Richard Kuöhl

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Richard Emil Kuöhl (born May 31, 1880 in Meißen ; † May 19, 1961 in Rohlfshagen near Bad Oldesloe ) was a German sculptor who was also known as an "architectural sculptor ".

Kuöhl works
The bumblebee fountain
Signature on the memorial in Wilster

life and work

After training as a craftsman in his native Meißen, Kuöhl studied from 1902 at the Dresden School of Applied Arts under Karl Groß and moved to Berlin in 1906. There are contradicting information in the literature about the year of the move to Berlin. In 1912 he followed one of his Dresden teachers, the architect Fritz Schumacher , to Hamburg. Schumacher put through a revival of the brick building there, he attached particular importance to the architectural sculpture. Kuöhl carried out a large part of the architectural jewelry on Schumacher's state buildings.

In doing so, he took up the most varied of current art movements and implemented them in a weakened manner - one could also say trying to achieve aesthetic consensus. The spectrum of his sculptures ranges from cute, naively designed fairy tale characters from the beginning of his time in Hamburg to expressionist echoes (e.g. in the building sculpture of the Chilehaus ) to the New Objectivity , whereby he also took up suggestions from the Renaissance .

Kuöhl worked in the 1920s and 1930s with an almost industrial output of sculptures in stone, ceramics and reliefs in terracotta . He was arguably the busiest sculptor in town. He developed a weatherproof building ceramic, the so-called clinker ceramic . His work not only adorns many buildings in Hamburg, but can also be found in other cities in northern Germany such as Lübeck today. His Gänselieselbrunnen is a landmark of Bad Oldesloe , and the Hummelbrunnen in Hamburg's Neustadt is reminiscent of the legendary water carrier Hummel .

At the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg, numerous naturalistic and expressionistic grave monuments as well as pleasant fairy tale characters testify to his work.

Kuöhl's grave, columnar female figure with folded hands

In retrospect, there are some contradictions in Kuöhl's work. Parallel to his occupation with expressionist or romantic architectural jewelery, Kuöhl designed war memorials in a monumental style, which already echo his later visual language. From 1919 to 1933 he was a member of the Hamburg Secession artists' association , which advocated avant-garde art, among other things. He was also a member of the Hamburg Artists' Association from 1832 and since 1920 a member of the Hamburg Art Association . The annual exhibition of the Hamburg Secession at the beginning of 1933 was the first at which the National Socialists , who organized a real hunt against modern art for propaganda reasons, forced the police to close.

Nevertheless filled Kuöhl without hesitation after the takeover of the NSDAP the wishes of the new government clients. “He formed heroic, monumental monuments and sculptures that served the political goals of the Nazis, such as the war memorial for those who died in the First World War of the 76th Infantry Regiment at Dammtorbahnhof in Hamburg”.

Because of his adaptation to the Nazi dictatorship, he was seriously reproached after its end. Nevertheless, Kuöhl made a fresh start in the Federal Republic . In his last creative years he mainly worked on war memorials that showed Christian motifs and stylistically adhered to the mainstream of the 1950s.

Kuöhl died in Rohlfshagen near Bad Oldesloe in 1961. He was buried in the main cemetery in Ohlsdorf (grave location Y 10). He created the tomb himself.

plant

  • Saint George in Rostock

  • Building sculpture at the Handelshof in Lübeck

  • Statue helmet off to prayer

  • War memorial of the Coburg Convent

  • Tchilinghiryan tomb (1927), Ohlsdorf cemetery

  • Weissleder tomb (1929) Ohlsdorf cemetery

literature

  • Friederike Weimar: Richard Kuöhl. In: The Hamburg Secession 1919–1933. History and dictionary of artists. Fischerhude 2003, ISBN 3-88132-258-2 , p. 118 f.
  • Werner Skrentny: Under the roofs of the “Quartier Satin”. In: On foot through Hamburg. Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-434-52590-4 , p. 50.
  • Rudolph Schmidt (preface): Architectural sculpture. Sculptor Richard Kuöhl. (= Neue Werkkunst ) FE Bübsch, Berlin / Leipzig / Vienna 1929. / as a reprint with a comment by Roland Jaeger: Gebr. Mann, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-7861-1970-8 .
  • Heinrich Lersch: Farewell to soldiers. Junge Generation Verlag, Berlin 1934. (anthology of soldier poems)

Web links

Commons : Richard Kuöhl  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hamburg biography on Googlebooks
  2. ^ Friederike Weimar: Richard Kuöhl. In: The Hamburg Secession 1919–1933. History and dictionary of artists. Fischerhude 2003, p. 118.
  3. ↑ Bremen (Germany). Senator for finances .: "House of the Reich": from the north wool to the senator for finances: Architecture and history of a Bremen administration building . HM Hauschild, Bremen 1999, ISBN 3-931785-37-8 , p. 40 ff .
  4. ↑ sculpture Kuöhl -Grabmal at Ohlsdorf cemetery Förderkreis
  5. ↑ Barbara Leisner, Heiko KL Schulze, Ellen Thormann: The Hamburg main cemetery Ohlsdorf. History and tombs. 2 volumes and an overview map 1: 4000. Hans Christians, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-7672-1060-6 , details on page 155, cat.no.1074
  6. ↑ Info leaflet Bergstedt cemetery: "Graves of well-known personalities in the Bergstedt cemetery"
  7. ↑ Works in Volksdorf at treffpunkt volksdorf.de
  8. ↑ Klinkerkeramik Kind mit Blumenkranz : Review and description of the location in Thomas Wittkuhn: SkulpTouren , Verlag Thomas Zang Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-9814508-0-4 , p. 17

Remarks

  1. ↑ for comparison in Poppenbüttel : group of fountains in Randel Park
personal data
SURNAME Kuöhl, Richard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kuöhl, Richard Emil (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH May 31, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Meissen
DATE OF DEATH May 19, 1961
Place of death Rohlfshagen