Peter Drömmer - Revolutionary Take-Offs

 Peter Drömmer, The Card Player [probably Richard Blunck], 1919

Friedrich Peter Drömmer (1889-1968) was a German expressionistic visual artist and designer who is almost completely forgotten today. Drömmer was born in Kiel as son of a carpenter family. He left school early and started a painter apprenticeship which he finished in 1908. Between 1908 and 1912, he studied at Kiel's Art and Crafts School (Städtische Handwerker und Kunstgewerbeschule). Drömmer's artistic talents were spottet by Wilhelm Ahlmann, the doyen of an old Kiel banking family, who financed his academic education at Weimar's prestigious Academy of Art (1912-1913). 

 Peter Drömmer, Masurenschlacht (Battle of Masuria), 1914

Like Karl Peter Röhl, another of Kiel's "revolutionary expressionists", Drömmer studied In Weimar under the famous Austrian painter Albin Egger-Lienz. In 1914, Drömmer returned to Kiel where he worked in a studio at his parent's home. Still in a patriotic mood, it was probably there where he painted Masurenschlacht (above). The painting refers to the First Battle of the  Masurian Lakes between German and Russian troops (there is a brilliant novel by Aleksandr  Solzhenitsyn, August 1914, about this dramatic engagement). Drömmer was drafted in 1915, and served at the Western and Eastern front until 1918. He visualized his war experiences in his Kriegsfurienbilder (war fury paintings). 

 Peter Drömmer, The Rider (Yellow Incarnation), 1918

Under the impression of the Kiel mutiny, Drömmer painted in 1918 The Rider (above), a pathetic glorification of this important revolutionary event (I have previously written about Heinrich Ehmsen, another forgotten painter from Kiel, who produced a series of great paintings depicting the bloody aftermath of the failed German revolution). After the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in 1919, Drömmer produced a series of "solidarity paintings", and an utterly expressive self-portray which he labeled The Revolutionary:

 Peter Drömmer, The Revolutionary, 1919

Together with the painters Karl Peter Röhl, Werner Lange, and Adolph Meyer - all of them born in Kiel - Drömmer joined the progressive artist group Expressionistische Arbeitsgemeinschaft Kiel (Expressionistic Working Group Kiel), which had been  founded around 1916 by the writers Richard Blunck and Gerhard Ausleger. The group published the magazine Schöne Rarität which combined texts and graphics, and worked closely together with similar groups in Berlin and Dresden, headed by Georg Tappert and Conrad Felixmüller. 

 Peter Drömmer, War Memorial, 1921

Highlights of the group's activities in 1919 and 1920 were two exhibitions in the "bourgeois temple of art", Kunsthalle Kiel, with the intention to overcome Kiel's reactionary image as the principal Prussian navy base. The modest exhibition slogan was: Still nobody has put the sun in his buttonhole. There, Drömmer first showed his architectural phantasies, paintings between Gothic cathedral and prismatic abstraction symbolizing the social and cultural utopia of a classless society, and reminescent of similar ideas by Lyonel Feininger (Cathedral of Socialism, 1919), and Wenzel Hablik. 

Peter Drömmer, City, 1923

Until 1923, Drömmer worked as a freelance artist producing a series of visionary architectural and cityscape works which put him into contact with The Bauhau in Dessau. Between 1923 and 1933, he headed the promotion and corporate design department of the Junkers-Werke, also located in Dessau, and at that time Germany's largest aeroplane manufacturer. Hugo Junkers, the visionary company founder and leader was passionate in his support of The Bauhaus and from that, Junkers and Bauhaus people formed relationships. 

Revolutionary take-off in 1929: Peter Drömmer (right) with Hugo Junkers (3rd from right) in front of the Junkers G38 ("Flying House") after its maiden flight. At the time, the G38 was the world's largest terrestrial airplane. You can see that some of the passenger seats were located inside the wings. Only two of these monsters were built. Luft Hansa employed one of them for its regular services between Berlin and London via Amsterdam until 1939.

Professor Junkers who almost always shunned the spotlight even showed up on December 4, 1926 when Walter Gropius' splendid  Bauhaus Building was formally dedicated and reportedly stayed at the party past midnight. It wasn’t long before the impact of Drömmer was felt and seen by millions aboard Junkers aircraft: He created the stylized Flying Man, the elegant logo of the Junkers factory:

Peter  Drömmer's "Flying Man", Logo of the Junkers Aerospace Company, c. 1925

Responsible for Junker's corporate design, which he developped in close cooperation with The Bauhaus, Drömmer became quite influential at the company. Based upon his autonomous position, and with the support of Hugo Junkers, he was even able to hire some of his leftist friends from Kiel, among them Heinrich Ehmsen and Richard Blunck (who later wrote Hugo Junker's first biography). Hugo Junkers wanted modern, functional design not only for the exterior of his airplanes, but also in the interior appointments. As a result, starting in 1925, Bauhaus designer Marcel Breuer and Drömmer were able to develop their first steel tube furniture, which in a modified form was later installed in Junkers commercial airplanes. You can read more about this here (in German).

