Rudolf Heinrich Zille (10 January 1858 – 9 August 1929) was a German illustrator, caricaturist,

lithographer Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...

and photographer.

Childhood and education

Zille was born in Radeburg near

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...

, son of

watchmaker A watchmaker is an artisan who makes and repairs watches. Since a majority of watches are now factory-made, most modern watchmakers only repair watches. However, originally they were master craftsmen who built watches, including all their part ...

Johann Traugott Zill (''Zille'' since 1854) and Ernestine Louise (born ''Heinitz'', daughter of a miner from the Ore Mountains). His father had originally been a blacksmith, however, being technically skilled, had gone on to become a watchmaker, goldsmith and inventor of tools. Zille spent his early years in Potschappel. His childhood was not without trouble. His father was incarcerated several times in

debtors' prison A debtors' prison is a prison for people who are unable to pay debt. Until the mid-19th century, debtors' prisons (usually similar in form to locked workhouses) were a common way to deal with unpaid debt in Western Europe.Cory, Lucinda"A Histori ...

and creditors harassed the family so much that the young Zille was often sent to live with his grandmother. In 1867 the family left town because of their debts and moved to

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

. While still in school, the young Zille began to take drawing lessons. The teacher was supportive, and during a discussion of his future career aspirations, encouraged Zille to become a

. Zille's father wanted Heinrich to become a butcher, but Heinrich could not stand the sight of blood. After he finished school in 1872 he went to the draughtsman Fritz Hecht on Jakobstraße and started an apprenticeship as a lithographer.

Career

In 1883, he married Hulda Frieske, with whom he had three children. She died in 1919. Zille became best known for his (often funny) drawings, catching the characteristics of people, especially "stereotypes", mainly from Berlin and many of them published in the German weekly satirical newspaper '' Simplicissimus''. He was the first to portray the desperate

social environment The social environment, social context, sociocultural context or milieu refers to the immediate physical and social setting in which people live or in which something happens or develops. It includes the culture that the individual was educate ...

of the Berlin Mietskasernen (literally "tenement barracks"), buildings packed with sometimes a dozen persons per room who fled from the rural regions to the expanding industrial metropolis during the

Gründerzeit (; "founders' period") was the economic phase in 19th-century Germany and Austria before the great stock market crash of 1873. In Central Europe, the age of industrialisation had been taking place since the 1840s. That period is not precisely ...

only to find even deeper poverty in the developing

proletarian The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian. Marxist philoso ...

class. His special talent was the scathingly humorous portrayal of what were in reality quite unfunny life conditions of handicapped beggars, tuberculous prostitutes, and menial labourers, and especially their children, making the best they could of life and resolutely refusing to give up. Zille did not consider himself a real artist: he often said that his work was not the result of talent but merely of hard work. Max Liebermann nevertheless promoted him. He called him into the

Berlin Secession The Berlin Secession was an art movement established in Germany on May 2, 1898. Formed in reaction to the Association of Berlin Artists, and the restrictions on contemporary art imposed by Kaiser Wilhelm II, 65 artists "seceded," demonstrating ag ...

in 1903, featured his work in exhibitions, and encouraged him to sell drawings – and when Zille lost his job as a lithographer in 1910, he encouraged him to live from his drawings alone. The Berlin "Common People" paid him the greatest respect, and very late in life his fame culminated when both poverty and freedom of expression reached new heights in the

roaring twenties The Roaring Twenties, sometimes stylized as Roaring '20s, refers to the 1920s decade in music and fashion, as it happened in Western society and Western culture. It was a period of economic prosperity with a distinctive cultural edge in the ...

, with the

National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director ...

buying some drawings in 1921, the Academy of the Arts honouring him with a professorship in 1924, and

Gerhard Lamprecht Gerhard Lamprecht (6 October 1897 – 4 May 1974) was a German film director, screenwriter and film historian. He directed 63 films between 1920 and 1958. He also wrote for 26 films between 1918 and 1958. Life and career Lamprecht was fasci ...

making the film '' Die Verrufenen'' based on his cartoon characters and stories in 1925. His 70th birthday in 1928 was celebrated throughout Berlin. He died one year later.

