Wilhelm Otto Pitthan

Wilhelm Otto Pitthan (born September 17, 1896 in Wöllstein , † November 20, 1967 in Schlotheim ) was a German painter (signature "WOP").

Life

Pitthan studied at the Mainzer Kunstgewerbeschule from 1911, did military service from 1914 to 1918, then continued his studies - from 1919 in Frankfurt / Main and on educational trips to Italy in 1923/24 and to Paris in 1925. Initially active as a landscape painter, the portrait of the then Reich Chancellor Gustav Stresemann from 1927 brought him numerous portrait commissions - Adolf Hitler's 1938 by Joseph Goebbels was acquired by Adolf Hitler , who commissioned him further portraits, three of which were at the 1940 art exhibition were exhibited in Munich.

Pitthan initially lived in Cologne , during the Nazi period mainly in Berlin , and finally came to Thuringia via Mecklenburg, where he married in Schlotheim, set up a studio there and looked for a new start as a freelance painter.

In addition to landscapes and figurative representations, his focus remained portrait painting - as seen at an exhibition in 1953 in the Museum am Lindenbühl Mühlhausen, where the living faces of his portraits were particularly praised. In the sixties, Pitthan received, among other things, the commission to portray the cartographer Hermann Haack and the rector of the Medical Academy Erfurt. On behalf of the city of Mühlhausen , Pitthan was to produce three large paintings on the subject of Thomas Müntzer , of which Thomas Müntzer preaches (1958, Mühlhausen, museums) and Müntzer installs the Eternal Council (1960, Mühlhausen, town hall), but a third remained unfinished, since Pitthan died in 1967.

Further works of his oeuvre can be seen in Schloss zu Schlotheim or are in Mühlhausen or in private ownership. A sketchbook that emerged in 2003 contained portraits from July 1944 and a drawing of broken imperial eagles.

Pitthan died in Schlotheim in 1967. His grave is located in the Schlotheim cemetery within an old family grave.

literature

• Dieter Fechner: Mühlhausen painter: Mühlhausen in Thuringia (alternative title: Mühlhausen painter book ). Rockstuhl Verlag, Bad Langensalza 2006, ISBN 978-3-938997-01-7 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Helena Ketter: On the image of women in the painting of National Socialism; Münster: LIT, 2002, p. 179 (note 78)
2. ↑ The year 1956 is given in: Thomas T. Müller: Thomas Müntzer im Bauernkrieg. Facts - fictions - desiderata (= Thomas-Müntzer-Gesellschaft e.V. [Hrsg.]: Publications of the Thomas-Müntzer-Gesellschaft e.V. No. 23 ). Thomas-Müntzer-Society e. V., Mühlhausen 2016, ISBN 978-3-935547-67-3 , p. 2, 5 .
3. ↑ Dieter Fechner: Mühlhausen painter: Mühlhausen in Thuringia (alternative title: Mühlhausen painter book ). Rockstuhl Verlag, Bad Langensalza 2006, ISBN 978-3-938997-01-7 , p. 168 ff.