Friedrich Kurt Fiedler
Encyclopedia
Friedrich Kurt Fiedler was a German
graphic designer
and a representative of the Social Democratic Party
. During the Weimar Republic
he was acknowledged for his poster
design, his book illustration
s and his drawing
s. After World War II
he belonged to the re-founders of the association of fine arts (Verein bildender Künstler) in Dresden, but lost his influence when all socialdemocratic forces were repelled.
as son of a carpenter
. His teacher noticed his talent and convinced the parents of enabling him to take an artist's education after completing Volksschule
.
Around 1910 he attended the evening classes of the Kunstgewerbeschule
Dresden, together with Hermann Glöckner
(later a renowned painter) and architect Edmund Schuchardt. It supported students that came from a humble family background and provided them with an education according to the ideas of Deutscher Werkbund
. Fiedler and Glöckner became friends and jointly attended the figure drawing
class of Carl Rade. From 1911 to 1915 Fiedler was supported by a grant to study as Meisterschüler (master's student) of Richard Guhr
and Josef Goller
.
Fiedler was a front-line soldier in France
. He learned French
in self-study and became a translator. After 1920 Fiedler and his family took a flat in the culturally important Dürerbundhaus in Blasewitz
. Here, Ferdinand Avenarius
headed the leading cultural organization of all German speaking countries at that time, the Dürerbund
. In this surrounding Kurt Fiedler immediately made essential contacts. He designed the masthead
for the social democratic newspaper Dresdner Volkszeitung.
, the new rulers ordered a search of Kurt Fiedler's house. He and especially the house owners Eva & Wolfgang Schumann, stepson of Ferdinand Avenarius, who had flown from Germany, were known as active social democrats. Among the fellow residents of the Dürerbundhaus in the next years was Götz Heidelberg
, whose parents had overtaken a company in Dresden.
Some of Fiedler's former clients were banned as Kaden & Comp. resp. cumbered as Sarrasani
. Fiedler could compensate less contracts with publishing houses to some extent by advertisement works for industrial clients. Shortly before the expropriation of the Jewish owners of Ilse Bergbau AG, Fiedler was charged with the advertisement on occasion of the 50th anniversary of the company. During early Nazi years, he was still present at some art exhibitions. Instead of following Nazi taste, Fiedler visited 1937 the Expo
in Paris
.
During World War II
Kurt Fiedler served as translator in the prisoner of war camps at Niedergeorgenthal
near Brüx
and at Zeithain
(Stalag IV-B
), which was erected by French prisoners of war from 1940. He left the army in 1942 after political conflicts and because of poor health and earned his money with technical drawings at the Dresden University of Technology
.
The Dürerbundhaus was completely destroyed during the bombing of Dresden in World War II
on 13 February 1945. Fiedler's sister-in-law Fanny Schuchardt, who lived next-door, used the opportunity to hide. Her transport to a concentration camp was already scheduled for 16 February. She was among the very few Jews who survived the Holocaust in Dresden.
. The first action on occasion of re-establishing Dresden's association of graphic designers in October 1945 was the commemoration of Bruno Gimpel, a Jewish painter and former chairman of the graphic designers who was impelled to suicide by the Nazis. At the Socialist Unity Party Fiedler's rank was formally equal to that of Wilhelm Schubert from the former Communist Party of Germany
, but like nearly all social democrats who became sidelined step by step he did not receive much appreciation that time, whereas Schubert was awarded the National Prize of East Germany
.
. It is estimated that this series, consisting of about 100 booklets, reached an overall edition of 10 million copies.
Together with Hermann Häfker
, who later died in the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp
, Fiedler created an astronomy book (Das Sternbilder-Buch) for the Dürerbund in 1926. It was part of the Dürerbund's ambition to distribute knowledge and evoke love of nature among the youth. In the same year, Dresden was one of the first cities to get a projection planetarium
by Walther Bauersfeld
(Zeiss model II) and Fiedler was selected for the promotion campaign. He designed posters and newspaper advertising, and illustrated two books by the director Kurd Kisshauer
.
