Paul from Spaun

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'' Still life with teapot and clock '' (1917, oil on canvas, approx. 52 × 52 cm), multiple motif

Knights Paul von Spaun (* 16th June 1876 in Scheibbs , † the 30th November 1932 in Innsbruck ) was an Austrian painter , known for landscapes and Capri - seascapes . In society, however, he was more known and controversial as a Diefenbach disciple and eccentric .

Life

Spaun's parents' house in Scheibbs, to the left of the Spaungarten
Spaungarten Scheibbs

Paul Ritter von Spaun came from the Austrian aristocratic Spaun family and grew up in Scheibbs. He was the youngest child of seven siblings of Auguste von Spaun, b. Manger (1839–1915) and Anton Joseph Karl Johann Maximilian von Spaun (1835–1877). His brother Friedrich von Spaun (1870–1950), who was six years older than him, had also become a painter and shared the path of his life for several years. Both paternal grandfather was Max Gandolf von Spaun (1797–1844). His mother bought a house with a large garden, the Spaungarten, in Scheibbs in 1884 to build a school there. A year later the school and kindergarten were opened.

The Linzer Tages-Post 1905 is the only known source to date about his artistic training that he first studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts with August Eisenmenger , then with Eduard Peithner von Lichtenfels , but then for a few years with Franz von Lenbach in Changed Munich , where he devoted himself to portraiture. In part, the death report in 1933 gives similar information ( Innsbrucker Nachrichten ).

Time as a follower of Diefenbach

Von Spaun temporarily joined the artists' commune “Humanitas” founded by Diefenbach in 1897, some 20 to 30 people in the house of the former restaurant “Am Himmel” at Himmelhof in Ober Sankt Veit (near Vienna), was at times Diefenbach's favorite disciple and did the business .

Towards the end of the 19th century, both Diefenbach and Paul von Spaun were the subject of scandal reports in the press. Max Winter , a journalist for the Arbeiter-Zeitung , first denounced his consumption of coffee and cigarettes behind drawn hotel curtains, which contradicted the maxims of a healthy lifestyle that Spaun publicly preached, and then wrote further reports about the painter. The press called him a hypocrite and a scrounger. Nobility titles and family origins did not fit into the propagated worldview, but were also used specifically to requisition funds, e.g. B. in the establishment of an "honorary association" for Diefenbach, for which people like the noble Bertha von Suttner could be won over at times .

In 1895 Paul von Spaun began a relationship with Diefenbach's twelve-year-old daughter Stella (1882–1971). When Diefenbach found out about this, he blackmailed his adlatus into staying in the commune that he actually wanted to leave. In 1899 Stella Diefenbach's daughter Vera was born. Since the young girl had also had a relationship with Paul von Spaun's brother Friedrich, who in turn was married to Diefenbach's former partner Magda Bachmann, since 1898, the question of fatherhood remains unanswered. Diefenbach's former lover Mathilde Oborny testified in court that Vera was Friedrich von Spaun's daughter, but it remains unclear how she wanted to know. In 1899 Diefenbach, who was already incapacitated at the time, moved to Trieste with Paul von Spaun and a few other companions . From there, Paul von Spaun had to return to Vienna in the summer of 1899 in order to deal with the allegations of rape and the violation of public peace and order. He too claimed at the time that Stella's child was not his but his brother Friedrich.

The actually secret court proceedings, for which Diefenbach also appeared, were extensively praised in the press. Among other things, Paul von Spaun was accused in an article in the News-Welt-Blatt dated September 22, 1899 of forging large numbers of Diefenbach pictures or of circulating them under the name Diefenbach's pictures. Spaun, defended by Richard Preßburger , who portrayed him as the seduced, was finally acquitted of the charge of rape. However, Spaun was punished with eight days of strict arrest for a letter in which he described the Catholic Church as harmful and degrading to the spirit, and he also had to pay the court costs.

At the end of 1899 he moved to Anacapri with Diefenbach, Wilhelmine Vogler, his brother Friedrich and Diefenbach's children . He stayed on Capri until the outbreak of the First World War , after which he moved to Wolfratshausen .

Four male (Fridolin, * 1901; Wahnfried, * 1904; Siegfried, * 1908; Wieland, * 1911;) and two female children (Vera, * 1899; Genovefa, * 1906) are considered to be the biological descendants of Paul von Spaun and Stella, nee . Diefenbach, including the founder of the Spaun Foundation for Family Research in Dorfen near Wolfratshausen, Fridolin von Spaun , who among other things created a Paul von Spaun archive , but was probably a son of Friedrich von Spaun.

