Richard Rother
Richard Rother (born May 8, 1890 in Bieber im Spessart , Hessen-Nassau , † November 2, 1980 in Fröhstockheim ) was a German sculptor and wood cutter .
biography
Richard Rother, whose parents came from Silesia but had family roots in Nuremberg , was born as the son of a magistrate in Bieber in Hesse-Nassau, not far from Gelnhausen . He had two brothers and a sister. After primary school he attended the Hadamar Humanistic High School . The school was expelled for a student prank. For him, however, an artistic career profile was established at an early stage. A visit to the Nuremberg School of Applied Arts in the class of the sculptor Max Heilmaier formed the basis for his career . Even Rudolf Schiestl counted there with his teachers. In 1910 he was given a place in Hermann Hahn's sculpting class at the Munich Art Academy , but was unable to take advantage of his mother's narrow widow's pension after his father's death.
Until 1914 Rother worked in the studios of sculptors in Munich, Offenbach am Main and Frankfurt am Main as well as with Philipp Widmer (1870–1951) in Nuremberg and learned how to work with wood, stone and stucco .
In 1914, after the outbreak of World War I , Rother was drafted into military service and deployed on the Western Front. In Champagne he suffered severe bruises to his thighs when he was buried and was sent to a hospital in Alexandersbad for a year . He received the silver Bavarian Bravery Medal , but had to compete in a replacement battalion in Regensburg . However, there was no renewed deployment to the front because he was soon retired and discharged from the army. Rother returned to his mother, who lived in Limburg . As an auxiliary service person he worked on a farm near Hadamar, where he a. a. repaired agricultural implements in a field blacksmith's shop.
After the end of the war, Rother went to Kitzingen , where he was invited by the local mayor Graff at a chance meeting. At the beginning, Rother stayed in a room in the “Zum Einhorn” inn and, on the mediation of the mayor, was able to use a room for his first workshop in a machine hall on the road to Mainstockheim free of charge. There he carried out commissioned work for portrait busts. When his mother had to move in with him, he found an apartment in Fröhstockheim and finally moved into the so-called “doctor's house” belonging to the Baron von Crailsheim's castle . He later described the eleven years that he lived there as the best time of his life. He moved to Kitzingen only because of the better accessibility for his customers. There he met his wife Linde, née Mauer, the daughter of a forester from Stadtprozelten , who was employed as a teacher at the Lyceum in Kitzingen. The marriage took place in 1920, the daughter Gertraud was born in 1922. Later the sons Jörg and Klaus followed (born August 6, 1925 in Fröhstockheim; † May 22, 2003 in Kitzingen). The birth announcement for his daughter in the form of woodcut prints met with an unexpected response, so that his woodcuts were in increasing demand for all possible occasions. During this time, Rother worked intensively with graphic techniques and in particular with woodcuts, where he found his motifs primarily in the local winegrowing environment and in Franconian viticulture. These woodcuts eventually became the most famous works by the original sculptor Rother.
In Kitzingen he finally built a house and a workshop on Galgenwasen. With the beginning of the Third Reich , he said he could not refuse to accept official orders from the NSDAP . Eg for the production of a monument to a "dead of the movement" in Sickershausen , in making a bookplate for Joseph Goebbels or messages to family events of the Franconian Gauleiter Otto Hellmuth . According to Elmar Schwinger, the city of Iphofen commissioned the artist in 1935 to design two anti-Semitic boards at the town gates, including the Rödelseer Tor .
With the beginning of World War II , Rother was deployed as a Hundred Leader on the Westwall . Towards the end of the war , he withdrew from being called up for the Volkssturm in Gerolzhofen .
Richard Rother was a “municipal assistant” from 1931 to 1965 as a teacher in the sculpture class at the Würzburg School of Arts and Crafts . He did not retire until the age of 72 . Beekeeping , which began at an early age, developed into a passion .
