quickly gained a reputation as a portrait painter . After the First World War , he made his talent available to anti-Semitic and anti-communist movements. He published numerous political caricatures in which he pilloried Jews , Russians and communists, among others . He conducted inflammatory speeches and actively participated in post services against Spartakists , in field exercises and patrols. He got to know Dietrich Eckart through Alfred Rosenberg , who not only published his work, but also won him over to work on the magazine “ Auf gut deutsch ”. In 1924 Kursell published pictures of the defendants in the Hitler trial . As one of the highly endowed National Socialist artists , Kursell carried out active National Socialist propaganda in his work and his lessons until the end of the Second World War .

family

He came from the German Baltic noble family Kursell and was the son of the excise tax - officials Woldemar Kursell (1849-1915) and Louise Stolzenburg (1857-1944).

Kursell married on August 12, 1908 in Reval (Estonia) Julia Wencelides (born July 1, 1887 in St. Petersburg, Russia, † July 31, 1961 in Munich), the daughter of the engineer and factory director Franz Wencelides and Luba Reuther.

Life

Early years

Kursell attended secondary school in Reval and completed a degree in structural engineering at the Riga Polytechnic between 1903 and 1905 . He became a member of the politically active Corps Rubonia .

In 1905 Kursell moved to Dresden , where he studied architecture at the TH Dresden from 1905 to 1907 . From 1907 to 1911 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and quickly advanced from a student of Hugo von Habermann to a master student of Franz von Stuck . The first successes as a portrait painter appeared .

In 1916 and 1917 Kursell fought as a lieutenant in the Russian infantry in the war . In 1918 Kursell worked in the press office of AOK ( Army High Command ) VIII for the German occupiers in Riga under Erwin von Scheubner-Richter . His employees in the press office were Arno Schickedanz and Max Hildebert Boehm .

At the end of 1918 and beginning of 1919 Kursell traveled to Munich . At that time, the city was considered a contact point for numerous Baltic Germans who had emigrated . The later party ideologist Alfred Rosenberg had also traveled to Munich at this time. In addition to Ernst Friedrich Tode , Kursell was Rosenberg's first point of contact.

In 1919 Kursell, together with Baron Friedrich von der Ropp , Roderich von Bistram and Harald von Rautenfeld, co-founded and headed the secret German-Baltic association "The Association of the Founders of the Order", which was constituted on October 10, 1920 in the town of Erkner near Berlin and which under the Code name "X" operated. In 1926 the "Baltic Brotherhood" emerged from it, after the war the Brotherly Circle .

Member of the NSDAP

In 1921 Kursell finally received German citizenship . In the same year he was involved in the brochure Grave Digger Russia , published by Deutscher Volksverlag , for which Rosenberg had written the foreword. In this popular booklet, which transports the conspiracy theory of Jewish Bolshevism , there are 32 caricatures of Kursell, which show high-ranking Bolshevik functionaries with "Jewish" facial features in the racist sense and are each underlined with quatrains by Dietrich Eckart .

In 1922 Kursell joined the NSDAP . 1922 and 1923, he served as "Wehrmann" member of the Munich Einwohnerwehr and was in 1923 a member of the SA - Regiment Munich .

As a member of the SA, Kursell also took part in the Hitler putsch on November 9, 1923. After the NSDAP was temporarily banned after the coup, Kursell rejoined the party in 1932. However, this re-entry was backdated to May 1, 1925 and given the low membership number 93.

Kursell then began a steep career in the service of Hitler and the party. From 1931 to 1935 he acted as managing director of the “ Combat League for German Culture ” in Greater Berlin and as editor of the “ German Culture Guard ”. At the same time he was editor of the “ Völkischer Beobachter ”.

After the " seizure of power " in 1933, he joined the Prussian Ministry of Culture as a consultant in the art department and in the same year was employed as a professor at the " Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste " in Berlin-Charlottenburg, of which he was later also director.

Between 1933 and 1936 Kursell was a member of the Presidential Council of the “ Reich Chamber of Fine Arts ”, and in 1934 he was appointed department head in the Reich Ministry of Science, Education and National Education . In 1935 and 1936, Kursell was the managing director of the People's German Council , which was called the People's German Center from March 1936 . On January 30, 1936, he was promoted to SS-Obersturmbannführer under the SS number 161 337 .

In 1937, however, he had to resign from the SS, the SA and the NSDAP with the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer, as he was also a senior member of the Baltic Brotherhood (see Brotherly Circle ). In order to avoid the impending arrest, Kursell filed a disciplinary procedure against himself. Probably also because he had fought alongside the "Führer" in November 1923, Kursell was reactivated in September 1940 as a member of the SA. He became SA Standartenführer and in November 1944 was promoted to SA Oberführer . As early as 1938 he was elected to the Reichstag , which was insignificant during the Nazi era .

His personal awards include the NSDAP's golden party badge and the blood order .

post war period

In 1945 Kursell was arrested by the Soviet occupying forces and was interned in Special Camp No. 1 in Mühlberg until 1950 and then in Special Camp No. 2 in Buchenwald . After his return from captivity in 1950, Kursell said he was economically and healthily ruined. The Munich Appeals Chamber ruled against a further punishment of Kursell with a judgment of October 26, 1950 and saw it as an exonerating behavior that Kursell had stayed in the Protestant Church and designed images of Luther . He spent the last years of his life withdrawn, and is said to have refused to participate in the revival of the Baltic Brotherhood that he was offered in 1952.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Album Rubonorum 206
  2. ^ Ernst Piper: Alfred Rosenberg . Hitler's chief ideologist, Munich 2005, p. 62, ISBN 3-89667-148-0 .
  3. ^ Walter Laqueur: Germany and Russia , Frankfurt a. M. / Berlin 1965, p. 93.
  4. ↑ Alfred Rosenberg: last records , Göttingen 1955, pp. 66, 71 .; IMG 1984, Vol. XVIII, p. 81.
  5. ↑ Walter Jung: Ideological requirements, contents and goals of foreign policy programs and propaganda in the German national movement in the early years of the Weimar Republic: the example of the German national protection and defensive association . University of Göttingen 2001, p. 186f; Exhibit as an example in the LeMO .
  6. ↑ Joachim Kretschmar, Otto von Kursell - Nazikünstler, Luthermaler, in: Sonntagsblatt, September 21, 2003, see also: [1] .
  7. ↑ Tammo Luther: Volkstumsppolitik des Deutschen Reiches 1933–1938: The Germans Abroad in the Field of Tension Between Traditionalists and National Socialists . Franz Steiner Verlag, 2004, p. 131.
  8. ↑ Łukasz Najbarowski, Waldemar "Scypion" Sadaj. Numery członków General SS oraz Waffen-SS , ISSN  2082-7431 . SS member numbers 161000 to 161999 .
  9. ↑ a b Tobias Ronge, The Image of the Ruler in Painting and Graphics of National Socialism , Vienna: Lit-Verlag, 2010, pp. 288–290: "Otto von Kursell (1884-1967")
  10. ^ Heinrich von Baer, My Experience of Brotherhood: Recordings from 1979 , BoD - Books on Demand, Norderstedt, 2012, pp. 109–110 ( preview on Google Books )
personal data
SURNAME Kursell, Otto von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kursell, Otto Konstantin Gottlieb von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Baltic painter, graphic artist and politician (NSDAP), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH November 27, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint Petersburg , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH August 30, 1967
Place of death Munich