Wilhelm Löber

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Wilhelm Löber (born February 26, 1903 in Neidhartshausen ; † July 28, 1981 in Juliusruh ) was a German sculptor and ceramist . He was a Bauhaus student and master student of Gerhard Marcks . His first two sculptural works for public space, the Vogelweide monument in Halle from 1930 and the Goethe fountain in Ilmenau from 1932, were considered degenerate art by the National Socialists. In 1956 he was a co-founder of Fischlandkeramik , and in 1967 he founded the Rügenkeramik . He is also represented in northern Germany with numerous sculptures.

life and work

Origin, youth and years of apprenticeship

Wilhelm Löber was born in 1903 in a village in the Thuringian Rhön as the son of the teacher Helene Löber-Reisner and her husband, the pastor Ernst Löber . In 1912 the family moved to Ilmenau . After graduating from the Goethe School there , he attended the State Art School in Berlin-Schöneberg.

From 1923 to 1926 he graduated from the Gerhard Marcks, composed by Otto Lindig led Dornburg pottery workshop of the Bauhaus Weimar an apprenticeship with the completion of a journeyman. From 1923 to 1925 he also completed an apprenticeship as a wood and stone sculptor in the Bauhaus sculpture workshop headed by Josef Hartwig .

In 1926/1927 he worked as a modeller as well as plaster and porcelain moulder in the ceramic specialist class of the state-owned Berlin Porcelain Manufactory (KPM). In 1927 he designed the “Löberschale”, which is still produced there today. This classic corresponds in its simplicity to the New Objectivity , as it was also realized at the Bauhaus. From 1926 to 1929 he was also an evening student at the United State Schools for Free and Applied Arts in Berlin.

From 1929 to 1932 Wilhelm Löber was a master student of Gerhard Marcks in the class for sculpture at the Halle Kunsthochschule Burg Giebichenstein . This is where the professor answered a call in 1925, when the Bauhaus moved to Dessau without pottery or sculpture . He headed this facility from 1928 until he was given leave of absence by the National Socialists in 1933 because he protested against the dismissal of Jewish teachers.

One of these teachers was the head of the ceramic workshops, Marguerite Friedlaender , who was also called to Halle from Weimar in 1925. She wrote:

“When the Bauhaus crashed, the castle was for us (and for me) a real improvement on the idea of ​​the Bauhaus. ... we could work there, ... everyone as he pleased, with the highest standard in the perfection of his art. "

In a letter from 1975, Gerhard Marcks wrote about the Bauhaus idea "that there were 2 Bauhaus houses", one of which was continued in Dessau under the motto "Art and technology a new unit" (Gropius 1923). The other's idea, which included an individual artistic development on a craft basis, was u. a. carried on in Halle. This is fundamental for Wilhelm Löber's artistic location and his orientation towards Gerhard Marcks. He later wrote in his personal notes:

“The Bauhaus has shaped me fundamentally. ... Everything that I was able to give my students Jochen Jastram and Wolfgang Eckardt was taught to me by Marcks. "

In 1930, Wilhelm Löber also trained as a metal driver with Karl Müller , the head of the metal workshop at the "Burg" in Halle . Also in 1930 he married his fellow student Frida Lüttich (1910–1989) who studied painting.

In 1931 he completed a “Walther von der Vogelweide” monument for the “An der Vogelweide” residential area in Halle. It was demolished in 1937 after a National Socialist smear campaign that the poet was degenerate and depicted "in Barlachian manner". This fate was spared the expressive relief from 1932 on the Goethe fountain in the Ilmenau cemetery , which was boarded up for 12 years in 1933. (See p. 36 in.) The relief-themed Goethe quote “ Die and become ”, carved in stone in the basin below, remained free.

Löber's apprenticeship years, which came to an end in 1932, were also years of traveling. He has been part of the Wandervogel movement since he was at school in Ilmenau . Study trips then took him to Italy in 1923, Iceland in 1926, Paris in 1927, Lapland and Leningrad in 1929, and Greece and Albania in 1939.

From 1932 to 1967

In 1932 Wilhelm Löber's life initially shifted to Fischland . He stayed there until 1967 until a few years after the end of the war, when he left the family and workshop to start over on Rügen .

