Paul Bollmann

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Paul Erdmann August Bollmann (born May 4, 1885 in Hanover , † August 14, 1944 in Überlingen ) was a German painter and graphic artist .

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Paul Bollmann was the youngest of four children of the merchant and wine merchant Gottfried August Bollmann and his wife Paula Wilhelmine Luise Bollmann, née Karl. His paternal grandfather was August Bollmann (1811-1884), who chaired the Hamburg Gymnastics Association from 1816 from 1851 to 1859, then co-founded the Harburg Gymnastics Association in 1858 and was among other things mayor of Harburg .

In 1889 the family moved to Hamburg, where their father died three years later before Paul Bollmann started school. From the age of seven he attended a middle school in Altona and took on jobs as an errand boy. He then completed an apprenticeship as a painter and attended evening classes at the Altona School of Applied Arts until 1903. With a recommendation from Alfred Lichtwark , Bollmann then studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart with Carlos Grethe . In 1906 he interrupted his studies and went to Paris for eight months . From 1907 he attended Adolf Hölzel's master class and received a silver and gold medal. He studied together with the painters Otto Meyer-Amden , Fritz Flinte and the interior designer Richard Herre , who became his friends. Bollmann first painted landscape motifs showing the Black Forest and the heath, created pictures of figures and still lifes. During the time in Stuttgart and Paris he followed the styles of Oskar Schlemmer , Willi Baumeister and Otto Meyer-Amden, but did not copy them.

In 1911/12, Bollmann traveled to Italy twice and then worked as a freelance artist in Hamburg. Bollmann created pastose , wide and large format open - air paintings of the beach of Blankenese in the style of post-impressionism . Since 1912 he participated in several group exhibitions and in 1913 received a solo exhibition. In 1914 he was one of the artists who were represented in Adolf Hölzel's "Expressionist Hall" at the Stuttgart art exhibition of the Association of Art Friends in the countries on the Rhine . He did military service during World War I , was made an officer in 1916 and wounded during the war. After Adolf Hölzl had left the Stuttgart Art Academy, Otto Meyer-Amden recommended Bollmann as his successor in 1919, which he refused. Instead, Bollmann moved into an old cottage in Wellingsbüttel . Here he experimented with abstractions and created paintings in the style of Hamburg expressionists. Since his works of art did not enable a living, Bollmann also worked as a night watchman and construction worker. Bollmann was a very hard-working painter, but often interrupted his artistic activities due to work inhibitions. In 1925, together with other artists who also did not have sufficient income, he asked the Hamburg Senate for commissions.

Bollmann exhibited at the Hamburg artist festivals and participated twice in the Hamburg Secession . Although he never became a member of the association, he found several friends among the members. Of the members of the Secession, Bollmann particularly admired Karl Ballmer . Around 1930 Bollmann took up the painting style cultivated during the Secession and went on several study trips. In 1928 he traveled to Switzerland, in 1931 to Holland, Belgium and Paris. Bollmann had been a member of the Hamburg Art Association since 1920 and joined the Hamburg Artists' Association from 1832 before 1930 . From 1927 he belonged to the Altona artists ' association and acted as its representative in the cartel of Hamburg artists' associations. In that year he also joined the Hamburg Art Association .

In the following years, Bollmann's economic situation did not improve. He created commissioned work, including a portrait of Mayor Rudolf Roß in 1925 and paintings for churches and schools, including for Fritz Schumacher . Nevertheless, the family received donations from artistic aid and welfare at the end of the 1920s. Bollmann himself worked part-time as an operations manager for a cinema. He now created less bright paintings, including the commissioned work “Frl. Agnes Wolffson ”, which received little praise from the Art Commission. In 1932 he moved into his own studio in the Ohlendorffhaus, which the City of Hamburg had given him, and in the same year he received two solo exhibitions.

Arthur Illies left the Hanseatic University at the end of 1933 . Paul Bollmann took over a teaching position in the painting class as his successor and thus had a regular income. He tried to bring his students closer to painting in the pure sense. Bollmann saw Hans von Marées as his role model, but was only able to teach his works to a limited extent during the Nazi era , as the painter had a Jewish mother and was therefore not regarded as "racially pure". Bollmann kept his distance from other teachers; He only had friendly contacts with Willi Breest and Willi Titze .

Bollmann was considered an anthroposophist and for this reason was viewed critically by the National Socialists. The art historian Walter Hansen and other experts described Bollmann as "cultural Bolsheviks". In 1936, Bollmann took part in the exhibition of the Künstlerbund, which had to end prematurely. He then stopped taking part in such presentations. Two watercolors that could be seen in the Hamburger Kunsthalle were confiscated as Degenerate Art in a raid in 1937 and later destroyed. In order to keep his position as a university professor, Bollmann joined the NSDAP in 1937 , but continued to try to maintain personal freedoms. He attended the funeral of Hugo Meier-Thur , who was murdered in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp . He also became a member of a resistance group around Agnes Holthusen, Kurt Eggers-Kestner, Karl Kluth and his wife Hanna.

From 1936 Bollmann lived with his family in Lemsahl-Mellingstedt , where his colleague Willi Titze also lived. As a result of air raids in the summer of 1943, the Lerchenfeld School, the Ohlendorffhaus and the Birkenau artists' home were destroyed. All the paintings and drawings that Bollmann had created up to that point were burned. A short time later he was commissioned to design stained glass windows for the main church of St. Peter , which had been destroyed in bombing. In the same year he visited the glazier Hermann Heberle in Überlingen to discuss the first drafts with him. During a second visit to the Heberle glazier in mid-1944, Paul Bollmann was found dead in Lake Constance. Shortly before the end of his life he had made self-portraits that looked depressed. He had used broken colors and baroque chiaroscuro.

Bollmann was married twice. The son named Per Halby, born in 1923, came from the first marriage. He married Gertrud Grosse for the second time in 1926. She gave birth to Regina and Peter until 1929.

literature

Web links

Commons : Paul Bollmann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bollmann, Paul. In: Maike Bruhns : Art in the Crisis. Vol. 2. Dölling and Galitz, Munich / Hamburg 2001, p. 76. ISBN 3-93337493-6 .
  2. ^ Carl Heitmann: Timeline of the history of the Hamburg gymnastics association from 1816: 1816 - 1882. Herbst, Hamburg, 1883, p. 16. ( online )
  3. ↑ August Bollmann. In: Gymnastics. Festival for the centenary of the Hamburg gymnastics club v. 1816 on September 2, 1916. Hamburg Regional Association for Youth Care (ed.), Hamburg 1916, p. 45. ( online )
  4. ↑ "Dr. Hans H. Völckers: August Bollmann, the first gymnastics pioneer Harburg. In: Harburger Jahrbuch, 1909, pp. 65-66. ( Limited preview in Google book search)
  5. ^ Exhibition catalog Art Exhibition Stuttgart 1914 , Kgl. Art building, Schloßplatz, May to October, ed. from the Association of Art Friends in the States on the Rhine, Stuttgart 1914, p. 46, cat. 398 ("gardener", oil painting).
personal data
SURNAME Bollmann, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bollmann, Paul Erdmann August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH May 4, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH August 14, 1944
Place of death Überlingen