Werner Mantz

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Werner Mantz (born April 28, 1901 in Cologne , † May 12, 1983 in Eijsden ) was a German - Dutch photographer.

life and work

Werner Mantz was born in Cologne in 1901. At the age of 14 he took the first photos with an Ernemann camera in Cologne and the surrounding area and in the Bergisches Land . Mantz documented the invasion of the occupation troops after losing World War I when he was 17 years old. In 1920 (at the age of 19) he photographed the flood disaster in Cologne's old town and later sold the photos as postcards .

From 1920 to 1921 Werner Mantz studied at the teaching and research institute for photography, chemical graphics, collotype and engraving in Munich under Professor Spoerl, where he got to know various high-quality printing processes ( rubber printing , bromine oil printing, etc.). In 1921 he opened his first photo studio in his parents' apartment at Hohenstaufenring 46 in Cologne.

Over the next few years portraits of Cologne celebrities and also photographs of people from politics, science and art were created. He was in contact with the Cologne group of progressive artists and made some photographic reproductions of works of art. Portraits of Wilhelm Sollmann , Heinrich George , Anton Räderscheidt , Willi Ostermann , Heinrich Hoerle and Franz Wilhelm Seiwert date from this period .

Against the background of slowly emerging hostility towards Jews , Werner Mantz, who was of Jewish origin, opened an additional photo studio in Maastricht with Karl Mergenbaum in 1932 .

From 1937 to 1938 Werner Mantz mainly worked on two major orders. On the one hand, he took over the photographic documentation of the mines of the Staatsmijnen in Limburg . On the other hand, he documented the new construction of regional roads in the province of Limburg on behalf of Provinciale Waterstaat .

After the Reichspogromnacht in 1938, Mantz left Cologne for good and moved to Maastricht, where he continued to work in his second photo studio, in the best inner city location at Het Vrijthof . The order situation for architectural photographs in Cologne and Maastricht stagnated. When the orders failed to materialize, he began to devote himself to photography for children.

Architectural photography

In addition to his work as a portrait photographer, Werner Mantz became a very sought-after architectural photographer who worked in the New Objectivity and New Building styles of the 1920s. Mantz was a commissioned photographer and viewed photography as a craft . He worked primarily for companies in Cologne. In 1925 he supported Konrad Adenauer in an article for the Rheinische Volkswacht with regard to his town planning. In 1926 Mantz became the house photographer of the architect Wilhelm Riphahn , who also had his office at Hohenstaufenring 46. The contact to GAG Immobilien AG that arose from this collaboration made Werner Mantz one of the most sought-after architectural photographers of his time. His documentary work on the GAG ​​settlements in Cologne is very extensive. Since 1927, numerous works by him have appeared in the magazines Bauwelt , Die Form , Bauwarte , Wasmuth's monthly magazine for architecture and in the Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung . In 1931 he took part in the XIIIe Salon international d'Art Photographique in Brussels.

Numerous well-known German architects, including Clemens Klotz , Erich Mendelsohn and Helmuth Wirminghaus , as well as Dutch architects such as Frits Peutz , Teun Swinkels and Jos Wielders , preferred to have their buildings photographed by Mantz. The Glaspaleis designed by Frits Peutz in 1934 , the former Schunck department store / warehouse in Heerlen , which has been a listed building since 1995 , was photographed by Mantz.

“Today Mantz is one of the most important photographers of the 20s and 30s, primarily because of his architectural photographs. The artistic value of his work is mainly determined by the fact that, despite the terms of the contract, he has rendered an aesthetically high-quality interpretive performance in conjunction with a sophisticated lighting installation that had an extraordinary advertising effect for the architect. He used light as a formative design tool to draw attention to order and measure within the architecture and to reinforce its expression. "

- Michael Euler-Schmidt

Exhibitions

In the 1970s, when Mantz had already closed his photo studio in Maastricht and moved with his wife to Eijsden, where he led a peaceful life, his work was rediscovered. At the exhibition From Dadamax to the Green Belt in Cologne (1975) Mantz was mentioned in the same breath as August Sander , Hannes Maria Flach and Raoul Ubac .

Rudolf Kicken , who was familiar with Werner Mantz's work at an early age, organized an exhibition in his Lichttropfen gallery in Aachen in the 1970s . In addition, works from the collection of Annette and Rudolf Kicken were donated to the Städel Museum in Frankfurt.

In 1977 Mantz took part in documenta 6 . In 1978 the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn organized a large-scale and much-noticed retrospective for Werner Mantz, and in 2009 the exhibition Werner Mantz – Licht op Limburg , Photos and Films 1932–1972 took place in the Limburgs Museum . In 2016, Kleinschmidt's works were on view at the Kleinschmidt gallery in Wiesbaden .

The largest collections of Werner Mantz's work are in the possession of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht.

In 2017/2018, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, in cooperation with the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam, held the exhibition Architectures and People , in which his works are not exhibited separately but juxtaposed in order to show the existing relationships. There is a trilingual exhibition catalog.

Werner Mantz Foundation

In 1989 the Werner Mantz Stichting was established by William Graatsma, director of the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. The aim was to promote black and white photography that was taken in natural daylight. The award of the prizes stopped in 2001. Previous winners have been photographers from the Netherlands ( Rineke Dijkstra 1994 and Kim Zwarts 1997) and from Germany ( Thomas Struth 1990 and Gosbert Adler 2001).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Euler Schmidt, German biography Werner Mantz, accessed on October 13, 2014
  2. ^ German biography Werner Mantz accessed on October 13, 2014
  3. ↑ Photographers van Nederland, Nederlands Fotomuseum: Etalage van Werner Mantz en Karl Mergenbaum aan het Vrijthof, Maastricht accessed on October 12, 2014 (Dutch)
  4. ^ German Historical Museum Berlin Werner Mantz, accessed on October 13, 2014
  5. ↑ Cologne Architectural Photography of the 1930s by Werner Mantz, accessed October 13, 2014
  6. ^ German biography Werner Mantz accessed on October 13, 2014
  7. ↑ Werner Mantz, photographer, Rudolf Kicken accessed on October 13, 2014 (Dutch)
  8. ↑ Kulturstiftung der Länder ( Memento from October 18, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ He built his pictures according to all the rules of the art in FAZ from November 9, 2016, page 34
  10. ↑ Werner Mantz, photographer, biography Werner Mantz in Parijs accessed on October 12, 2014 (Dutch)
  11. ↑ Museum Ludwig Werner Mantz.Architekturen and people accessed on October 8, 2018


personal data
SURNAME Mantz, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Dutch photographer
DATE OF BIRTH April 28, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH May 12, 1983
Place of death Eijsden