Peter Drömmer, Portrait Adolf Dethmann [Director of Junkers-Werke 1931-33], 1921

Almost nothing is known about Drömmer's following years. After Hitler came to power in 1933, he was arrested by the Gestapo, and, since 1935, had to work as a freelance designer (he designed the logo of the Deutz Company at that time). During the Second World War, he moved to Southern Germany, and, shortly after the war, suffered a complete physical and mental breakdown. Friedrich Peter Drömmer died in 1968 in Gräfeling, Bavaria.

Heinrich Ehmsen

Heinrich Ehmsen, almost forgotten today,  was born in 1886 as the fifth child of a basket maker in Kiel. His childhood was determined by poverty and his parents' struggle to provide food. From the age of six, Heinrich had to contribute to the family's livelihood by weaving baskets in his father's workshop. From 1901 to 1906 Ehmsen trained under the Kiel master painter Ernst Rüschmann and painted his first landscape and animal studies. Ehmsen's interest in fine arts grew and he decided to train as a decorative painter, paying for his training by painting houses after work.

Heinrich Ehmsen, Execution by Firing Squad (Red Jacket), 1919

From 1906 to 1909 Heinrich Ehmsen attended the Düsseldorf  Kunstgewerbeschule, where he was taught by leading exponents of Jugendstil such as Peter Behrens and Jan Thorn-Prikker. In 1909 Ehmsen spent a year in Paris, where he was inspired for his future work. From 1911 until 1928 Ehmsen worked as a freelance artist in Munich, interrupted by World War I and several trips. After his move to Munich, the Blauer Reiter group of artists began to influence Ehmsen's creative work and his art became more critical of society. In 1913, two of his paintings were shown in Herwarth Walden's exhibition of the European Avantgarde, Erster Deutschen Herbstsalon .

During the 1920s Ehmsen developped increasingly into a fighter for the wretched in society and revolution became the central theme of many of his paintings. Reflections on the war and the failed German revolution, especially his experience of the bloody liquidation of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic of 1918/19 led him to paint the works shown here. Like the revolution paintings shown yesterday in my article about the the Cooperative for Proletarian Art I found them in the inventories of the St. Peterburg Hermitage.

Heinrich Ehmsen, Execution by Firing Squad of the Sailor Egelhofer (central part of the triptych), 1931. The sailor Rudolf Egelhofer was one of the first members of the German Communist Party. Aged only 23, he became one of the leaders of the Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919. Together with Ernst Toller, he was commanding the "Red Army". After the defeat of the Soviet Republic by troops loyal to the central government in Berlin, Rudolf Egelhofer was tortured and shot on May 3rd, 1919.

In 1929, after a six months study sojourn to Southern France, Heinrich Ehmsen moved to Berlin. The following year he worked at the German academy in Rome for six months together with Schmidt-Rottluff and Georg Schrimpf and subsequently went to Southern Italy. In 1932, Ehmsen stayed one year in the Soviet Union; he exhibited in Moscow and several russian museums acquired his works.

Heinrich Ehmsen, Execution by Firing Squad of the Sailor Egelhofer (right-hand part of the triptych), 1931

In 1933, Ehmsen was held captive by the Gestapo for several months. He was denounced as a "degenerate" artist in 1937 and his pictures were removed from German collections. During World War II Ehmsen worked for the Wehrmacht as a cultural liaison officer in Paris. In 1941, he organized a trip to Germany for French artists (participants were, among others, André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck).

Heinrich Ehmsen, Execution by Firing Squad of the Sailor Egelhofer (left-hand part of the triptych), 1931

After the war, in 1945, Heinrich Ehmsen was appointed head of the painting class at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in West Berlin which was directed, at that time, by Karl Hofer. On the grounds of  a solidarity note to the Congrès mondial des partisans pour la paix Ehmsen lost his job at the Hochschule in 1949. Ehmsen now preferred to take residence in the German Democratic Republic where, in 1950, he joined the Akademie der Künste in East Berlin. Heinrich Ehmsen died 1964 in East Berlin.