Robert Kämmerer-Rohrig

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Robert Kämmerer-Rohrig (born March 11, 1893 in Wahlershausen near Kassel , † January 19, 1977 in Schwalenberg ) was a painter and draftsman from Lippe.

biography

Robert Kämmerer-Rohrig was born on March 11, 1893 as the son of the painter Robert Kämmerer in Wahlershausen, a village near Kassel. The second name comes from his mother, a born Rohrig. Four years later the young family moved to Berlin because the father hoped for better earning opportunities here. Here he copied pictures by well-known French impressionists for wealthy customers. The Kämmerer family was soon able to move into a larger apartment with a studio in the artist suburb of Zehlendorf . Son Robert, who had inherited his father's talent, attended grammar school, which he left in 1912 to study at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin-Charlottenburg . His teachers were Professor Koch in portrait drawing, and Professors Paulvorgang and Friedrich Kallmorgen in landscape painting.

In 1914 Kämmerer-Rohrig became a soldier and served on the Western Front in World War I. After the Battle of Verdun in 1916, he was taken prisoner by the French , from which he was released in 1920. He initially returned to the Academy of the Arts in Berlin to continue his studies under Olaf Jernberg for two semesters. In the same year he married Elfriede Albrecht and, like his father, settled in Berlin-Zehlendorf as a freelance artist. While in captivity he met Alfons Aldegarmann, whom he and his wife visited in his hometown of Schwalenberg in 1921. During the stay of several weeks, a number of drawings, watercolors and oil paintings were created based on motifs from the city and the surrounding landscape. The Kämmerer-Rohrig couple came to Schwalenberg every summer. In 1922 they were accompanied by their father Robert Kämmerer and subsequently both Kämmerer regarded Schwalenberg as their summer residence, in which the newly created pictures were exhibited at the end of their stay. Many other painters from the big city also came to Schwalenberg to live and work here in the tranquil tranquility.

To distinguish it from the work of his father, the son of his signature initially had the feature jr. and later added his place of birth Cassel . After his mother's death in 1928, he officially called himself Kämmerer-Rohrig after her maiden name . After the birth of their second son, the young family moved to a larger apartment in Berlin in 1929. At the beginning of the 1930s, Kämmerer-Rohrig was asked to participate in an exhibition at the Berlin Academy, in which Max Liebermann also took part. In 1934 he became a member of the Association of Berlin Artists . He was then able to take part in other exhibitions in Berlin and other large cities that made his name known. During the Second World War , the family moved into an idyllic wooden house in Kleinmachnow on the outskirts of Berlin. Kämmerer-Rohrig was obliged to serve in the war, in which he was used as a tower observer at the train station in Zehlendorf-West. After the end of the war, Kleinmachnow belonged to the Soviet occupation zone. There were no more commissions for the painter and he contacted Schwalenberg again. There was a shortage of living space here and it was not until 1949 that the family was able to move west to Schwalenberg. Artistically Robert Kämmerer-Rohrig tried to pick up where he left off before the war. In the 1950s, pictures were created based on motifs from Schwalenberg's old town and the landscape in the southeast of Lippe. However, interest in his work had waned and the exhibitions in Schwalenberg's town hall brought few sales. Only a small group of loyal admirers of his works could avert economic bankruptcy .

In 1972 the Institute for Lippe Regional Studies became aware of the artistic work of Robert Kämmerer-Rohrig. After much hesitation, the artist agreed to hold a retrospective , which took place in 1974 in the exhibition room of what was then Volksbank Detmold . A total of 45 works from the period from 1909 to 1974 were presented. The exhibition met with a great response from those interested in art, much to the surprise of the artist, who was able to look forward to numerous sales. The late success encouraged him to make 40 more pen drawings of Lippe landscapes and to exhibit them again in the Volksbank in 1976. All exhibits found their buyers.

