Fritz Cremer

Last updated
Fritz Cremer
Fritz Cremer.png
Cremer working in his studio in 1967
Born(1906-10-22)October 22, 1906
Arnsberg, Germany
DiedSeptember 1, 1993(1993-09-01) (aged 86)
Berlin, Germany
EducationChristian Meisen, United State Schools for Fine and Applied Art (1929), Villa Massimo (1937-1938), Academy of Arts, Berlin (1938)
Notable workRevolt of the Prisoners, Buchenwald

Fritz Cremer was a German sculptor. Cremer was considered a key figure in the art and cultural politics of East Germany. [1] He is most notable for being the creator of the "Revolt of the Prisoners" ("Revolte der Gefangenen") memorial sculpture at the former concentration camp of Buchenwald. [2]

Contents

Life

Fritz Cremer was the son of the upholsterer and decorator Albert Cremer. One year after his father's death, his mother Christine Cremer moved to Rellinghausen with her children Fritz and Emmy in 1908. In 1911, the family moved to Essen, where Christine began a second marriage with a teacher. After his mother died in 1922, Cremer lived with a miner's family. [3] [4]

In 1929, the Austrian expressive dancer Hanna Berger met Cremer and the two began a romantic relationship. [5] [6] In autumn 1942, Berger was arrested by the Gestapo [7] for her work as a campaigner in Kurt Schumacher's resistance group. In 1944, Berger was able to escape from prison when she was being transferred to Ravensbrück concentration camp during a bombing. [8] She lived illegally in Styria until the end of the war. [8]

In 1953, Cremer married Christa von Carnap (1921-2010), a painter and ceramicist who had divorced shortly before. She was the daughter of Alfred von Carnap (1894–1965), a merchant from the Wilmersdorf area of Berlin, and his first wife Susanne Schindler. Christa von Carnap had previously been married to the Schöneberg-based sculptor Waldemar Grzimek. [9]

Career

Cremer trained as a stone sculptor under Christian Meisen in Essen from 1921 to 1925 after finishing grammar school. [10] During his subsequent work as a journeyman stonemason, he executed some sculptures based on models by Will Lammert and attended sculpture courses at the Folkwang School in Essen during this time. [11] In 1929, as a committed communist, he decided to join the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). He took up studies at the "United State Schools for Fine and Applied Art", (Vereinigte Staatsschulen für Freie und Angewandte Kunst) in Charlottenburg with Wilhelm Gerstel (1879-1963), whose master student he became from 1934 to 1938. [4] During this time Cremer shared a studio with Kurt Schumacher and produced his first socially-critical etchings. In 1934 he travelled to Paris. During a trip to London in 1937, Cremer met the writer and playwright Bertolt Brecht, the composer Hans Eisler and the actor Helene Weigel there, [12] who advised him to continue working in Germany. Twice he was a guest of the Villa Massimo in Rome. The first time was in 1937-1938 where he was awarded a fellowship to study for the year, after winning a prize at the "Preußischen Staatspreis für Bildhauerei" (Prussian State Prize for Sculpture). [13] The second time in 1942-43. At the Prussian Academy of Arts, Cremer now ran a master studio himself. He was in close contact with the Red Orchestra resistance group around the sculptor Kurt Schumacher and the writer Walter Küchenmeister. Cremer was linked to a resistance group associated with the actor Wilhelm Schürmann-Horster via Hanna Berger. [14]

His communist past, possibly not particularly spectacular in terms of political action, seems not to have been taken into account by the Nazi regime; but this is by no means a singular case since talents of all kinds were sought after and employed in the culture industries as long as they kept quiet about their former political options.[ citation needed ]

From 1940 to 1944, he served in the Wehrmacht as an anti-aircraft soldier in Eleusis and on the island of Crete, [15] after which Cremer became a prisoner of war in Yugoslavia. While he was a soldier would spend any extended leave in Rome where the German Academy had been taken over by the German army. In October 1946, vouched for by his party comrades, he was awarded a professorship and the chair of sculpture department of the Academy for Applied Art in Vienna. [16]

