Rudolf Sleifir

Rudolf Sleifir (born December 22, 1904 in Vienna , † September 15, 1971 in Berlin ) was a German enamelur and engraver .

After his parents moved from Vienna in 1906, Sleifir grew up in Berlin and began an apprenticeship as an enameller in his father's company in 1918. Already during his apprenticeship he dealt with special enamel techniques and enamel painting. The work submitted at the end of his training already won him a state award.

In the years after 1950 he was the last known enamelur and master of his trade who was able to carry out restorations on high-quality Fabergé works as well as on tobacco boxes and medals from the time of Frederick the Great that can be found in German museums. The possibilities of expression through the use of opaque and transparent enamels and the enamel painting were more to him than pure restorations.

The preoccupation with miniatures and the design of Art Nouveau- oriented pieces of jewelery reached its climax in an exhibition in 1963 on the occasion of the centenary of the engravers and chiselers guild in Berlin. From then on, the master dealt with the creation of modern jewelry and increasingly with large-scale, modern representations of sacred art. The altarpiece in the Catholic parish church of St. Canisius in Berlin may serve as the best example .

Literature / sources

• Official commemorative publication for the association conference of engravers, electroplaters, belters and related professions. Verlag "Heimat und Werk", Berlin, May 1963, OCLC 918052763 , p. 11.

• Personal. In: craft and trade. No. 51/52, December 19, 1964, p. 8.

• Obituary for the Reich Guild Master Othmar Sleifir. In: The German engraver, chaser and enamelur, sole official organ of the Reichsinnungsverband des Engraveur- und Gürtlerhandwerk. Volume 14, No. 5, March 1, 1939, p. 82, 2nd column.