Professor Meistermann

Georg Meistermann wanted Wittlich. He loved this small town near the Moselle. To give his artistic legacy a home had been his express wish. Emphatically he supported the plan of the then mayor in office, Helmut Hagedorn who had initiated this idea.

After the Second World War Meistermann had obtained his first big glass window order (1949) for the local church of St Mark. Five years later the four-part window cycle of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1954) followed. By referring to the local symbolics they recall the dread of war. The courage of this town and the commitment of the then mayor Matthias J. Mehs to modern contemporary art had been the basis for the love of Wittlich by the artist who was born in Solingen and later choose to live in Cologne.

The “Province of the Eifel” seemed to him to be the right place. “Because there just as in the southern-French Provence, people are still open for and have a true love for art, whereas people from large cities are spoilt and more bored owing to the excessive offer of art.” After his death (1990) the psychoanalyst Edeltrud Meistermann administered her husband's estate.

In this connection, the donation takes the most important steps of the artistic development into consideration. It representatively includes the categories of graphics, glass and oil painting which are so typical for Meistermann. There is also the comprehensive bundle of cartons on a scale of 1:1 (glass window drafts).

While art history is still disputing the oil painter's rank it does agree with respect to the evaluation of the coloured-glass oeuvre: apart from Johann Thorn-Prikker, Meistermann is one of the most important renewers of German and international glass painting of the 20th century. There is hardly any other artist who has immersed private, public and church rooms in coloured light in such a comprehensive and innovative manner.

The three disciplines of graphics, painting and glass document the artist's outstanding ability to meet the requirements of both the different materials and the different topics of the paintings. In addition they allow us to see how much Meistermann was interested in newly balancing the interaction of colour, form and line by a rich, often also bold ratio of potential

On the screens the lines are both supports and at the same time catalysts of the acutely instrumented colour notations. To bring the colour to floating, to detect meditative spaces and to conquer a depth of the painting directed towards transcendence has been his artistic programme. Undoubtedly his oil-painting oeuvre fits into the long tradition of large Western colourists.

However, Meistermann would not be Meistermann if his disputatious mind were to be ignored. On the socio-political level he did not ask for trouble for the sake of trouble but for the gentle task and obligation to promote and consolidate the culture of arguing in democracy. He perceived himself not only as a painter, but above all as a convinced Republican – and this in the purest sense of the word – who would have to contribute his part to the social discourse exceeding the topic of art.

His own experience of having been suppressed by the inhuman Nazi Regime had a lasting impact on him during his life. According to what he says, what he had experienced and what other people had to suffer from Germans, had induced him to watch political processes in Post-War Germany with the highest critical attention. As soon as he recognised deficits in democracy or wrong socio-political developments he did not mince his words. In his rigorous, moralistic and often also cutting behaviour he argued with parties, associations and the Church. The result for him was not only recognition, friends and comrades.

Meistermann always requested his colleagues in numerous papers, speeches and finally also as the President of the German Artists Association (1967 – 1972), to contribute their part to a more humane society. Even if he knew that art cannot change a human being, he believed in the power of art to formulate a picture of human beings which is in a position to strengthen the unimpeachable dignity of every human being.

In addition to his free works for profane purposes the devout Catholic Meistermann worked for the sacred room with great passion. With jubilating colours and bold drafts he wanted to praise the grace of God. As a picture theologian he looked for form-expressing solutions to glorify the Creator.

However, this religious attitude did not stop him from severely criticising the Church. Although he always longed for the community of believers – and particularly therefore – he quarrelled again and again with those who thought they were in a position to claim special rights only because they administered the Christian faith.

In order not to be captured by the Church he unequivocally professed as a main intention of his sacred entire works: “I make propaganda for the Christian faith, but quite certainly, I do not make propaganda for the Church”.

It was due to his unshakeable Rhenish humour and his huge inner freedom that he did not go too far in this connection. This is because he loved life, humans and last but not least a good drop of wine too much. This may have been one reason why Meistermann immediately and without hesitating decided in favour of the wine town by the Moselle as the repository for his art. Because where sensuality has a home in people, art has a home.

Wittlich can be proud to accommodate the legacy of an important German artist.

Biography (1911-1990)

1911	Born on 16 June in Solingen, Germany
1930 - 1933	Leaves the eighth year of German secondary school with the intermediate school certificate. Studies in three winter semesters at Düsseldorf Art Academy under W.Heuser, H.Nauen and E.Mataré
1933	Decreed end to his studies and ban on exhibition
1938	First glass windows in St Engelbert, Solingen, destroyed during the war
1944	Destruction of numerous earlier paintings
1946	First single exhibition in the “Studio” of the Municipal Museum of Wuppertal
1949	Move to Cologne. Five windows for St Mark in Wittlich
1950	Blevin-Davis-Prize for the oil painting “Der neue Adam”. Member of the newly founded German Artist Association
1951	Culture prize from the Town of Wuppertal
1952	Stefan-Lochner-Medal from the City of Cologne. WDR-glass wall (54 sm), Cologne
1953	Glass wall (240 sm) for St Kilian, Schweinfurt. Guest lecturer at the Art School of the Land Hamburg
1953 - 1955	Offered a chair at the Städelschule, Frankfurt
1954	Fresco-Altar wall painting (200 sm) for St Alfons, Würzburg. Four staircase windows (Horsemen of the Apocalypse) for the Old Town Hall in Wittlich
1955	Great Art Prize from the Land Northrhine-Westphalia. Participation in the documenta
1955 - 1959	Professorship at Düsseldorf Art Academy
1956	First prize for “The best glass picture of the glass foundry Mittinger”
1957	Glass wall (294 sm) of the Bottrop Heilig-Kreuz-Church: In Germany the first abstract design in sacral room
1958	Prize for glass painting at Biennale in Salzburg
1959	Great Federal Gross of Merit. Participation in documenta II
1959/1970	Window wall “The Good Sheperd” for Wittlich's cemetery chapel
1960 - 1976	Professorship at the Art Academy Karlsruhe
1963	Altar Fresco (123 sm) for Maria-Regina-Martyrum, Berlin
1964 - 1967	Lectureship at the Academy of Graphic Arts Munich
1965	“The Risen Christ”, Glass window for cemetery chapel, Trierer Landstraße
1967 - 1972	President of the German Artists Federation
1969	Seven windows for the hospital chapel in Wittlich – in the meantime located in the Old Town Hall
1969 - 1973	Oil painting: “Colored notes for the biography of Federal Chancellor Brandt”
1971	Overview exhibition at the Rhenish Land Museum Bonn
1974	Culture prize from the Town of Solingen Fresco wall painting (160 sm) for the ZDFBroadcasting Centre Mainz
1975	State prize from the Land Rhineland-Palatinate for “Art in Buildings”
1976	Four windows for the Camposanto Teutonico
1979 - 1986	New designing of St Gereon at Cologne (“... my religious testament and climax of my lifework ...”)
1981	Overview exhibition in the Germanic National Museum Nuremberg
1982	Slevogt-Medal
1984	Romano-Guardini-Prize
1986	Honorary member of Düsseldorf Art Academy, Order of Merit from the Land Northrhine-Westphalia
1989	State prize from the State of Northrhine-Westphalia
1990	Federal Gross of Merit with star and shoulder band. Georg Meistermann dies on 12 June.

Find complementary information about Georg Meistermann in the
biographic-biblical church lexikon of Traugott Bautz publishing house.