Walter Corsep

Walter Corsep (born November 20, 1862 in Wittenberg , † May 19, 1944 in Erfurt ) was a German professional officer and painter .

Life

He was the son of Captain Ernst Wilhelm Paul C., who was temporarily stationed in Wittenberg, and was born by Eugenie Alexandria. Fisherman. In 1863 the family moved to Düben , where Corsep senior took over the position of chief of the 3rd mounted battery of the 3rd field artillery regiment. First receiving private tuition and then attending the local school, Corsep junior later came to institutions in Erfurt, Wittenberg, Königsberg and Berlin . In 1882, according to family tradition, he joined the 71st Infantry Regiment in Erfurt as a flag junior and in 1883 became second lieutenant . This was followed by commands as an inspection officer at the war school in Neisse and to the war ministry in Berlin. During the latter stay, Corsep also attended the painting academy there. Kaiser Wilhelm II , who became aware of Corsep's painterly arts, paid for these lessons from his private box. On his orders, Corsep then went to the cadet house at Plön Castle as an educator to give Crown Prince Wilhelm painting and drawing lessons. After further service in his original Erfurt regiment, Corsep was transferred from 1904 to 1906 to the East Asian occupation brigade Tientsin , where he was chief of the mounted company of the 2nd regiment. After another service in the home regiment, he left the army in 1912 as a battalion commander in the 144 infantry regiment in Metz . Corsep then took up residence in Erfurt. When the First World War began in 1914, he was given the post of battalion commander in the 71st Landwehr Infantry Regiment, which was deployed in the Vosges . Later he was used in other reserve regiments on the Eastern Front as well as in Austro-Hungarian formations. In 1917 Corsep was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class . After the end of the war in 1918 he fought in volunteer units against the separation of Upper Silesia from the Reich. Wounded twice, he finally left the army as a lieutenant colonel .

Even during his military service, but especially since he was retired , Corsep worked with great intensity as a painter. He primarily made oil paintings with views of the city of Erfurt, to which he added historical staffage, landscape paintings with views of Thuringia and historical depictions of battles. But von Düben, where he evidently had a happy childhood, also painted several paintings, mostly with historicizing depictions of the events of the liberation wars of 1813. Corsep had a politically conservative national stance. His monarchist worldview was completely destroyed by his defeat in World War I, which radicalized him not only politically but also culturally. This prompted him to conduct a personal Kulturkampf in Erfurt, in the course of which he made some caricatures with anti-Semitic statements, which were published in the Erfurt "Echo Germania". Corsep's paintings were printed in many publications about Erfurt, but also about Düben and the Dübener Heide . Even today his pictures are traded with rising prices. There are pictures of Corsep in various museums, such as the Erfurt City Museum and the Landscape Museum of the Dübener Heide in Bad Düben.

Literary works

• Elementary school and civic education. Cramer, 1917, DNB 57263935X .
• The education of our army offspring ... Erfurt 1915, DNB 579298647 .
• Pre-war errors. 1929.

literature

• Johannes Bohrmann: Excerpts from the local history of the city of Düben. Düben 1935, DNB 572465017 .
• Steffen Raßloff : Escape into the national community. The Erfurt bourgeoisie between the Empire and the Nazi dictatorship. Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-412-11802-8 , pp. 177, 198, 277 ff., 263 ff.
• Hans-Joachim Böttcher : Corsep, Walter. In: Important historical personalities of the Düben Heath. (= Series of publications of the Working Group for Central German Family Research. No. 237). Leipzig 2012, DNB 1024972186 , pp. 19-20.