Wilhelm Kleinenbroich

Wilhelm Kleinenbroich: Self-Portrait. The painter is holding an edition of the Kölnische Zeitung , 1845. Vollmer Collection Foundation

Wilhelm Kleinenbroich (born April 12, 1812 in Cologne , † June 21, 1895 in Cologne-Lindenthal ) was a German painter .

Life

Kleinenbroich learned painting from Simon Meister in Cologne and at the Düsseldorf Art Academy . He can therefore also be counted as part of the Düsseldorf School of Painting .

Kleinenbroich's artistic work in the first half of the 19th century must be seen in close connection with his socially critical engagement: In 1848 he was a founding member of the Cologne workers' association and an active participant in the revolution of 1848 .

After the failed revolution, Wilhelm Kleinenbroich withdrew from politics and lived from decorative and portrait painting. After the military and political rise of Prussia in the 1860s and the founding of the Empire in 1871, Kleinenbroich evidently even reconciled with the Prussian monarchy and designed pro-Prussian decorations and designs for the carnival.

Significant works

Among Kleinenbroich's works, the socio-critical painting Mahl- und Schlachtsteuer , created in 1847, stands out. The social historian Hans-Heinrich Bass sees in this work - similar to Hübner's picture Schlesische Weber from 1844 - a new quality in the representation of social problems with painterly means. Kleinenbroich portrayed the widespread lack of food in the "hungry 1840s" as a conflict between two social groups:

“Kleinenbroich's picture is titled pars pro toto , because it shows as a central group wood collectors arguing with a customs officer in front of a city gate and the collection of grinding and slaughter tax for imported grain is actually only shown in the top right middle. The painting shows a hiatus between background and foreground, the former becomes a foil against which the foreground scenes can be viewed through the use of color (the dust thrown up by the riders) and two-dimensional representation (due to the dust cloud there is hardly any aerial perspective ). The two parts are connected to each other only by the direction of the boy standing a little to one side in the front left and the man's finger pointing (in the costume of a painter?) In the front right. Nevertheless, it is precisely this extensive disconnection that appears analytically significant: While the adult generation of poor people deals with the immediate state representative and this scene also pulls the frightened girl in the front right, clinging to her mother, under its spell, it is spatial (literally) and socially independent boy (as someone who already collects wood himself) is the focal point for the otherwise falling apart parts of the picture. Only to him is the Janus head of the state apparatus visible, who, personified as an officer, pulls his cap from the middle ground grandstand in front of the high society in the background [whose game was not subject to tax], but below (i.e. in the foreground), in the person of a customs officer , the poor harassed: two related aspects of the state, the unity of which is created spatially by inserting these two state representatives between the abstract state symbols of the background, the eagles leaning towards each other. Since it is precisely a boy who creates this pivot, the social and state analysis of the picture has a utopian moment: the population is not yet capable of it, its bearers are only growing up. After the dress rehearsals in the 1840s, these new forces entered the political stage for the first time in the revolution of 1848, a new era dawned. "

Wilhelm Kleinenbroich: Portrait of the Cologne poor doctor and revolutionary Andreas Gottschalk , 1849

As early as 1843, Kleinenbroich had recorded the repression of the Prussian authorities and the intensified social climate in the period of Vormärz with the picture Ban in the Rheinische Zeitung . The fact that Kleinenbroich had the social situation of the workers and the dispossessed in particular in mind is shown by the picture of a worker entitled The Proletarian , which he exhibited in 1846. It identifies him as a painter of the early labor movement .

The picture series Cölner Hänneschen Theater Anno 1848 , in which the puppet theater functions as an allegory of the revolution, is testimony to the socially critical and revolutionary sentiments of Kleinenbroich .

Another important work of Kleinbroich's creative period is the portrait of the Cologne poor doctor and revolutionary Andreas Gottschalk from 1849 .

The fact that Kleinenbroich's painting was committed to socio-political issues of its time and took a partisan position was already judged by parts of the art critics as inartistic and disparaged as part of the trend painting of the 19th century.

Exhibitions

Revolution! (Cologne 2012)

Under the title “Revolution! For the painter Wilhelm Kleinenbroich on his 200th birthday ”, the Cologne City Museum showed the entire spectrum of Kleinenbroich's artistic work in a retrospective for the first time in a museum from June 23 to September 23, 2012.

Carnival decorations from 1835, portraits from museum and private collections, socially critical images and designs for the Rose Monday procession in 1872 were presented. The focus of the exhibition was one of the rare black, red and gold flags from 1848 from the holdings of the Cologne City Museum. Kleinenbroich's graphics and watercolors on the revolution in Cologne were also shown.

literature

• Kleinenbroich, Wilhelm . In: Friedrich von Boetticher : painter works of the nineteenth century. Contribution to art history . Volume I, Dresden 1891, p. 698.
• Hans-Heinrich Bass : Hunger crises in Prussia during the first half of the 19th century. Scripta Mercaturae Verlag, St. Katharinen 1991, ISBN 3-922661-90-4 (social-historical analysis of the Kleinenbroich painting Mahl- und Schlachtsteuer, pp. 278-279).
• Joachim Großmann: artists, court and bourgeoisie. Life and work of painters in Prussia 1786–1850. Oldenbourg Akademie Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-05-002412-7 (on Kleinenbroich, pp. 194-196).
• Horst Heidermann : 1848/49: The revolution of the painter Kleinenbroich. A biographical contribution to the history of the city of Cologne. (= Publications of the Cologne City Museum. Volume 2). Publishing house of the Cologne City Museum, 1999, ISBN 3-927396-77-X .
• Rita Wagner, Sascha Pries, Mario Kramp (eds.): Revolution! To the painter Wilhelm Kleinenbroich on his 200th birthday. Accompanying volume 1 for the exhibition “Revolution! - Decoration - Cologne in the 19th Century ”in the Cologne City Museum. 2012, ISBN 978-3-95451-048-1 .

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm Kleinenbroich  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Cornelia Schlösser: City Museum shows Wilhelm Kleinenenbroich - Cologne decorator with a revolutionary spirit, in: report-k.de, June 22, 2012
• Photo gallery of the Cologne exhibition 2012 (including the picture of meal and slaughter tax (c) Rheinisches Bildarchiv)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Revolution! To the painter Wilhelm Kleinenbroich on the occasion of his 200th birthday , Cologne City Museum: June 23 to September 23, 2012 ( Memento of the original from February 2, 2014 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. 
2. ^ Hans-Heinrich Bass: Hunger crises in Prussia during the first half of the 19th century. Scripta Mercaturae Verlag, St. Katharinen 1991, pp. 278-279.
3. ^ Hanna Gagel: The Düsseldorf School of Painting in the Political Situation of the Vormärz and 1848 . In: Wend von Kalnein (Ed.): The Düsseldorf School of Painting . Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1979, ISBN 3-8053-0409-9 , p. 77
4. ↑ James M. Brophy: Popular Culture and the Public Sphere in the Rhineland, 1800-1850 . (New Studies in European History). Cambridge University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-521-84769-8 , p. 122 (online)