His parents had had a Fischland holiday home in Althagen since 1911 . There they bought a cottage for him and his wife Frida in 1932. The two then worked freelance, Wilhelm also in his Berlin studio until 1939, where most of his sculptural works were created. He also trained as a stone sculptor with Joseph Gobes from 1929 to 1936 in Berlin.

In 1933 the Löber couple held a memorial exhibition for Frida's older sister, the painter Ella Lüttich-Etzrodt, in the Gurlitt gallery in Berlin . Their death in childbed on March 7, 1932 was reflected on by Wilhelm Löber in his Goethe fountain relief soon after. In Althagen he then created the 75 cm high relief stele "Two sisters" from linden wood, who embrace each other tenderly and lovingly. Frida's first child was born in 1933 and named "Ella" after his aunt. By 1953 the Löbers had another 7 children.

Although Wilhelm Löber had an exchange of blows by letter with the National Socialist Reich Association of Visual Artists (Gau Thuringia) in the spring of 1933 about the relief at the Goethe Fountain in Ilmenau, which they rejected (see p. 35 in), he joined the SA in 1934 . In 1938 he was expelled from this NSDAP fighting organization because he had warned Gerhard Marcks against a house search. From this 86 works were confiscated and several were shown in the defamatory exhibition " Degenerate Art " from 1937. - When asked about his changing political views, he said: "I was always looking."

In 1940 Wilhelm Löber was drafted into the Wehrmacht and served first in a construction battalion and then until 1945 as a private. He was wounded twice. As a war opponent and anti-fascist, he created works such as the wooden sculpture “Peace”, the copper drift “ Triptych against War” and in 1965 the larger than life memorial for the victims of fascism in the city park of Ribnitz-Damgarten .

The first-mentioned carving was done in 1951 in Empfertshausen , where the family moved in 1946 and Löber taught at the local state carving school. In 1950 he became a member of the SED and community representative. He had to stop teaching in 1952 because he stood up for a student who had been convicted of political motives.

After a short stay in Wismar , where he taught in the Stein department of the technical school, he went back to Althagen with his family . From January 1953 he worked freelance again, for example in Rostock , where he designed three column capitals in Langen Strasse in the same year . For example, he also created the Fischbrunnen in Barth in 1959 , an Ernst Moritz Arndt monument in Löbnitz in 1960 and the massive musk ox in the zoos in Rostock and Berlin (1961 and 1964) for free space .

In 1956 he founded Fischland ceramics in Althagen with his wife and the couple Barbara and Arnold Klünder , who soon left the company . Today the family business is run in Ahrenshoop in the Dornenhaus by the son Friedemann Löber. In 1966 the parents divorced, and in 1967 Löber moved to Berlin-Weißensee for a short time and worked in the sculptor's workshop of his son Ernst. Then he went to Juliusruh.

On Rügen

Juliusruh lies where the northern Rügen peninsula Wittow merges into the Schaabe . Margarethe Markgraf ran a bookstore and arts and crafts shop there, which is why she had visited the Fischland pottery workshop in Althagen and met Wilhelm Löber. Now he set up a ceramics workshop with and with her in 1967 and thus founded the Rügen ceramics, which soon enjoyed enormous popularity.

They married in 1970, and in the following year the arts and crafts trade, which had operated in parallel, was given up. The business flourished. Soon he had the maximum of ten employees allowed for private GDR companies. The lucrative ceramics were looked after more and more by Mrs. Marga, while Löber devoted himself to the sculpture. Again there were many animal sculptures, for example the life-size copper "Sea eagle with prey" from 1969, today hanging freely in the tower of Granitz Castle . Another copper drift is the fish fountain, which was set up in front of the workshop in 1970. In the same year the wall-filling “Dance of the Cranes” was created - also in copper - for a hotel in Bergen , just as the crane was his favorite animal in general. He also created outstanding portraits in bronze and ceramic of his children, other relatives, friends and other contemporaries. For example, he designed imaginative copper drifting work on the workshop doors in Juliusruh, and a life-size walrus, which was made on the Fischland, guards the associated garden on the 2012 so-called “Löberplatz”.

