Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler (born ''Anna Frieda Wächtler''; 4 December 1899 – 31 July 1940) was a German painter of the avant-garde whose works were banned as " degenerate art", and in some cases destroyed, in

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

. She became mentally ill and was murdered in a former psychiatric institution at Sonnenstein castle in Pirna under

Action T4 (German, ) was a campaign of Homicide#By state actors, mass murder by involuntary euthanasia which targeted Disability, people with disabilities and the mentally ill in Nazi Germany. The term was first used in post-WWII, war trials against d ...

, a forced euthanasia program of Nazi Germany. Since 2000, a memorial center for the T4 program in the house commemorates her life and work in a permanent exhibition.

Life

Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler grew up in a middle-class family, but left at the age of 16 to study at the Royal Arts School Dresden from 1915 to 1918 (fashion, then applied graphics). From 1916 to 1919, she also attended drawing and painting courses at the Dresden Art Academy. She came into contact with the Dresden

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 ...

Group 1919 and became part of the circle of friends around

Otto Dix Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix (; 2 December 1891 – 25 July 1969) was a German painter and Printmaking, printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of German society during the Weimar Republic and the brutality of war. Alon ...

, Otto Griebel, and Conrad Felixmüller. Renting part of the studio of the latter near the Dresden city center she made a living with batiks, postcards and illustrations. In June 1921, she married the painter and opera singer , following him to

Görlitz Görlitz (; ; ; ; ; Lusatian dialects, East Lusatian: , , ) is a town in the Germany, German state of Saxony. It is on the river Lusatian Neisse and is the largest town in Upper Lusatia, the second-largest town in the region of Lusatia after ...

in 1922 and in 1925 to

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...

. The marriage was a difficult one and the couple separated several times in the following years. In 1926, Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler joined the ''Federation of female Hamburgian artists and art lovers''; in 1928. she was able to participate in some exhibitions of the

New Objectivity The New Objectivity (in ) was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s as a reaction against German Expressionism, expressionism. The term was coined by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, the director of the ''Kunsthalle Mannheim, Kunsthalle' ...

In 1929, she had a nervous breakdown because of financial and partnership difficulties and was committed to a psychiatric institution in Hamburg-Friedrichsberg. During the two months' stay she painted the ''Friedrichsberg heads'', a piece of work consisting of about 60 drawings and pastels, mainly portraits of fellow patients. After her recovery and a final separation from Kurt Lohse (in 1926), she had a very creative phase. She painted numerous paintings of Hamburg's harbor, scenes from the life of workers and prostitutes, and pitiless self-portraits. But despite some exhibitions, sales, and smaller grants, she lived in grinding poverty. Due to financial problems and increasing social isolation, she returned to her parents' home in Dresden by midyear 1931. When her mental state worsened her father admitted her to the state mental home at Arnsdorf in 1932. There she was diagnosed with

schizophrenia Schizophrenia () is a mental disorder characterized variously by hallucinations (typically, Auditory hallucination#Schizophrenia, hearing voices), delusions, thought disorder, disorganized thinking and behavior, and Reduced affect display, f ...

. From 1932 to 1935 she was still creatively active, drawing portraits and creating arts and crafts. After Kurt Lohse divorced her in May 1935 she was incapacitated due to "incurable insanity". After refusing to consent to a sterilisation, she was denied the permission to go out of the hospital any more. In December 1935, she underwent a forced surgical sterilisation in the Dresden-Friedrichstadt women's hospital on the grounds of Nazi

eugenicist Eugenics is a set of largely discredited beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetics, genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter the frequency of various human Phenotype, phenotypes by ...

policies. After this traumatic event she never painted again. In 1940 she was deported to the former psychiatric institution at Pirna-Sonnenstein (located in the

Sonnenstein castle The Sonnenstein Castle is a castle in Pirna, near Dresden, Germany. It housed a mental hospital, which operated from 1811 to the end of World War II in 1945. During the War, it functioned as an Sonnenstein Nazi Death Institute, extermination cen ...

Pirna Pirna (; , ) is a town in Saxony, Germany and capital of the administrative district Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge. The town's population is over 37,000. Pirna is located near Dresden and is an important district town as well as a ''Große ...

), where, on 31 July, she was murdered along with the majority of the other residents as part of the Nazi "euthanasia" program,

. The official cause of death was "pneumonia with myocardial insufficiency". In the years of 1940 and 1941, a total of 13,720 mainly mentally ill or disabled people were gassed by Nazis in this institution formerly well known for its humanistic traditions.

