Max Kahlke: Frisian and Schleswig coast

Kahlke, Max

(Glückstadt  13-01-1892 – 28-02-1928 Kiel) 

Painter and graphic artist. 

Kahlke's rendering of "Clouds, Sea, Tide and Space". And a much treasured print by my favorite but much obscured and neglected Dutch printmaker: Louis Haver (1906-1969).

Max Kahlke was the son of Jacob Kahlke (1866-1935) and Minna Raave (1869-1964). He was born on the banks of the Elbe estuary in the small village of Glückstadt ones important for its herring ("matjes") fishery. 

He studied 1911-12 in Stuttgart “Akademie für bildende Künste” with Robert Poetzelberger (1856-1930) and 1912-14 in Weimar “Großherzoglich-Sächsiche Kunstschule” with Fritz Mackensen (1866-1953). But according his own words he did not think very highly of his academical training but being mostly inspired and influenced by Tirol painter Albin Egger-Lienz (1868-1926). Albin Legger taught in Weimar 1912-13 after being denied a professorship in Munich Academy in 1910 because of a Kaiser  displeasing painting.... 

Sea and Clouds 

He was a member of the “Schlewig-Holsteinische Kunstgenossenschaft” and the “Hamburger Künstlerverein von 1832”. In WWI he fought as a soldier in Flanders, was wounded and treated for many months in field hospitals. 

Friedrich Lissmann, Sea & Tirns. 

Kahlke's fascinating for this landscape reminds me of Bremen born Friedrich Lissmann (1880-1915) he fought in the trenches too but did not return from Flanders Fields. I shared my admiration for Lissmann in this Blog 6 years ago here* and here*.

A photograph of a farmhouse seen through wind battered trees on Island Ameland (Neth.), much like in Kahlke's print. 

A print I showed many years ago here*

Short lived Kahlke, he only reached 36, is known and reminded for his portraits, moor landscape paintings and religious work for Schleswig churches but to me his woodcuts showing the North German coastal and tidal Wadden-sea landscapes are the most interesting works he created. His work is collected in several North German Museums: Altona-Hamburg, Flensburg, Glückstadt, Itzehoe and Schleswig Museums. 

And here's a photograph I took only last week on Island Ameland. Nord-Friesland (Germ.) near the Danish border and my Friesland (Neth.) aren't that far apart. There are 100 years and some 150 miles (as the crow flies) between both observations in this beautiful (World Heritage) part of the world. 

Tönning in Nord-Friesland (Ger.) a small village until the 1970's important for crab fishing. 

Do not hesitate sending me more examples of Kahlke's work for sharing in this Blog.

All pictures borrowed freely from the Internet for friendly, educational and non commercial use only.

Louise Steinbach-Weinhold: Pollards on the isle of Finkenwerder.

Steinbach-Weinhold, Louise (Lise)

      (Dresden 1879-1971 Hamburg) 

Visiting Hamburg and enjoying the city and river Elbe in last postings this is a  good opportunity to show this print that showed up in German Ebay recently. To my knowledge (but that is not a way of measuring) the second example of a print by this forgotten printmaker. It is a limited (12/50) copy printed in 1990 from the original 1909 blocks. I do not have a clue who printed them, where and why, and if the original was at hand to determine and choose colors. (If it wasn't for the horizon it could easily be mistaken for a view of Provincetown Mass. USA)

It's titled "Kopfweiden" (Pollard Willows) in "Finkenwerder": an island in river Elbe just south of the great city. An idyllic place, a fishing community, around 1900 but 100 years later hardly recognizable by "progress': it's todays centre of the German Airbus industry. The sad thing about progress is it cannot be stopped. 

Louise's Pollards: although it's not 100 years old, as it should be, I loved it the moment I saw it. Just three color blocks (blue, green and purple) and a key block were used but it is how the eye is drawn into the composition and the great suggestion of depth (the purple roof top placed under the horizon) by overlooking the broad river from the heights of the moraine, a wall created by friction from the glaciers advancing from the North in successive ice-ages (350.000-150.000 years ago). When they retreated and melted the river bed of todays tidal river Elbe was formed.  

The traditional Elbe "Fischkutter" fleet is/was marked HF (Hamburg Finkenwerder) below by Thomas Herbst. The nearby (opposite) Blankenese fleet SB (Schleswig-Holstein Blankenese).  

