Margaretha Angelika (Fick) Hoerle ~ 1899 to 1923
On this page: Angelika’s Promise | Angelika Hoerle’s Gravesite | Ute Bales Book | GÜNTHER LIMBURG | Museum Ludwig | PDFs & Podcasts | Anton Raderscheldt | Johannes Raederscheidt
OUTTAKE One: The Forebears
Angelika Hoerle’s heritage dates back to the 1700s in Pomerania. The story of her forebears foreshadows the talents and influences that shaped her and her time period.
Before Michael Fick turned fourteen in 1815, his small town of Falkenberg in Pomerania changed hands several times—a bouncing ball that Prussia, Sweden and France kicked around during their war games. Fortunately Michael did not worry about the vagaries of wars as he had married well into the inn-keeping family of Marie Louise Charlotte Glaese from Massow. Armies passing through meant prosperity. Michael, literate and good at numbers, wielded his assay scale with expertise to test the coins of the various metals that gentlemen travelers and army officers from nations across Europe offered the accommodating innkeeper. Due to his keen business sense and the fine table set by good wife Marie Louise, life was good for the Fick family. Michael lived comfortably to the age of 70, long enough to see the end of the last Napoleon. Michael Fick was laid to rest in Massow in 1871 just as William I, King of Prussia, was proclaimed German Emperor in the splendour of the Palace of Versailles.
Marie and Michael’s son Wilhelm Carl August Fick, born when Michael was 32 years of age, came into the world Dec. 1, 1833 in the year that Gauss and Weber devised the telegraph. The 1848 rebellions throughout Europe strengthened Marie and Michael’s resolve to keep their son safe in agricultural Pomerania. Although this first Willy Fick did not inherit his parents’ inn in Massow , his parents assisted his career as cattle merchant in the fertile land that the Oder River had carved out over millennia as it emptied into the Baltic Sea.
Willy Fick was well established at 26 years of age when in the deep of winter 1859, he took as his bride Maria Amalie Levin, the 21-year-old daughter of Friedrich Wilhelm Levin of Stargard, one of the larger towns in the area that served as a railroad hub. The elder Levin, born in 1788, the year Mozart composed the “Jupiter” Symphony, freely gave his daughter to the prosperous young cattle merchant from Massow not expecting that she would be widowed a mere 12 years later. When Willy Fick died unexpectedly at 38 years of age, he left the 33 year old Maria with three children between the ages of eight and eleven: Richard, Wilhelm and Amalie.
The widow Maria Amalie, could not return home to Stargard as her 83 year old father was ailing and indeed died the next year. Her father-in-law’s death in the same year as her husband made the situation dire. She could not assume her husband’s work as cattle trading was a man’s business. Maria looked at her three young children, still in school, and rued that she could not provide the improved future of which she and Wilhelm had dreamed.
Maria’s eldest son Richard, took over leadership of the family to the best of his ability. Maria’s brother August Levin helped out as much as he could. The long-term solution seemed to be to find a new husband for Maria Amalie –which was done after a suitable time of widowhood. Maria Amalie married a Mr. Renntzmann who was keener to be a husband than a father. He wanted to start a new life in America without Maria’s children.
By April 1878 Richard August Michael Fick was apprenticed as a cabinet maker in Falkenberg. Over the next six years, he learned his trade in 13 different locations from Massow, Stettin and Potsdam to Namby and Dibbersen. The young Richard, often impatient with working conditions, stayed in some placements for only three or four months. In May of 1884 when he was finally a qualified cabinet-maker, his mother Maria Amalia Renntzmann was living in Rich Hill, Missouri, his sister Amalie was married in Massow and his brother Wilhelm had migrated south to Cologne.
Richard decided to join his brother in Cologne where rapid industrialization made work opportunities that didn’t exist in the rural areas of Pomerania. In 1867, at the World Exposition in Paris, Krupp’s Giant 1000 pounder cannon had drawn as much awe as Eiffel’s Tower–it was a changing world. A woodcut of Elberfeld in 1882 showed the Mechanical Weaving Factory Boeddinghausen with other factories in the distance. The industrial Rhineland in the 1880’s was ready to absorb a qualified worker like Richard Fick.
While the fortunes of the Fick family waxed and waned in Pomerania, the Kraft family in the Rhineland was strictly ascending. Peter Hubert Kraft, born in 1834 in Randerath, northwest of Cologne, climbed through the hierarchy of the expanding Deutsche Bahn to reach the position of Chief Lading Officer in one of Cologne’s busiest Railroad Stations. Described as upright and open in character with precision of knowledge and a deep sense of duty, he was much beloved by everyone.