The publishing houses Steinkopff, Teubner, and Rudolph charged Fiedler with illustrations of textbooks and bookplates. Jüdische Witze (Jewish humor
) was published in two editions (1928, 1930) by Rudolph under a pseudonym. Today, it is not known which author hid behind "H. Itler", an ironical reference the later Nazi dictator. Moreover, Fiedler designed various titles of Talisman-Bücherei, a successful series edited by Harry Winfield Bondegger and published by Rudolph, which was bound to the New Thought
movement. Some books of this series were banned by the Nazis.
, Dresden's first newspaper Dresdner Anzeiger, e. g. with a poster on occasion of its 200th anniversary in 1930, and the German Cycling Federation
belonged to his most important customers.
, Akademie der Künste
and the German Federal Archive. Among his best known pieces of that period is Junkerland in Bauernhand, a film poster designed for the DEFA, which is also part of a permanent exhibition in Haus der Geschichte
in Bonn. The German national picture archive of arts at the University of Marburg documents 34 of his posters from this time.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
graphic designer
Graphic designer
A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, printed or electronic media, such as brochures and...
and a representative of the Social Democratic Party
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
. During the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
he was acknowledged for his poster
Poster
A poster is any piece of printed paper designed to be attached to a wall or vertical surface. Typically posters include both textual and graphic elements, although a poster may be either wholly graphical or wholly text. Posters are designed to be both eye-catching and informative. Posters may be...
design, his book illustration
Illustration
An illustration is a displayed visualization form presented as a drawing, painting, photograph or other work of art that is created to elucidate or dictate sensual information by providing a visual representation graphically.- Early history :The earliest forms of illustration were prehistoric...
s and his drawing
Drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...
s. After World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
he belonged to the re-founders of the association of fine arts (Verein bildender Künstler) in Dresden, but lost his influence when all socialdemocratic forces were repelled.
Early life and education
Kurt Fiedler was born in the little village of Eichbusch near DresdenDresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
as son of a carpenter
Carpenter
A carpenter is a skilled craftsperson who works with timber to construct, install and maintain buildings, furniture, and other objects. The work, known as carpentry, may involve manual labor and work outdoors....
. His teacher noticed his talent and convinced the parents of enabling him to take an artist's education after completing Volksschule
Volksschule
A Volksschule was an 18th century system of state-supported primary schools established in the Habsburg Austrian Empire and Prussia . Attendance was supposedly compulsory, but a 1781 census reveals that only one fourth of school-age children attended. At the time, this was one of the few examples...
.
Around 1910 he attended the evening classes of the Kunstgewerbeschule
Kunstgewerbeschule
A Kunstgewerbeschule was the old name for an advanced school of applied arts in German-speaking countries. The first such schools were opened in Kassel in 1867 and Berlin and Munich in 1868 with other German towns following. They are now merged into universities....
Dresden, together with Hermann Glöckner
Hermann Glöckner
Hermann Glöckner was a German painter and sculptor. He was an important representative of constructivism.Glöckner was born in Dresden-Cotta. He attended the vocational school in Leipzig in 1903 and worked as a designer for textiles...
(later a renowned painter) and architect Edmund Schuchardt. It supported students that came from a humble family background and provided them with an education according to the ideas of Deutscher Werkbund
Deutscher Werkbund
The Deutscher Werkbund was a German association of artists, architects, designers, and industrialists. The Werkbund was to become an important event in the development of modern architecture and industrial design, particularly in the later creation of the Bauhaus school of design...
. Fiedler and Glöckner became friends and jointly attended the figure drawing
Figure drawing
In art, a figure drawing is a study of the human form in its various shapes and body postures - sitting, standing or even sleeping. It is a study or stylized depiction of the human form, with the line and form of the human figure as the primary objective, rather than the subject person. It is a...
class of Carl Rade. From 1911 to 1915 Fiedler was supported by a grant to study as Meisterschüler (master's student) of Richard Guhr
Richard Guhr
Richard Guhr was a German sculptor and painter. He became also known as one of the most important teachers of Otto Dix....
and Josef Goller
Josef Goller
Josef Goller was a German designer, most notably of stained glass.-Life:Goller was apprentice at Franz Mayer & Co. and attended the School of Applied Arts in Munich...
.