Visiting Hamburg and Blankenese, the picturesque village on the opposing Elbe bank, and using the unique Hamburg water taxi service we enjoyed similar views from the other side, the North Bank, overlooking Finkenwerder and the bustling river with endless rows of cargo ships, fishing boats, tugboats and ocean steamers entering and leaving majestic Hamburg harbor. It created an everlasting impression in my memory. As it did on many artists who came here to paint and sketch 100 years before. A selection will be shown in next posting.
  

Louise, who had been a student of Lovis Corinth (1858-1925) in Berlin's Art Academy, was trained a painter but for most women artists that was to have a career as teacher, what she actually was for a while at a drawing school in her native Dresden. While studying in Berlin she will have learned that new way of Printmaking-the-Japanese-way from Emil Orlik (1870-1932) who was appointed to teach the craft (or is it an art ?) in Berlins "Kunstgewerbe Museum Schule" in 1905. 

Friedrich Schaper: Sommertag in Finkenwerder 1895.

Louise was married to painter and professor Eduard Steinbach (Hamburg 1878-1939) who taught at the Academies of Berlin, Leipzig, Karlsruhe and Hamburg and together leading a private painting school in Hamburg. They lived and worked in Berlin and Hamburg (below: camping along the river  by Eduard Steinbach).

She exhibited in the Berlin Secession 1909/10 and was close friends with painter/printmakers Arthur Illies (1870-1952), who also taught at the Hamburg Arts and Craft (Kunstgewerbe) school and that wonderful but short-lived Friedrich Lissmann (1880-1915) who appeared earlier in this Blog (do follow the label below to read more !)

Willy Dammasch (1887- ?), The Elbe seen from Finkenwerder.

Willy Tiedjen (1881-1950), Elbe impression and Hamburg skyline from Finkenwerder.  

Eduard and Louise worked (and possibly lived) on the Isle of Finkenwerder from 1901-1919 where a small artist colony had emerged frequented in summer by famous impressionist painters like Thomas Herbst (1848-1915) and Friedrich Schaper (1859-1956) but many other artists, local Hamburg painters and the lesser gods, will have payed a visit to this idyllic place with flowering fruit trees, haymaking and its traditional islanders, the inviting "Gasthausen" and fishing fleet.

Gretchen Wohlwill: Heu-ernte auf Finkenwerder.

Rolf Diener (1906-1988) Finkenwerder  

Gretchen Wohlwill (1878-1962), was here, the Jewish painter-printmaker who was befriended with painter, printmaker and Finkenwerder born Eduard Bargheer (1901-1979) (below). 

Printmaker Luigi Kazimir (1879-1937) visiting Hamburg also halted on Finkerwerder Island overlooking the Elbe and Hamburgs skyline on a gloomy day, obviously inspired by Emil Nolde's "Elbe Schlepper" (Elbe tug boat). 

Emil Nolde (1867-1956) 1910: "Elbe Schlepper" 

Hamburg printmaker Hans Förster (1885-1966), a shamefully neglected artist, but one of the earliest (1905-06) and a brilliant student of Emil Orlik in Berlin, immortalized the fishing village individuals of Finkerwerder making him a nice candidate to appear next in the Linosaurus. 

All pictures are mouse-clickable to embiggen.

All pictures borrowed freely from the Internet for friendly, educational and non commercial use only. 

Friedrich Lissmann, a follow up

Friedrich Lissmann
(Bremen 1880 – Yper 1915)

German painter and woodblock printer.

Before showing some great new discoveries I first want to update and complete my posting on October 27th 2010 on Friedrich Lissmann http://gerrie-thefriendlyghost.blogspot.com/2010/10/friedrich-lissmann.html

In the meantime I found an affordable copy (1€) of the little book by Mia Lenz “ein Lebensbild”. A small biography on the short but rich life and the works (paintings) of the artist edited in 1920 by the “Hanseatischer Kunstverlag Hamburg”. The gulls woodcut on the front a free print. This great "puffins" 1920's postcard of a woodcut by Friedrich, a reproduction of the authentic print I cleaned and polished a bit for your pleasure to show how keen an observer as well great printer he was. I think Friedrich was the Frans Schubert of nature painting and woodblock printing, if only they've had the chance of living longer (relief printers have a tendency for long life). What more could they have given the world?
And here's a woodcut and b&w book page and the real painting I found.

