Hans Wildermann
Hans Wilhelm Wildermann (21 February 1884 – 1 November 1954) was a German stage designer, painter and sculptor. Life. Wildermann was born in Cologne the son of the authorised agent Heinrich W. Wildermann and his wife Maria Wildermann, "née" Röhr. He first attended schools in Recklinghausen and Cologne and then studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, the Universität der Künste Berlin and the Akademie der Bildenden Künste München. In Düsseldorf, where he studied from 1900 to 1903, Peter Janssen and Willy Spatz were his teachers. From 1907, Wildermann lived again in his home town, where he worked under Max Martersteig  and his conductor Otto Lohse on the decoration of the Bühnen der Stadt Köln and as a sculptor. Martersteig had seen Wildermann's etching "Tor der Phantasie". Contact then arose through Lohse's wife, in whose salon the theatre world from Germany and other countries met. Wildermann then participated in the 1911 Opera Festival and the following year took part in the Cologne Sonderbund exhibition, where he created the group of figures "Young Man with Pony" and "Girl with Deer" for the forecourt of the exhibition hall at the Aachener Tor which later stood in the green spaces of until  World War II. In 1912 the . Until the end of the First World War, he worked mainly as a sculptor, painter and graphic artist. Somehow this doesn't really fit in anywhere, he seems to have been constantly on the move in all the arts during that time. In 1912, brought him to the Stadttheater Essen as a guest stage designer. A year later, in 1913, he went to Munich, where he met Paul Klee. This was followed by collaborations with the Berlin Opera House, the Nationaltheater München and the Opernhaus Leipzig. In August 1919, Wildermann again followed Maurach, who  was now artistic director at the Städtische Bühnen Dortmund. In 1920 he then married "Erna" Maria Concordia Hoheisel in Berlin. When Maurach went to Nuremberg in 1922/1923, Wildermann also followed him initially. However, the new Dortmund artistic director Karl Schäffer succeeded in bringing Wildermann back to Dortmund. In 1926, Hans Wildermann moved to Breslau, where he received a professorship for theatre painting at the . From 1936 he was head of the decoration department at the Wroclaw Opera House. In 1937, the National Socialists confiscated his triptych "Transfiguration" and declared it Degenerate Art. After the Second World War, Wildermann returned to  his home town of Cologne, where he last lived in Riehl, not far from the Cologne Zoological Garden. On 1 November 1954, he died in the in the district of Lindenthal at the age of 70. His marriage produced a daughter, Angelika. Wildermann and National Socialism. Already in the 1920s, Wildermann had a deep friendship with the nationalist and, since 1933, national-socialist Regensburg music book publisher Gustav Bosse. Bosse had him illustrate the "Almanach der Deutschen Musikbücherei" (1920-1927) extensively and dedicated a separate publishing line to him, "Hans-Wildermann-Werke", in which almost the entire graphic work had  already appeared in 1923. Wildermann cut the Anton Bruckner Medal of the International Bruckner Society in 1936 on the occasion of the unveiling of Anton Bruckner's bust in the Valhalla on 6 June 1937; a commission that once again emanated from Bosse. In 1942, he illustrated the book "Italian Poetry from Dante to Mussolini - An Anthology" (Gauverlag-NS-Silesia), and in the same year was honoured with Siegmund Skraup's book "Die Oper als lebendiges Theater" by illustrating 35 stage sets. His illustrations for "Die Schildbürger" appeared in the for the 63,000th time in 1942. For his 60th birthday  in 1944, the magazine published " – Organ of the Office of Music at the Fuehrer's Commissioner for the Supervision of All Spiritual and Ideological Training and Education of the NSDAP" the homage by Carl Niessen "Hans Wildermann als Bühnenbildner" (issue 1, ). Achievements. Wildermann began his career during the economically difficult period of the Weimar Republic. However, he used the financial bottlenecks as an opportunity and implemented new developments from painting in stage design. Instead of elaborate, decorative scenery, he used simple shapes and achieved desired effects with colours and lighting. In addition to his work as a stage designer, Wildermann  always worked as a sculptor, painter and graphic artist. The Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte in Dortmund, dedicated a place to him in its permanent exhibition. The "Werkfolge" of Hans Wildermann's works published in 1933 by , curator and deputy director of the Silesian Museum of Applied Arts and Antiquities at Breslau, comprises 589 titles. Among them are 72 paintings and 60 sculptures. Work. Paintings Plastiken Cycles Single pages