Walter Gotschke

Walter Gotschke (* 14. October 1912 in Bennisch ; † 28. August 2000 in Rangendingen ) was a German graphic artist and newspaper cartoonist , who through his car - and Grand Prix - Illustrations gained worldwide notoriety.

Life

The first years

Walter Gotschke was born on October 14, 1912, the sixth of seven children of a master farrier and wagon smith in Bennisch , Freudenthal district , in what was then Austrian Silesia , which in 1918 belonged to the newly formed Czechoslovakia after the loss of the First World War . From early childhood he drew obsessively, first the animals of his rural surroundings, from the age of 11 the automobiles of the early days that he saw. Between 1928 and 1932 Gotschke studied architecture , structural engineering and engineering at the building school / construction technology in Brno , at the gates of which the first Masaryk Grand Prix took place in 1930. For the next year's race in 1931 he won the poster competition announced by the Czech Automobile Club . With the club armband, Gotschke now had free access to all racing events taking place. His sketches of these races were published in the daily newspaper. After graduating, Walter Gotschke worked as a freelance commercial artist instead of the architect he had learned. In the spring of 1938, due to the worsening political situation in Czechoslovakia after the annexation of Austria to the German Reich, he undertook a career orientation tour with car companies in Germany. On June 1, 1938, he got a job at Daimler-Benz in Stuttgart . His area of responsibility included technical drawings, brochures and advertisements for aircraft and ship engines. After work, the Mercedes-Benz racing posters were created, which were sent worldwide after a victory. At the end of 1939 Gotschke married the professor's daughter Erika Krohmer (born July 18, 1915) from Brno, whom he brought to Stuttgart. In 1940 he won the in-house calendar competition, and when it was carried out with gouache he found his painting technique, which he retained for life.

War years

After 1940, due to the production changeover in the Second World War, advertising activity at Daimler-Benz was throttled, Walter Gotschke was fired. As a freelance graphic designer, he worked for book and magazine publishers until he was drafted into military service. On behalf of Signal magazine , as a special leader of the propaganda company , he accompanied a tank regiment in Operation Barbarossa to Leningrad from July to October 1941 in order to report on it in drawings. In 1942 he received the Carl Schnebel Prize for the best war press drawing of the year. From November 1942, Walter Gotschke drew as commissioned in southern France, including the self-sinking of the Vichy fleet in the naval port of Toulon and the dismantling of the French fleet and the “cleaning up of the old town” in Marseille . In 1943, A. Daehler-Verlag put together a portfolio with Gotschke original drawings from the Russian campaign on behalf of OKH for the “ Führer’s birthday ” . When it was presented, Adolf Hitler asked about the artist, whereupon Gotschke was requested to return to Germany by dispatch from France. As a result of the worsening war events, the meeting did not take place; Gotschke was received by Colonel General Guderian , who transferred him to the armored troop schools. In July 1943 Gotschke's wife Erika was evacuated to relatives in Karlsthal ( Sudetenland ) with her daughters born in 1941 and 1943 , where the children died of smoke inhalation in January 1945 from a smoldering fire . At the end of January Erika Gotschke received permission to go to see her husband in the barracks in Potsdam - Krampnitz . Shortly afterwards his unit was relocated to Landeck in Tyrol, with his wife accompanying him. She found accommodation on the wall above the village of Pfunds, 30 kilometers away . Walter Gotschke visited her there and one day stayed there entirely. He reported to a Swabian infantry unit stationed in Pfunds, but helped the farmers clear up avalanche debris and looked after their cows. After the end of the war in 1945, he and the Swabian infantry unit, which was added to the retreating Italian army, were taken prisoner by the Americans in Bavaria , where he was soon released and allowed to return to Tyrol as a homeless ethnic German from Czechoslovakia. He resumed his work as a cowherd with the farmers. It didn't take long for his mountain and cow sketches to appear in the Tyrolean daily newspaper .

