Will Lammert

Will Lammert (born January 5, 1892 in Hagen , Westphalia , † October 30, 1957 in Berlin ) was a German sculptor . In 1959 he was posthumously awarded the GDR National Prize.

Will Lammert in his studio, 1956

Life

Germany

Sitting Girl I , 1913

Will Lammert was born in Hagen in 1892 as the son of a machine fitter. He completed his apprenticeship as a stucco , stone and wood sculptor and initially worked in the studio of the Russian sculptor Moissey Kogan . From 1911 he studied at the Staatliche Kunstgewerbeschule Hamburg under Richard Luksch with a scholarship that he received through the recommendation of the collector and founder of the Museum Folkwang Karl Ernst Osthaus . Between 1912 and 1913 he spent a study visit to Paris. Through his old teacher Kogan, he made the acquaintance of the sculptors Alexander Archipenko and Otto Freundlich .

In 1914 Lammert served as a soldier in the First World War , which he survived seriously wounded. After the war he attended the Höhr University of Applied Sciences near Koblenz . In the following years he worked as a freelance sculptor in his hometown, but also in Düsseldorf and Munich . He also exhibited together with the artist group Das Junge Rheinland , to which Otto Dix and Max Ernst also belonged. In 1920 he married Hette Meyerbach.

Mother Earth , 1926 (destroyed)

At the same time as the Folkwang Museum , he moved to Essen in 1922 . With the support of the city, the Margarethenhöhe artists' colony was established here , where he moved into a studio. Free and building-related sculptures were created for buildings by the architects Edmund Körner , Georg Metzendorf and Alfred Fischer . In addition to his artistic work, he ran a ceramic workshop. Both Hermann Blumenthal and Fritz Cremer began their artistic work in his studio. With the express endorsement of Max Liebermann , he received a Rome scholarship from the Prussian Academy of Arts in 1931 and spent nine months studying at the Villa Massimo , where he worked simultaneously with the artists Werner Gilles , Ernst Wilhelm Nay and Hermann Blumenthal. In 1932 he joined the KPD .

exile

After the National Socialists seized power , Lammert was advertised by the Gestapo for a search for high treason . In the early summer of 1933 he was forced to emigrate to Paris via the Netherlands , where he was also followed by his Jewish wife Hette with his two sons Till and Ule. There he lived temporarily in the same house as the German writer Bodo Uhse and the publisher Willi Münzenberg . But in 1934 Lammert was expelled from France and had to flee further to the Soviet Union . In the meantime, the press in Essen rushed against the “ Jewish-influenced art Bolsheviks” and his “degenerate art”. Almost all plants in Germany were destroyed by the National Socialists in the following years.

Memorial bearers for the Ravensbrück Memorial , 1959

Despite Lammert's great efforts, which led him to Siberia in the hope of finding work as a sculptor , there were few opportunities for artistic activity in the Soviet Union. In 1938 he moved from Moscow to the Peredelkino suburb , where he lived in Friedrich Wolf's dacha . He also maintained contact there with other German emigrants such as Johannes R. Becher , Adam Scharrer and Erich Weinert . He worked in various architectural offices and led drawing circles with the artist Heinrich Vogeler, who also emigrated . After the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, he was expelled - this time as a German - from the greater Moscow region and first came to the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic , where he worked in a collective farm . A year later he was drafted into the " labor army " and taken to Kazan . Even with the end of the war, his banishment , now converted into a "special banishment for ever", did not end.