In the booklet I found the portrait of Friedrich, giving him after nearly a 100 years a face on the Internet. The contents telling, in old German print (Fraktur font), the life story of Friedrich. How he was very talented and encouraged at drawing as a boy. How he visited the Karlsruhe Art School and fell in love with the North Sea coast and the Elbe river estuary with its tidal mud flats, and hords of migrating birds. Like in this painting of a skein of geese following the dunes, that he whitnessed there. (I gave the b&w book page a colour wash in Photoshop)
Friedrich grew up in Bremen and Hamburg. Later as a young man he made journeys to the wilderness of Iceland and painted the landscape and wildlife there. He made studies in botany to get the plants right and in ornithology to get the birds right. Then he was a model soldier serving his country and died aged 35 in the trenches of Flanders Fields in 1915.
In 1920, 5 years after his death the complete works of Lissmann were edited in 6 maps, in copper plate engravings, each map with an original woodcut on the cover. The set recently offered for 500 € in a German antique books shop. Also postcards were made of his prints, 18 of them, regularly offered on Ebay. And the booklet tells of 23 “Original Holzschnitte” (17 of them birds) that sold in 1920 signed for a 100 DM (Deutsch Mark). After some serious Googling learning that wouild be about $ 30 in today’s money value.

Friedrich Lissmann

Friedrich Lissmann

(Hamburg 1880-Ieper, september 27th 1915)

German painter and woodcut printer

Skimming Ebay I discovered Friedrich Lissmann. In three days 9 of his woodblock prints were offered. All sold. I think they might have belonged to some folio or book. Maybe the 1920 edition on his life and work by Mia Lenz.

By then (1920) his talent was already noticed and his fame esthablished. After his travels to Iceland he came back with many sketches from the birdlife on this sub-arctic island. Which he transferred into some of the most remarkable, delicate and unnoticed woodblock prints I have ever seen.

The happy announcement (by a woodcut print, left) of an exhibition with friends in his native Hamburg in 1910.

Not yet clouded by the dark shadows of WW-I. Friedrich died only 5 years later. Just 35 years old. A totally senseless death, in the stinking, rat and gas infested trenches of Ieper, Belgium. On September 27th 1915.

On that same day many thousands of young, talented and educated, hardworking and dedicated young men, sons and brothers, died. Workmen, painters and poets. Together. As before and every day after. Until November 1918.
4 million Central Power soldiers (2 million Germans), 6 million Allied soldiers (1 million British) died.

Friedrich's hunting Eagle casting shawows over the hiding grouse almost symbolic to Death, flying over Flanders Trenches. 5 years later.

His entry in "die Algemeine Künstler Lexikon 1920":
Lissman, Friedrich, painter, born Hamburg, October 24th 1880, pupil of Weishaupt and Trübner, working in Hamburg since 1906, made travels to Iceland, painter of animals and arctic birds in particular, died on the Western front September 27th 1915.

Possibly the best book ever written (i.m.h.o) is “Everything quiet on the Western Front”, by Erich Maria Remark (1898-1970) published in 1929. An eyewitniss account and sharp analysis of the madness and arrogance sacrificing a whole generation of young men over a conflict. By a young man who was old aged 18. Thousands of editions, translated in every language. Read it. You'll have to. It will change you.

Friedrich Lissmann was such a very talented artist and a keen observer. He painted, mainly wildlife and was an extraordinary woodcut printer. Also mainly wildlife and birds. His Kingfisher (above) is of the most delicate posture and rendering. Like Aelbrecht Dürers rabbit (1502) or Carel Fabricius gold finch (which it isn't) (1654).

Have you ever seen a wild sea, just in one color, a pale green, against the black silhouetting birds. The suggestion of movement, the rolling and breaking surf with such minimal effort. The cormorants and rock a perfect frame creating astonishing depth and perspective in his composition. Perfection ?

September 27th 1915 the world lost a genius. But nobody realized.

Ieper memorial cemetry (1914-1918)

We are the Dead. Short days ago,

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

the torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

John McCray(Canadian soldier, † 1918)