Toni Wolter

Toni Wolter (1907)

Anton "Toni" Wolter (born September 20, 1875 in Friesdorf near Bonn , Rhine Province ; † April 11, 1929 in Rüngsdorf near Bonn) was a German landscape painter from the Düsseldorf School . His industrial paintings were particularly important .

Life

Wolter, son of the Friesdorf brewer Lorenz Wolter (1843–1905) and his wife, Elisabeth Christine, known as “Stine”, née Pützfeld (1848–1905), owner of the Godesberg restaurant “Zum Gambrinus”, came from a respected family from which among other things the Benedictines Maurus and Placidus Wolter had emerged. His talent for drawing was already noticed when he went to kindergarten. In 1882 he started school at the Burgschule in Godesberg, and then went to the Hubertinum , a Godesberg private school. When his cousin Lina Frings he learned during the school holidays in Moselweiß the watercolors . Due to poor school performance, he left the Hubertinum prematurely and began an apprenticeship as a house painter in 1889 with the painter Franz Le Roi in Godesberg, he passed the journeyman's examination in 1892. Then he went to the vocational college of the city of Cologne , the forerunner of the Cologne factory schools , where the study conditions, however, gave him did not agree, which is why he decided to go on the roll . The wanderings took him via Hanover, Berlin, Munich and Constance to Switzerland and Italy , where he traveled to Tuscany, Rome and Naples.

When he returned to Godesberg, he worked as a sign and decoration painter. When his parents gave up the Godesberg inn in 1897 and sold their shares in the Friesdorfer brewery and moved to Vallendar , Wolter began studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy , where Ernst Roeber and Willy Spatz taught him in the elementary class. With fellow students he visited the Paris World Exhibition in 1900 . Then he went to Eugen Dücker's landscape class . He became his favorite student and was allowed to work on a monumental landscape commissioned by the Schifferbörse in Ruhrort . Wolter interrupted his studies for a few months in 1902 in order to get to know the "Nordic conception of nature" from the Norwegian painter Frits Thaulow . There he became acquainted with the landscape painter Eugen Bracht . In 1904 Wolter became a student member of the Düsseldorf artists' association Malkasten . In Düsseldorf, Hans and Josef Kohlschein , Robert Seuffert , Walter Heimig , Richard Bloos , Max Westfeld , Carl Plückebaum and Ernst Inden were among his closer friends. From 1904 to 1907 he was involved in the organization of artist festivals in the Malkasten House , such as the "Festival of the Black Tulip" and the festival "Im Reiche des Tanzes". In 1913 Wolter became a full member of the paint box. There he met his wife, the landscape gardener Else Schlesinger (1881-1918), daughter of the German-American industrialist Adolf Schlesinger (1840-1922), whom he married in 1907. In the same year he went to Dresden for a short time to work as Eugen Bracht's assistant. Through this he came into contact with industrial painting. During this time, his landscape paintings were successfully exhibited in Bonn and Düsseldorf art galleries. In 1908 he began painting for the Beuron monastery on behalf of a relative, the Benedictine Placidus Wolter . On the advice of his father-in-law, Wolter took part in the theater painting studio “Die Bühne” in Düsseldorf, an engagement that turned out to be a financial failure and from which he left in 1909. With the money raised, he initially financed the establishment of a guesthouse and a studio in Düsseldorf. Shortly thereafter, however, Wolter and his wife moved into a hut in the Eifel , where they also rented beds.

Workers in the steam hammer mill

They spent the winter of 1910 in Santa Margherita Ligure . In 1911 Wolter in Rapallo was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and a heart valve defect. In the artist colony of Rapallo he frequented Gerhart Hauptmann , Siegfried and Cosima Wagner as well as the landscape painters Hans Thoma and Gustav Schönleber . From Rapallo, the Wolter couple traveled on to Rome, Naples and Pompeii, where they made colorful studies of the later “images of Italy”. In 1912 the couple stayed in Karlsruhe , where they rented a studio and a city apartment. From there they traveled to German low mountain ranges, including to the Beuron monastery, where the couple temporarily lived. In 1914, at the beginning of the First World War , Wolter was written as “not suitable for use in the war”. In Werdohler punch and hammer his father, he began to work and study factory operations in the form of sketches as a draftsman. During this time he created his first large oil painting, The old steam hammer mill . Frequent illness soon led to the fact that he was released from work in Werdohl and moved to his wife in Karlsruhe. The daughter Brigitta was born there in 1915. In 1916 the family moved to a large house in Hüfingen , where the twins Gottfried and Wolfgang were born in 1918. In the premature birth of the twins, his wife Else died in childbed. In addition, the loss of war bonds plunged Wolter into a crisis, which he got under control through the emergency sale of pictures. Because he was not allowed to move to relatives in Godesberg because of the occupation of the Rhineland , he decided to move into accommodation in Karlsruhe with his children on a temporary basis.