In 1862 Peter Kraft married Anna Maria Caspers of Rondorf. She was 27 to his 28 years of age. The only anomaly in their staunch, well-lived Catholic lives was that Anna delivered their first child, Anna Maria Kraft, a mere four months after their wedding in Cologne. In all, the couple had six children, four sons and two daughters.
Anna and Angelika, the two beautiful Kraft daughters, were raised in middle class splendour. Their home was full of music and literature. There were cultural outings and much was made of the latest finery in clothes. All the Kraft children played at least one musical instrument. Sheet music and railroad schedules underpinned the home’s operations. Railroad holidays punctuated their lives.
All was going well for the two Kraft beauties when Angelika Kraft, met the aspiring young architect, Johannes Reif from Hamburg. Anna had already met the handsome Fick brothers Richard and Wilhelm and had been smitten by the confident and worldly Richard. As a cabinet-maker Richard did not rank as high in their parents’ estimation as Angelika’s architect beau. In the end, love triumphed. On Feb 9, 1889 in the St. Gereon Church in Cologne, Anna Maria Kraft married Richard August Michael Fick in a lovely ceremony sponsored by the bride’s parents.
Shortly after her sister’s wedding, Angelika and Johannes Reif returned to Hamburg while uncle August Levin and Richard’s sister Amalie and her family returned to Massow. Maria Amalie Levin Fick Renntzman, the mother of the groom, did not attend. She had started a new life in Missouri.
These decades of family history during the turbulent political and economic times from 1800 to 1890, set the backdrop for the arrival of the Fick children, the artist Wilhelm Peter Hubert Fick born in 1893 and the artist Angelika Margaretha Fick born in 1899. The values in the home where Willy and Angelika grew up had been finely honed by their ancestors as they had made places for themselves in the world.
These ancestors had been landowners, literate, skilled, respected and religious. Their talents included being good at numbers and music. Their interests were the arts and the well being of the working man. Had Willy and Angelika Fick been children of Michael and Marie Fick in Pomerania at the beginning of the 19th century, instead of children of Richard and Anna Fick at the end of that century, the family expectations would have differed little.
As the Fick children grew up during the beginning of the 20th century, they drew upon the talents and resiliency of their forebears, to give vision, voice and witness not just to what the world was, but also to what it should be.
“The Developing Artists 1912-1914”
Outtake from the Manuscript Angelika Hoerle: The Comet of Cologne Dada (AGO 2009 exhibition)
Things started to percolate for Angelika and Willy Fick in 1912. Willy began evening and Sunday courses in drawing and architectural drafting at Cologne’s Kunstgewerbe School. Angelika did all his assignments with him. During the two years that Willy took classes he met Franz Seiwert, Heinrich Hoerle, Anton Raederscheidt and Marta Hegemann who were there either in full or part time studies. The Kunstgewerbe circle started to overlap with that of the Gereonsclub creating a heightened atmosphere of creative interaction—all of which reverberated in the Fick home.
Then came the Cologne Sonderbund, also in 1912. The impact of this international exhibition featuring 577 paintings and drawings and 56 sculptures is well documented in the lives of artists such as Max Ernst and Heinrich Hoerle. These artists were inspired by the exposure to great men of the European avante-garde. Angelika Fick noted that great women were present as well. She was enchanted by the fashionable ladies of Marie Laurencin and impressed by the massive sculptures of Milly Steeger who at the time was working in Hagen for one of the Sonderbund’s organizers. Karl Ernst Osthaus planned to create a community representing the ideal synthesis of the arts and architecture.
By 1912 Angelika had grown to a lanky young woman with a prodigious interest in the arts. The careers of Kaethe Kollwitz, who she had first seen in Licht und Schatten, Marie Laurencin, and Milly Steeger were as impressive to her as the organizing capacity of Emmy Worringer’s and Olga Oppenheimer for the Gereonsclub. In 1912 the club featured the Blue Rider, Paul Klee, William Worringer reading from his thesis Abstraction and Empathy (1908), Theodor Daubler reciting from his lengthy poem Das Nordlicht and the composer Arnold Schoenberg showing his artistic works. Even though Angelika would not have attended all these events, they were highlights of the Cologne avante-garde.
