Ernst Barlach

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(b Wedel, nr Hamburg, 2 Jan 1870; d Rostock, 24 Oct 1938). German sculptor and printmaker. He experimented with several media because he believed that conventional forms of communication were too formulaic and often failed to make tangible the essence of artistic vision. In his plastic and literary oeuvres Barlach sought to define and externalize the inner processes of humanity and nature through depriving his subject of its superficial mask and extraneous detail.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

The German sculptor Ernst Barlach (1870-1938), working predominately in wood, created important figurative carvings in that medium.

Ernst Barlach was born in Wedel, a small town near Hamburg, the son of a physician. He studied at the Hamburg School of Applied Arts (1888-1891) and the Academy of Art in Dresden (1891-1895). He briefly attended the Académie Julian while residing in Paris (1895-1896), but his stay in France did not leave any apparent mark on his sculpture.

Returning to Germany in 1897, Barlach periodically sketched for the journals Jugend, Simplizissimus, and Die fliegende Blätter and taught ceramics. One of his earliest known pieces, the Cleopatra of 1904, suggests the strong Art Nouveau interest of the time. Barlach's first mature work came as a result of a trip to southern Russia in 1906. He transformed his drawings of Russian peasants into small ceramic pieces, rounding out the generally rough features of the beggars, villagers, and shepherds. His work caught the eye of the Berlin art dealer and publisher Paul Cassirer in 1907. Two years later Barlach won the Villa Romana Prize and a subsequent year in Florence. Upon his return to Germany in 1910, and with Cassirer's continued support, he settled in the rural village of Güstrow, only occasionally traveling to Berlin.

Barlach began to carve in wood in 1907, and it became the principal material in which he worked throughout his life. He drew principally on the life of small German towns for his imagery, and his approach to the material recalls the simplicity and strength of expression found in Romanesque and Gothic sculpture of northern Europe. His works are only of single figures, and they depict man's loneliness, fear, and suffering. This pessimism, often emphasized by the gesture of the hands and the visionary gaze of the eyes, was spiritually akin to the mood of the German expressionist painters, but he was never affiliated with the expressionist movement. Like the graphic artist Kathe Köllwitz, he remained apart from any avant-garde movement or style.

Barlach's hatred of the suffering and chaos of war was forecast in his Panic, Fright (1912) and the Abandoned Ones (1913). Like Daumier, Barlach depicted those who were left homeless by the conflagration. His themes remained constant, and he seldom altered his tendency to compose in a solid block form. His greatest works are his war memorials, and he is the sculptor who most successfully captured the terror of war in the 20th century. His best-known memorials are the Hovering Angel (1927) in Güstrow, the Champion of the Spirit (1928) in Mannheim, and the Memorial for the Dead of World War I (1928) in Magdeburg.

Barlach did not complete one ambitious commission, the facade figures for St. Catherine's Church in Lübeck (1930-1932), owing to the rise of the Nazis. Although he opposed the Nazis, he remained in Germany, where his work was condemned as degenerate; his Magdeburg and Güstrow memorials were removed. The continued persecution of the sculptor ultimately contributed to his death of heart failure in 1938.

Barlach's graphic work, both woodcuts and lithographs, reveals the same vital energy and bold composition found in his best sculpture. His work includes the Modern Dance of Death and illustrations for the writings of Goethe and Schiller. Barlach also illustrated some of his own plays.

Further Reading

The most important work on Barlach is the catalogue raisonné in German, Friedrich Schult, ed., Das plastiche Werk (1960). Schult also edited the catalogue raisonné of Barlach's graphic art, Das graphische Werk (1958). Two useful works in English are Alfred Werner, Ernst Barlach (1966), which provides a concise summary of and introduction to Barlach's sculpture, graphics, and dramatic pieces, and Carl Dietrich Carls, Ernst Barlach (1931; rev. ed. and trans. 1969), a good biographical study of the artist.