Visual representation in the arts

Memorial designs

During his time in Austria, Cremer designed two memorials for the victims of fascism, a small one for the French prisoners at Mauthausen near Linz in Austria and a very important and controversial one at the Vienna Central Cemetery, the Memorial for the victims of a free Austria 1934–1945. Controversy was sparked off by the memorial's dedication to the victims of Fascism as from 1934, the year that an authoritarian regime accepted by the Catholic Church took power in Austria. [20] [21] The memorial represented a naked bronze figure of a resistance fighter, which was considered controversial. Theodor Innitzer, the Archbishop of Vienna wanted a fig leave placed on the sculptor, which Cremer did not accept. [22]

In 1950, Cremer had moved to the German Democratic Republic and took over the master class at the Academy of the Arts, [23] later serving as vice-president from 1974 to 1983. [4] His most important work by far during his earlier life in the GDR is his 1958 bronze sculpture "Revolt of the Prisoners" (Revolte der Gefangenen); set in front of a bell tower, high up in the hills above Weimar, the grouping of 11 figures, some gesturing triumphantly, forms the focal point of a memorial at the site of the former concentration camp of Buchenwald. [24] [25]

A further memorial at Mauthausen was commissioned in 1961 from Cremer by the German Democratic Republic's Association of Victims of Fascism and completed in 1965-1955. This memorial known as "O Deutschland, bleiche Mutter" in bronze dominates a pivotal area of the former concentration camp, the access road to the stone quarries where most of the camp's victims died. [26]

In Fritz Cremer's work, the acts and lovers form the thematic counterpart to the political commissioned works, and also served to calm down and retreat into the private. In them, “her true features and erotic sensuality unite,” “close together, tenderness and fulfilment.” [27]

Stylistically, it cannot be assigned to modernity or to socialist realism. The aim of Cremer's artistic efforts was to make the “mentalic constitution” of the presented. [28] For this reason, Cremer breaks with the idealising representation of the body, while stressing its irregularities.

Overview of creations

Sculpture and busts

Drawings and lithographs

Book illustrations

Exhibitions

The following exhibitions were held by Cremer: [37]

Awards and honors

Awards

Honours

In 1967 Cremer became an Honorary Member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR. [23]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elisabeth Schumacher</span>

Elisabeth Schumacher was a German artist, photographer. and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime. She was a member of the Berlin-based anti-fascist resistance group that was later called the Red Orchestra by the Abwehr, during the Third Reich. Schumacher trained as an artist, but as her father was Jewish, who died in battlefield during World War I, she was classified as half-Jewish or Mischling, so worked as a graphic artist, before joining the resistance efforts.

Norbert Kricke was a German sculptor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edwin Scharff</span> German sculptor

Edwin Scharff was a German sculptor. He was born in Neu-Ulm and died in Hamburg.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abraham David Christian</span> German sculptor

Abraham David Christian is a German sculptor.

Franz Rosei is an Austrian sculptor and draughtsman. His brother is the writer Peter Rosei.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Will Lammert</span> German sculptor

Will Lammert was a German sculptor. In 1959 he was posthumously awarded the National Prize of the German Democratic Republic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Herbert Sandberg</span>

Herbert Sandberg was a German artist and caricaturist. He was best known for his caricatures in the satirical magazine, Ulenspiegel, which he co-founded and art directed. He is also well known for his drawings of Bertolt Brecht and for his column, Der freche Zeichenstift in the magazine, Das Magazin. A member of the Communist Party, a Jew, and a German Resistance fighter, Sandberg spent 10 years in a Nazi prison and in Buchenwald concentration camp. He conceived the idea for Ulenspiegel while a prisoner there and began working on it almost immediately on liberation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georg Wrba</span> German sculptor and graphic artist

Georg Wrba was a German sculptor and graphic artist. He created some 3,000–4,000 works, including as a collaborator of the Zwinger workshop.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hanna Berger</span> German music educator

Hanna Berger was an Austrian dancer, choreographer, teacher, director, theatre director, writer and lifelong anti-Nazi and communist. She was described as part of the free dance movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruthild Hahne</span> German sculptor

Ruthild Hahne was a German sculptor. Her most productive phase coincided with the early years of the German Democratic Republic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marburg Picture Index</span> German image database of art and architecture

The Bildindex der Kunst und Architektur is an open online database of 2.2 million photographs of 1.7 million artworks and architectural objects. The owner/operator of this database is the German Documentation Center for Art History known formally as Bildarchiv Foto Marburg.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joachim Schmettau</span> German sculptor (born 1937)

Joachim Schmettau is a German sculptor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heinz Zander</span> German author and illustrator

Heinz Zander is a German painter, graphic artist, illustrator and writer. Zander belongs to the Leipzig School. His fields of work are painting (oil), drawing, graphics and illustration. He is also active as a writer and publishes novels, stories and essays. Zander worked with painting techniques oriented towards the Old Masters, from which he developed a completely independent pictorial language. He was inspired by Bosch, Grünewald, Altdorfer, Cranach and Italian Mannerists. He works mainly with colourful resin-oil glazes.

