Willi Meyer

Georg Julius Otto Willi Meyer (born June 5, 1890 in Northeim , † October 23, 1958 in Oldenburg ; also Willi Meyer ) was a German painter .

Life

The painter and graphic artist Georg Julius Otto Willi Meyer was born on June 5, 1890 in Northeim am Harz as the son of the district court assistant Siegmund Heinrich Robert Meyer and his wife Sophie Louise Meyer née Wehmhörner. Another four siblings lived next to him in his parents' house. After the family moved from Northeim to Celle and attended elementary school, Willi Meyer was retrained to middle school and from 1899 to high school. In 1902 his parents decided to send him to a boarding school in Hamburg , because he was supposed to get the one-year certificate there. At this point, Meyer had already been intensively involved in drawing and painting and stood out in school with his extraordinary talent. He was impressed by the seafaring. He formulated his wish to combine painting and seafaring at school when he replied to a teacher's question about his career aspirations that he wanted to become a marine painter and writer.

After successfully completing school, the painter applied to the Navy, but was rejected there because the shortsightedness of one of his eyes meant that he did not meet the health requirements for a job. Studying art at an academy was also a long way off because his mother became seriously ill and financial support from his parents was not possible due to this illness. His father tried in vain to persuade him to become a civil servant. Instead, Willi Meyer took a job as an intern in a machine factory and worked there for a year before joining the German military as a soldier.

When the First World War broke out in 1914 , he was first ordered to the Eastern Front , but then assigned to France . There he fought in the forefront for several years. Heavy losses on both sides, never-ending drum and shell fire, the sight of the most seriously wounded, the loss of comrades and an ever-present fear of death caused deep wounds, furrows and cracks in the painter's psyche. In 1918, shortly before the end of the war, Willi Meyer was shot in the head in a battle and then, seriously wounded, was taken prisoner by the French. In 1919 he was moved from Poitier to Berlin in exchange and with the help of the Swiss Red Cross . Deeply traumatized, he was supposed to master his life there alone and without help.

Tired of life, the painter finally passed away on October 23, 1958. He was buried in the municipal cemetery on Sandkruger Strasse.

education

Fortunately for him, Willi Meyer met the painter and film architect Walter Reimann in Berlin , who encouraged him to resume his artistic activity. Meyer traveled from Berlin to Bielefeld, but only stayed there for a short time before going to Oldenburg in 1926. The reason was apparently that a brother of his had lived in Easter castle for a long time and he was initially able to stay with him. With a disability pension of only 20 Marks, Willi Meyer tried to get through life as a freelance artist in Oldenburg.

However, desperation quickly spread to him because large sections of the residents spent their money primarily on food and not on paintings. The income he earned from the sale of his work was correspondingly low. During this difficult time, the painter got to know the Oldenburg senior building officer and art-loving architect Adolf Rauhheld , who made contact with the Oldenburg painter Wilhelm Kempin . Kempin, who could hardly support his family himself by selling his paintings, assured Meyer support and taught him in the following years. Willi Meyer was the first student to whom Kempin gave painting and drawing lessons.

Willi Meyer and Marie Glaeseker

In 1927 the painter met his future wife Marie Glaeseker , who had been trained by Gerhard Bakenhus and who found a new teacher in Wilhelm Kempin. Both got along well and eventually fell in love. In 1929 they both attended the Academy for Graphic Arts and Book Design in Leipzig. After only one semester, Willi Meyer had to leave the academy due to his complicated character, but did not return to Oldenburg until 1933. It can be assumed that he stayed in Leipzig for so long because of Marie Glaeseker, because she did not finish her studies until March 1932. On April 15, 1933, Marie Glaeseker and Willi Meyer married and then moved into an old railroad car on the Huntedeich. Some time later, the two of them moved into a farm workers' house at 238 Cloppenburger Strasse, which belonged to the painter's parents. They set up a studio in the attic of one half of the semi-detached house, which they shared. The marriage between Marie Meyer-Glaeseker and Willi Meyer was difficult and often put his wife Marie to a severe test. Haunted by recurring terrible visions of war, the traumatized painter suffered from what he had experienced, especially at night in his dreams. Paintings with war landscapes and battles, which the painter created from his memory, were a recurring theme in his work and probably an important component in processing his trauma. However, his wife Marie was directly affected. When memories of the war experiences came up again and became overwhelming, the painter quickly produced painted, small-format and expressive depictions of war and landscapes, which he burned or destroyed in the garden immediately after completion. Only now and then did his wife manage to save such works from destruction by snatching them from him or taking them away and hiding them at a favorable moment. After the destruction, the painter felt free again and was then able to paint impressionistic landscape paintings full of grace and beauty. The marriage was divorced on April 17, 1946. However, both remain friends and Willi was allowed to continue to use the shared apartment and studio in the Glaeseker house.

Work as a painter

Willi Meyer appeared as an artist under the pseudonym Otto Georg. His friends only ever called him Willi Meyer. He had made friends with Wilhelm Kempin over the past few years and belonged to the group of artists that had now formed, to which his wife Marie belonged as well as Gerhard Bakenhus, Paul Schütte and Wilhelm Behrens. In 1940 his works were shown under the name Otto Georg (Meyer-Oldenburg) in the Oldenburg State Museum under the title "War Landscape - In the Age of Material Battle". The works were created in the years 1929 to 1939 and gave the painter the first major public attention. In 1944, from May 7th to June 6th, he took part in the art exhibition of the Gaukulturtage Weser-Ems in Oldenburg in the Augusteum with 6 paintings (Red Death, Flamethrower, Morning Fog, Nocturnal Fire and Cyclus World War). His wife Marie Meyer-Glaesecker exhibited 6 paintings (calves in the stable, self-portrait, May, azalea, resting cattle, forest study). In a memorial exhibition of the Oldenburger Kunstverein in Oldenburg Castle, paintings by him and Emil Brose were shown in a joint exhibition in his honor and the painter Emil Brose, who died in 1962 . He was further honored in 1968 in a memorial exhibition in the Augusteum organized by the Oldenburger Künstlerbund.

Since that time it has become quiet around the battle painter Willi Meyer, who was one of the outstanding Oldenburg painters due to his skills.

literature

• Gerhard Wietek : 200 years of painting in the Oldenburger Land . Oldenburg 1986, ISBN 3-9801191-0-6 .
• Jürgen Derschewsky: Biographies of Oldenburg artists . Oldenburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-89995-718-1 .

Web links

• Biographies of Oldenburg artists