Wilhelm Schäffer (artist)

Wilhelm Schäffer (born February 19, 1891 in Neckargartach ; † December 22, 1976 in Heilbronn ) was a visual artist, founder and first chairman of the Heilbronn Artists' Guild. He was awarded the Golden Mint of the City of Heilbronn, his estate is in the municipal gallery. A street in Heilbronn is named after him.

Life

August Wilhelm Schäffer was the son of the railway inspector Wilhelm Schäffer and his wife Sophie Caroline. After completing school at the secondary school in Heilbronn, Schäffer began an apprenticeship in construction, but broke it off in 1908 in favor of studying painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart with professors Robert Poetzelberger and Christian Landenberger , where he was awarded a prize for nude studies. In the First World War he was a soldier at the front from 1914, and from 1917 as an officer of the 2nd Reserve Infantry Regiment 121. In 1918 he was seriously injured on his right arm and was awarded the Golden Württemberg Military Merit Medal.

After 1919 he was a successful freelance artist with exhibitions in Heilbronn, Stuttgart, Munich, Berlin and Düsseldorf. In 1920 he was a founding member of the Heilbronner Künstlerbund . In 1923 he again attended a sculpture class at the Stuttgart Art Academy with Alfred Lörcher and was a founding member of the Stuttgart Secession . In 1928 he made the memorial plaque for his former regiment, which was first attached to the Friedenskirche in April 1929, then re-consecrated at the Nikolaikirche in 1957 and is now in the war memorial in the harbor market tower.

From 1933 he was banned from commissions for political reasons. Study trips took him to France and Italy during this time. In 1940 he was called up again for military service and served in Hildesheim and Braunschweig. His apartment in Heilbronn with a studio and works of art was destroyed in the air raid on Heilbronn in 1944.

In 1946 he was the founder and first chairman of the artists' guild in Heilbronn, where numerous exhibitions of his works took place from 1956 to 1976. At the age of 65, he took a course in mosaic and sgraffito techniques in 1956 in order to be able to work in the field of building art. In 1957 he designed a mural at the Goetheschule in Ludwigsburg. From 1963 he had a studio in the former municipal hospital on Pestalozzistraße in Heilbronn. As early as 1969 he bequeathed his estate to the municipal galleries.

Schäffer had been married to Elise Klara Pauline Weber (1892–1975) since 1924. The marriage resulted in two sons: Son Arno (* 1925) has been missing since 1945, a second son died shortly after his birth in 1939. Wilhelm Schäffer died after a brief illness on December 22, 1976.

The Städtische Museen Heilbronn honored him posthumously in 1987 with the exhibition Mirror of an Inner Life . In addition, Wilhelm-Schäffer-Strasse in Heilbronn is named after him and the Schäfferstube with some of his works has been set up in the old Neckargartach town hall . Further works by Wilhelm Schäffer can be found among others. a. in the Württemberg State Gallery in Stuttgart, in the Gallery of the City of Stuttgart and in the City Museums Heilbronn.

literature

• Schäffer, Wilhelm . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 3 : K-P . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1956.
• 30 years of the Heilbronn Artists' Association, summer exhibition 1979 , Heilbronn 1979, p. 132/133.
• Pictures by Wilhelm Schäffer - a mirror of an inner life . City Museums Heilbronn, Heilbronn 1987 ( Heilbronn Museum Catalog . 30)