Hans Steger was a German sculptor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oda Schottmüller</span>

Oda Schottmüller was an expressive dancer, mask maker and sculptor. Schottmüller was most notable as a resistance fighter against the Nazis, through her association with a Berlin-based anti-fascist resistance group that she met through the sculptor Kurt Schumacher. The group would later be named by the Gestapo as Die Rote Kapelle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter H. Feist</span> German art historian

Peter Heinz Feist was a German art historian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ernesto de Fiori</span> German sculptor

Ernesto de Fiori was a German painter and sculptor of Italian and Austrian descent. A dazzling personality himself, he rose to fame as a society portraitist and a major protagonist of Berlin's vivid art scene during the Weimar Republic. One of the many artists defamed as "degenerate" by the Nazis in 1937, de Fiori emigrated to Brazil where he died in 1945.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Akademie der Künste der DDR</span> East-German music institut

The Akademie der Künste der DDR was the central art academy of the German Democratic Republic (DDR). It existed under different names from 1950 to 1993. Then it merged with the "Akademie der Künste Berlin (West)" to become the Academy of Arts, Berlin.

Karl Krug was a German painter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wilhelm Schürmann-Horster</span> German actor and resistance fighter

Wilhelm "Willy" Schürmann-Horster was a German actor, dramaturge, and director, who was a marxist and dedicated communist, and who became a resistance fighter against the Nazis. As a young man, Schürmann-Horster trained as an actor at the Düsseldorf Drama School. During the 1920s he worked in various acting troupes in theatres in the Rhineland. By the mid 1930s, he had become a communist and in 1934 and 1935 he was arrested for political agitation but acquitted for lack of evidence. After moving to Berlin in 1937, he met and became friends with Cay and Erika von Brockdorff. Through them, a discussion group of like-minded friends was formed who openly discussed current affairs and Schürmann-Horster became their spokesman. Through contacts in the group, connections were made with a resistance organisations that was run by Harro Schulze-Boysen and Arvid Harnack in 1940. Although Schürmann-Horster wasn't a physical resistance fighter in the cast of Harro Schulze-Boysen, he was an intellectual opponent of the Nazis who displayed his convictions on the stage and as a result never took part in any of the operations that his friends undertook. After falling ill in 1941, Schürmann-Horster moved to Konstanz where he worked as a dramaturge at the Grenzland Theatre. In October 1942, he was arrested and sentenced to death for "high treason", "dissemination of illegal writings" and "aiding and abetting the enemy" by the 2nd of the Volksgerichtshof. He was executed in Plötzensee Prison on 9 September 1943. He was described by his close friend, the communist trade unionist Rudy Goguel in the daily newspaper Südkurier as

