Werner Heldt

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Felix Martin Werner Heldt (born November 17, 1904 in Berlin-Mitte ; † October 3, 1954 in Sant'Angelo , Ischia ) was a German painter , essayist and poet.

Life

Heldt spent his childhood in the parsonage of the Berlin Parochial Church , where his father Karl Martin Paul Heldt (1867-1933) was pastor. His first Berlin ancestor had come to Berlin under the Great Elector . The mother, Charlotte Helene Friederike Lucie Heldt, b. Weber (1867–1947), had Huguenot ancestors . Heldt, to whom this long Berlin family tradition meant a lot, grew up in old Berlin in the area between Klosterstrasse , Waisenstrasse and Neue Friedrichstrasse . After graduating from high school in 1922 at the Gray Monastery , he attended the arts and crafts school in Berlin from 1923 to 1924 . From 1925 to 1930 he studied at the University of Fine Arts in Charlottenburg. At that time he made friends with Heinrich Zille (his role model at the time). Heldt was homosexual, but hoped to be able to build a “normal existence” in view of the parental moral standards. His hopes were dashed when his girlfriend "Lo" died in an accident in 1929 and his "happy time" broke off. Until his death he suffered from the wound that had opened at the time. Lo appears repeatedly in later works. From then on Heldt suffered from depression - until 1933 he was under psychiatric treatment for it.

In the spring of 1933, shortly after the National Socialists took power, Heldt decided to leave Germany and fled to Mallorca. His father died in the autumn of 1933. “Unable to return to Berlin, he consumes himself in reproach and now experiences the mental paralysis also physically. He can no longer move his right arm, which happened to him several times later. ”In 1936 he returned to Berlin.

In 1940 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht, which he hated, and came to the air defense in Western Europe. At the end of 1945 he was taken prisoner by the British and then returned to Berlin, where he lived in the Soviet sector. The year 1947, in which he was very successful, ended with two strokes of fate for Heldt. His mother died in the fall and a good friend took her own life. In the spring of 1948, shortly before the start of the Berlin blockade , Heldt moved to West Berlin in the British sector.

Heldt's health, who had been drinking for a long time, deteriorated greatly. After a brief recovery, Heldt was able to travel to Ischia in the summer of 1954 , where he visited his friend and painter colleague Werner Gilles , whom he had already met in 1939 in the Berlin studio community in Klosterstrasse . Plagued by persistent premonitions of death, he died of a stroke on October 3, 1954. His grave is in Sant'Angelo, Ischia.

plant

Heldt started out as an autodidact. In 1922 he produced his first works with scenes from old Berlin and religious motifs. During this time, Zille's influence was palpable. The next significant development after his studies was certainly due to the trip to Paris in 1930: As a result of the encounter with Maurice Utrillo , numerous works were created. The catalog raisonné counts 80 works for 1930 alone. In contrast, only twelve papers followed between 1931 and 1933. The typical motifs for the rest of the work already appeared here: city views, window pictures, church towers, firewalls and Berlin houses, in which he processed his fate between exile and inner emigration.

After his return, between 1937 and 1940, Heldt was able to exhibit oil paintings and drawings in galleries. During the World War, his stationing in Western Europe helped him to keep in touch with modernity. In 1942 he bought reproductions of works by Picasso such as Guernica and was able to speak to 82-year-old James Ensor in Belgium in 1942 . In his diary and in letters, the motifs of his later work appeared: the destroyed Berlin standing in a sea of ​​rubble, deserted streets, guitars.

In 1947, at an exhibition opening, Heldt reported that a friend's pictures had hung next to those of a madman in the 1937 exhibition Degenerate Art . The signature at the time read What is the difference? Heldt did not emphasize the differences, but rather the similarities between both forms of creativity. In 1929, Heldt came across Bildnerei der mentally ill - with works that are today part of the Prinzhorn Collection and pointed to the great effect the book had had on French Surrealism (compare Schmied).

In 1946 and 1947 he was able to present his work in Berlin for the first time after the war. In 1947, 120 pictures were taken in a brief intoxication and the Berlin bourgeoisie now showed great interest in Heldt, who could be funny and witty. However, Heldt did not return the interest.

In 1950 he accepted the Berlin Art Prize , while repeatedly turning down offers for a professorship.

In the last four years before his death, Heldt's health deteriorated and little more than a hundred pictures were taken. Now his pictures also showed flat buildings and non-representational figures in the cityscape.

Some of his works were shown posthumously at the Kassel documenta 1 (1955), the documenta II in 1959 and at the Great Art Exhibition in Munich in 1963 in the Haus der Kunst .

Werner Heldt was a member of the German Association of Artists .

Performs as an essayist

In addition to his work as a painter and draftsman, Heldt wrote poems and essays.

The most famous essays include:

  • From Baudelaire to Picasso , started in 1929.
  • Some observations on the crowd , begun in 1927 and finished in 1935, the longest essay by Heldt.

