Yrsa from Leistner

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World religions sculpture in the sculpture park Bildungszentrum St. Virgil Salzburg
Augustine in Sankt Augustin

Yrsa von Leistner (born July 18, 1917 in Munich ; † April 12, 2008 in Siegburg ) was a German sculptor and painter. She was best known for her bronze work .

Life

Yrsa von Leistner was born in Munich as the daughter of a church builder and a Danish classical singer. The family soon moved to Mexico and the United States . At the age of 16 von Leistner entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich , where she became a master class student after two years . Yrsa von Leistner lived in Sankt Augustin for over forty years and had her studio on the grounds of the St. Augustin Mission House of the Steyler Mission . She was buried in the local cemetery after her death.

In National Socialism

Von Leistner reported in October 1944 after a general call by the Red Cross for military service. She was sent to the Charité so that she could combine her art with caring for the wounded. She was also supposed to make a bust of Ferdinand Sauerbruch , moved into a room in the surgical clinic and studied the character of the surgeon with whom she established a kind of spiritual connection. Von Leistner stayed for several weeks. She was of the opinion that Sauerbruch belonged to a resistance group. She learned from his chief secretary, Maria Fritsch , that Sauerbruch was said to have beaten an SS man with a file, and then she found him crying in the studio she had set up in the clinic. The artist was nicknamed “Bomb Liese” by the doctors and nurses who remained in the already badly damaged Charité, as her house had already been hit three times by Allied bombs at that time.

Works

War blind monument in Mehlem
Sculpture in Minden

During the Second World War , Yrsa von Leistner created the monumental concrete statue The War Blind . This was followed by a bust of Professor Ferdinand Sauerbruch , which is in the Berlin Charité . In Japan there is the three and a half meter high Madonna of Nagasaki , in Rome the world age and in the Vatican there is the relief of the Jewish Passion . One of her most famous works is the first official bust of Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer , who also had personal contact with her. Adenauer commissioned her to return home with her mother , in memory of the Wehrmacht soldiers who had been free negotiated from long Soviet forced labor in the 1950s. In Sankt Augustin, where the artist lived for a long time, stands Augustine . On the occasion of her hundredth birthday in 2017, there was an exhibition at the Steyler missionaries, on whose grounds around twenty Leistner's works are located.

Religion and reconciliation

The themes of religion, reconciliation and peace preferred by the sculptor found international interest, as they had previously aroused the attention of Chancellor Adenauer. After his first visit to the studio in Bonn, representatives of politics and society also wanted to get to know “Adenauer's favorite sculptor”. These included Ludwig Erhard , numerous ministers, NATO militaries, bishops and cardinals. Among other things, she was by Pope Paul VI. received at the handover of the relief “The Passion of the Jews” in the Vatican for a private audience , as Pius XII had done years earlier .

In India she met Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama , whom she portrayed in Bonn. After Yrsa von Leistner's move from the federal capital to the Sankt Augustin studio , “First Lady” Mildred Scheel came to Klosterstrasse in 1974 as the most prominent visitor . The artist dedicated the small sculpture “Mother” to the founder of the German Cancer Aid as a thank you for “helping people with cancer and their groundbreaking work against cancer”.

criticism

The Hamburg newspaper Die Zeit wrote in a comment (author abbreviation 'M') in November 1949 that Yrsa von Leistner's design of a 50 meter high statue of Christ standing in the sea was “colossal kitsch ”.

Honors

The honors for Yrsa von Leistner included private audiences in the Vatican with the award of the

  • Peace Medal PAX by Pius XII.
  • Reconciliation Medal by Paul VI.
  • Visiting professor at George Washington University in St. Louis .
  • Honorary member of the European Culture Foundation "in recognition of her cultural work".

literature

  • Yrsa von Leistner: Great encounters from the point of view of an artist. Hohenrain-Verlag, Tübingen / Paris 1986, ISBN 3-89180-010-X .
  • Horst Heidermann : Konrad Adenauer and the sculptor: Yrsa von Leistner (1917–2008) - a biographical approach. In: Bonner Heimat- und Geschichtsverein , Stadtarchiv Bonn (Hrsg.): Bonner Geschichtsblätter: Yearbook of the Bonner Heimat- und Geschichtsverein. ISSN  0068-0052 , Volume 67 (2017), Bonn 2017, pp. 289–321. [not yet evaluated for this article]

Web links

Commons : Yrsa von Leistner  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Günter Willscheid: The whole world embraced with art and heart. In: Kölnische Rundschau. April 16, 2008, accessed on January 1, 2019 (German).
  2. ↑ Sofia Grillo: On the birthday of Yrsa von Leistner - Sankt Augustinian artist Yrsa von Leistner would now be 100 years old. In: General-Anzeiger Bonn. May 30, 2017, accessed January 1, 2019 .
  3. ^ Christian Hardinghaus: Ferdinand Sauerbruch and the Charité. Operations against Hitler. Europa Verlag, Berlin / Munich / Vienna / Zurich 2019, ISBN 978-3-95890-236-7 , pp. 142 ff./166 ff .
  4. ↑ Martina World: 40 Years of the City of Sankt Augustin - The story of the bust of St. Augustine. In: General-Anzeiger Bonn. November 24, 2017, accessed January 1, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Thomas Heinemann: Exhibition in the Steyler Monastery - show in Sankt Augustin reminds of Yrsa von Leistner. In: General-Anzeiger Bonn. July 24, 2017, accessed January 1, 2019 .
  6. ↑ EKS archive, 1974 interview with YvLeistner.
  7. ↑ specimen in the collection Bodenstein in the Museum of European Art from the Nörvenich Castle .
  8. ↑ http://europaeische-kultur-stiftung.org , artist archive, accessed on March 19, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Leistner, Yrsa from
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sculptor and painter
DATE OF BIRTH July 18, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH April 12, 2008
Place of death Siegburg