References

  1. 1 2 Břízová, Daniela. The role of sculpture in the official art of totalitarian regimes: GDR and ČSR 1948–1968 compared (PDF) (Thesis). Univerzita Karlova. p. 157. Retrieved 20 October 2022.
  2. ↑ "Fritz Cremer, Creator of the Buchenwald Memorial". Defa Film Library. University of Massachusetts Amherst. Retrieved 15 October 2022.
  3. ↑ Fischer-Defow, Christine; Norbert, Bunge (September 1986). Fritz Cremer zum 80 (in German). Berlin: Hans am Lützowplatz. OCLC   74798728.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "Fritz Cremer 1906 - 1993". Lemo Lebendiges Museum Online (in German). Berlin: Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Das Bundesarchiv. Retrieved 15 October 2022.
  5. ↑ Amort, Andrea. ""Die Wahrheit ist dem Nationalsozialismus immer unangenehm"". Deutschen Tanzarchiv (in German). Cologne: Freunde der Tanzkunst am Deutschen Tanzarchiv Köln e.V. Retrieved 20 October 2022.
  6. ↑ Andresen, Geertje (1 November 2005). Oda Schottmüller: Die Tänzerin, Bildhauerin und Nazigegnerin Oda Schottmüller (1905–1943) (in German). Lukas Verlag. p. 144. ISBN   978-3-936872-58-3.
  7. ↑ Vernon-Warren, Bettina; Warren, Charles (1999). Gertrud Bodenwieser and Vienna's Contribution to Ausdruckstanz. Hove: Psychology Press. p. 150. ISBN   978-90-5755-035-5.
  8. 1 2 "Hanna Berger: Following the Traces of a Dancer in the Resistance by Andrea Amort". National Fund (in German). Vienna: National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism. Retrieved 25 October 2022.
  9. ↑ Grzimek, Sabine; Jacobi, Fritz (1992). Sabine Grzimek: Plastik, Zeichnung, Malerei : Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, 9. Oktober bis 29. November 1992 (in German). Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz. p. 115. ISBN   978-3-88609-407-3.
  10. ↑ "Fritz Cremer". Kunst in der DDR (in German). Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung. Retrieved 15 October 2022.
  11. ↑ Cremer, Fritz; Ballarin, W. (1986). Fritz Cremer: Erinnerungen an morgen ; Städt. Kunstsammlungen Karl-Marx-Stadt, 16. Februar - 19. Mai 1986 (in German). Kunstsammlungen Karl-Marx-Stadt. p. 86.
  12. ↑ "Fritz Cremer". Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (in German). Netherlands Institute for Art History. 20 April 2021. Retrieved 15 October 2022.
  13. ↑ "Bild des Monats September 2008". Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation (in German). Berlin. Retrieved 15 October 2022.
  14. ↑ Andresen, Geertje (1 November 2005). Oda Schottmüller: Die Tänzerin, Bildhauerin und Nazigegnerin Oda Schottmüller (1905–1943) (in German). Berlin: Lukas Verlag. ISBN   978-3-936872-58-3.
  15. ↑ Cremer, Fritz (1980). Fritz Cremer - Plastik und Grafik: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, Wilhelm-Lehmbruck-Museum der Stadt Duisburg, 7.Dezember 1980 bis 25.Januar 1981 (in German). Duisburg: Das Museum. p. 19.
  16. ↑ Stroynowski, Juliusz (1989). Who's who in the Socialist Countries of Europe: A Biographical Encyclopedia of More Than 12,600 Leading Personalities in Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia. Munich: K.G. Saur. p. 198. ISBN   978-3-598-10636-1.
  17. ↑ Grzimek, Sabine (1982). "Porträt Fritz Cremer". Bildindex der Kunst & Architektur - Startseite Bildindex (in German). Marburg: Philipps-Universität Marburg. Retrieved 19 October 2022.
  18. ↑ Goltzsche, Dieter (1969). "Porträt Fritz Cremer". Bildindex der Kunst & Architektur - Startseite Bildindex (in German). Marburg: Philipps-Universität Marburg. Retrieved 19 October 2022.
  19. ↑ Mucchi, Gabriele (1963). "Porträt Fritz Cremer". Bildindex der Kunst & Architektur - Startseite Bildindex (in German). Marburg: Philipps-Universität Marburg. Retrieved 19 October 2022.
  20. ↑ Borejsza, Jerzy W.; Ziemer, Klaus; Hułas, Magdalena; historyczny (Varsovie), Niemiecki instytut (2006). Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes in Europe: Legacies and Lessons from the Twentieth Century. New York: Berghahn Books. p. 574. ISBN   978-1-57181-641-2.