In order to be able to devote himself even more to sculpture and the artistic design of ceramics, he decided to hand over most of the Rügen ceramics workshop to the GDR state art trade. After previous years of very hardship, he was doing well financially. The decision was certainly accelerated due to political motives and years of relevant action by the tax authorities. In 1975 the sale including the samples and molds took place, and only one employee remained with the Löber couple. At Gill, 10 illustrations with ceramics from the second half of the 1970s testify to the continued creative process. Sometimes they served as preliminary work for bronzes.

Wilhelm Löber died on July 28, 1981 in Juliusruh.

Balance sheet

In the time of classical modernism , he began as the prototype of a Bauhausler in the sense of his most important teacher, Gerhard Marcks, who brought together art and craft. In the 1960s and 1970s he then made the popular Fischland and Rügen ceramics. Quite playful forms and motifs were taken up that departed from the original Bauhaus concept.

In Halle an der Burg Giebichenstein in particular , Löber became familiar with all the sculpting techniques and materials that he could use in his later creative years. While his first works had expressionistic echoes - especially those of Ernst Barlach , whom he greatly admired - and deliberately acted rudely, he later endeavored to create more harmony with his sculptural works. As a teacher and as a boss (see also footnote 7 in) he was valued and respected.

Works

  • Praise bowl. Designed in 1927 by Wilhelm Löber in the Staatliche Porzellan-Manufaktur ( KPM ) in Berlin, where it is still produced today as the "Festive Bowl". As a classic, it represents the New Objectivity in porcelain production.

  • The Goethe fountain from 1932 in the cemetery in Ilmenau (Thuringia)

  • The fish fountain from 1959 on the market in Barth

  • Sculpture musk ox (bronze and ceramic) in Rostock Zoo (1961)

  • Clinker plastic musk ox herd (second form, 1963) in Tierpark Berlin ( Friedrichsfelde ), on the roundabout near the ring-tailed lemurs.

Posthumous exhibitions

  • Frida and Wilhelm Löber - an artist couple from the Ahrenshooper artist colony. Ahrenshoop 2013.
  • Wilhelm Löber - the forgotten Bauhaus ceramist. From Dornburg to Rügenkeramik. Bürgel 2018/2019.
  • Wilhelm Löber - the forgotten Bauhaus ceramist. Rügen ceramics. Dornburg 2019.
  • The forgotten Bauhaus student and Rügen ceramist Wilhelm Löber (including '6th Bauhaus album') , Putbus 2018, Berlin 2018/2019, Ilmenau 2019.

literature

  • Bernd Frankenberger : 'Die and grow' behind wood. The Goethe fountain in the Ilmenau cemetery was inaugurated 75 years ago. In: Free Word (Southern Thuringia), August 29, 2007.
  • Oscar Gehrig : The sculptor Wilhelm Löber. In: Monthly Issues for Mecklenburg . 14th vol., H. 168, 1938, pp. 560-566 (online)
  • Hartmut Gill: Wilhelm Löber. The forgotten Bauhaus student and Rügen ceramist and the "6th Bauhaus album". Edition Schwarzdruck, Gransee 2018, ISBN 978-3-935194-88-4 .
  • Hartmut Gill: Wilhelm Löber. From Bauhaus to Fischland and Rügen ceramics. Hinstorff, Rostock 2015, ISBN 978-3-356-01907-0 .
  • Hans-Peter Jakobson: The ceramic workshop of the State Bauhaus Weimar in Dornburg. In: Profile: Bauhaus University Weimar
  • Konrad Kessler among others: Wilhelm Löber. Bauhaus student · ceramist · sculptor. Exhibition catalog. Funding group Ceramics Museum Bürgel and Dornburger Keramik-Werkstatt e. V., 2018.
  • Wilhelm Löber: Veneer cutting - a new technique in applied art. In: German architecture . Berlin. 8th year, issue 1, January 1959, pp. 44 and 45.
  • Wilhelm Löber: Archives from the estate (Margarethe Löber)
  • Margararethe and Wilhelm Löber: Diary of the Rügen ceramics. (Original documents).
  • Renate Marschallek: Traces in plastic and ceramics - the sculptor and ceramist would have been 100 years old these days. In: Ostsee-Zeitung . (Ribnitz-Damgartener Zeitung), 51, March 12, 2003, p. 17.
  • Arne Martius: Bauhaus-style fountains should end shadowy existence. In: Thuringian General . (Local section Ilmenau), March 16, 2017.
  • Friedrich Schulz : Wilhelm Löber. In: Ahrenshoop - artist lexicon. Fischerhude 2001, ISBN 3-88132-292-2 , p. 118 f.
  • Klaus Weber (Ed.): Ceramics and Bauhaus. History and effects of the ceramic workshop of the Bauhaus. Exhibition catalog. Berlin (West) 1989, ISBN 3-891-81404-6 .

