Wilhelm Dachauer (5 April 1881 – 26 February 1951) was an Austrian painter. He studied at the

Akademie der bildenden Künste The Academy of Fine Arts, Munich (, also known as Munich Academy) is one of the oldest and most significant art academies in Germany. It is located in the Maxvorstadt district of Munich, in Bavaria, Germany. In the second half of the 19th centur ...

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

from 1899 to 1907 and was a professor at the academy from 1928 to 1944.

Life

Dachauer was in

Ried im Innkreis Ried im Innkreis (Central Bavarian: ''Riad'') is a town in the Austrian state of Upper Austria, approximately west of Linz and north of Salzburg. It is the capital of the district of Ried im Innkreis (district), Ried im Innkreis, and it serves a ...

on 5 April 1881 into a family of clockmakers. He was intended to continue his father's business but after some struggle, he was allowed to move to Vienna, where he had a time full of privations. He started an

apprenticeship Apprenticeship is a system for training a potential new practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study. Apprenticeships may also enable practitioners to gain a license to practice in a regulat ...

as decoration painter and in the nighttime he prepared for the Academy of Applied Arts. In 1899, 17-year-old Dachauer began his studies under the supervision of Professor Griepenkerl. In 1913, he had his first arguably successful exhibition at the

Secession Secession is the formal withdrawal of a group from a Polity, political entity. The process begins once a group proclaims an act of secession (such as a declaration of independence). A secession attempt might be violent or peaceful, but the goal i ...

. He was appointed to an honored professorship of the

(Academy of Fine Arts) in Vienna in 1928, a position that he occupied until 1944. Temporarily, he was rector of the institution. Among his students were

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Maria Lassnig Maria Lassnig (8 September 1919 – 6 May 2014) was an Austrian artist known for her painted self-portraits and her theory of "body awareness".Attias, Lauri''Maria Lassnig'', ''Frieze'', May 1996. She was the first female artist to win the Gran ...

Adalbert Pilch Adalbert Pilch (16 February 1917 in Vienna, Austria – 10 December 2004 in Tulln) was an Austrian painter and graphic artist. The works of Adalbert Pilch include paintings, drawings and illustrations. He became well known for designing postage ...

, and Peppino Wieternik (1919–1979). He was one of the founders and leaders of the Federation of German Painters, Austrian branch (Bund Deutscher Maler Österreichs), which from 1937 sought to bring together painters with National Socialist sympathies. Dachauer joined the Nazi party in July 1938. A Committee of Inquiry after the end of World War 2 found him not guilty of serving the Nazis through his work, however he was never reinstated to his post at the Academy of Fine Arts. Dachauer died in Vienna on 26 February 1951.

Opus

Dachauer was initially influenced by the art of the Secession and later developed a form of

realism Realism, Realistic, or Realists may refer to: In the arts *Realism (arts), the general attempt to depict subjects truthfully in different forms of the arts Arts movements related to realism include: *American Realism *Classical Realism *Liter ...

that was strongly dedicated to rural and regional arts. This style fitted well to the "official" taste of the Ständestaat and the National Socialist regime, so his work became somewhat disreputable after 1945. He was rather unconsciously known to the public by the design of some stamp series than for his other paintings. Among his stamp designs are the well-known set of the

Nibelungen The term Nibelung ( German) or Niflungr (Old Norse) is a personal or clan name with several competing and contradictory uses in Germanic heroic legend. It has an unclear etymology, but is often connected to the root ''Nebel'', meaning mist. The ...

motifs and the

inventor An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea, or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...

set; other motifs are:

Stille Nacht Stille may refer to: Geography *Stille (river), a river near Schmalkalden, Thuringia, Germany *Stille Musel, a river of Baden-Württemberg, Germany Science *Stille reaction History * Stille Omgang, a religious procession in the Netherlands * St ...

and Johann Strauß. In 1926, Dachauer was awarded the Thomson medal for the most beautiful stamp in the world for the second stamp of the before mentioned

set. The design of this stamp has the title ''"Gunters Drachenschiff auf dem Weg nach Island"'' (Gunter's Dragon Boat on the Way to Iceland). This stamp has a nominal value of 8+2 g (

Groschen Groschen (; from "thick", via Old Czech ') is the (sometimes colloquial) name for various coins, especially a silver coin used in parts of Europe including Kingdom of France, France, some of the Italian states, and various states of the Holy R ...

). After the

annexation Annexation, in international law, is the forcible acquisition and assertion of legal title over one state's territory by another state, usually following military occupation of the territory. In current international law, it is generally held t ...

of Austria to the

German Reich German ''Reich'' (, from ) was the constitutional name for the German nation state that existed from 1871 to 1945. The ''Reich'' became understood as deriving its authority and sovereignty entirely from a continuing unitary German ''Volk'' ("na ...

and the occupation of Poland, Dachauer designed several other stamps of the so-called Generalgouvernement and a few of the German Reich. He also made the designs for several Austrian stamps after

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, among them the so-called ''Homecomer series''. Ten glass windows and one altarpiece of the Franziskaner hospital chapel in Ried 1928 are designs of Dachauer. More conserved works are the portraits of

Julius Wagner-Jauregg Julius Wagner-Jauregg (; 7 March 1857 – 27 September 1940) was an Austrian physician, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1927, and is the first psychiatrist to have done so. His Nobel award was "for his discovery of the therape ...

and Viktor Kaplan. Nowadays a street—the ''Wilhelm-Dachauer Straße'' in

Essling Essling
Essling entry in the Viennese government's history wiki (German) () is a neighbourhood ...

, the 22nd borough of Vienna—is named after Dachauer.

References

Literature

Wilhelm Dachauer, ''Gemälde und Briefmarken'', Österr. Bundesverlag, Vienna 1963.

External links

* http://www.archiv-verlag.at/inhalte/loseblatt/oberoearchiv1.html (in German) * http://www.artnet.com/artist/659675/wilhelm-dachauer.html

Nibelungen drawing, Wilhelm Dachauer Centenary, Austria 1981 issue {{DEFAULTSORT:Dachauer, Wilhelm 1881 births 1951 deaths 20th-century Austrian painters Austrian male painters Austrian Nazis Austrian stamp designers Art Nouveau painters Art Nouveau illustrators People from Ried im Innkreis District Nazi Party members 20th-century Austrian male artists