Works

Her most creative period falls within the time of her stay in Hamburg. From 1927 to 1931, she painted some of her major works. The portraits of mentally ill people she drew in Hamburg-Friedrichsberg (1929) and Arnsdorf (1932–1935) have attracted much interest. As part of the " degenerate art" campaign by the Nazis, nine of her works from the art museum Hamburger Kunsthalle and the Altonaer Museum were confiscated and destroyed in 1937, including paintings entitled ''Strassen-Musik, In der Kneipe, Aus St Pauli,'' ''Café'', and ''Cabarett'', as well as a large part of her paintings from Arnsdorf.

Commemoration and legacy

Renewed interest in Lohse-Wächtler started with a presentation of some of her paintings in Reinbek near Hamburg. In 1994, an association for the promotion of the works of Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler was founded (''Förderkreis Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler''). 1996 saw the publication of the first

monograph A monograph is generally a long-form work on one (usually scholarly) subject, or one aspect of a subject, typically created by a single author or artist (or, sometimes, by two or more authors). Traditionally it is in written form and published a ...

on her works, written by Georg Reinhardt. This and the exhibitions in Dresden, Hamburg-Altona and Aschaffenburg marked the beginning of a broader reception of the artist's work and fate. In 1999, there was a

stele A stele ( ) or stela ( )The plural in English is sometimes stelai ( ) based on direct transliteration of the Greek, sometimes stelae or stelæ ( ) based on the inflection of Greek nouns in Latin, and sometimes anglicized to steles ( ) or stela ...

erected in memory of her at the Saxon Hospital in Arnsdorf and a ward house named after her. In Pirna-Sonnenstein, a street was dedicated to her in 2005, and since 2008, a street in Arnsdorf also carries her name. At the former hospital site in Friedrichsberg (Hamburg-Barmbek-Süd), a rose garden with a commemorative plaque was designed for her in 2004. In the development area close by, another street was also given her name.

Exhibitions

These were some of the most important expositions on the work of Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler: * 1991 Castle Reinbek bei Hamburg * 1997 Art Gallery Finckenstein, Dresden * 1999 Municipal museum of Dresden, Altonaer Museum in Hamburg and Municipal Gallery of the City of Aschaffenburg * 2002 Gallery Kunsthandel & Edition Fischer, Berlin * 2003 Municipal museum of Pirna 2003 * 2004 Prinzhorn Collection, Heidelberg * 2005 Representation of the Free State of Saxony to the Federation, Berlin * 2006 During the exhibition ''Female Artists of the Avant-garde (II) in Hamburg from 1890 to 1933'' (2006) in the art museum Hamburger Kunsthalle there were also several works by Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler. Amongst them one of her most famous paintings, the "Lissy" from 1931 was on display. * 2008/09 Zeppelin Museum, Friedrichshafen, Lake Constance and Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, Bremen: comprehensive exhibition on the life and work of the painter: ''Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler. 1899-1940'' with about one hundred of their works from all phases (with extensive catalog of the same title) * 2010 Käthe-Kollwitz-house, Moritzburg (near Dresden): watercolors and drawings

References

These are some of the most important works on Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler (all of them in German). For a more complete list check the German Wikipedia article on the artist :de:Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler. * Georg Reinhardt (ed.): ''Im Malstrom des Lebens versunken... Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler. 1899-1940. Leben und Werk'' (with contributions by Georg Reinhardt, Boris Böhm, Hildegard Reinhardt and Maike Bruhns), Cologne: Wienand, 1996. Monograph. * Stiftung Sächsische Gendenkstätten zur Erinnerung an die Opfer politischer Gewaltherrschaft (ed.): ''«...das oft aufsteigende Gefühl des Verlassenseins». Arbeiten der Malerin Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler in den Psychiatrien Hamburg-Friedrichsberg (1929) und Arnsdorf (1932-1940)'' (with a contribution by Hildegard Reinhardt and a prologue by Norbert Haase), Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 2000. or * Hamburger Kunsthalle (ed.): ''Künstlerinnen der Avantgarde in Hamburg zwischen 1890 und 1933'', vol. II. Bremen: Hachmannedition, 2006. Catalogue. or * Regine Sondermann: Kunst ohne Kompromiss. Die Malerin Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler. 1899–1940. (ed. rev.), Berlin: Weißensee Verlag, 2008. * Regine Sondermann: Nothing but Art. Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler, 1899–1940. Magdeburg, 2013, * Dirk Blübaum, Rainer Stamm, Ursula Zeller (ed.): ''Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler. 1899 - 1940''. Tübingen, Berlin: Wasmuth, 2008. Catalogue of the exposition with the same title in the Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen and the Paula-Modersohn-Becker-Museum, Bremen, 2008–2009. * Boris Böhm: ''Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler. 1899 - 1940. Eine Biografie in Bildern'', ed. by Kuratorium Gedenkstätte Sonnenstein e.V. Dresden: Sandstein Verlag 2009, 128 pages, 182 ill.,

External links