1912 was filled with exciting enticements for a 12-year-old but as yet she was only a pre-teen working on her brother’s art school assignments and going to art exhibitions with him. She matured during 1913 and 1914 as she continued to find great stimuli in the Rhineland arts scene. Kaethe Kollwitz works were at the Cologne Kunstverein and Marie Laurencin works at the Galerie Flechtheim in Duesseldorf. The Cologne Secession formed in 1912 had a very important exhibition at the Art Salon Cohen in Bonn in 1913. Some of the artists displayed were now familiar to Angelika through the Gereonsclub and her brother Willy.
The synaptic connections that formed the core of a Cologne arts coterie kept firing in the exciting pre-war years. Artists met in studios, coffee houses and at exhibitions and events. In 1913-14 Hoerle had a studio in his parents’ home on Erftstrasse where he and Max Ernst worked. The vortex of the growing group of artists, poets, writers, architects and academics was the Cafe Luna in Cologne where coffee klatches covered a great deal of territory.
In Jan 1914 the German Theatre in Cologne presented Maeterlinck’s marionette play Death of Tintagiles. Maeterlinck’s marionettes portrayed his view that fate pulled man’s strings. Kandinsky attended the premiere at the theatre where he had a one-man show. At this point in time he labelled many of his abstract works concerts and improvisations.
The changing nature of music was the subject of discussion when Schoenberg, whose art had been at the Gereonsclub, had his Chamber Symphony #9 performed in February, 1914. The Cologne Stadtanzeiger review was titled “Cannibalism in Music”.
The opening of the Cologne Werkbund exhibition in May 1914 was yet another marker for the Cologne arts scene. Van de Velde’s Theatre, Gropius’ Factory and Bruno Taut’s Glass House were marvels of design and material. Karl Ernst Osthaus was once again at the helm, this time for an astounding display of German applied arts. Angelika Fick was most certainly drawn to the House of Women where Milly Steeger had organized the display of the works of twelve female sculptors. There were batik fabrics, wall hangings, rugs and even linoleum floor designs by women. The Cologne Stadtanzeiger reviewer had special praise for Lotte Pritzel’s wax dolls which he described as having an almost demonic attraction.
Angelika Fick finished Volkschule shortly after the Werkbund exhibition. Unlike her sister Maria, she did not wish to continue. Angelika wanted an apprenticeship like her brothers as she coveted the freedom that working brought. Her traditional father acquiesced to the decision when an apprenticeship in millinery was found.
Below is the impossibly long link to the German version of the Polish blogspot on Angelika.
Museum Ludwig
Elastikakt: Zeichnung von Angelika Hoerle (1920) copy: Museum Ludwig
Formal wie inhaltlich sieht sich Hoffmann in der Tradition der russischen Suprematisten und Konstruktivisten, denen eine parallele Ausstellung gewidmet ist. Auch sie wollten das Bild von der Wand lösen, den Betrachter in das Kunstwerk einbeziehen, nicht wenige beschäftigten sich auch mit Architektur. Vor allem aber: Die russische Kunstszene der 1920er Jahre war keine Männerdomäne – im Gegenteil. Von dieser Gender-Offenheit waren die Kölner Progressiven zur gleichen Zeit weit entfernt. Und so ist die zweite Ausstellung mit der Wieder-Entdeckung von Angelika Hoerle auch eine Wiedergutmachung.
Angelika Hoerle ist für Kenner der Kunstgeschichte keine Unbekannte, doch bestenfalls eine Fußnote. Dabei ist ihr Fisch in einer Konservendose, eine Linolschnitt-Illustration für den Buchstaben F in einem ABC-Bilderbuch für Kinder aus dem Jahr 1920, ist eine kleine Ikone für die Arbeit der Kölner Progressiven. Doch sie starb jung, 1923 nur 23 Jahre alt, so ist ihr Oeuvre nicht sehr groß, war lange verschollen. Zudem: Der Kreis der Kölner Progressiven gilt nicht als sehr frauenfreundlich. Es spricht einiges dafür, dass sich ihr Ehemann Heinrich Hoerle aus Eifersucht über ihr Talent von ihr trennte. Im „Dürer-Saal“ des Museums ist jetzt eine Auswahl aus dem überraschend aufgetauchten Nachlass der Künstlerin zu sehen.