World War I and Weimar Republic
During World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
Fiedler was a front-line soldier in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. He learned French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
in self-study and became a translator. After 1920 Fiedler and his family took a flat in the culturally important Dürerbundhaus in Blasewitz
Blasewitz
Besides being an urban and often preferred multiple dwelling villa quarter with appealing architecture situated on the Elbe river Blasewitz is also a larger borough of Dresden, Germany in the eastern centre of the city...
. Here, Ferdinand Avenarius
Ferdinand Avenarius
Ferdinand Avenarius was a lyric poet, a leading representative of the culture reform movement of his time and the first popularizer of Sylt.-Life:...
headed the leading cultural organization of all German speaking countries at that time, the Dürerbund
Dürerbund
The Dürerbund was an organization of writers and artists with a strong influence on the intellectual life of the middle class in the German Reich, but also in Austria and Switzerland....
. In this surrounding Kurt Fiedler immediately made essential contacts. He designed the masthead
Masthead
-Media:* the masthead , a list, usually found on the editorial page of a newspaper or other periodical, listing the publisher, editorial board, advertising rates, etc....
for the social democratic newspaper Dresdner Volkszeitung.
Nazi period
Immediately following the MachtergreifungMachtergreifung
Machtergreifung is a German word meaning "seizure of power". It is normally used specifically to refer to the Nazi takeover of power in the democratic Weimar Republic on 30 January 1933, the day Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany, turning it into the Nazi German dictatorship.-Term:The...
, the new rulers ordered a search of Kurt Fiedler's house. He and especially the house owners Eva & Wolfgang Schumann, stepson of Ferdinand Avenarius, who had flown from Germany, were known as active social democrats. Among the fellow residents of the Dürerbundhaus in the next years was Götz Heidelberg
Götz Heidelberg
Götz Heidelberg is a German constructing engineer and entrepreneur. He is known for the development of Maglev magnetic transportation systems....
, whose parents had overtaken a company in Dresden.
Some of Fiedler's former clients were banned as Kaden & Comp. resp. cumbered as Sarrasani
Sarrasani
Sarrasani is the name of a German circus which reached world fame before World War II and was resident in Dresden, but became also known as national circus of Argentina during the years of German separation....
. Fiedler could compensate less contracts with publishing houses to some extent by advertisement works for industrial clients. Shortly before the expropriation of the Jewish owners of Ilse Bergbau AG, Fiedler was charged with the advertisement on occasion of the 50th anniversary of the company. During early Nazi years, he was still present at some art exhibitions. Instead of following Nazi taste, Fiedler visited 1937 the Expo
Expo
Expo may refer to:*Expo , short for "exposition", and also known as World's Fair*A trade fair, an exhibition where companies in an industry showcase and demonstrate their latest products...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
.
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
Kurt Fiedler served as translator in the prisoner of war camps at Niedergeorgenthal
Horní Jiretín
Horní Jiřetín is a Czech municipality with 1,900 inhabitants in Most District, in the Ústí nad Labem Region in the foothills of the Ore Mountains on the border with Germany.- Geography :...
near Brüx
Brux
Brux is a commune in the Vienne department in the Poitou-Charentes region in western France.-External links:*...
and at Zeithain
Zeithain
Zeithain is a municipality in the district of Meißen, in Saxony, Germany.During World War II a large prisoner-of-war camp, Stalag IV-B/H, was located here.A memorial and museum commemorate it.-Municipality subdivisions:...
(Stalag IV-B
Stalag IV-B
Stalag IV-B was one of the largest prisoner of war camps in Germany during World War II. Stalag is an abbreviation of the German noun "Stammlager". The main camp was located 8km NE of the town Mühlberg in Brandenburg, just east of the Elbe river and about 30 miles north of Dresden...
), which was erected by French prisoners of war from 1940. He left the army in 1942 after political conflicts and because of poor health and earned his money with technical drawings at the Dresden University of Technology
Dresden University of Technology
The Technische Universität Dresden is the largest institute of higher education in the city of Dresden, the largest university in Saxony and one of the 10 largest universities in Germany with 36,066 students...
.