Robert Kämmerer-Rohrig died on January 19, 1977 at the age of almost 84 in Schwalenberg. His wife survived him by four years. Both have found their final resting place in the cemetery in Schwalenberg.

plant

Robert Kämmerer-Rohrig made a contribution with his oil paintings , watercolors , etchings and pen and ink drawings with which Schwalenberg strengthened its reputation as a town of painters. He was the only painter who had permanent residence in the city and to whom he devoted more than 56 years of his artistic work.

At the Prussian Academy of the Arts Berlin-Charlottenburg, Friedrich Kallmorgen in particular had initially influenced his painting style. However, the young artist soon tried to find his personal style and preferred strong colors and the great perspective. In many of his landscapes, the horizon dominates, in which the streets and paths disappear in the distance. When he was a prisoner of war in France, he began to make pencil and ink drawings on small pieces of cardboard. He took up this idea again later after the war, but now used larger formats for his pen and ink drawings, which were recognized by an expert audience. In the mid-1930s he was at the height of his artistic work. He had further developed his large-format oil paintings, the large-scale landscapes depicted varied from light to dark and from soft to hard, but always remained associated with the naturalistic , neo-romantic style. The modern styles such as expressionism , cubism and other abstract painting hardly touched Kämmerer-Rohrig and he remained true to his painting style until the end of his life.

... Now that everything has been presented so excellently, I didn't care so much about the object, but actually only that it should express strength, whether it was a twilight that suggested a moon behind a dark forest or a cloudy sky full of movement and strength in expression, that didn't matter. That which is powerful in everything had to be indicated and expressed, that it spoke to the beholder, spoke from the soul ... But above all one has to create with joy, as Walther von der Vogelweide said: "Nothing good without joy. " Then it is not work, then it is an activity that is fun. If you can do something, time does not matter, then if you can do it, it makes you happy, then you reach your goal much faster and easier.

In the 1950s, Kämmerer-Rohrig worked on large-format landscape oil paintings in his typical style. He painted motifs in and around Schwalenberg and also took on commissioned work. He was increasingly creating large-format black and white ink and pen drawings, which made up the majority of his works in the last years of his life. The result was a cycle of 40 works on the Lippe landscape and Lippe buildings, which were first exhibited in Detmold in 1976 . Today his pictures are mostly in private hands.

literature

  • Fritz Bartelt, Brigitte Kühling-Sandhaus: Robert Kämmerer-Rohrig - painter and draftsman in Lippe . Lippischer Heimatbund, Detmold 1981.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fritz Bartelt, Brigitte Kühling-Sandhaus: Robert Kämmerer-Rohrig - painter and draftsman in Lippe. Pp. 4-9. Lippischer Heimatbund, Detmold 1981
  2. ^ Fritz Bartelt, Brigitte Kühling-Sandhaus: Robert Kämmerer-Rohrig - painter and draftsman in Lippe. Pp. 9-14. Lippischer Heimatbund, Detmold 1981
  3. ^ Fritz Bartelt, Brigitte Kühling-Sandhaus: Robert Kämmerer-Rohrig - painter and draftsman in Lippe. Pp. 17-35. Lippischer Heimatbund, Detmold 1981
  4. ^ Fritz Bartelt, Brigitte Kühling-Sandhaus: Robert Kämmerer-Rohrig - painter and draftsman in Lippe. Pp. 35-48. Lippischer Heimatbund, Detmold 1981
  5. ^ Fritz Bartelt, Brigitte Kühling-Sandhaus: Robert Kämmerer-Rohrig - painter and draftsman in Lippe. Pp. 9-28. Lippischer Heimatbund, Detmold 1981
  6. ↑ Extracts from Kämmerer-Rohrig's biography in Fritz Bartelt, Brigitte Kühling-Sandhaus: Robert Kämmerer-Rohrig - painter and draftsman in Lippe. P. 21
  7. ^ Fritz Bartelt, Brigitte Kühling-Sandhaus: Robert Kämmerer-Rohrig - painter and draftsman in Lippe. Pp. 34-39. Lippischer Heimatbund, Detmold 1981
personal data
SURNAME Chamberlain-Rohrig, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and draftsman
DATE OF BIRTH March 11, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Wahlershausen
DATE OF DEATH 19th January 1977
Place of death Schwalenberg