Gefunden hat ihn Angelika Littlefield, eine Großnichte von Angelika Hoerle, als sie 1967 den Gartenschuppen von deren Bruder Willy Fick in Köln aufräumte. Sie wusste zuerst nicht, welchen Schatz sie da geborgen hatte, nahm ihn aber mit in ihre Heimatstadt Toronto/Kanada. Erst Jahre später erkannte dort ein französischer Kunsthistoriker den Wert. Es kam zu einer Ausstellung, die jetzt auch in Köln zu sehen ist. Gezeigt werden vor allem Zeichnungen, die von Dada und Surrealismus beeinflusst sind, den sachlichen Progressiven-Stil vorwegnehmen, aber eine deutliche eigene Handschrift zeigen: Köpfe – auch Porträts von linken Politikern wie Leviné, Luxemburg und Landauer –, Akrobaten, Stilleben. Sie arbeitete bei der Zeitschrift Die Schammade“ mit und war Mitglied der Gruppe „stupid“, die auch das Kinder-ABC herausbrachte. Mit diesem sollte die Kunst aus ihrem Elfenbeinturm herausgeholt und dem Volk nahe gebracht werden. Mit dieser Ausstellung erfährt die „Meisterin des Dada“, wie eine Zeitung Hoerle damals nannte, eine späte Wiedergutmachung.
„Leni Hoffmann“: bis 28.3., „Angelika Hoerle: Komet der Kölner Avantgarde“: bis 17.1., Museum Ludwig Köln, Di-So 10-18 Uhr, jeden ersten Donnerstag im Monat: 10 – 22 Uhr, Eintritt: 9/6 Euro, am ersten Donnerstag im Monat gilt ab 17 Uhr ein um 50 Prozent reduzierter Eintrittspreis für die Sammlung und alle Sonderausstellungen von 4,50/ 3,00 Euro
Eighty-six years after her much too early demise at 23 years of age, Angelika Hoerle, nee Fick, returned to her native city Cologne, Germany in triumph. Almost the entire oeuvre of this political activist and artist prodigy who was active during the times of the German revolution and Dada was at the AGO in Toronto during the spring and summer of 2009. Now for the fall and winter, Angelika’s talents, and promise, are on display at Museum ELudwig in Cologne until Jan 17, 2010. German press reviews or links available on this website. The catalogue in English is available via the AGO gift shop or through the Walter Koenig bookstore in Germany. Angelika Hoerle’s works are part of the Fick-Eggert Collection permanently housed at the AGO. Thanks to the AGO and the Museum Ludwig for their wonderful support!
Download pdf of Museum Ludwig Angelika Hoerle Komet der Kölner Avantgarde guide
Kölner Dada-Kunst kehrt zurück ~ Daniel Müller
http://www.koeln-nachrichten.de/kultur/museen/koeln_museum-ludwig_hoffmann_hoerle.html
http://www.wechselausstellungen.de/koeln/angelika-hoerle-komet-der-koelner-avantgarde/
Download pdfs of Podcasts:
Podcast ONE
Born in Prague in 1894 and victim to tuberculosis in the Wulzburg Concentration camp in 1942, composer Erwin Schulhoff’s early years in Cologne add musical spice to the exhibition Angelika Hoerle: Cologne Comet of Dada.
Podcast TWO: Aspects of the New Woman
Ever since I started researching the Rhineland arts scene of my great-aunt Angelika Hoerle who died in 1923, I have been struck by the different roles strong women played immediately before and after World War I. There are many aspects to what was dubbed the new woman
Podcast THREE: Who had the right to expect what?
It has always been difficult for me to imagine why my great-aunt Angelika Hoerle would alienate her parents by eloping with Heinrich Hoerle.
http://www.ago.net/Angelikas-Promise-Monologue-Play
Exhibitions and Productions
Angelika’s Promise | June 17 & 24, 2009
Click on the titles below for the complete English script and scene one of the script in German.
Angelika’s Promise © 2009 by Angelika Littlefield MEDIA RELEASE
Angelika’s Versprechen © 2009 by Angelika Littlefield
- Family Secrets: An Inside View of the Short Life of Angelika Hoerle 1899-1923
- Angelika’s Promise: A Monologue Play
- Discovering the lost art of Angelika Hoerle
- Taryn Jorgenson: Taryn is currently an acting student at Ryerson, Toronto. Taryn will play Angelika in the June 24 performance
- Sochi Fried: Sochi has just completed Ryerson University’s Acting program. Sochi played Angelika in the June 17 performance
- Ennio Paola: Musician/Composer
- Marianne Jette: Stage manager and Make-up Design. Marianne has just completed her first year at Ryerson Theatre School.