It was not until 1919 that he succeeded in obtaining permission to move to Godesberg, where he bought a house on Karl-Finkelnburg-Strasse in 1920 with funds from his father-in-law. In 1921 he met the painter and music teacher Marthe Sauer, the daughter of the Wiesbaden architect August Sauer and niece of the Salzgitter drilling contractor Anton Raky , whom he married in 1922. During this time he dealt again with industrial painting and created views of the Rhenish lignite mining area . In 1923/1924 he painted Raky's oil rigs in Nienhagen on behalf of Raky . Racy's business friend, the industrialist Paul Silverberg , commissioned him to paint more "brown coal pictures ". On the mediation of the Bad Nauheim spa doctor Franz Groedel , with whom Wolter had been friends since 1911, he received the order in 1925 from the German-American industrialist Henry K. Janssen , whose textile machine factory "Wyomissing Industries" ( Thun & Janssen ) in Wyomissing ( Pennsylvania ) to paint. Wolter and his wife traveled there via New York in September 1925. In a short time, the company created 15 small and medium-sized oil paintings as well as some charming landscape paintings that Toni Wolter later gave to the family of his client. The execution of three large, wall-filling paintings was no longer possible because initially the unfavorable weather (snowfall) and then a sudden cardiac insufficiency prevented Toni Wolter from further work. On the trip home, which the couple set out in November 1925, Wolter received permission from the US military authorities to paint a picture of the New York skyline from Governors Island .

After returning from the United States, Wolter enjoyed brisk demand from industry. The Rheinbraun AG , the IG Farben , the RWE energy plants in Bitterfeld and Lausitz as well as some large public utility ordered portraits of their industrial plants, which one could publish but especially in business reports on trade fairs, congresses. In 1928 Wolter reached the height of his artistic recognition when he was represented at the annual meeting of the Association of German Engineers in the Folkwang Museum in Essen with “brown coal pictures” at the “Art and Technology” exhibition. Cologne galleries also exhibited his industrial landscapes. After Wolter had caught a bad cold while visiting his daughter Brigitta in January 1929, his health deteriorated. He then went to a private clinic in Blankenheim an der Ahr , where his last pictures were taken. At the age of 54, he died in April 1929 in Rüngsdorf near Bonn, where he had been transferred due to an inflammation of the kidneys. He was buried in the family grave of the castle cemetery in Godesberg.

Works (selection)

• The old steam hammer mill , 1914
• Brown coal pictures , 1920s
• Wyomissing Industries , 1925

literature

• Horst Heidermann : “until one day, even after my death, you discover a flower” - on the trail of the painter Toni Wolter (1875–1929) . In: Godesberger Heimatblätter: Annual issue of the Association for Home Care and Home History Bad Godesberg eV , ISSN  0436-1024 , Issue 37 (1999), Association for Home Care and Home History Bad Godesberg , Bad Godesberg 2000, pp. 5–59
• Marte Wolter: Toni Wolter on the 100th birthday . In: Godesberger Heimatblätter , issue 13, p. 60

Web links

Commons : Toni Wolter  - Collection of Images

• Artist profile Toni Wolter 1875–1929 , biography on the portal treffpunkt-kunst.net
• Anton Wolter , Auction Results on the Portal artnet .de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Horst Heidermann , Klaus Vollmer: Millionaires & Patrons. Ferdinand Thun and Heinrich Janssen from Barmen. Gustav Oberländer from Düren . Edition Köndgen, Wuppertal 2014, ISBN 978-3-939843-467 , p. 54 ( Google Books )
2. ^ Burgfriedhof , website in the portal godesberger-markt.de , accessed on November 6, 2016