Return to Germany

Lammert was only allowed to leave the Soviet Union in December 1951 in order to finally return to Germany, what was then the GDR . Previously, other returnees such as Else and Friedrich Wolf had repeatedly campaigned for his exit permits. A year later he was elected a full member of the German Academy of the Arts . While he was still working for the Ravensbrück Memorial and Memorial Center on the site of the former Ravensbrück concentration camp , he died in October 1957 in Berlin. Lammert found his final resting place in the Pankow III cemetery in the Berlin-Niederschönhausen district , where he also had his studio. The National Prize of the GDR was awarded to him posthumously in 1959. With this money, his wife donated the Will Lammert Prize , which was awarded to numerous sculptors by the German Academy of the Arts from 1962 to 1992.

plant

Female and male nude , 1931/32 (destroyed)

Early work

At the age of twenty-two, Lammert was noticed at the Cologne Werkbund exhibition in 1914. Two of his golden figures were temporarily removed from the exhibition as morally offensive. Of these, only the head of a golden figure (1914) has survived as a fragment. Small Seated Woman I (1913) was created before that . After the First World War, he was represented by the gallery owner Alfred Flechtheim and took part in various exhibitions by the artist group Das Junge Rheinland. Portraits, large standing and lying female figures and various small sculptures were created. He also carried out public commissions, including Mother Earth (1926) for the entrance to the south-west cemetery in Essen and a lion as a memorial to the fallen in Marburg (1926/1927). From his study stay in Italy he brought along the female and male nudes (1931/1932). In the run-up to the “ Degenerate Art ” campaign, initiated by its protagonist Klaus Graf von Baudissin , after 1933 Lammert's early work was almost completely destroyed. Today this part of his work is mainly known through photographs by Albert Renger-Patzsch and Edgar Jené . In addition to a few small sculptures, only the little reclining figure (1930), a fragment by Ruth Tobi (1919) and an early version by Karl Ernst Osthaus (1930) have survived. Casts of these sculptures are now in the Nationalgalerie , Berlin, the Germanisches Nationalmuseum , Nuremberg, and the Smart Museum of Art , Chicago. There are also a number of drawings that were made mainly during his studies in France in 1912/1913 and in Italy in 1932.

Memorial at the Old Jewish Cemetery, Berlin-Mitte, 1956/85

Late work

Only after his return from eighteen years of exile was Lammert able to resume his artistic activity. During this time he also made several portraits and memorial sculptures, among others by Karl Marx (1953), Eduard von Winterstein (1954), Friedrich Wolf (1954), Wilhelm Pieck (1955) and Thomas Müntzer (1956). But mainly he devoted himself to the design of the Ravensbrück memorial . After Lammert's death, part of the design was implemented. The carrying woman (1957), with Olga Benario as a model, was enlarged on a pylon in 1959 . Thirteen of the sculptures actually intended for the base of the stele have been standing since 1985 in memory of the Jewish victims of fascism at the Old Jewish Cemetery in Grosse Hamburger Strasse in Berlin-Mitte. This group of figures (composition: Mark Lammert ) was the first memorial for the Jewish victims of National Socialism in Berlin. A Karl Marx bust placed in the entrance area of ​​the Humboldt University in Berlin was removed during the fall of the Wall.

Sculpture find in Berlin

Before the start of construction work on the new Red Rathaus Underground Station of subway line U5 were in 2010 sculptures of classical modernity rediscovered after its seizure by the National Socialist regime were lost. Among them was a fragment of Seated Girl I , 1913, by Will Lammert. The works of the sculpture find were shown from November 9, 2010 to March 2012 in the Neues Museum in Berlin. On March 15 and 16, 2012, a scientific symposium took place in Berlin at which new findings were presented.

Exhibitions / participation in exhibitions (selection)

Karl Ernst Osthaus , 1930 (destroyed)