The auto-self-taught

Walter Gotschke began to become known through his publications. He received orders from companies and publishers and lived in a small studio in the Stubai Valley . In search of work, constantly on the move between Innsbruck and Bregenz, one day in Bregenz he saw the American cars that had come over from Switzerland for the festival week, and whose design impressed him very much and never let go. A third daughter was born to him in February 1946. Daimler-Benz, for whom he was already working as a commercial artist from Tyrol, brought him back to Stuttgart at the end of 1949. There he got in touch with the editor-in-chief of Das Auto magazine , in which Gotschke's article Automobilarchitektur - An almost too late consideration of the form problems in automobile construction , inspired by the design of American cars, appeared. The Daimler-Benz board of management saw the article as a public criticism of the design of its vehicles, which is why the Walter Gotschke company withdrew its orders. In 1952, Ford Germany hired Gotschke as a graphic designer for the printed advertising material for their newly designed Taunus M model. In some cases he also worked for Schenk trailers, MAN Nutzfahrzeuge , Klöckner-Humboldt-Deutz ( Magirus-Deutz ), Kässbohrer , Shell , Maybach , Goodyear , Gulf Benzol, Austin , Ford England, Fiat , Nissan , Marwitz glasses, Volkswagen , Clymer Publications and others. In February 1955 Gotschke had a son. As far as the work schedule allowed, Walter Gotschke attended automobile races . From mid-1960 onwards, drawings were increasingly replaced by photographs in advertising . Gotschke therefore shifted his work focus to illustrations on current and historical topics of automobile sport in magazines and automobile publications such as Motor-Revue, ams , Sports-Illustrated, Quattroroute, Road & Track, Automobile Quarterly and others. In 1976 his wife Erika Gotschke died of stomach cancer . In 1981 Walter Gotschke married his niece Gerhild Drücker, b. Klenner (born February 19, 1938 in Neisse , Upper Silesia ), who supported him in his work. His journalistic work was supplemented by exhibitions, he became a member of the Automotive Fine Art Society (AFAS) in the USA, and auto art collectors began to be interested in his works. After the 1984 Dallas Grand Prix, visual disturbances irritated Gotschke's right eye; the one on the left was blind years ago from a minor stroke . The following year he became completely blind. At the beginning of 1990 he moved to the country with his second wife, where he died on August 28, 2000.

credentials

Harry Niemann: Die Sternenmaler, Motorbuch Verlag, 2008, pp. 20–49, ISBN 978-3-613-02864-7 .
The autodidact Christian Steiger, Mercedes-Benz Classic, 04-2003, pp. 34–40.
Auto-motivated: no other artist captured the automotive zeitgeist better than Walter Gotschke Reinhard Bogena, Markt, Cabrio Revue, June 6/92, pp. 36–40.
Walter Gotschke: Capturing Movement on Paper Jacques Vaucher, VINTAGE motorsport, Nov / Dec 1991, P. 54-55.
Signs of the Times Corinna Freudig, auto motor und sport, 21/1992, pp. 216–219.
Pressed on the tube: passionate car painter Rainer Schneekloth, iwz, 23. – 29. March 1985, title page, pp. 6-10.
They were there: Walter Gotschke I DRAW CARS Reinhard Seiffert, christophorus, No. 151 / February 1981, pp. 22-26.
"Walter Gotschke: Picasso on the racetrack - photos with a paintbrush", Peter Groshupf, hobby: magazin der technik, October 26, 1981, pp. 19-27.
Car artist by vocation Reinhard Bogena, Drive International, 10/97, pp. 62–65.

WALTER GOTSCHKE Perhaps the world's greatest automotive artist, John Lamm, ROAD & TRACK, November 1978, pp. 20–28.
Automobile Quarterly Magazin: Vol 2 No 2: recollection of an enthusiast - the illustrations of walter gotschke
Automobile Quarterly Magazine: Vol 4 No 1: RACING IMPRESSIONS
Automobile Quarterly Magazine: Vol 6 No 3: The Grand Prix Cars of The Thirties
Automobile Quarterly Magazin: Vol 6 No 4: Is Your car an EGG or a POTATO?
Automobile Quarterly Magazine: Vol 7 No 1: The Caracciola Story
Automobile Quarterly Magazine: Vol 8 No 1: AUTO UNION RACING CARS
Automobile Quarterly Magazine: Vol 9 No 2: PORSCHE: RACING PORTFOLIO
Automobile Quarterly Magazine: Vol 11 No 3: The Grand Prix Cars of the Forties
Automobile Quarterly Magazin: Vol 15 No 4: ADLER The Eagle from Frankfurt
Automobile Quarterly Magazine: Vol 20 No 1: The Grand Prix Cars of the Fifties
Automobile Quarterly Magazin: Vol 24 No 1: The power and glory of Mercedes-Benz, as captured by its most gifted witness
Automobile Quarterly Magazine: Vol 38 No 3: The Grand Prix Cars of the Twenties
The Color and Emotion of Le Mans ", Sports Illustrated, June 23, 1958, pp. 20-24.
I draw cars ", Herbert Buzas, Die Wochenpost (Austria), August 9, 1947, p. 5.

Web links

"Walter Gotschke - picture archive"

personal data
SURNAME	Gotschke, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German graphic artist, press illustrator and automobile illustrator
DATE OF BIRTH	October 14, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH	Bennisch
DATE OF DEATH	August 28, 2000
Place of death	Rank things