Barlach, Ernst (Wedel, Holstein, 1870-1938, Rostock), a richly gifted personality, who became sculptor, graphic artist, dramatist, and novelist, studied art in Hamburg, Dresden, and Paris. He lived in various towns, including Wedel and Berlin, settling in Güstrow, Mecklenburg, in 1910. A visit to Russia in 1906 and another to Florence in 1909 were decisive artistic experiences. In the 1920s, when Expressionism was in fashion, many honours were conferred upon him. He was made a member of the Berlin Academy in 1919 and of the Munich Academy in 1925, was awarded the Kleist Prize (for literature) in 1924 and the highest Prussian order Pour le mérite in 1933. Under the National Socialist regime Barlach's art was regarded as degenerate (see Entartete Kunst) and his works were destroyed or impounded, and until his death he was subject to continuing attacks and provocations. He is buried in Ratzeburg. His sculptures include monuments in stone and bronze (at Cologne, Kiel, Lübeck, and Magdeburg) and numerous carvings in wood, one of which (Lesender Klosterschüler) plays a central part in the story Sansibar oder Der letzte Grund by A. Andersch. Some of his lithographs are illustrations to his own literary works.

Barlach made a number of early experiments in writing, but his first works of importance were written when he was over 40. Between 1912 and 1929 he published seven plays; Der tote Tag (1912) and Der arme Vetter (1918) are both concerned with the relationship of father to son, a personal preoccupation linked with the birth of Barlach's illegitimate son in 1906. The other dramatic works, Die echten Sedemunds (1920), Der Findling (1922), Die Sündflut (1924), Der blaue Boll (1926), and Die gute Zeit (1929) frequently touch the same theme, but also represent the individual wrestling with the ties of the material world in search of God. The dramatic fragment Der Graf von Ratzeburg (1951) presents this theme in particularly complex symbolism. Barlach's two novels, the auto-biographical Seespeck (1948), written before 1914, and Der gestohlene Mond (1948), begun two years before his death, are episodic and unfinished by design. In the latter the two contrasting figures Wau and Wahl represent the contradictions within Barlach's own individuality by reflecting his ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ world, vita contemplativa and vita activa. This dichotomy, perceptible throughout his oeuvre, shows in an imaginative range of contexts, including myth, though always in relation to good and evil. The tension Barlach creates by the complex web of associations has challenged producers and critics and led to widely differing interpretations. Barlach objected to being associated with any literary school, notably Expressionism, despite his proximity to some aspects of the movement (see Expressionismus). His consciousness of good and evil is basic to the spiritual dimension of his concept of growth (‘Werden’) towards the ultimate meaning of creation, but the path towards it is riddled with crossroads and never completed. Clear-sighted and unafraid in his denunciation of National Socialism, he created as one of his last figures in wood a laughing old woman (‘Lachende Alte’), a haggard rustic character marked with deep facial furrows resembling his own; her grotesque demeanour intimates the absurdity of life's hardships, but its ultimate meaning is inconclusive.

Barlach's outstanding autobiography, Ein selbsterzähltes Leben appeared in 1938, the noteworthy Russisches Tagebuch in 1940, Das dichterische Werk (3 vols.), ed. K. Lazarowicz and F. Droß, 1956-9, the prolific and informative correspondence, Briefe aus den Jahren 1888-1924 and Briefe aus den Jahren 1925-1938 (2 vols.), ed. F. Droß, 1968-9, and Dramen (8 vols.), ed. H. H. Fischer, 1986 ff. A comprehensive Gesamtausgabe (12 vols.), ed. G. Martens et al., is planned to appear 1995 ff.

