Rudolf Heinisch

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rudolf Heinisch in a self-portrait from 1937

Rudolf Heinisch (born May 24, 1896 in Leipzig , † November 22, 1956 in Berlin ) was a German painter, graphic artist and set designer . In Frankfurt am Main he developed his own style, coming from expressionist painting in figurative drawings, graphics and paintings, and is now part of the New Objectivity .

Life

Childhood and youth

Rudolf Heinisch was the youngest of three children from Leopoldine and Gustav Heinisch. The father, from Lower Silesia , was a trained printer and co-editor of Saxon SPD newspapers. In 1902 the family moved to Frankfurt am Main. There Rudolf Heinisch learned the profession of lithographer at the company Kornsand & Co. Afterwards he completed an apprenticeship at the Frankfurt School of Applied Arts, a. a. as a student of Prof. Franz Karl Delavilla .

First World War

As an involuntary combatant in the First World War , he experienced the trench warfare in France and was seriously injured in the left hand in 1918. His first pictures were expressionist prints on the subjects of "military hospital" and "horror of war".

Rudolf Heinisch, portrait of Paul Hindemith, 1931

Time of the Weimar Republic

In 1919/1920 he went on study trips to Vienna , Florence and Paris . Back in Frankfurt he moved into a studio in the local Carmelite monastery (studio neighbors: Benno Elkan , Hans Feibusch ). While socializing with Hans Flesch , Hermann Scherchen and Friedl Schramm, he met Paul Hindemith in 1921 . Both hit it off right away and remained friends until Heinisch's death. Heinisch was the best man at Hindemith's marriage to Gertrud Rottenberg in 1924 and was named " House Painter of the Minimax Chapel", nickname of Hindemith's Amar Quartet .

From 1919 to 1934 Heinisch was a member of the Frankfurter Künstlerbund and provided a. a. in the Städelsche Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt, in the Museum Folkwang in Essen and in the Städtische Galerie Nürnberg. In 1931 he received the Hessian State Prize. In the Hessian art scene he was referred to as "a coming man". As a set designer, in 1928 he designed the much acclaimed set for the premiere of “ Schwejk ” in the Frankfurt theater.

time of the nationalsocialism

Heinisch's artistic career ended abruptly with the “ seizure of power ” by the National Socialists . In 1938 he was in Hamburg , Berlin and Nuremberg with four paintings, three watercolors and ten prints in the femoral exhibition " Degenerate Art " and was classified as "technically good, judicially judged". His pictures hung there next to those of Otto Dix and Erich Heckel . His best-known painting, the portrait of Paul Hindemith , was removed from the Städel Museum in Frankfurt by the National Socialists , exhibited in the “ Degenerate Art ” exhibition and then destroyed as “unusable”. Thanks to an illustration in Hans Mersmann , Modern Music since Romanticism , a photographic reproduction of the image has been preserved, which is still depicted on Hindemith posters and record covers today. The three other pictures exhibited as “Degenerate Art” and later destroyed were oil paintings with the titles Der Volksredner , Fabrik and Frühling . Since Heinisch had no artistic perspective since 1933, he went to Berlin, where friends (including Karl Friedrich Brust ) helped him to get a job as a press draftsman at Ullstein-Verlag . In Berlin he met his wife Erika, née Ditt, and married her in 1934. The best man was Paul Hindemith, who had since moved to Berlin with his wife. The two friends and their families remained in close contact until the Hindemiths emigrated in 1938. In contrast to many other artists, Heinisch could not make up his mind to leave Germany, but refused to accept the Nazi ideology and demonstratively entered the Catholic Church with his wife during the war. He was one of the friends of the resistance fighter Theodor Haubach , whom he portrayed in 1942. Shortly before the end of the war, his son Philipp Heinisch was born, who became a criminal defense attorney and then also a freelance artist (judicial caricature).

