Walter Womacka

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Womacka (right) and his wife Hanni with exhibition visitors in front of his picture Young Cooperative Farmer (1960)
Memorial plaque for Walter Womacka on his former home at Wallstrasse 90 in Berlin-Mitte

Walter Womacka (born December 22, 1925 in Horní Jiřetín , Czechoslovakia , † September 18, 2010 in Berlin ) was a German painter , graphic artist and designer of numerous architecture-related works. For twenty years he was rector of the Berlin-Weißensee School of Art .

Life

Walter Womacka in December 2006

Womacka was born the son of a gardener. After training as a decorative painter from 1940 to 1943 at the State School for Ceramics in Teplitz-Schönau , Womacka had to do military service until 1945, during which he was wounded. After the end of the war he first worked as a farm worker and from 1946 he attended the master school for creative craft in Braunschweig with Bruno Müller-Linow . Because his family had moved to Thuringia , he moved to the University of Architecture and Fine Arts in Weimar in 1949, where he studied with Hans Hofmann-Lederer , Hermann Kirchberger and Otto Herbig . After the university's realignment towards architecture , he continued his studies from 1951 to 1952 at the Dresden University of Fine Arts, among others with Fritz Dähn and Rudolf Bergander .

In 1953 Walter Womacka moved to the Berlin-Weißensee School of Art , where he initially worked as an assistant and from 1963 as head of the painting department. Georg Baselitz was one of his most famous students today . In 1965 he was appointed professor . In 1968 he replaced Fritz Dähn as rector of the university and remained so until 1988. From 1959 to 1988 he was vice-president of the Association of Visual Artists of the GDR . He was a member of the SED and was significantly promoted by state and party leader Walter Ulbricht . In 1968 Womacka became a full member of the GDR Academy of Arts . Due to his numerous architecture-related works in public space, the presence of his works in school books and in the form of reproductions, Walter Womacka is still one of the most famous painters in the GDR. From 1969 to 1971 Womacka was a member of the district leadership of the SED in East Berlin.

Womacka was considered a state artist because of his system-compliant work . In 1968, in a newspaper article, he expressly welcomed the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia and thus the suppression of the Prague Spring . During his principal activity at the Art Academy Weissensee least 40 students were political reasons expelled . Shortly before his death, he justified the Berlin Wall in his autobiography with the words: This wall was ugly, but necessary. And in her own way she helped to ensure that there was peace.

Create

The human being, the measure of all things after its implementation (Berlin, Friedrichsgracht; originally at the Ministry of Building, Breite Straße )

He was one of the most important representatives of socialist realism in the GDR. In addition to panel paintings , graphics and watercolors , he also designed glass windows in the 1950s, for example in the building of the former State Council and in the Humboldt University in Berlin , as well as mosaics and enamel work . In 1968 he was in charge of the artistic design of the new buildings on Alexanderplatz . There he designed the 7 × 125 m frieze Our Life at the Teacher's House (1964), the Fountain of Friendship between Nations (1970) and the copper relief at the House of Traveling Man and Space (1971).

Mosaic frieze Our life at the teacher's house in Berlin on the side facing Alexanderplatz

For the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the GDR (1967) he created three large-format murals that were destroyed when the building was demolished in 1995/96. The same threatened his mural The Man, the Measure of All Things (1968) at the Ministry of Building. The federal government, as the owner, wanted to tear down the mural with the building. At the end of a public discussion, the Berlin-Mitte housing association took over the mural in 2010, restored it and repositioned it in another location in October 2013.

Womacka's panel painting When Communists Dream hung in the main foyer of the Palace of the Republic , today it is kept in the depot of the German Historical Museum . Commissioned portraits were created by Walter Ulbricht, the physician Moritz Mebel and the mayors of Berlin Arthur Werner , Friedrich Ebert and Herbert Fechner , among others . In 1987 Womacka portrayed the Syrian dictator Hafiz al-Assad , who gave him a vacation trip to his daughter in Cyprus as a thank you . Since the Third German Art Exhibition in 1953, works by Walter Womacka have been on view at the GDR art exhibition in Dresden.