Web links

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

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Hartmut Gill: Wilhelm Löber - From the Bauhaus to Fischland and Rügen ceramics. Hinstorff Verlag, Rostock 2015.
  2. ↑ Werner Geske: From the Fischland and Rügen ceramics and a close friendship. Why the Rostock doctor Dr. Hartmut Gill wrote a book about the Bauhaus artist Wilhelm Löber. Rostock delüx; Society magazine. OZ GmbH (Rostock). 2016 H. 9, pp. 10-11. From this, regarding H. Gill: "From 1967 until Löber's death in 1981 he was a frequent guest in his workshop."
  3. ↑ a b c d Heinrich Arnold: The Bauhaus artist Wilhelm Löber and his Ilmenau Goethe fountain , 2019
  4. ↑ Angela Dolgner : Burg and Bauhaus - "they were related, like brothers". In: Simplicity in multiples: Berlin porcelain under the influence of the Bauhaus and Burg Giebichenstein. Berlin 2009, pp. 10-13.
  5. ↑ a b Arie Hartog: “The way into the Bauhaus and back out again. Gerhard Marcks and his circle ”. In: Anke Blümm et al. (Ed.): Ways out of the Bauhaus. Gerhard Marcks and his friends. Catalog of the opening exhibition in Weimar and Bremen for the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus in 2019. Weimar 2017, ISBN 978-3-7443-0305-7 .
  6. ↑ Martina Springer: Nazis destroyed a memorial to the minstrel. Cultural barbarism. In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung . June 3, 2009, in connection with the "Bauhaus renaissance at Giebichenstein Castle " (MZ on September 10, 2009) on the 90th anniversary of the Weimar Bauhaus foundation.
  7. ↑ According to Löber's diary, this happened after the initial rejection of National Socialism "partly in the hope of finding a solution to the national question" . See Konrad Kessler and others: Wilhelm Löber. Bauhaus student · ceramist · sculptor. Exhibition catalog. 2018.
  8. ↑ Renate Luckner-Bien: I saw us all in the degenerate exhibition. In: M. Ratayczyk (Ed.): We're going to Halle. Marguerite Friedlaender & Gerhard Marcks. Exhibition catalog. Halle (Saale) 2018, ISBN 978-3-932962-96-7 , p. 142.
  9. ↑ For the century-old, thatched thorn house with ceramics workshop, gallery and sale see archived copy ( Memento from March 30, 2018 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ↑ Margarethes daughter Hanne wrote to Hartmut Gill: "Incidentally, Wilhelm was a very unpretentious person who surprised us when we first met on the street with his trousers that were too short, which also revealed two differently colored and patterned socks."
  11. ↑ See e.g. B. the interview with Werner Grosch in the exhibition catalog for section 2: "The forgotten Bauhaus student and Rügen ceramist Wilhelm Löber"
  12. ↑ Also in this catalog: “There was a good atmosphere in the Rügenkeramik workshop. Even today, the former employees speak respectfully of the 'boss'. ... The employees remember a calm and level-headed boss in a pleasant way who did not utter many words. Wilhelm Löber was not a man who put himself in the foreground. "
  13. ↑ Frank Kalla: Bürgel kicks off the Bauhaus anniversary. In: Ostthüringer Zeitung . November 5, 2018, accessed March 12, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Löber, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sculptor and ceramist
DATE OF BIRTH February 26, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Neidhartshausen
DATE OF DEATH July 28, 1981
Place of death Juliusruh