post war period

After the end of the war, Heinisch resumed his artistic activity. However, like many artists of the “ lost generation ”, he was denied a real rehabilitation and broad recognition of his work. He remained a book illustrator (Safari Verlag) and press illustrator ( Berliner Morgenpost and IBZ). He also got some portrait commissions, for example for the school reformer and SPD politician Hildegard Wegscheider and again for Paul Hindemith. There were no exhibitions of his pictures after the war during his lifetime. Rudolf Heinisch died on November 22, 1956 as a result of sepsis . Attempts to give his oeuvre an appropriate place in the art of his time have met with only modest success. From January 18 to March 6, 1977, the only major retrospective took place in the Frankfurter Kunstverein , where all the pictures that could be collected from private collections were shown. The widow, who outlived her husband by 50 years, sold picture after picture over the years to make a living. One of the last remaining works in the family, the painting Trinker from 1925, found its way into the Gerhard Schneider Collection Ostracized Art and was shown in 2012 and 2013 on the occasion of the anniversaries of the Feme exhibitions “ Degenerate Art ”.

Rudolf Heinisch, Juxplatz, 1931

The work

Heinisch's style of painting moved between Expressionism and New Objectivity . The art historian Rainer Zimmermann coined the expression “expressive realism” for the style formed by Heinisch and other painters of his generation. Heinisch found his subjects among the little people in the big cities: bar scenes, workers' meetings, work breaks, allotment gardens, returning home at night. Other motifs were fairgrounds, dancers ( Tatjana Barbakoff , Lizzi Waldmüller ) and artists ( Enrico Rastelli ). In addition to artists such as Max Beckmann and Richard Scheibe , Heinisch was able to assert himself artistically with success: exhibitions in 1922 in the Schames art salon , 1928 in the Prestel gallery. According to the testimony of Curt Gravenkamp, ​​the managing director of the Frankfurter Kunstverein from 1930 to 1962, Rudolf Heinisch was one of the "most active and most important representatives of the younger direction of Frankfurt painting". Under Gravenkamp's aegis , an important exhibition took place in 1929 with his studio neighbor, the sculptor Benno Elkan . In the same year a detailed review of the works appeared in the Parisian magazine La Revue Moderne , in which it was said, “When Heinisch will have calmed down in his painting - he is only 32 years old - then he will have found his right balance and with it that give German tradition a new upswing. You have to remember the name Heinisch. ”After joining the Catholic Church, Heinisch also took up religious themes in his paintings from 1945 onwards.

Selected works (oil on canvas or wood)

  • Erna, 1919
  • Lovers by the sea, 1920
  • Girlfriends, 1921
  • Man in the Sea, 1922
  • Portrait RR, 1922
  • Woman of no importance, 1923
  • Big city, 1923
  • Lovers at the window, 1924
  • Portrait of a woman, 1924
  • Bridge, 1925
  • Drinker, 1925
  • Blue girl, 1925
  • Painter and model, 1926
  • People's Orator, 1926 (destroyed by the National Socialists)
  • Factory, approx. 1926 (destroyed by the National Socialists)
  • Vorstadtstrasse, 1926
  • Old woman in the garden, 1926
  • Blue girl, 1926
  • E. in red coat, 1926
  • Spring, 1926 (destroyed by the National Socialists)
  • Portrait of a gentleman, 1927
  • Sleeping girls, 1927
  • Nocturnal couple, 1927
  • Work tower, 1927
  • Factory scene with stairs, 1927
  • Work break in the factory, 1927
  • Girls in the Garden, 1927
  • Parents in the garden, 1927
  • Nude outdoors, 1927
  • Portrait of a woman, around 1927
  • Bathers, 1928
  • Jumping, 1928
  • Mine, 1928
  • On the scaffolding, 1928
  • The beautiful Mary, 1928
  • Mirror cabinet, 1928
  • Man with a Flag, 1928
  • The Juggler ( Enrico Rastelli ), 1929
  • Dancer ( Tatjana Barbakoff ), 1929
  • Black panther, 1929
  • Parents in the garden, 1930
  • Juxplatz, 1931
  • Portrait of Kurt Scheer , 1931
  • Girl at the Window, 1931
  • Portrait of Paul Hindemith seated, 1931 (destroyed by the National Socialists)
  • Portrait Paul Hindemith , 1931
  • Erika Heinisch, 1934
  • Self-Portrait, 1937
  • Portrait of Theodor Haubach , 1942
  • Portrait of Jan Verkade , 1946
  • My son paints, 1950
  • The bridge, 1950
  • Paul Hindemith conducts, ca.1950
  • Magnolias, 1954
  • Limburg Cathedral , 1956
  • The harvest, 1956
  • Paul Hindemith with the viola, 1956
  • Santa Croce in Florence , 1956
  • The reapers, undated