Legacy and honors

Heinrich Zille Park on Bergstraße in Berlin's Mitte borough was named for him by the City of Berlin in 1948 and formerly featured a statue of him from the workshop of Paul Kentsch, but the statue's whereabouts are unknown and the park is now a children's adventure playground. There is a Zille Memorial statue created in 1964–65 by

Heinrich Drake Heinrich Drake (December 20, 1881 – June 12, 1970) was a German politician ( SPD). He was President of the Free State of Lippe from 1925 to 1933 and again from 1945 to 1947, until Lippe was incorporated into the new state of North Rhine-Wes ...

in the Lapidary within Köllnischer Park, also in Mitte. An elementary school in Berlin's Friedrichshain district is named in his honor. A museum dedicated to Zille's work opened in Berlin's Nikolaiviertel, in Mitte, in 2002; in 2007 a statue of him by

Thorsten Stegmann Thorsten (Thorstein, Torstein, Torsten) is a Scandinavian given name. The Old Norse name was ''Þórsteinn''. It is a compound of the theonym ''Þór'' (''Thor'') and ''steinn'' "stone", which became ''Thor'' and ''sten'' in Old Danish and Old Swed ...

was erected nearby. It is less known that Zille produced many erotic pictures that are close to pornography but also show the life of normal people; some of them can be seen in the Beate Uhse Erotic Museum in Berlin. In 1983 director

Werner W. Wallroth Werner W. Wallroth (28 February 1930 – 9 August 2011) was a German film director and screenwriter. He directed sixteen films between 1961 and 1991. His 1983 film '' Zille and Me'' was entered into the 13th Moscow International Film Festiva ...

made an

East German East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

film based on a musical written by Dieter Wardetzky and Peter Rabenalt. This movie, '' Zille und Ick'' (''Zille and I'' in Berlin dialect), is not a real biopic but uses parts of Zille's life for the story. A drawing by Zille appears on a German postage stamp of 55 Euro-Cents, with the caption "Heinrich Zille, 1858–1929". Zille's grandniece is

Helen Zille Otta Helene Maree (''née'' Zille ; born 9 March 1951), known as Helen Zille, is a South African politician. She has served as the Chairperson of the Federal Council of the Democratic Alliance since 20 October 2019. From 2009 until 2019, she w ...

, the former mayor of

Cape Town Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest ...

and Premier of the

Western Cape The Western Cape is a province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is the fourth largest of the nine provinces with an area of , and the third most populous, with an estimated 7 million inhabitants in 2020 ...

province in South Africa.

Gallery

File:Zille3a.jpg, File:zille school.jpg, "School", by Zille File:Berliner Strandleben Heinrich Zille.jpg, "Beach life in Berlin" (1901), by Zille File:Heinrich Zille berlin.jpg, Monument to Zille by

in the Nikolaiviertel File:Heinrich Drake - Heinrich-Zille-Denkmal.jpg, Zille Memorial in Köllnischer Park, Berlin, by

Selected filmography

* '' Slums of Berlin'' (1925) * ''

The Ones Down There ''The Ones Down There'' (german: Die da unten) is a 1926 German silent film directed by Victor Janson and starring Maly Delschaft, Aud Egede-Nissen, and Walter Rilla. The film's sets were designed by the art director Jacek Rotmil Jacek Rotmil ...

'' (1926) * '' Big City Children'' (1929) * '' Mother Krause's Journey to Happiness'' (1929)

References

External links

Available Works & Biography
Galerie Ludorff, Düsseldorf, Germany
Documents from the life of the Zille family
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Zille, Heinrich 1858 births 1929 deaths German illustrators Photographers from Saxony German caricaturists German erotic artists 20th-century German artists People from the Kingdom of Saxony People from Meissen (district)