He was a member of the Hetzfeld rafters' guild , an association of artists and art lovers founded in Würzburg in 1905, which has its headquarters in the so-called Döle in Stegenturmgasse. In 1938 he received the Main Franconian Art Prize. The city of Würzburg awarded him its 1975 Culture Prize ; likewise the city of Kitzingen shortly afterwards. In addition, his artistic work was honored with the Riemenschneider Prize and in 1957 the German Wine Culture Prize.
Richard Rothers urn burial site is in the cemetery of the Hohenfelder Bergkirche in Kitzingen above the mainland.
Like hardly any other artist of the 20th century, Rother shaped the Main Franconian cultural landscape with his work with stone and bronze sculptures.
Honors
- 1972: Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Federal Republic of Germany
- The state secondary school in Kitzingen bore his name until the decision was made in July 2015 to abandon the name.
literature
- Richard Rother: An artist's life between Main and Vines. Würzburg 1978, ISBN 3-429-00549-3 .
- Richard Rother and his work. Congratulations on the turn of the year. Würzburg 1989, ISBN 3-429-01260-0 .
- Klaus M. Höynck: Richard Rother. A Franconian artist in the service of wine culture. In: Frankenland , 1997, p. 404 f. ( online )
- Heinz Otremba: Richard Rother and his work. (Several volumes) Echter-Verlag, Würzburg 1987–1991.
- Heinz Otremba: En Franconian artist life. Memories of the wood cutter and sculptor Richard Rother (1890–1980). In: Tempora mutantur et nos? Festschrift for Walter M. Brod on his 95th birthday. (with contributions from friends, companions and contemporaries, edited by Andreas Mettenleiter ) Akamedon, Pfaffenhofen 2007 (= From Würzburg's city and university history. Volume 2), ISBN 3-940072-01-X , pp. 345–353.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Perhaps from Schweidnitz , where there was a Rother brewery , or from Liegnitz , where the Rother'sche Kunstziegeleien GmbH was located
- ^ Heinz Otremba: En Franconian artist life. Memories of the wood cutter and sculptor Richard Rother (1890–1980). In: Tempora mutantur et nos? Festschrift for Walter M. Brod on his 95th birthday. (with contributions from friends, companions and contemporaries, edited by Andreas Mettenleiter ) Akamedon, Pfaffenhofen 2007, pp. 345–353, here: p. 345.
- ^ Richard Rother: An artist's life between Main and Reben , p. 24
- ^ Antiquarian Tobias Müller: Klaus Rother. In: Catalog 10. Antiquariat Müller, Würzburg 2014, p. 26 f.
- ^ Richard Rother: An artist's life between Main and Reben , p. 53 f.
- ^ Antiquariat Tobias Müller: Richard Rother. In: Catalog 10. Antiquariat Müller, Würzburg 2014, p. 27 f.
- ↑ Winfried Schmidt (Ed.): "... was extremely cheeky against the Führer ..." Karlstadt 1999, ISBN 3-9804477-7-4 , p. 127 f.
- ^ Elmar Schwinger: From Kitzingen to Izbica. Rise and catastrophe of the Main Franconian Israelite Community of Kitzingen. (= Writings of the Kitzingen City Archives , Volume 9.) Kitzingen 2009, p. 220 ff.
- ^ Tobias Müller: Franconian homeland and poetry. Nikolaus Fey. In: Kurt Illing (Ed.): In the footsteps of the poets in Würzburg. Self-published (print: Max Schimmel Verlag), Würzburg 1992, pp. 91-101, here: pp. 99-101.
- ↑ Richard-Rother-Realschule discards names. infranken.de, July 24, 2015, accessed on July 25, 2015 .
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Rother, Richard |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German sculptor and wood cutter |
DATE OF BIRTH | May 8, 1890 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Beaver in the Spessart |
DATE OF DEATH | November 2, 1980 |
Place of death | Fröhstockheim |