Permanent exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

Group exhibitions

  • 1922 "German Art", Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt
  • 1925 industrial exhibition in Essen
  • 1928 The beautiful person, Darmstadt
  • 1928 German contemporary art, Norishalle Nuremberg
  • 1931 Die Ecke, Kunstverein Kassel
  • 1980 Art in Resistance instead of Adaptation, Karlsruhe, Frankfurt, Braunschweig, Munich
  • 2012 “Modernism in the Pillory”, Aschaffenburg
  • 2013 “Ostracized, Persecuted, Forgotten?” Art and Artists under National Socialism. Ephraim-Palais, City Museum Berlin

References to Rudolf Heinisch and illustrations of his pictures in

  • Das Kunstblatt - monthly magazine for artistic development in painting, sculpture, architecture, handicrafts , 10th year. Edited by Paul Westheim. Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, Potsdam 1926, p. 44 ff.
  • Agnes Waldstein : The industrial image: of the becoming of a new art . Furche-Kunstverlag, Berlin 1929, p. 38 ff. With illustration.
  • Franz Roh : Degenerate Art - Art Barbarism in the Third Reich . Fackelträger-Verlag, Hanover 1962, pp. 186-187.
  • Rainer Zimmermann : The Art of the Lost Generation. German expressive realism painting from 1925–1975 . Econ-Verlag, Düsseldorf u. a. 1980, p. 186 u. P. 243 with illustration. Revised new edition under the title Expressive Realism. Painting of the Lost Generation , Hirmer, Munich 1994.

Web links

Commons : Rudolf Heinisch  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Mersmann, Modern music since the romantic era . Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, Potsdam 1929, p. 208, panel X.
  2. ↑ Another illustration of the Hindemith portrait by Rudolf Heinisch u. a. in La Musica Moderna , No. 40 a. 41. Fratelli Fabbri Editori, Milan 1967.
  3. ↑ Inventory numbers of the paintings in the exhibition "Degenerate Art" a. a. proven in Klaus Gallwitz (Ed.), ReVision: Die Moderne im Städel 1906-1937 . Municipal gallery in the Städelschen Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt 191, p. 137 ff.
  4. ↑ Berlin ABC. Paul Hindemith's private address book, 1927 to 1938. Ed. Christine Fischer-Defoy and Susanne Schaal with a foreword by Walter Jens. Transit Verlag; Berlin, 1999. p. 216 ff.
  5. ^ Original in the possession of the city of Darmstadt
  6. ↑ Announcement in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of January 13, 1977, p. 19 and review of the exhibition by Christa von Helmolt in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of January 26, 1977, p. 33.
  7. ↑ Quoted in Georg Bussmann, brochure on the Rudolf Heinisch retrospective at the Frankfurter Kunstverein , January 18 - March 6, 1977, Haus am Römerberg, Frankfurt a. M.
  8. ^ Clément Morro, Les Artistes vus aux récents Salons - Exposition de Nuremberg; in La Revue Moderne illustrée des Arts et de la Vie , Volume 29, No 5, March 15, 1929, pp. 6–8 with numerous illustrations.
personal data
SURNAME Heinisch, Rudolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Heinisch, Rudolf Wilhelm (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, graphic artist and stage designer
DATE OF BIRTH May 24, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH November 22, 1956
Place of death Berlin