  21. ↑ Berger, Stefan; Eriksonas, Linas; Mycock, Andrew (2008). Narrating the Nation: Representations in History, Media, and the Arts. New York: Berghahn Books. p. 211. ISBN   978-1-84545-424-1.
  22. ↑ Amort, Andrea (2010). Hanna Berger: Spuren einer Tänzerin im Widerstand (in German). Vienna: Brandstätter. pp. 142–143. ISBN   978-3-85033-188-3.
  23. 1 2 "Cremer, Fritz". Bundesstiftung Aufarbeitung (in German). Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur. October 2009. Retrieved 20 October 2022.
  24. 1 2 Monteath, Peter (2013). "Holocaust Remembrance in the German Democratic Republic—and Beyond". In Himka, John-Paul; Michlic, Joanna Beata (eds.). Bringing the Dark Past to Light: The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Pres. pp. 223–260. doi:10.2307/j.ctt1ddr8vf. ISBN   9780803225442. JSTOR   j.ctt1ddr8vf.
  25. 1 2 Koshar, Rudy (2000). From Monuments to Traces: Artifacts of German Memory, 1870-1990. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 215. ISBN   978-0-520-92252-5.
  26. ↑ Spielmann, Jochen (1988). "Steine des Anstoßes - Denkmale in Erinnerung an den Nationalsozialismus in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland". Kritische berichte - Zeitschrift für Kunst- und Kulturwissenschaften (in German). University of Heidelberg. 16 (3): 5–16. doi:10.11588/kb.1988.3.10120. ISSN   0340-7403.
  27. ↑ Brüne, Gerd (May 2009). "Fritz Cremer (1906 - 1993) - Plastiken und Zeichnungen". In Cremer, Fritz; Schwind, Karl; Schwind, Galerie (eds.). Fritz Cremer (1906 - 1993) - Plastiken und Zeichnungen, Retrospektive [anlässlich der Ausstellung "Fritz Cremer - Retrospektive" in der Galerie Schwind, Frankfurt am Main vom 8. Mai bis 27. Juni 2009] (in German). Frankfurt, M: Ed. Galerie Schwind. pp. 6–43. ISBN   978-3932830617.
  28. ↑ Brüne, Gerd (2005). Front cover image for Pathos und Sozialismus : Studien zum plastischen Werk Fritz Cremers (1906-1993) Pathos und Sozialismus : Studien zum plastischen Werk Fritz Cremers (1906-1993) (in German). Weimar: Verlag und Datenbank für Geisteswissenschaften. p. 20.
  29. ↑ "Schwimmerin, Fritz Cremer, 1959/1966". Potsdam (in German). Die Landeshauptstadt Potsdam. 21 July 2014. Retrieved 19 October 2022.
  30. ↑ Cremer, Fritz; Hoffmeister, Christine (1976). Fritz Cremer: Projekte, Studien, Resultate (in German). Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / National-Galerie Akademie der Künste der DDR. p. 92.
  31. ↑ Grabs, Manfred (1983). Wer war Hanns Eisler: Auffassungen aus sechs Jahrzehnten (in German). Verlag Das Europäische Buch. p. 8. ISBN   978-3-88436-123-8.
  32. ↑ Cremer, Fritz (1980). Fritz Cremer - Plastik und Grafik: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, Wilhelm-Lehmbruck-Museum der Stadt Duisburg, 7.Dezember 1980 bis 25.Januar 1981 (in German). Duisburg: Das Museum. p. 62.
  33. ↑ Cremer, Fritz (1980). Fritz Cremer - Plastik und Grafik: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, Wilhelm-Lehmbruck-Museum der Stadt Duisburg, 7.Dezember 1980 bis 25.Januar 1981 (in German). Duisburg: Das Museum. p. 137.
  34. ↑ "Die Frau auf der Promenade". Märkische Oderzeitung (in German). Märkisches Verlags. 30 June 2008. Archived from [tp://www.moz.de/artikel-ansicht/dg/0/1/19337 the original] on 15 July 2015. Retrieved 19 October 2022.
  35. ↑ "Nanu. 1. Karl-Marx-Denkmal nach der Wende". B.Z (in German). Berlin: Ullstein-Verlag. 2 November 2000. Retrieved 19 October 2022.
  36. ↑ Cremer, Fritz; Hoffmeister, Christine (1976). Fritz Cremer: Projekte, Studien, Resultate (in German). Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / National-Galerie Akademie der Künste der DDR. p. 37.
  37. ↑ Eisold, Dietmar (2010). Lexikon Künstler in der DDR. Berlin: Verlag Neues Leben.
  38. ↑ "Neue Elite". Spiegel-Verlag. Der Spiegel. 24 December 1972. Retrieved 20 October 2022.
  39. 1 2 Stroynowski, Juliusz (1989). Who's who in the Socialist Countries of Europe: A Biographical Encyclopedia of More Than 12,600 Leading Personalities in Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia. Munich: K.G. Saur. p. 198. ISBN   978-3-598-10636-1.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.