LINKS:
- Stupid Girl | Angelika Hoerle’s Art, Rediscovered by Genevieve Paiement
- AGO Exhibitions and Productions
- Angelika’s Promise | June 17 & 24, 2009
- Angelika’s Promise Family Secrets: An Inside View of the Short Life of Angelika Hoerle
Ryerson Theatre students Sochi Fried and Taryn Jorgensen brought Angelika to life in Angelika’s Promise, a monologue play, Jackmann Hall, June 17th and 24th at 7 p.m. Assisting playwright Angelika Littlefield with the direction of the play was Ryerson Theatre student Meghan Gennings. Littlefield, who also curates Angelika Hoerle: Comet of the Cologne Avante-Garde 1912-1923 says, “The exhibition shows the talent of this young woman who lived hard and died young; the play shows feminist issues of Angelika’s times that continue to reverberate today.”
Angelika Hoerle – Book
Cologne Dada ~ 2002 at AGO
Comets and Shadows
Musician/Composer Ennio Paola, inspired by the life and works of Angelika Hoerle, composed Comets and Shadows, a powerful piano piece which will be part of the play Angelika’s Promise at Jackmann Hall. “Ennio captures the evanescent life of my great-aunt with echoes of her strength and her sorrow,” says Angie Littlefield. “It is a haunting piece that acts as Angelika’s sound signature. We are lucky to have found a composer with the sensitivity to put notes to a life.” https://soundcloud.com/ennio-a-paola/comets-shadows
Angelika Hoerle’s Gravesite
Angelika Hoerle died of tuberculosis Sept 9, 1923. She was buried just a little before her Nov 20th birthday in Cologne’s West Cemetery. Only a very few people were at her burial. Her friend the young artist Gottfried Brockman wrote, “I first heard of Angelika’s death from the art dealer Kleinertz who attended the funeral. Only three or four people were there and her husband Hoerle wasn’t one of them. After she was delivered to the hospital, he remained continuously drunk. He didn’t want to see her anymore.”
In Europe graves have to be maintained or they are re-used. Although the top photo shows the exact plot where Angelika Fick Hoerle was interred, the gravestone behind the branch is that of a more recent “visitor”. In the second photo, I am standing where Angelika’s head would have been when she was laid to rest. Like her, I am looking towards the pathway where visitors might come.
Many years later, MAF Raederscheidt, visited this spot not knowing that her grandmother’s best friend was burried at this site. She created two works— one of which is reproduced. Is it irony or fate that drew her to this exact spot in Cologne’s West Cemetery?
Fate and the Three Angelikas
On a recent trip to Cologne I was fortunate enough to visit with the 89-year-old Johannes Raederscheidt, whose father and mother were sheltering angels to my great-aunt Angelika Hoerle. In the early 1920s when Angelika’s husband Heinrich and fair weather friends abandonned Angelika because she had tuberculosis, Marta and Anton Raederscheidt stuck by her. ~ read more
Günther Limburg recently painted Angelika Hoerle with her husband Heinrich dominating the foreground. With what is known about Angelika, this is an apt portrayal. However, with the 2009 exhibition of Angelika’s oeuvre at the Art Gallery of Ontario, she will finally emerge rightfully from behind his shadow.
Günther Limburg is a successful German artist whose works may be seen at www.art-in-cologne-guenther-limburg.de Guenther’s current exhibition “Spurren” or “Traces” is in the Junker Haus in the Eiffel mountains outside Cologne, a place Angelika and Hoerle visited as a type of honeymoon outing in June 1910. More about “Traces” later.
In Günther’s words:
Angelika appears a little bit abstractly, I painted her as if she was about to vanish from this world. There is a black line to suggest her right shoulder and arm in a way as if she was standing. But there are also yellow lines which give the idea of a lying woman. Somehow I tried to show her in some state between health and illness, which is also underlined by her black eyes. Hints to Cologne are included in the Romanesque church windows and the bridge over the River Rhine which is still a very popular view at Cologne. H. Hoerle is shown in front of a throne, on which he would have liked to sit.