Works (selection)

  • 1930: Berlin cityscape , oil on canvas, State Museums of Prussian Cultural Heritage, Neue Nationalgalerie, 75 × 101 cm
  • 1935: Revolt of the zeros , coal, 47 × 63 cm, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (formerly Siegfried Enkelmann Collection, Munich)
  • 1945: View from the window with a dead bird , tempera on fibreboard, 85 × 99 cm, Sprengel Museum Hannover
  • 1946: Berlin by the sea , oil on canvas, 42 × 72 cm, private collection, Hanover
  • 1951: A thunderstorm afternoon on the Spree , oil on canvas, 80 × 140 cm, private collection
  • 1952: Berlin by the sea , oil on canvas, 48 ​​× 84 cm, private collection
  • 1952: Saturday afternoon - Sunday afternoon , oil on canvas, 60 × 100 cm, private collection
  • 1952: Sunday afternoon , oil on canvas, 61 × 108 cm, private collection

Exhibitions (selection)

Werner Heldt took part in the first four annual exhibitions of the German Association of Artists:

posthumously:

literature

  • Wieland Schmied (Ed.): Werner Heldt. Oeuvre catalog of Heldt's pictures 1920–1954 . Kestner Society, Hanover, March 8 to April 7, 1968. Hanover 1968.
  • Wieland Schmied : Werner Heldt. With a catalog of works by Eberhard Seel . DuMont, Cologne 1976.
  • Christos M. Joachimedes, Norman Rosenthal , Wieland Schmied (Eds.): German Art in the 20th Century. Painting and Sculpture 1905–1985 . Royal Academy of Fine Arts, London, October 11 to December 22, 1985. Prestel-Verlag et al., Munich et al. 1985, ISBN 3-7913-0743-6 .
  • Berlin by the sea. Edition Brusberg, 1987, ISBN 3-87922-060-6 .
  • Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt. Kunsthalle Nürnberg, December 2nd, 1989 - February 11th, 1990; Berlinische Galerie, Museum for Modern Art, Photography and Architecture, 23.2. - April 15, 1990; Kunsthalle Bremen, May 25. - 8.7.1990. With contributions from Annie Bardon. 2nd Edition. Nicolaische Verl.-Buchh., Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-87584-289-8 .
  • Jörg Deuter: The wrong picture: the revision of an icon. Werner Heldt's “Dead Crow at the Window”, the program picture of the prisoners of war . In: Kevin E. Kandt, Hermann Vogel von Vogelstein (ed.): From Hippocrenes Quell '. Festschrift Gerd-Helge Vogel . Berlin 2011, pp. 230-252.
  • Verena Hein: Werner Heldt (1904–1954). Life and work . utzverlag, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-8316-4413-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, p. 11.
  2. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, p. 10.
  3. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, p. 12.
  4. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, p. 12.
  5. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, p. 14.
  6. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, p. 61.
  7. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, p. 14.
  8. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, p. 35.
  9. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, p. 39.
  10. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, p. 41.
  11. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, p. 40.
  12. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, p. 49.
  13. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, p. 52.
  14. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, p. 51.
  15. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, pp. 60, 61.
  16. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, pp. 62/63
  17. ↑ Werner Heldt had studio room no. 112 at Klosterstrasse 75 from autumn 1936 to February 1945, s. Short biography of Heldt, Werner , in: Ateliergemeinschaft Klosterstrasse - Berlin 1933–1945. Artists in the time of National Socialism , Academy of the Arts (Edition Hentrich), Berlin 1994. ISBN 3-89468-134-9
  18. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, p. 63.
  19. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, pp. 32 and 73
  20. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . Werner Heldt. 1990, pp. 32/33
  21. ↑ Martin Schieder: Berlin in the image of its being. Werner Heldt's urban landscapes. In: Berlin in your head - working on the Berlin myth. Exile and internal emigration 1933 to 1945 , ed. by Hermann Haarmann, Berlin 2008, pp. 44–57.
  22. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, p. 40.
  23. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, p. 44.
  24. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, p. 45.
  25. ^ Wieland Schmied: Werner Heldt. 1976, p. 90.
  26. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, pp. 50f.
  27. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, p. 59.
  28. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, p. 60.
  29. ↑ Large Art Exhibition Munich 1963 , Süddeutscher Verlag Munich, official exhibition catalog 1963 (p. 182; ill. P. 226)
  30. ↑ kuenstlerbund.de: Full members of the Deutscher Künstlerbund since it was founded in 1903 / Heldt, Werner ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on August 19, 2015) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kuenstlerbund.de
  31. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, p. 31.
  32. ↑ Lucius Grisebach (Ed.): Werner Heldt . 1990, p. 32 (there pp. 17-31 partially printed).
  33. ↑ kuenstlerbund.de: Archive since 1950 / Exhibitions ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on August 19, 2015) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kuenstlerbund.de
  34. ↑ Schloss Gottorf in the Gallery of Classical Modernism ( Memento from February 2, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Heldt, Werner
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Heldt, Felix Martin Werner (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, essayist and poet
DATE OF BIRTH 17th November 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin center
DATE OF DEATH October 3, 1954
Place of death Sant'Angelo , Ischia