Peter Ludwigs

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The war , 1937

Peter Ludwigs (born February 16, 1888 in Aachen , † July 3, 1943 in Düsseldorf ) was a German sculptor and painter .

life and work

Peter Ludwigs, who came from a family of manufacturers in Aachen , initially studied sculpture at the academies in Aachen , Liège and Brussels . In 1911 he moved to Düsseldorf, where he got married. Back from the First World War , in which he had participated voluntarily from 1915 to 1918, he joined Otto Pankok and Gert Heinrich Wollheim in the left-wing activist association 1919 ("new society for artistic culture"). The meetings, as well as the exhibitions, took place in the house of the photographer and chemist Erwin Quedenfeldt at Rosenstrasse 28. Ludwigs was also one of the co-founders of the movement Das Junge Rheinland with address under the gallery “Neue Kunst Frau Ey”. The young artists of the group met at Mother Ey's . During this time he turned increasingly to painting and showed pronounced social commitment in his work from an early age. Eventually he became secretary of the Reich Association of Visual Artists Germany Gau Rheinland in Düsseldorf.

In 1922 Ludwig became a member of the KPD and in 1924 co-founder of the political-satirical magazine Die Peitsche . Together with Karl Schwesig and Gert Wollheim, he published sketches and graphics that set an example against murderous voluntary corps , class justice and militarism . In the same year he took part in the First General Art Exhibition in Moscow (1924), together with Otto Dix , Hans Baluschek , Heinrich Zille , Käthe Kollwitz and many more.

In 1926 he met the Oldenburg artist Luzie Uptmoor , whom he taught in Düsseldorf from 1927 and with whom he shared a studio. After the collapse of the Young Rhineland , Ludwig became a board member of the Rhenish Secession . In the summer of 1929 he traveled with Luzie Uptmoor and the painter Heinz Tappeser (1888–1942) for three months to Marseille , Cassis-sur-Mer and Arles in southern France.

In 1929 Peter Ludwigs founded the Düsseldorf group Association of Revolutionary Visual Artists , or “ASSO” for short, together with his painters Karl Schwesig, Mathias Barz , Hanns Kralik , Julo Levin , Carl Lauterbach and the director and actor Wolfgang Langhoff . At the same time Langhoff had taken over the management of the recently founded agitprop theater group "Nordwest ran!", The communist amateur theater group to which Hilarius Gilges also belonged.

Mother B. , 1937

After the seizure of power of Hitler in 1933 Louis got his pictures, which by the Nazis as degenerate art were classified, exhibition ban and pulled back more and more. Before that, in the 1920s and early 1930s, Ludwigs was represented at many important exhibitions. Now banned from the profession and thus impoverished, he worked in the resistance against National Socialism and distributed illegal communist publications. From the former avant-garde of the Young Rhineland and the Rhenish Secession , a group of anti-fascist artists had finally formed around Pankok in Düsseldorf , including Julo Levin, Franz Monjau , Mathias Barz, Carl Lauterbach, Peter Ludwigs and Will Küpper . The basis formed contacts against isolation, state pressure and resignation as well as material help among each other. Peter Ludwigs was under constant surveillance by the Gestapo . In March 1937 he was arrested for preparation for high treason and released again in 1938. Charges were also brought against Luzie Uptmoor and other friends. In 1937 he painted, among other things, the painting Mother B. It shows an old woman against the backdrop of the Ulmer Höh prison , who accusingly points to three corpses. Presumably it is the mother of Karl Schwesig's friend, who often brought food to the imprisoned artists. In this picture, Ludwigs processed news of the persecution, arrest and murder of friends from the resistance.

Another arrest took place on February 5, 1943. Again he was taken to the Ulmer Höh prison. The highly diabetic Ludwigs did not survive this time, had still done heavy road clearing work there and died in July 1943 of insulin withdrawal in Gestapo custody .

“The painter Levin, one of our most talented artists, was brought from Berlin to Auschwitz one day and ended up there in the gas chamber. Then it was the turn of Peter Ludwigs; he died in the dungeon in Düsseldorf. He was also a fanatical resistance fighter and had often supplied drawings for illegal posters. "

- Mathias Barz

On June 19, 1982, a memorial stone for the painters Peter Ludwigs, Karl Schwesig, Franz Monjau and Julo Levin was erected in the southern part of the Golzheim cemetery . A stumbling block in Konkordiastraße 19, the former place of residence, reminds of the painter Peter Ludwigs.

The modern department of the Museum Kunstpalast has over thirty paintings from the estate of Peter Ludwig.

Works (selection)

The letter , 1940
  • In the Varieté , drypoint etching around 1925
  • Mutter Ey , printmaking, 1925, destroyed, formerly art collections of the city of Düsseldorf
  • Adenau , 1927, Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf
  • The game of chess , 1927, Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf
  • Fishermen in Cassis , 1929
  • Fields in Kappeshamm , 1929, Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf
  • At the lock , 1930
  • Old Rhine landscape with fishermen
  • The Embrace (A Couple in Love) , 1936/1937
  • The war , 1937, Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf
  • Mother B. , 1937
  • The Letter , 1940, Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf
  • Potato harvest , 1941, Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf
  • War widows (three women) , 1941, Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

Exhibition (selection)

Web links

Commons : Peter Ludwigs  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Day of death, according to Stolperstein July 3rd, other references say July 2nd, 1943.
  2. ↑ In the beginning there was the Ey, photo: Peter Ludwigs and Johanna Ey , photo Stadtmuseum Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf
  3. ↑ Johanna Ey, (from left to right) Peter Ludwigs, Robert Pudlich, Luzie Uptmoor in the entrance of the gallery
  4. ^ Database of confiscated art: Peter Ludwgs , on database of the confiscation inventory of the "Degenerate Art" campaign, Research Center "Degenerate Art", FU Berlin
  5. ↑ Occupation and National Socialism: 19. Peter Ludwigs (PDF) , in the museum newspaper newspaper No. 04, 2009, Stadtmuseum Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf
  6. ^ Berto Perotti: Encounter with Otto Pankok , Progress Verlag Düsseldorf 1959, p. 32
  7. ^ Golzheim (Düsseldorf -) / memorial stone painter. In: GenWiki. November 30, 2007. Retrieved July 17, 2017 .
  8. ↑ Christine Zacharias: Neglected Stolpersteine , in Rheinische Post from July 15, 2011, accessed on May 10, 2016.
  9. ↑ Stolperstein Peter Ludwigs, Konkordiastraße 19, Düsseldorf , on tracesofwar.com, accessed on May 11, 2016.
  10. ↑ "The collection often has larger bundles of artists who were active in the Rhineland - in art before the Second World War, for example, a good 30 paintings by Peter Ludwigs" (PDF) , on rak-bonn.de, in the painter's estate Walter Ophey (1882–1930) in the Museum Kunstpalast , accessed on May 10, 2016
  11. ↑ Peter Ludwigs: In the Varieté . Drypoint etching with plate tone around 1925, with erased, handwritten inscription in brown pen on the lower edge. Website in the lot-tissimo.com portal , accessed on May 11, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Ludwigs, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH February 16, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Aachen
DATE OF DEATH July 3, 1943
Place of death Dusseldorf