Künstler - - Stift Admont

Heinrich Hack
*Sandhausen 1869, Accounted for in the Wiesloch Clinic until 1936
Heinrich Hack, day labourer in a cigar factory and later a cement factory, married
early and had seven children.
He began to receive disability benefits in 1904 due to a brain tumour. The
symptoms rescinded in 1906, but he continued to feel as though he was being
followed, saw colours and images in his mind's eye and heard rustling in his ears.
He spent a few weeks in the Wiesloch clinic in 1907, returned for six years in
1910 and began permanently residing there in 1919.
The doctor described him as an “obtuse, slow, dull person, the eyes often have a
peculiar dreamy expression as well as a frequently occurring, empty expression.
His facial expression is sometimes almost sentimental.”
The effects of many years of institutionalisation began to present themselves
after 1925. Hack became very quiet. While his files used to speak of uproars and
“endless speeches”, he became “dull” and “lifeless”. In the “final stages of
schizophrenia”, he was transferred to Sinsheim in 1936, where all traces of him
have been lost.
Hack, who enjoyed delivering spontaneous sermons, began to draw in 1912. He
reported that he had seen Jesus on the cross: “He should pursue painting, so that
he will be able to feed his family from it later. An angel came to him later and
dissolved itself into him. That was aid from God.”
He began copying from newspapers, but soon invented his own characters, his
own sumptuous and dignified typeface and orthography. Hack granted the
masterful subjects of his extraordinary portrait gallery an imposing and jaunty
stature. Despite their corpulence and vestments, they seem to float within their
noble spheres – something unattainable for the institutionalised day labourer...
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