Partial estate of the painter and graphic artist Otto Illies (Yokohama 1881-1959 Wernigerode), consisting of numerous paintings, hundreds of pastels and oil studies, countless sketches, some watercolours and the artist's almost complete graphic works. The estate also contains paintings by artist friends. Many of Illie's classmates from Ludwig von Hofmann's class at the Weimar art school are represented, as is the teacher himself, in some cases with several works.
The collection also contains a large part of the written estate with autobiographical notes, poetry, memoranda to artist friends and extensive correspondence with family members and friends (including Gottfried Holthusen, Ludwig Delbrück, Ivo Hauptmann, Rudolf Siegmund, Ludwig von Hofmann). Donated to the Gleimhaus by the painter's daughters in 2008.
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Jean David Grüson (Magdeburg 1780-1848 Breslau), a descendant of Huguenots who had emigrated from France in 1689, grew up in Magdeburg-Neustadt and learnt the trade of trimmings. He studied at the Berlin Academy of Art from 1805 to 1809, then with Anton Graff in Dresden until 1813. He was already active as a portraitist in Magdeburg and later in Berlin and Dresden, initially mainly in pastel, later also in oil. In 1813 he worked in Bohemia, and from September 1813 in Breslau and elsewhere in Silesia. In 1819 he settled in Breslau, married and ran a lithographic printing business as well as an art and bookshop alongside his portrait painting. Grüson was active on the management committee of the Silesian Art Association. He died in the cholera epidemic in 1848.
A fragment of his estate, consisting mainly of lithographs, hand drawings, a few works in oil as well as written and documentary material, was donated to the Gleimhaus by the family after 2005. The collection mainly documents Grüson's publishing activities through original works; his portrait painting is only documented through photos, including an extensive album with photos of portraits painted in Silesia.
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Julius Barheine, born in Halberstadt in 1897, began an apprenticeship at the Louis Koch lithographic studio in Halberstadt in 1911 and studied at the Magdeburg School of Arts and Crafts from 1919 to 1922. In 1924, he settled in Halberstadt as a painter and graphic artist. In 1926, he continued his training at the Vereinigte Staatsschule für Freie und Angewandte Kunst in Berlin and returned to Halberstadt in 1934. After the Second World War, he was taken prisoner of war and found his studio destroyed on his return.
Barheine was active in the Association of Visual Artists. He carried out numerous public commissions, for example in the Pathological Institute of the Magdeburg Medical Academy, in the Magdeburg boathouse, in the Hans Schemm School (later the Peace School) and in the later Diesterweg School. Until his death in 1976, he was committed to promoting young artists by leading a painting circle, for which he was awarded the Halberstadt Art Prize in 1969.
After the death of his widow Hermine Barheine, née Tolle, in 1995, her last will and testament transferred the entire artistic estate to the Gleimhaus - several thousand drawings, colour woodcuts, etchings, watercolour, pastel, oil and tempera paintings as well as extensive written material and other documents. The remaining assets (land, house and capital) were handed over to the town of Halberstadt for administration. In accordance with the will, an advisory board was set up, consisting of a representative of the town, a representative of the Halberstadt and Wernigerode districts, an employee of Wernigerode Castle, the administrator of the estate and the director of the Gleimhaus (Barheine Art Advisory Board).
The classic genres of portrait, nude, floral still life and landscape (especially Harz foreland) are equally represented in Barheine's oeuvre.
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Graphic designer, dog breeder, hiking guide, Quedlinburg original. Dorothea Milde had a difficult life, was of a heavy disposition and reserved nature. Her life was not only marked by two world wars, but also by several personal strokes of fate. From 1905 to 1908 she attended the Breslau art school, and in 1909 she also passed her exams as a gymnastics teacher. In 1910, she was offered a position as a drawing and gymnastics teacher at the lyceum with an associated women's school and nursery school in Quedlinburg. In the following years, she attended painting courses in Munich and Dresden. In 1914, she began studying at the Weimar School of Art, which she was unable to continue after the outbreak of war.
From the summer holidays of 1916, she regularly travelled to the Lüneburg Heath, Worpswede and the East Frisian coast for study trips and sojourns. She painted regularly in the Harz Mountains; she often stayed in her weekend flat in Friedrichsbrunn and roamed the woods from there. Her artistic interests were combined with her life-reforming endeavours as a "Wandervogel".
In 1925, she bought a plot of land on Bornholzweg on the outskirts of Quedlinburg and built herself a little house there. She named her property "Bergnest" after her previous home in Bergstraße.
During a holiday year in 1920, which she spent in solitude, her emotional experience intensified and her art reached its culmination. Linked to this creative surge, the traumatic experience of her mother's death and human disappointments, her artistic endeavours changed. In the mid-1920s, after barely fifteen years of independent work, it came to a complete standstill.
"Gravity" is the key term used by D. Milde herself to describe both her mind and her art. She renounced colour almost completely. Since her art school days, she favoured black chalk. Soon, pen-and-ink drawing became her characteristic technique, in which she created darkness by means of the pressing density of the lines of a thin pen. In addition, in 1914, she began making woodcuts, which she had been working on independently since 1916.
Dorothea Milde bequeathed her artistic estate to the Gleimhaus. It contains several hundred items of prints and hand drawings, her portfolios and sketchbooks. In addition to the artistic works, there are diaries, correspondence, documents, collections and a few photographs, as well as written elaborations.
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Gleimhaus
Museum of the German Enlightenment
Domplatz 31
38820 Halberstadt
Tel: 03941 6871-0
E-mail: gleimhaus@halberstadt.de