• 1913: "Will Lammert - Drawings", Museum Folkwang, Hagen
• 1914: Werkbund exhibition, Cologne
• 1919: "On the way to the art of our time", Galerie Flechtheim, Düsseldorf
• 1919: The Young Rhineland, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf
• 1930: "Westphalian Modernism", a. a. Hagen
• 1931: German Association of Artists , Essen
• 1959: "Will Lammert - Memorial Exhibition", German Academy of the Arts , Berlin
• 1973: “Will Lammert and the Will Lammert Prize Winners”, Exhibition Center at the TV Tower , Berlin
• 1977: "Will Lammert (1892-1957)", Orangery Palace , Potsdam
• 1981/1982: "Will Lammert - Sculpture and Drawings 1910-1933", Kunsthalle Weimar / Art Gallery Gera
• 1988: "Will Lammert - Sculpture and Drawings", Our Dear Women Monastery , Magdeburg
• 1988/1989: “And teaches them: Memory”, Ephraim-Palais , East Berlin, Martin-Gropius-Bau , West Berlin
• 1990: "Artists for Humanity - Committed Art 1945-89", GDR cultural center, Paris
• 1992: "Will Lammert (1892–1957) - Sculptures and Drawings", exhibition on the occasion of the artist's 100th birthday, Akademie der Künste, Berlin
• 1999/2000: "Avant-garde in Westphalia?", Traveling exhibitions, including Ahlen
• 1999/2000: "Sculpture for a New Europe", The Henry Moore Foundation , Leeds
• 2003: "The early modernist German art collection", The Smart Museum of Art, Chicago
• 2003: "Art in the GDR", Neue Nationalgalerie , Berlin
• 2009: "Cold War", Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg

Public collections (selection)

• New National Gallery, Berlin
• Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg
• Folkwang Museum, Essen
• Monastery of Our Dear Women, Magdeburg
• Moritzburg , plastic collection, hall
• The Smart Museum of Art, Chicago

Awards

• 1931: Rome Prize of the Prussian Academy of the Arts
• 1959: National Prize of the GDR, 2nd class (posthumous)

Drawings (selection)

• 

  Image composition , 1912

• 

  Three standing people , 1932

• 

  At the fountain , 1932

• 

  On the street , 1932

literature

• Annita Beloubek-Hammer: The beautiful characters of the better future. The sculpture of expressionism and its intellectual environment. LETTER Foundation, Cologne 2007, ISBN 3-930-63313-2 .
• Erwin Dickhoff: Essen heads - who was what? Richard Bracht, Essen 1985, ISBN 3-870-34037-1 .
• Anke Scharnhorst, Peter Erler:  Lammert, Will . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Peter H. Feist (ed.) With foreword by Fritz Cremer and catalog raisonné by Marlies Lammert: * Will Lammert. Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1963.
• Peter Heinz Feist: Plastic from the GDR. Dresden 1965.
• Matthias Flügge : Will Lammert - Drawings 1932 , Foundation Archive of the Academy of Arts, Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 2002, ISBN 3-364-00393-9 .
• John Heartfield (Ed.): Will Lammert - Memorial Exhibition. Academy of Arts, Berlin 1959.
• Marlies Lammert: Will Lammert - Sculpture and Drawings (1910–1933). Academy of Arts, Berlin / Gera / Weimar 1982.
• Will Lammert (1892-1957). Sculpture and drawings . Exhibition by the Berlin Academy of the Arts on the occasion of the artist's 100th birthday. Berlin, 1992
• Marlies Lammert: Will Lammert - Ravensbrück. Academy of Arts, Berlin 1968.
• Horst-Jörg Ludwig (Ed.) With a foreword by Werner Stötzer : Will Lammert (1892–1957) - Sculpture and Drawings. Exhibition on the occasion of the artist's 100th birthday. Academy of Arts, Berlin 1992.
• Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): Will Lammert. In: International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 , Volume II / Part 2: LZ, The Arts, Sciences and Literature. Saur Verlag, Munich et al. 1983, ISBN 3-598-10087-6 , p. 684.
• Günter Vogler : The Thomas Müntzer Monument in Mühlhausen. The monument tradition and the monument by Will Lammert. Mühlhausen 2007, ISBN 3-935547-21-8 .
• Matthias Wemhoff: The Berlin Sculpture Find. "Degenerate Art" in bomb rubble , Schnell and Steiner, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7954-2463-3 . (Accompanying volume to the exhibition)
• Matthias Wemhoff (Ed.): The Berlin Sculpture Find. “Degenerate Art” in bomb rubble. Discovery - interpretation - perspective. Accompanying volume for the exhibition with contributions from the Berlin Symposium 15. – 16. March 2012 , Schnell and Steiner, Regensburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-7954-2628-6 .

Web links

Commons : Will Lammert  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Will Lammert in the catalog of the German National Library