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist_profile/Guenter+Limburg/29596.html
Angelika Hoerle links
- Pascal Raederscheidt www.raederscheidt.com
Z206 for Angelika Hoerle, from David Annwn’s collection – “Bela Fawr’s Cabaret”
AGO “Angelika Hoerle: The Comet of Cologne Dada”
BOOK ~ Hoerle, Comet of Cologne Dada
Museum Ludwig
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelika_Hoerle
Fate and the Three Angelikas
On a recent trip to Cologne I was fortunate enough to visit with the 89 year old Johannes Raederscheidt, whose father and mother were sheltering angels to my great-aunt Angelika Hoerle. In the early 1920s when Angelika’s husband Heinrich and fair weather friends abandonned Angelika because she had tuberculois, Marta and Anton Raederscheidt stuck by her. Their companionship represented the same act of heroism as that demonstrated by those who continued to caress victims of AIDS at a time when fear-mongering made these individuals untouchables.
Johannes Raederscheidt, although only five years old when Angelika died over 80 years before, remembered the tall, thin, impressive young woman who had been his mother’s best friend. To commemorate the deep bond he knew that his mother Marta felt for her friend, he named his last child, Marta-Angelika.
Marta-Angelika Raederscheidt already as a young woman knew that her destiny was to be an artist. Incredibly enough, not even decades after her namesakes’ pioneering in the art world, was art an acceptable vocation for a young woman. Marta-Angelika escaped to the peace of the Westfriedhof in Cologne to sketch. Eventually she struggled to build a successful career as an artist.
A continent away in Canada, a young woman named Angelika, began the search for her namesake. That decades-long search in the summer of 2007 led Angelika Littlefield nee Eggert to Johannes Raederscheidt and through him to Marta-Angelika, MAF Raederscheidt.
I cannot capture the depth of emotions unleashed by my visit with Johannes Raederscheidt. He was waiting for me outside his apartment, formally dressed, excited as a young man waiting for his first date. I was escorted inside with full formalities and offered coffee and cookies in good German fashion. Johannes, who had had a stroke, wanted to speak in English and I soldiered on in my broken German. The German/English smorgasboard that followed could never be reproduced. Languages flowed as they were needed. I don’t know in what language our hearts met.
When it was time to go, and after he had hooked me up with his daughter Marta-Angelika, he walked me to the tram. I felt guilty walking away from his building with an 89 year old stroke victim but Johannes wanted to go with me. He held my hand at the tram stop, as I know his mother would have, to say good-bye.
Days later I met with Johannes’ Marta Angelika. When she heard that I was off to visit Angelika’s original grave, she studied the map of the Westfriedhof and ran off to her studio. Unbeknownst to her, she had been drawn to the area of Angelika’s grave as a young woman and she’d done studies there. Angelika Hoerle had drawn Marta-Angelika to her in the same way as Angelika Littlefield was drawn to her.
What power!
The three Angelikas are Angelika Hoerle, Marta-Angelika Raederscheidt and Angelika Littlefield. Through us, Angelika Hoerle lives again.
Die Welt Zerschlagen: die Geshichte der Dada-Kuenstlerin Angelika Hoerle
Angelika Hoerle gets more of her due
German author Ute Bales published her novel about my great-aunt Angelika Die Welt Zerschlagen: die Geshichte der Dada-Kuenstlerin Angelika Hoerle, with Rhein-Mosel Verlag early in 2016. After a full year of interacting with Ute during her research and writing, I was delighted to introduce her reading in Simonskall on April 17, 2016. Ute read to a full house in the Marienkapelle in the Eifel Mountains south of Cologne—a place where Angelika Hoerle honeymooned in June 1919. During the reading Ute played a piece of music specially composed for her book tour by Canadian composer Ennio Paola. The hushed audience was awe-inspired as The World is Smashed echoed in the beautiful chapel. Mary Cook and Andrea Ketelaars consulted on the book`s cover—a German-Canadian co-operative venture.
Anton Raderscheidt
Q & A
Anton Raderscheidt’s Wives
I came across your website while researching a couple of prints I have inherited signed ‘Gisele Raderscheldt’. The prints are stamped ‘Nachlass Anton Raderscheldt’.
However, I can’t seem to find anything on ‘Gisele’. Have you ever come across this name in your art research? Rebecca Russell, New Zealand
Anton Raderscheidt and his first wife, the artist Marta Hegemann, were about the best friends anyone could have. When their friend Angelika Fick Hoerle became ill with tuberculosis and her husband Heinrich and ‘friends’ deserted her, Anton and Marta stayed by her side.
