Wilhelm Nauhaus

Wilhelm Nauhaus (born September 23, 1899 in Erfurt , † July 31, 1979 in Halle / Saale ) was a German bookbinder, artist, archivist and publicist.

Life

Wilhelm Nauhaus initially planned to become a painter and began his training in 1917 with Walther Klemm at the Weimar Academy of Art . Influenced by the ideas of the Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius , he then turned to handicrafts after a short military service and initially studied for two semesters with Ernst Schneidler at the Barmen School of Applied Arts . In 1920 he began an apprenticeship as a bookbinder with Walther Frickmann in Erfurt, passed the journeyman's examination there two years later and switched to Otto Dorfner in Weimar. In 1924 Nauhaus went to the Berlin-Charlottenburg School of Applied Arts to study with Paul Kersten , where he passed the master craftsman examination in 1925.

From 1925 to 1928 Nauhaus headed the Brockhaus handbinding in Elberfeld and in 1928 followed an appointment as a lecturer for artistic handbinding at the United State Schools for Free and Applied Arts (later the State University of Fine Arts) in Berlin-Charlottenburg, where, in addition to his teaching activities, he made new armbands - and was able to invent and test jewelry techniques and develop old techniques. In 1935 he was appointed professor.

In an air raid on Berlin in November 1943, Nauhaus lost all of his possessions and almost all of the work he had done up to then. His workshop and apartment were destroyed. He moved to Dornburg near Jena and taught for some time in Primkenau in Silesia, where teaching at the Berlin University had been relocated.

After serving in the war and being an American prisoner of war, Nauhaus followed an appointment by Ludwig Erich Redslob in December 1945 to the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art in Halle / Saale, where he has since been professor of artistic hand-binding and head of the bookbinding class. At the beginning of his time in Halle, he also held the office of rector for a few months. In 1958, as part of the change from handicrafts to industrial design that took place at the castle , the book design department was dissolved. Until his retirement in 1965 held Nauhaus, which classical general education of obligation knew at the castle now lectures on various topics - about art history and as well as about ancient mythology, Goethe and Thomas Mann theory - and built an archive of the history of the castle on .

As emeritus , Nauhaus wrote a fundamental monograph on the history of the Burg Giebichenstein Art School from its founding by Paul Thiersch in 1915 until the Nazis came to power in 1933, which was published posthumously in 1981. Wilhelm Nauhaus' preserved hand bindings are mostly in private ownership or in the German Museum of Books and Writing in Leipzig. The St. Bartholomäus parish in Halle has had an altar Bible bound by Nauhaus since 1971.

Wilhelm Nauhaus was married to the translator Barbara Cramer-Nauhaus . The church musician and author Kilian Nauhaus is their son.

Publications (selection)

• Paths to Goethe. 3 commemorative speeches by Wilhelm Nauhaus . Private printing of three lectures given for the Goethe year 1949. Giebichenstein Castle, Halle 1951
• The changing duration of the colorful arc . In: Yearbook of the Goethe Society. Hermann Böhlaus Nachf., Weimar 1966
• Giebichenstein Castle . In: Rudolf Fahrner (Ed.): Paul Thiersch, life and work . Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin 1970
• Karl Muller . In: Günter Hanisch (Ed.): Order and concerns. 13 artist paths here and today . Evangelical Publishing House, Berlin 1975
• To the book covers by Ingrid Schultheiß . In: Paper and Printing 27, 1978
• Gustav Weidanz . In: Erika A. Lehmann (Ed.): Mission and concern. Volume 2. 13 artist paths here and today . Evangelical Publishing House, Berlin 1981
• Giebichenstein Castle. History of a German art school 1915–1933 . Seemann-Verlag, Leipzig 1981, 2nd edition 1992. ISBN 3-363-00539-3
• Gerhard Marcks - Wilhelm Nauhaus, letters . With a foreword by Kilian Nauhaus. Workshops at Giebichenstein Castle, Halle 1991
• Correspondence between Gerhard Marcks and Wilhelm Nauhaus. In: Gerhard Marcks: Durchs dunkle Deutschland , correspondence 1933 to 1980. Ed. By Jens Semrau. Seemann Verlag, Leipzig 1995.

Literature (selection)

• Book covers . Workshop report no. 17 of the art service. Texts by Martin Kautzsch and Wilhelm Nauhaus. Ulrich Riemerschmidt Verlag, Berlin 1941.
• Christian Rietschel: Wilhelm Nauhaus. In: Günter Hanisch (Ed.): Order and concerns. 13 artist paths here and today . Evangelical Publishing House, Berlin 1975.
• Walter Bergner: Professor Wilhelm Nauhaus in memory. In: Paper and Printing 28, 1979, General Part, p. 159.
• Rainer Behrends, Ingrid Schultheiß, Arnd Schultheiß: In memoriam Wilhelm Nauhaus, Sept. 23, 1899 to July 31, 1979. In: Bildende Kunst, 28, 1980, pp. 69-71
• Angela Dolgner, Katja Schneider (eds.): Wilhelm Nauhaus. Book covers from six decades. Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg, Halle 2000, ISBN 3-86019-024-5 .
• Katharina Heider: From applied arts to industrial design. The Burg Giebichenstein art college in Halle (Saale) from 1945 to 1958. Publishing house and database for the humanities, Weimar 2010, ISBN 978-3-89739-672-2 .