Walter Gemm

Ernst Walter Gemm (born September 27, 1898 in Halberstadt ; † March 17, 1973 in Osterwieck ) was a German vedute and landscape painter, whose life and work is closely linked to his native town of Halberstadt and the northern Harz foreland.

life and work

Childhood, youth, education

Ernst Walter Gemm was born in Halberstadt, the second of seven children of the glove maker Max Gemm. From 1904 to 1912 Gemm attended the Lower City Elementary School. In the years 1912 to 1916 he completed an apprenticeship as a decorative painter . In 1916 he attended courses with Adolf Rettelbusch in Magdeburg. The military service in the First World War in France from 1917 to 1918 and until February 1919 in Poland and Belarus interrupted his artistic training. From April 1919 onwards, a scholarship from the Halberstadt Buchhorn Foundation enabled him to study at the Magdeburg School of Applied Arts , specializing in decorative landscape and architectural painting with Adolf Rettelbusch.

After studying for a year, Gemm found a job as a draftsman for goods packaging in the graphic workshops in Bruchsal until March 1921 . At the same time he attended evening courses at the Karlsruhe Art Academy . Also in 1921 he married Frieda Pohle (1901–1948) for the first time.

In 1923 Gemm settled in his hometown as a decorative painter or freelance painter and graphic artist. In 1923 he had his first exhibition in the Halberstadt Art Association, another followed in 1926 in the City Museum of Halberstadt. It was the beginning of years of fruitful collaboration with the then museum director August Hemprich. In 1935 Gemm was commissioned to paint five history pictures from prehistory and early history for the Museum Halberstadt . In 1939 he painted three large oil paintings for a waiting room at Halberstadt Central Station. In 1926, Gemm and his childhood friend Wilhelm Pramme decided to go on a trip around the world, which ended in Tyrol, where Gemm gave up. A year later Pramme traveled to Central Asia with very little means.

With the outbreak of the Second World War, Gemm was drafted into the Wehrmacht. Between 1939 and 1941 he took part in the French campaign as well as in the war against the Soviet Union . Here, however, he was temporarily exempted from working with the weapon and used exclusively as a war painter . In 1941 Gemm was sent to Germany because of an illness and stayed with a recovery company in Quedlinburg until the end of the war , where he could continue painting. On April 8, 1945, he witnessed the bombing and the almost complete destruction of his hometown, only a few kilometers away, from here.

In 1942 Gemm took part in the exhibition of the Wehrmacht High Command "War and Art" in the Vienna Künstlerhaus with four pictures . For six weeks, this show showed a cross-section of German war painting as well as war painters allied with Germany. Gemm's picture Soviet battery shot up on the Desna was bought in 1945 by the Army History Museum in Vienna .

post war period

In 1945 Gemm organized a first joint art exhibition with other local artists in Thale . He also suggested printing a souvenir folder with twelve colored views of Halberstadt before the destruction. He was involved in the “Cultural Association for the Democratic Renewal of Germany” . In 1948 his wife died after a long illness. In the same year Gemm got involved in the “Halberstadt calls” development campaign. This initiative pursued the goal of breathing new life into the destroyed Halberstadt in a comprehensive, i.e. urban, economic and cultural sense. In 1950 and 1951 Gemm undertook study trips to the Upper Rhine, the Black Forest and Tyrol. In 1952 he married Annemarie Keuthe. 1955 Gemm became a member of the SED , the Urania and later also the regional "Club of Intelligence Professor Hans Kehr ".

From 1956 Walter Gemm illustrated the local magazine Zwischen Harz und Bruch with hundreds of drawings and was also active on the editorial board of the time. In addition to vital commissioned work, his artistic work in this decade was dominated by the clearing of rubble and the reconstruction of Halberstadt. This earned him the nickname "chronicler with pen and brush". In 1962 the Museum of German History in Berlin bought five drawings from him. In 1967 Gemm designed a memorial to April 8, 1945 on the foundation walls of the ruins of the French Church.

A close friendship connected the painter with Walter Mahlke, a photographer from Halberstadt, and with the writer Bert Brennecke. Gemm died on March 17, 1973 in Osterwieck. He was buried in the municipal cemetery in Halberstadt.

Artistic creation

With around 6000 works in over 50 years of creativity, Walter Gemm can be considered one of the most productive painters in his profession. The reason for this also shows that as a freelance painter he was dependent on orders and therefore often had to serve the general taste. The preferred motifs of his 19th century realism paintings are the medieval architecture of Halberstadt and the landscapes of the Harz foreland. His pictures have their own status as documentation of the building stock of Halberstadt before the bombing on April 8, 1945. Gemm always remained true to his conventional painting style, the socialist realism of his time left no traces in his pictures.

Binders

• Halberstadt am Harz. Picture folder with 12 picture plates in bestehorn print from Gemm, Datan, Lipke, Thiemann, Ebeling, Schiel. 1945.

Exhibitions (selection)

• 1923: Halberstädter Kunstverein
• 1926: Solo exhibition in the City Museum in Halberstadt
• 1941: Exhibition of Gemm's war painting from 1939 to 1941 (French and Eastern campaigns) in Vienna
• 1942: Gemm participates with four war pictures in the international exhibition of the High Command of the Wehrmacht "War and Art" in the Vienna Künstlerhaus
• 1946: Group exhibition of local artists in Thale
• 1948: "Halberstadt calls!"

Honors

• 1966: Art Prize of the City of Halberstadt.
• 2001: a Halberstadt secondary school was named after Walter Gemm.

Web links

• Walter Gemm on the website of the secondary school "Walter Gemm" in Halberstadt
• Photo Walter Gemm on the Halberstadt website
• Walter Gemm on artnet

literature

• Uta Siebrecht: Walter Gemm. 1898-1973. Halberstadt 1998.
• 60 years old. In: Between Harz and Bruch , No. 9, September 1958.
• With the sketchbook ... Warnowwerft. In: Between Harz and Bruch , issue 10, October 1959.
• Short notes, in: Between Harz and Bruch , issue 2, February 1960.
• Portrait of Wilhelm Pieck, in: Between Harz and Bruch , issue 2, February 1961.