Life being what it is, fraught with triumphs and tragedies, Angelika died at 23 years of age and Anton left Marta and children behind. Anton left with Ilse Salberg, a well-to-do Jewish married art patron.
During the Nazi era, Anton experienced great difficulties because of Ilse’s Jewish heritage. However, with luck, friends and connections, he eluded death. Ilse, an accomplished photographer, died shortly thereafter of cancer.
Anton’s third wife and mother to more of his children (he had had two with Marta) was Gisele Ribreau who he met in 1948. The website www.raederscheidt.com doesn’t say when they married. As Anton had a stroke in 1967 and to the best of my knowledge, Gisele was not an artist, I’m guessing that she signed some of his late works between 1967-70. You’d have to describe the subject matter of the works to try to pinpoint the decade in which they originated.
The good news is that I have some connections with Anton’s first family (Marta Hegemann’s son Johannes is still alive and very ‘peppy’ at 89 years of age) and the grand-daughter MAF Raederscheidt, a fantastic artist in her own right, who makes videos on artists for the “Rheingalerie” at www.center.tv (with her partner Stephan Everling). I will ask her for more information about Gisele. My hunch is that you’ve lucked into some Anton Raederscheidt works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelika_Hoerle
Ute Bales and Angie in Simonskall for her book reading
DaDaLA DADA DIE DADA
SHE DADA
Vernissage
le vendredi 3 octobre 2015
à 18h
en présence des artistes
Dada a 100 ans ! En 1916, alors que la Première Guerre fait rage en Europe, Dada voit le jour à Zürich. Œuvres d’art radicales, poésie expérimentale, actions subversives, renversement des valeurs, jeu, humour, le mouvement intellectuel, littéraire et artistique entend faire table rase de toutes les conventions et contraintes idéologiques, esthétiques et politiques. Si Dada est souvent associé à des artistes masculins comme Jean Arp, Tristan Tzara, Max Ernst ou Marcel Duchamp, au cœur de Dada se trouvent aussi, et très souvent, des femmes.
Pour fêter ce jubilé, le Manoir de la Ville de Martigny propose LA DADA DIE DADA SHE DADA, une exposition en partenariat avec le Forum Schlossplatz Aarau et le Kunstmuseum d’Appenzell. Cinq femmes dadaïstes actives à Paris, New York, Berlin, Cologne et Zurich sont présentées à travers une série d’œuvres et de documents : l’écrivaine Céline Arnauld, la peintre et graphiste Angelika Hoerle, la collagiste Hannah Höch, la performeuse Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven et la peintre et plasticienne Sophie Taeuber-Arp.
L’exposition s’attache également à mettre en valeur la portée de cet héritage aujourd’hui à travers des créations inédites de cinq artistes vidéastes contemporaines animées par l’esprit de ces grandes femmes de l’histoire de l’art : Judith Albert, Elodie Pong, Anne-Julie Raccoursier, Chantal Romani et Anka Schmid.
Le Manoir de la Ville de Martigny
1, Place du Manoir
CH – 1920 Martigny
+41 (0) 27 721 22 30
manoir@villedemartigny.ch
www.manoir-martigny.ch
- Angelika Hoerle ~ closed exhibition at Museum Ludwig
- Angelika’s Promise and recent AGO Exhibition
- Angelika Hoerle: Comet of Cologne Dada
- Where are the originals?
These Angelika Hoerle works were reproduced in Bulletin D, Stupid 1 and Die Schammade, but where are the originals?
Help us to find the originals for the 2009-2010 Art Gallery of Ontario Exhibition, titled Angelika Hoerle: Cologne Comet of Dada
We know where almost all of her extant works are. Join the sleuthing to find the remainder.
She was a compatriot of Max Ernst, wife of Heinrich Hoerle, friend to Marta Hegeman and Anton Raderscheidt, three of her works were purchased by Katherine Dreier to be memorialized in Yale’s Societe Anonyme Collection. She was dead of tuberculosis by 23 years of age. My great-aunt Angelika Fick Hoerle was a political activist whose art crossed styles and whose passion to make positive changes in society did not die with her. To prepare for an exhibition of her works at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2009-2010 I am looking to find EVERYTHING THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT HER. To do that, I’m willing to share what I know about her and Cologne dada. Join with me on the voyage of discovery.
Photo of young Angelika, me, at my uncle Willy Fick’s atelier in Cologne.
It was taken summer 1967. I think it shows why uncle Willy saw me as a reincarnation of his sister Angelika Hoerle.