The Dürerbundhaus was completely destroyed during the bombing of Dresden in World War II
Bombing of Dresden in World War II
The Bombing of Dresden was a military bombing by the British Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force and as part of the Allied forces between 13 February and 15 February 1945 in the Second World War...
on 13 February 1945. Fiedler's sister-in-law Fanny Schuchardt, who lived next-door, used the opportunity to hide. Her transport to a concentration camp was already scheduled for 16 February. She was among the very few Jews who survived the Holocaust in Dresden.
Post-war years
Kurt Fiedler and his family moved back to his parental home in Eichbusch. He belonged to the directorate of the association of fine arts (Verein bildender Künstler) in Dresden and was artistic staff member (künstlerischer Mitarbeiter) of the Saxon regional board of the Socialist Unity Party of GermanySocialist Unity Party of Germany
The Socialist Unity Party of Germany was the governing party of the German Democratic Republic from its formation on 7 October 1949 until the elections of March 1990. The SED was a communist political party with a Marxist-Leninist ideology...
. The first action on occasion of re-establishing Dresden's association of graphic designers in October 1945 was the commemoration of Bruno Gimpel, a Jewish painter and former chairman of the graphic designers who was impelled to suicide by the Nazis. At the Socialist Unity Party Fiedler's rank was formally equal to that of Wilhelm Schubert from the former Communist Party of Germany
Communist Party of Germany
The Communist Party of Germany was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany in the postwar period until it was banned in 1956...
, but like nearly all social democrats who became sidelined step by step he did not receive much appreciation that time, whereas Schubert was awarded the National Prize of East Germany
National Prize of East Germany
The National Prize of the German Democratic Republic was an award of the German Democratic Republic given out in three different classes for scientific, artistic, and other meritorious achievement...
.
Book illustrations
Fiedler was especially known for his cover illustrations of the adventure stories series Fahrten und Abenteuer (Travels and Adventures), edited by the director of the circus SarrasaniSarrasani
Sarrasani is the name of a German circus which reached world fame before World War II and was resident in Dresden, but became also known as national circus of Argentina during the years of German separation....
. It is estimated that this series, consisting of about 100 booklets, reached an overall edition of 10 million copies.
Together with Hermann Häfker
Hermann Häfker
Hermann Wilhelm Häfker was an important film theoretician as well as an acknowledged Esperantist and writer....
, who later died in the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp
Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp
Mauthausen Concentration Camp grew to become a large group of Nazi concentration camps that was built around the villages of Mauthausen and Gusen in Upper Austria, roughly east of the city of Linz.Initially a single camp at Mauthausen, it expanded over time and by the summer of 1940, the...
, Fiedler created an astronomy book (Das Sternbilder-Buch) for the Dürerbund in 1926. It was part of the Dürerbund's ambition to distribute knowledge and evoke love of nature among the youth. In the same year, Dresden was one of the first cities to get a projection planetarium
Planetarium
A planetarium is a theatre built primarily for presenting educational and entertaining shows about astronomy and the night sky, or for training in celestial navigation...
by Walther Bauersfeld
Walther Bauersfeld
Walther Bauersfeld was a German engineer, employed by the Zeiss Corporation, who, on a suggestion by the German astronomer Max Wolf, started work on the first projection planetarium in 1912. This work was stopped by military needs during World War I, but resumed after the war...
(Zeiss model II) and Fiedler was selected for the promotion campaign. He designed posters and newspaper advertising, and illustrated two books by the director Kurd Kisshauer
Kurd Kisshauer
Kurd Kisshauer was a member of the German society for astronomy. During Nazi time he was employed at Amt Rosenberg.- Life :...
.
The publishing houses Steinkopff, Teubner, and Rudolph charged Fiedler with illustrations of textbooks and bookplates. Jüdische Witze (Jewish humor
Jewish humor
Jewish humour is the long tradition of humour in Judaism dating back to the Torah and the Midrash from the ancient mid-east, but generally refers to the more recent stream of verbal, self-deprecating, crude, and often anecdotal humour originating in Eastern Europe and which took root in the United...
