Wilhelm Bauche

Street sign to Wilhelm Bauche in Hamburg-Poppenbüttel

Adolf Max Wilhelm Bauche (born October 20, 1899 in Lübeck , † July 29, 1959 in Hamburg ) was a German graphic artist , cultural functionary and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Education and professional success

Wilhelm Bauche was the youngest of Carl August Bauche's four children. His father worked as a civil servant at the Lübeck-Büchener Railway and was in charge of the freight yard in Wandsbek until the end of his career . All of his siblings became teachers. Wilhelm Bauche attended the Johanneum in Lübeck , which he left in 1916 with the primary school leaving certificate. He had already received lessons in painting and graphic technology at the art school from Willibald Leo von Lütgendorff-Leinburg . During the First World War , he did military service from 1917. He fought as a field artilleryman in France, where he was wounded and honored for his bravery.

After the end of the war he went to Hamburg. From January 1919 he studied painting, graphics and art history at the School of Applied Arts . Among the teachers who had a special influence on him were Carl Otto Czeschka and Wilhelm Niemeyer . As a supporter of democracy, he took part in the student council, which he succeeded in joining the Reichsbund deutscher Kunsthochschule in 1921. As a member of the board of directors for several years, he organized the 1st International Congress of Students at European Art Academies in 1922, which took place in Hamburg with an accompanying exhibition in the Hamburger Kunsthalle . From 1921 to 1926 he helped equip artists' parties in the Curiohaus , of which he was a permanent member of the commission.

From 1924, Bauche worked as a qualified member of the Association of German Commercial Graphics as a freelance graphic designer. He also gave lessons in art history and drawing, for example at the state-recognized Hagemann-Mensendieck-Gymnasium-Seminar and at the Hamburger Volkshochschule . In 1926 he married the gymnastics teacher Gertrud Mendel, who was a daughter of the Hamburg Senator Max Mendel and had just passed the diploma examination. The couple moved into a large apartment in Borgfelde , where Gertrud Mendel founded her own teaching institute. Two years after the wedding, a son was born.

Wilhelm Bauche had a close relationship with his father-in-law Max Mendel. He sat on the supervisory board of the consumer, construction and savings association “Production” and initially commissioned his son-in-law to produce posters and illustrations for “Production”. He also mediated participation in campaigns for the Hamburg workers' education. Together with numerous other artists, Bauche himself designed a puppet theater in the Hamburg trade union building that showed fairy tales and legends in the run-up to Christmas. Together with H. C. B. Sommer, Bauche wrote a screenplay for the animated film Film vom Marxismus - Des Geistes Werk , which was shown in 1931 at the party congress of the SPD , to which Bauche had been a member since 1926. From 1930 to 1932, the authors who were friends wrote the picture calendar Society and Economy , which was published by E. Laub in Berlin .

time of the nationalsocialism

During the time of National Socialism , Bauche's working and living conditions changed significantly. For some time he only taught at the Hagemann School and in the run-up to Christmas he performed puppet games in the shop window of the Karstadt department store in Hamburg-Barmbek . In his apartment in Hamm he gave art lessons to former members of the socialist youth workers . Bauche took part in the illegal social democratic district organization against which the Gestapo took action in autumn 1935. After his arrest on November 2, 1935, the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court pronounced a 33-month prison sentence on February 27, 1936 against Bauche for “preparing for high treason”. With detainees he was considered "unworthy of defense"; He was no longer allowed to pursue professional activities in art and teaching. The gymnastics institute Gertrud Bauches took care of the family's maintenance.

Since Gertrud Bauche was of Jewish faith, she was not allowed to continue running her institute after the Reichspogromnacht . The couple intended to emigrate, but did not have the necessary financial means. Bauche acquired knowledge as a balance sheet accountant in self-study and, through friends, received a corresponding position at Hamburg Fruit Importers. In 1941, Gertrud Bauche was used for forced labor in waste disposal. The family barely survived Operation Gomorrah , but lost their home and property. This included works of art created by Bauche and other collected works of art, as well as an extensive library. Friends gave the Bauches an allotment arbor in Bergstedt , in which they rented for three years. Since he was considered “ Jewish misplaced ”, Bauche had to work in the Hamburg clearing office from August 1944.

Professional new beginning

After the end of the Second World War , Bauche immediately became politically active again. He first tried to rebuild the Free Socialist Trade Unions and participated in the committee of former political prisoners . In the context of conflicts over the consequences of the Third Reich and the war, Bauche joined the KPD with the support of his wife , for which he participated in the Bergstedt local committee, among other things. In Hamburg he headed the “Fine Arts Committee to Eliminate National Socialists” and took on a leading position in the re-establishment of the Association of German Commercial Graphic Artists. Since he had no suitable premises, no suitable utensils and too few connections, he did not succeed in returning to work in the long term. In 1949 he developed another picture calendar of society and the economy for the Union publishing house in Hamburg . He was unable to carry out further planned publications due to a lack of financial means. Reviews of theater and art that he wrote made Bauche sufficiently well known to head the culture section of the Hamburger Volkszeitung from 1949 to 1950 . During the election period from 1949 to 1953 he represented the KPD in the Hamburg cultural authority .

When the Democratic Cultural Union of Germany was founded in 1951, Bauche was a member of its federal executive board and was given a full-time position as state secretary. He particularly campaigned for contacts between visual artists from the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR. Bauche promoted participation in the GDR's third art exhibition , which took place in Dresden in 1953. He was a major editor of the magazine Von Atelier zu Atelier published by Progress-Verlag in Düsseldorf . In 1953 he took over the management of the “Fine Arts” section of the German Culture Day , directed by Karl Saller , which wanted to promote all-German encounters. After the Democratic Cultural Association was banned in North Rhine-Westphalia, Bauche became its federal secretary.

Bauche died suddenly of a heart attack in late July 1959.

His son is the cultural historian and folklorist Prof. Dr. Ulrich Bauche .

Honor

The Wilhelm-Bauche-Weg in Poppenbüttel has been named after the former resistance fighter since 1984 .

literature

• Bauche, Adolf Wilhelm . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 1 : A-D . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1953, p. 130 .
• Bauche, Adolf Wilhelm . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 5 : V-Z. Supplements: A-G . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1961, p. 277 .
• Ulrich Bauche: Bauche, Wilhelm . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 5 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0640-0 , p. 40-41 .