The young Ernst Barlach

Ernst Barlach (January 2, 1870 – October 24, 1938) was a German expressionist sculptor, printmaker and writer. Although he was a supporter of the war in the years leading to World War I, his participation in the war made him change his position, and he is mostly known for his sculptures protesting against the war. This created many conflicts during the rise of the Nazi Party, when most of his works were confiscated as degenerate art.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Youth 1.2 Study Years 1.3 Seeking 1.4 Formative years 1.5 Popularity 1.6 Degenerate art 2 Works 3 Works cited 4 References 5 External links

Biography

Youth

Barlach was born in Wedel, Holstein as the oldest of the four sons of Johanna Luise Barlach and Dr Georg Barlach. He attended primary school in Ratzeburg. It was during this period that his father died, early in 1884.

Study Years

Barlach studied from 1888 to 1891 at the Gewerbeschule Hamburg. Due to his artistic talent, he continued his studies at the Königlichen Akademie der bildenden Künste zu Dresden (Royal Art School Dresden) as a student of Robert Diez between 1891 and 1895. He created his first major sculpture during this time, Die Krautpflückerin (The Herb Plucker). He continued his studies for one more year in Paris at the Académie Julian, but remained critical of the German tendency to copy the style of French artists. Nevertheless he returned to Paris again for a few months in 1897 to undertake further studies.

Seeking

After his studies, Barlach worked for some time as a sculptor in Hamburg and Altona, working mainly in an Art Nouveau style. He produced illustrations for the Art Nouveau magazine Jugend 1897-1902, and made sculpture in a style close to Art Nouveau, including some ceramic statues. Afterwards, he also worked as a teacher at a school for ceramics. His first solo exhibition took place at the Kunstsalon Richard Mutz, Berlin, in 1904.

The Magdeburger Ehrenmal, which created a large controversy about Barlach's anti-war position

Formative years

However, the lack of commercial success of his works depressed Barlach. To lighten up, he decided to travel for eight weeks together with his brother Nikolaus and to visit his brother Hans in Russia. This trip to Russia in 1906 was one of the greatest influences on him and his artistic style. Also during his travels in Russia his son Nikolaus was born on August 20, 1906, starting a two-year fight with the mother, Rosa Schwab, for the custody of the child, which Barlach was finally granted.

After returning from Russia, Barlach's financial situation improved considerably, as he received a fixed salary from the art dealer Paul Cassirer in exchange for his sculptures. The formative experiences in Russia and the financial security helped him to develop his own style, focusing on the faces and hands of the people in his sculptures and reducing the other parts of the figures to a minimum. He also began to make wood carvings and bronzes of figures swathed in heavy drapery like those in early Gothic art, and in dramatic attitudes expressive of powerful emotions and a yearning for spiritual ecstasy. He also worked for the German journal Simplicissimus, and started to produce some literature. His works were shown on various exhibitions. He also spent ten months in Florence, Italy in 1909 and afterwards settled in 1910 in Güstrow in Mecklenburg, where he spent the rest of his life.

In the years before World War I, Barlach was a patriotic and enthusiastic supporter of the war, awaiting a new artistic age from the war. This support for the war can also be seen in his works, as for example the statue Der Rächer (The Avenger), from December 1914. His awaited new artistic age came for him when he volunteered to join the war between 1915 and 1916 as an infantry soldier, and he returned as a pacifist and a staunch opponent of war. The horror of the war influenced all of his subsequent works.

Popularity

Barlach's fame increased after the war, and he received many awards and became a member in the prestigious Preußischen Akademie der Künste (Prussian Art Academy) in 1919 and the Akademie der Bildenden Künste München (Munich Art Academy) in 1925. Barlach rejected a number of honorary degrees and teaching positions. In 1925 he also met Bernhard and Marga Böhmer for the first time. He received the Kleist Prize for drama in 1924 for his Die Sündflut (The Flood), in which he projects his personal mysticism onto the story of Noah and the Ark. In 1926 he wrote Der blaue Boll (translated as Squire Blue Boll or Boozer Boll), an expressionist drama in which the eponymous squire almost succeeds in seducing a down-and-out young mother, before both achieve spiritual regeneration.^[1]

