Walther KJE Frahm

Walther KJE Frahm, self-portrait 1912

Walther Karl Johann Ernst Frahm (born January 28, 1884 in Mölln , Lauenburg ; † February 8, 1970 in Bad Frankenhausen , Kyffhäuser ) was a German painter and graphic artist .

Life

Walther Frahm grew up with five younger siblings in Mölln. There he first attended elementary school and then moved to the secondary school in Lübeck , where he received his school leaving certificate in 1901.

From 1902 to 1906 he completed an artistic training with Ludwig Dettmann , Karl Storch , Heinrich Wolff and Karl Albrecht at the Königsberg Art Academy . He did this because of his friendly relationship with Heinrich Dettmann, whose cousin (Ludwig Dettmann) was the director of this school. He applied with a painting that showed an autumn forest and that was so good that Ludwig brought him to the academy right away. To ensure his existence, Frahm took up the teaching profession and chose gymnastics as a minor. His preferred motifs were bodies, probably because great importance was attached to them during his art training and he could study the movements of the muscles while doing gymnastics.

W. Frahm: Königsberg (1906)

His first commission was a portrait of the children of an East Prussian district administrator. This portrait earned him a substantial fee and an Academy award. Following his one-year military service, he worked from 1908 to 1945 as a teacher and art educator at the Oberschule in Bad Frankenhausen am Kyffhäuser . There he lived in the house of Helene Seifart, who later became his mother-in-law. He settled in quickly and made contact with the Seifarth family. Helene's brother was a pastor in Uthleben , where Sunday trips were often made. This also explains why Uthleben and the rectory in Uthleben are shown in many of his pictures. He often wandered through Uthleben packed with painting materials. In 1925 he married Elisabeth Seifarth, the daughter of Helene. She, too, was often a model for his pictures. Frahm felt so connected to the Kyffhäuser and the entire fauna and flora of the region that he only took pictures from here. Works by Walther Frahm can be found in the Ostdeutsche Galerie Regensburg , in the graphic collection Weimar and especially in the regional museum in the castle in Bad Frankenhausen (woodcuts, etchings, estate).

Exhibitions

• 1935: Erfurt
• 1960, 1961: Bad Frankenhausen
• 1982: Duisburg: Königsberg Art Academy
• 2014: Bad Frankenhausen: Walther Frahm, a graduate of the Königsberg Art Academy in Bad Frankenhausen

literature

• Kürschners Graphiker Handbuch , 2nd extended edition, ed. C. Fergg-Frowein, Verlag W. de Gruyter, Berlin, 1967, p. 79.
• Königsberg Art Academy 1845-1945 , ed. Prussia-Gesellschaft eV in Duisburg and Ostdeutsche Galerie Regensburg, catalog editor Dr. W. Timm, Regensburg, 1982, Sn. 28, 54, 55, 78, 98, 106.
• HJW Müller-Kirsten , Walther Frahm - a Möllner painter at Kyffhäuser , Schleswig-Holstein No. 10, 263 (1972).