) was published in two editions (1928, 1930) by Rudolph under a pseudonym. Today, it is not known which author hid behind "H. Itler", an ironical reference the later Nazi dictator. Moreover, Fiedler designed various titles of Talisman-Bücherei, a successful series edited by Harry Winfield Bondegger and published by Rudolph, which was bound to the New Thought
New Thought
New Thought promotes the ideas that "Infinite Intelligence" or "God" is ubiquitous, spirit is the totality of real things, true human selfhood is divine, divine thought is a force for good, sickness originates in the mind, and "right thinking" has a healing effect.Although New Thought is neither...
movement. Some books of this series were banned by the Nazis.
Advertising and drawings
Fiedler received an award on occasion of the World Advertising Congress 1929 in Berlin. Afterwards he became known for some of his drawings, especially of children. The tourism industry , Villeroy & BochVilleroy & Boch
Villeroy & Boch is a large manufacturer of ceramics with the company headquarters located in Mettlach, Germany.-Company history:The company began in the tiny French village of Audun le Tiche, where François Boch set up a pottery company with his three sons in 1748. Later, the company moved to...
, Dresden's first newspaper Dresdner Anzeiger, e. g. with a poster on occasion of its 200th anniversary in 1930, and the German Cycling Federation
German Cycling Federation
The German Cycling Federation or BDR is the national governing body of cycle racing in Germany.The BDR is a member of the UCI and the UEC.-History:...
belonged to his most important customers.
Socialist posters
Today, Fiedler is regarded as one of the leading poster artists of post-war East Germany. Many of his works can be found in Deutsches Historisches MuseumDeutsches Historisches Museum
The German Historical Museum , DHM for short, is a museum in Berlin devoted to German history and defines itself as a place of enlightenment and understanding of the shared history of Germans and Europeans....
, Akademie der Künste
Akademie der Künste
The Akademie der Künste, Berlin is an arts institution in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in 1696 by Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg as the Prussian Academy of Arts, an academic institution where members could meet and discuss and share ideas...
and the German Federal Archive. Among his best known pieces of that period is Junkerland in Bauernhand, a film poster designed for the DEFA, which is also part of a permanent exhibition in Haus der Geschichte
Haus der Geschichte
Haus der Geschichte is a modern history museum in Bonn, Germany. Located on the Museumsmeile , the museum has exhibitions related to German history from 1945 until the present...
in Bonn. The German national picture archive of arts at the University of Marburg documents 34 of his posters from this time.
Namesake
For many decades, Kurt Fiedler from Dresden had been confused with impressionist Kurt Fiedler (* 19 November 1878, Berlin). The latter became attached to many of the works of Dresden's Kurt Fiedler. This mistake can be traced back to Dresslers Kunsthandbuch of 1930, which confused the Dresden address with the life of Berlin's Kurt Fiedler, who lived from 1908 till at least 1943 at Bülowstraße 20. This confusion propagated even through later lexicons.Archive
- City Archive of Dresden (17.6.3.5: 79 documents; drawings, posters, illustrations, advertising graphics)
Literature
- Frank und Uwe Fiedler: Zwischen Dürerbund und Kulturbund – Aus dem Leben des Dresdner Grafikers Kurt Fiedler. In: Sächsische Heimatblätter. Jg. 55, 1/09, S. 10-18. Verlag Klaus Gumnior. Chemnitz 2009. ISSN 0486-8234.
- James Aulich, Marta Sylvestrová: Political posters in Central and Eastern Europe, 1945-95: signs of the times. Ed. James Aulich, Marta Sylvestrová. Manchester University Press ND, 1999
External links
- Kurt Fiedler - Arts & Architecture, Research, and Dresden at ScribdScribdScribd is a Web 2.0 based document-sharing website which allows users to post documents of various formats, and embed them into a web page using its iPaper format. Scribd was founded by Trip Adler, Tikhon Bernstam, and Jared Friedman in 2006...
- Kurt Fiedler in Italian
- Biographical lexicon at Saxon State LibrarySaxon State LibraryThe Saxon State Library in Dresden is the Staatsbibliothek of Saxony and the academic library of the Technische Universität Dresden. It is one of the main public archival centers of Germany. Its treasures, collected over four centuries, were located in the Japanisches Palais and in temporary...
- German national picture archive of arts at the University of Marburg