Degenerate art

From 1928 onward Barlach also generated many anti-war sculptures based on his experiences in the war. This pacifist position went against the political trend during the rise of Nazism, and he was the target of much criticism. For example, the Magdeburger Ehrenmal (Magdeburg cenotaph) was ordered by the city of Magdeburg to be a memorial of World War I, and it was expected to show heroic German soldiers fighting for their glorious country. Barlach, however, created a sculpture with a French, German, and Russian soldier showing the horror, pain and desperation of the war. This naturally created a controversy with the pro-war population, and the sculpture was removed. Friends of Barlach were able to hide the sculpture until after the war, when it was returned to the Magdeburg Cathedral. Yet the attacks on Barlach continued until his death.

In 1931 Barlach started to live with Marga Böhmer, whereas her ex-husband and Barlach's friend Bernhard Böhmer lived with his new wife Hella.

In 1936, Barlach's works were confiscated during an exhibition together with the works of Käthe Kollwitz and Wilhelm Lehmbruck, and the majority of his remaining works were confiscated as "degenerate art", for example the Güstrower Ehrenmal (Güstrow cenotaph) and the Hamburger Ehrenmal (Hamburg cenotaph). Barlach himself was prohibited from working as a sculptor, and his membership in the art academies was canceled. This rejection is reflected in his final works before his death on October 24, 1938 in Rostock, Mecklenburg. He is buried in the cemetery of Ratzeburg.

In addition to his sculpture, Barlach also wrote eight Expressionist dramas, two novels and an autobiography Ein selbsterzähltes Leben 1928, and had a distinguished oeuvre of woodcuts and lithographs from about 1910 onwards, including illustrations for his own plays.

Works

• 1894 Die Krautpflückerin (The Herb Plucker)
• 1908 Sitzendes Weib (Sitting Woman), Nürnberg
• 1914 Der Rächer (The Avenger)
• 1917 Der tote Tag (The Dead Day, play)
• 1919 Der arme Vetter (The Poor Cousin, play)
• 1920 Die Wandlungen Gottes: Der Gotliche Bettler (Transfiguration of God: Third Day)
• 1921 Die echten Sedemunds (The Real Sedemunds, play)
• 1924 Die Sintflut (The Flood, play)
• 1926 Der blaue Boll (Squire Blue Boll, play)
• 1927 Güstrower Ehrenmal (Güstrow cenotaph), Güstrow
• 1927 Der schwebende Engel (The Floating Angel)
• 1928 Der singende Mann (The Singing Man), Nürnberg
• 1928 Der Geistkämpfer (The Ghost Fighter), Kiel
• 1929 Magdeburger Ehrenmal (Magdeburg cenotaph), Cathedral of Magdeburg, Magdeburg
• 1930 Bettler auf Krücken (Beggar on Crutches )
• 1931 Hamburger Ehrenmal (Hamburg cenotaph), Hamburg
• 1936 Der Buchleser (The Book Reader), Schwerin

Works cited

• Banham, Martin, ed. 1998. "Barlach, Ernst" In The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521434378. p.78-79.
• Ritchie, James McPherson, ed. 1968 Seven Expressionist Plays. German Expressionism Ser. London: John Calder, Dallas: Riverrun, 1980. ISBN 0714505218.

References

1. ^ See Banham (1998) and Ritchie (1968).

• From a Notebook 1906 in Elmar.Ed Elmar Jansen. Berlin 1963
• The Letters 1888-1924 R Piper & Co. Munich 1968

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ernst Barlach

• Ernst Barlach Society, Hamburg Retrieved 15 July 2007.
• Online Bibliography of Secondary Literature

Persondata
NAME	Ernst Barlach
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	German expressionist sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH	January 2, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH	Wedel, Pinneberg, Germany
DATE OF DEATH	October 24, 1938
PLACE OF DEATH	Rostock, Germany

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