Wilhelm Scholkmann

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Self-portrait, woodcut

Wilhelm Ludwig Adolph Scholkmann (born December 25, 1867 in Berlin , † 1944 in Worpswede ) was a German painter .

Life

Wilhelm Scholkmann: Seated Farmer
Wilhelm Scholkmann: Study for a portrait of a child
Wilhelm Scholkmann: Ex libris

“Willi” Scholkmann was the son of the theology professor Adolf Scholkmann and his wife Marie Bussmann, daughter of a lady-in-waiting and a Hohenzollern prince. His mother had no problems with her illegitimate origin, especially since Wilhelm Scholkmann's grandmother was quickly married off to an elderly councilor. Wilhelm Scholkmann tormented this story all his life, he later suffered from paranoia because of it.

In February 1888 he passed the Abitur at the Luisenstädtische Gymnasium in Berlin and began his free studies in Paris and Munich. He was convinced of his talent, but did not yet know which art direction he liked most. However, his parents would have wished him a job as an art teacher or illustrator that could also have supported him.

After the death of his brother with lung disease, his 50-year-old mother also died. In 1907 the father died too. From 1908 Wilhelm Scholkmann lived more badly than right in Dötlingen from the interest on his inherited small fortune. In November 1909 an exhibition of the Oldenburg Art Association took place in Oldenburg in the Augusteum . Here he exhibited the large painting “Before the start of the service” from the Dötlinger church . He expected this picture to get a lot of attention at the exhibition. When the artist, always gloomy and repellent, firn his picture , he clashed with a board member of the art association. Everyone insisted on his point of view, so the artist withdrew his works from the exhibition.

In autumn 1912 he moved into a small house in Osterdorf, Post Worpswede, No. 47. There he simply lived like a hermit in a spartan way and even tried beekeeping. Inflation devoured the rest of his capital. His melancholy moor, heather and poor people pictures hardly found buyers. The relatives felt it was an unpleasant duty to keep the "crazy artist" from starving. In return, some of his creations - autumn fog, heather trails, peat barges, village violinists, wooden shoe repairers and bitter peasant women - wandered into the living rooms of his middle-class relatives. He himself remained a stranger among them. Often he was silent all day.

Training and work

From 1889 Wilhelm Ludwig Scholkmann attended the publicly recognized painting school founded by Heinrich Knirr in 1888 in Munich , whose most important students were probably Paul Klee and Emil Orlik . At the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Wilhelm Scholkmann studied with Ludwig von Herterich and Johann Leonhard Raab . From 1891 he stayed at the Dachau artists' colony for further training and then went to art academies in Paris and Düsseldorf. He first settled in Worpswede around 1900 .

In 1910 Scholkmann moved to the Dötlingen artists' colony . From there he sent to various exhibitions. He had been working on his “Before the Service” began for six months. On October 17, he wrote in his diary: “Working out the details of the interior of the church has not always been a pleasure. This picture should now be my last attempt to penetrate as a figure painter, at least here in northern Germany. I am definitely counting on this picture to get a fair amount of attention. "

The forgotten among the “Worpswede artists” first appeared in Worpswede in 1900 and finally settled there in 1910. In age, he was very close to the Worpswede painters of the first generation. With the exception of Otto Modersohn , contacts with the other prominent Worpswede painters always remained very loose. He felt deeply disappointed by Heinrich Vogeler , whose sister he wanted to marry. He died in the summer of the war year 1944 in the Worpswede poor house.

plant

In 1904 Scholkmann took part in the 34th major exhibition of the Kunstverein in the Kunsthalle Bremen . His work, "Portrait of my father" is noted in the exhibition catalog. His numerous etchings, the parables based on the Gospel, the cycle “Ages and Seasons” have not survived. They are only known from letters and reviews. Wilhelm Scholkmann apparently painted until the end of his life, but his late work has not survived. Maybe he destroyed it himself in a depressive phase.

Scholkmann's work is scattered to the wind. There is no general catalog and his work has so far hardly been known or recognized. “What have I already had to endure because I have never had any external success!” Wilhelm Scholkmann wrote in his diary in 1908. “I could write a lot about the thorn path that I had to walk; But so far it has happened to all artists who go their own way, so I won't let myself be dissuaded from my path. I will pursue my goal, and I just want to hope to at least get so far that one day my talent can no longer be denied. Whether I will be able to create the works that have occupied me for so long, of course I cannot know. "

He never adapted to the taste of his time, which preferred history and genre images, but he was not as free and independent as Paula Modersohn-Becker . Paula Modersohn-Becker appreciated Wilhelm Scholkmann very much and wrote to him in a friendly manner. He also always maintained a good relationship with her husband, Otto Modersohn. Scholkmann also corresponded with August von Brandis .

literature

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Entry in the register of the academy
  2. ^ Artist directory of the 2004 exhibition ( Memento from June 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Scholkmann, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Scholkmann, Wilhelm Ludwig Adolph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 1944
Place of death Worpswede