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<strong>July</strong>-<strong>August</strong> 20<strong>09</strong> THE JEWISH GEORGIAN Page 11 Dachau Artist Colony exhibition continues at Oglethorpe T he groundbreaking exhibitions “Dachau Before Dachau: European Artist Colony 1860-1914” and “Dachau Concentration Camp: Years of Destruction 1933-1945” are at the Oglethorpe University Museum of Art (OUMA) through <strong>August</strong> 30. When Chloe Edwards, president of Oglethorpe’s <strong>Jewish</strong> Student Union, first heard that the exhibition was coming to the school, she “was intrigued but also apprehensive, “ she wrote in the <strong>The</strong> Stormy Petrel, the student newspaper. “What could this mean to me, as a Jew and the current president of the <strong>Jewish</strong> Student Union, and also as an art lover, someone who attends the opening of new OUMA exhibits religiously each semester? Could I, in good conscience, attend this exhibit, let alone endorse it? While I have heard arguments for supporting and shunning the Dachau exhibit, having thought long and hard about it, I find that I must support the efforts of the museum in bringing this exhibit to campus. “ <strong>The</strong> following essays are reprinted, with permission, from the exhibition catalogue accompany the Dachau Artist Colony exhibition at the OUMA. ————— It was during the twentieth century that the name “Dachau” became famous throughout Europe and the world in association with horror. For Dachau was the location of the concentration camp that bore the city’s name from the very beginning. <strong>The</strong> name “Dachau” will always go hand in hand with memories of the National Socialist crimes against humanity, a circumstance placing a special responsibility on the city which it must— and will—never evade. This responsibility means, among other things, that Dachau must do everything in its power to ensure that the memory of the abominable crimes of National Socialism is kept alive for the generations that did not witness the events first-hand. <strong>The</strong> first and foremost obligation assigned the city of Dachau by its own history is to be a city of peace and a place of learning and commemoration for the world’s youth. As a site of remembrance, Dachau actively confronts its history. One concrete expression of this is the Dachau Youth Guesthouse, which invites young people from Germany and abroad to study National Socialist despotism and organizes discussions with persons who experienced the historical events. <strong>The</strong> town has furthermore established a Department of Contemporary History in addition to hosting an annual symposium on the same subject. Yet Dachau was and is also a city of culture. Already in the late nineteenth century, due to its proximity to Munich, one of the most important artists’ colonies of Europe emerged here. Attracted by the fascinating landscape of the Dachau Moor, a substantial number of artists— Adolf Hoelzel, Ludwig Dill, Arthur Langhammer, and others—moved to Dachau. And thanks to the unusually large number of artists presently living and working here, the city is still a vibrant artists’ centre today. What is more, Dachau has become increasingly active in the Federation of European Artists’ Colonies EuroArt. In the coming years, by means of a traveling exhibition in English, Dachau would like to introduce itself internationally as a place of commemoration and culture. In the process, it will decidedly not use culture as a means of distracting from the city’s history. On the contrary: the city of Dachau wants to show how important the interplay of commemoration and culture is for a peaceful and open world. In Dachau, culture and commemoration are inseparable. Along with the city’s active commemoration and remembrance work, art and culture serve as responses to its history and act as its ambassadors to the world. <strong>The</strong> city of Dachau, whose name has become synonymous with the atrocities committed during the Third Reich, is opening its doors and presenting itself to the world as a cosmopolitan and international city of culture. —Peter Bürgel, Mayor, City of Dachau —————- <strong>The</strong> Artists of Dachau <strong>The</strong> Dachau Painting Gallery is situated in the middle of the picturesque historic city of Dachau, right opposite the city hall. Its permanent collection provides documentary evidence of the artists’ movement in the 19th century, which gave an important stimulus to the development of art in Germany. It was here in Dachau that the open-air painting found one of its origins, the discovery of the landscape as an independent motif. Due to its location in the vicinity of Munich, Dachau became a popular meeting point for landscape painters in the 19th century. First, they were enthusiastic about the atmospheric landscape of the Dachau Moss, with its changing natural light. Later, the painters began to show interest in the picturesque city, the village life, and the people in their traditional costumes. Besides purely artistic reasons which made the landscape painters leave the Munich art scene and go to Dachau, some of them came because of economic considerations. In comparison to Munich, living in Dachau was cheaper and the rents for studios were reasonable. Dachau became an artists’ location where the painters tried to portray the landscape in a true-to-life way. This was successfully achieved by painting right in front of the motif, in the landscape itself. Nature had become a work of art. <strong>The</strong> Dachau Moss (or moor) was discovered in the first half of the nineteenth Gustav Keller (1860-1911), Heimweg/Way home, oil on cardboard, 28 x 34.5 cm Museumsverein Dachau century, by Johann Georg von Dillis, who was a teacher in landscape painting at the Munich Academy from 1804 to 1814. He visited the Dachau Moss together with his students and encouraged them to paint from nature. It was only in the middle of the nineteenth century that artists like Eduard Schleich the Older, Carl Spitzweg, and Christian Morgenstern came to Dachau. <strong>The</strong>y were strongly influenced by the artists from Barbizon, whom they had visited in 1851. <strong>The</strong> style in painting of the second half of the century was characterized by Adolf Lier and Wilhelm von Diez, two famous teachers in landscape painting at the Munich Academy. Among their students were painters like Fritz Baer, Josua von Gietl, Richard von Poschinger, Joseph Wenglein, Ludwig Willroider, Hans am Ende, Ludwig Herterich, Fritz Mackensen, Max Slevogt, and Wilhelm Trübner. Around 1900, Dachau became an artistic colony through the work of art of Ludwig Dill, Adolf Hölzel, and Arthur Langhammer and an art center from which an important new style developed. From Hans von Hayek (1869-1940), Verschneiter Bauernhof/Snow Covered Farm, 1904, oil on canvas, 60.5 x 80 cm Stadt Dachau Otto Rau (1869 – 1900s), Winterlandschaft/Wintery Landscape, oil on canvas, 49.5 x 65.7 cm Dachauer Galerien und Museen Dr. Ulrich und Gertrude Lechner Stiftung 1893 until 1905, they met in Dachau to discover new styles in painting and expressions. <strong>The</strong>ir breakthrough came in 1898, when the three artists had a joint exhibition as “<strong>The</strong> Dachauer“ in Berlin. With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Dachau, as many other artistic colonies, lost its importance. New, sensational fashions in painting were created in the big cities, and only a small group of painters remained in Dachau. Nevertheless, besides the traditional open-air painting which still was continued by some artists, there were also avant-garde-style painters in Dachau, like <strong>August</strong> Kallert, Adolf Schinnerer, and Paula Wimmer, all artists who were looking for development out of the regional boundaries. OUMA is located on the campus of Oglethorpe University, 4484 Peachtree Road N. E. Hours are 12:00 noon-5:00 p.m., Tuesday-Sunday. Admission is $5. For additional information, visit http://museum.oglethorpe.edu, or call 404-364-8555.
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