Works

Spaun created numerous works, many, as with Diefenbach, with the sole intention of selling. In 1909, his brother Friedrich, when questioned about signature forgery, declared that he and Paul had also worked together on pictures, with the one who had the greatest artistic share always signed.

Paul von Spaun's works are largely family-owned. A rocky coast was bought by the Upper Austrian State Museum in 1972 .

His oeuvre has so far not been recognized in terms of art history, he is not mentioned in any artists' lexicon and, as a person in today's literature, is more of an anecdote or a footnote. In contrast, the contemporary painters Gusto Gräser , Fidus and Franz Kupka are shown as his disciples at Diefenbach retrospectives.

Image selection

  • The Faraglioni cliffs near Capri (1913, oil on canvas, approx. 60 × 60 cm), multiple motif

  • Ocean surf (1918, oil on canvas, 87.5 × 120.5 cm)

  • View of the Villa Jovis on Capri (?), Oil on canvas, 80 × 110.4 cm

Publications

Spaun published several articles and brochures in defense of Diefenbach, and only from 1911 onwards did a contribution with a utopian architectural design and one on Richard Wagner . His style is highly pathetic, which is one reason why the art historian Claudia Wagner believes that the authorship of the life report described in 1897 as Diefenbach's dictation is possible, which is still uncertain. In 1927 he published two articles about Diefenbach in the magazine Die Schönheit .

  • The Diefenbach case . Trieste 1899.
  • The musical drama in Bayreuth . In: Bayreuther Blätter , Volume 34, Pieces 7–9, 1911.
  • Temples of art and temple art . In: The marker . tape 3 , 1912, pp. 634–639, 679–684 ( hathitrust.org [accessed June 10, 2018]).
  • Karl von Diefenbach. A pioneer . In: Die Schönheit , Volume 23, 1927, pp. 402-423.
  • "Per aspera ad astra". The work of master KW Diefenbach . In: Die Schönheit , Volume 23, 1927, pp. 561-571 ( digitized version ).

literature

  • Genealogical manual of the nobility , Adelslexikon Volume XIII, Volume 128 of the complete series, CA Starke Verlag, Limburg (Lahn) 2002, ISSN  0435-2408
  • Claudia Wagner: The artist Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach (1851-1913). Master and Mission. With a catalog of all known oil paintings . Dissertation, Department of Art History at the Free University of Berlin 2005.

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ (Linzer) Tages-Post . March 2, 1905, p. 4 ( onb.ac.at [accessed June 10, 2018]).
  2. ↑ a b Innsbruck News . January 4, 1933, p. 7 ( onb.ac.at [accessed June 11, 2018]).
  3. ↑ Arbeiter Zeitung . September 6, 1898, p. 5 ( onb.ac.at [accessed June 10, 2018]).
  4. ↑ Arbeiter Zeitung . September 21, 1899, p. 6–7 ( onb.ac.at [accessed June 10, 2018]).
  5. ↑ News World Sheet , September 22, 1899
  6. ^ A b Günther zuner : half silk imperial Vienna: 12 crime novels from the fin de siècle. Verlag Federfrei, Marchtrenk 2018, ISBN 978-3-99074-007-1 ( limited preview in Google book search). In this work, the year of birth of Stella Diefenbach's daughter is once, obviously erroneously, the year 1889 (instead of 1899).
  7. ↑ Will of the Workers . June 23, 1909, p. 4 ( onb.ac.at [accessed June 10, 2018]).
  8. ^ Benno Ulm : Upper Austrian State Museum. Department of Art and Art Cultural history. In: Yearbook of the Upper Austrian Museum Association. Volume 118b, Linz 1973, pp. 26-31 ( PDF (623 kB) on ZOBODAT ).
  9. ↑ Cf. Uwe Puschner: Handbook on the “Völkische Movement” 1871–1918. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1996, ISBN 978-3-11-096424-0 , p. 414 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  10. ↑ See Chapter 3, Claudia Wagner: The artist Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach (1851-1913). Master and Mission. With a catalog of all known oil paintings . Berlin 2005 ( fu-berlin.de [accessed on June 10, 2018] Dissertation, Department of Art History at the Free University of Berlin 2005).
  11. ↑ See also Diefenbach's life report. In: gusto-graeser.info. www.gusto-graeser.info, accessed on June 10, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Spaun, Paul from
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian painter
DATE OF BIRTH June 16, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Scheibbs
DATE OF DEATH November 30, 1932
Place of death innsbruck