After 1990, in addition to still life and landscape painting, Womacka dealt with topics of today's ( throwaway ) society and the allegedly freedom-bringing role of the USA. He designed the logo for the Society for the Protection of Civil Rights and Human Dignity , which was founded in 1991 and was temporarily monitored by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution . In 2007, the Walter Womacka Circle of Friends was founded, which is headed by a former manager of the Culture Department of the Central Committee of the SED .

dig

Walter Womacka died on September 18, 2010 in Berlin and was buried on October 7, 2010 in Berlin's central cemetery in Friedrichsfelde .

Womacka left no children of her own. Daughter Uta, whose father died in World War II , brought his wife Hanni into the marriage. The couple lived in Berlin-Mitte and in Loddin on Usedom .

Works (selection)

painting

Construction-related work

Man creates his world - mural in the former Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the GDR
20 Pf - special stamp of the GDR Post 1975 with a mural on the former textile department store Eisenhüttenstadt

Where to find

Works by Walter Womacka are owned by the Nationalgalerie (Berlin) , the Peter Ludwig Collection , the Stadtmuseum Berlin Foundation , the Beeskow Art Archive , the Museum Junge Kunst , Frankfurt (Oder) , the Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues, and many others private collector.

Awards

Filmography

  • 1958: A picture made of 100,000 stones (documentation of the work on the mosaic in the town hall of Eisenhüttenstadt , DEFA ')
  • 1984: A feast for the eyes (documentary about work, television of the GDR )
  • 2003: Show your colors - the painter Walter Womacka (A film by Sabine Skupin, MDR )

literature

General

Contributions to the death of Walter Womacka

Web links

Commons : Walter Womacka  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Erika Rödiger-Diruf (Ed.): Painting is dead, long live painting: 150 years of the Karlsruhe Art Academy. Lindemanns Bibliothek, 2004, ISBN 3-88190-364-X , p. 75.
  2. ↑ Monika Zimmermann: What is actually doing-- ?: 100 GDR celebrities today. Ch. Links Verlag, 1994, ISBN 3-86153-064-3 , p. 295 ff.
  3. ↑ Walter Womacka: My full agreement. In: New Germany . August 27, 1968.
  4. ↑ Bernd Eisenfeld : Hope, Resistance, Resignation. on: deutschland.info , p. 804.
  5. ↑ Hannelore Offner, Klaus Schroeder: Restricted - excluded. Akademie-Verlag, 2000, p. 640.
  6. ↑ W. Womacka: Color Confess. Memories . Berlin 2004, p. 262
  7. ^ Walter Womacka: Bekennennen , Verlag Das Neue Berlin, 2nd edition, ISBN 3-360-01257-7 , p. 239 ff.
  8. ↑ Axel Hecht: Comrade artist: With his cheerful, colorful agitation pictures, Walter Womacka became the GDR's first state artist.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Art - the art magazine . Issue 12/2008, p. 74 ff.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.art-magazin.de  
  9. ^ Report of the Berlin Office for the Protection of the Constitution on the structures of the former MfS, 2007 ( Memento from April 15, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 284 kB)
  10. ^ Dietmar Pühler: Excitement on Usedom about GDR art. In: Usedom Kurier. October 19, 2011.
  11. ↑ Walter Womacka: Show your colors . 2nd Edition. Verlag Das Neue Berlin, ISBN 3-360-01257-7 , p. 82
  12. ↑ When communists dream. Website of the German Historical Museum
  13. ↑ Website of the Documentation Center, with text to the glass window, entitled The life of a child carries , accessed on 23 January 2018th
  14. ↑ Jeanette Bederke: Iron Hut City, of all places , In: Berliner Zeitung , February 19, 2018, p. 17 (illustration)
personal data
SURNAME Womacka, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH December 22, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Horní Jiřetín , Czechoslovakia
DATE OF DEATH September 18, 2010
Place of death Berlin