''Friedrich'' Kurt Fiedler (8 March 1894 – 11 November 1950) was a German graphic designer and a representative of the

Social Democratic Party The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology. Active parties Fo ...

. During the

Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is ...

he was acknowledged for his poster design, his book illustrations and his drawings. After World War II, he belonged to the re-founders of the association of fine arts (''Verein bildender Künstler'') in Dresden, but lost his influence when all social-democratic forces were repelled.

Life

Early life and education

Kurt Fiedler was born in the little village of near

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...

as son of a carpenter. His teacher noticed his talent and convinced the parents of enabling him to take an artist's education after completing

Volksschule The German term ''Volksschule'' generally refers to compulsory education, denoting an educational institution every person (i.e. the people, ''Volk'') is required to attend. In Germany and Switzerland it is equivalent to a combined primary ('' ...

. Around 1910 he attended the evening classes of the

Kunstgewerbeschule A Kunstgewerbeschule (English: ''School of Arts and Crafts'' or S''chool of Applied Arts'') was a type of vocational arts school that existed in German-speaking countries from the mid-19th century. The term Werkkunstschule was also used for thes ...

Dresden, together with Hermann Glöckner (later a renowned painter) and architect Edmund Schuchardt. It supported students that came from a humble family background and provided them with an education according to the ideas of

Deutscher Werkbund The Deutscher Werkbund (English: "German Association of Craftsmen"; ) is a German association of artists, architects, designers and industrialists established in 1907. The Werkbund became an important element in the development of modern arch ...

. Fiedler and Glöckner became friends and jointly attended the

figure drawing A figure drawing is a drawing of the human form in any of its various shapes and postures using any of the drawing media. The term can also refer to the act of producing such a drawing. The degree of representation may range from highly detailed, ...

class of Carl Rade. From 1911 to 1915 Fiedler was supported by a grant to study as ''Meisterschüler'' (master's student) of

Richard Guhr Richard Guhr (30 September 1873 – 27 September 1956) was a German sculptor and painter. He became also known as one of the most important teachers of Otto Dix. Biography Guhr was born in Schwerin in 1873. At an age of 17 he came to Dresden, th ...

and Josef Goller. Blasewitz Dresden Dürerbundhaus 1925

World War I and Weimar Republic

During

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

Fiedler was a front-line soldier in

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

. He learned French in self-study and became a translator. After 1920 Fiedler and his family took a flat in the culturally important ''Dürerbundhaus'' in

Blasewitz Blasewitz is a larger borough (''Stadtbezirk'') of Dresden, Germany in the city's eastern centre on the Elbe river. It consists of seven quarters (''Stadtteile''): *Blasewitz *Striesen-Ost *Striesen-Süd *Striesen-West *Tolkewitz/Seidnitz-Nord *S ...

. Here,

Ferdinand Avenarius Ferdinand Avenarius (20 December 1856, in Berlin – 22 September 1923, in Kampen) was a German lyric poet, a leading representative of the culture reform movement of his time and the first popularizer of Sylt. Life Avenarius was born in Berlin. ...

headed the leading cultural organization of all German speaking countries at that time, the

Dürerbund The Dürerbund (named after Albrecht Dürer) was an organization of writers and artists with a strong influence on the intellectual life of the middle class in the German Reich, but also in Austria and Switzerland. The Dürerbund was founded in ...

. In this surrounding Kurt Fiedler immediately made essential contacts. He designed the masthead for the social democratic newspaper '.

Nazi period

Immediately following the Machtergreifung, the new rulers ordered a search of Kurt Fiedler's house. He and especially the house owners Eva & Wolfgang Schumann, stepson of Ferdinand Avenarius, who had flown from Germany, were known as active social democrats. Among the fellow residents of the ''Dürerbundhaus'' in the next years was

Götz Heidelberg Götz Heidelberg (1 March 1923 in Bergisch Gladbach-Bensberg near Cologne – 22 April 2017) was a German constructing engineer and entrepreneur known for the development of Maglev magnetic transportation systems. He implemented the first func ...

, whose parents had overtaken a company in Dresden. Ilse-bergbau

Some of Fiedler's former clients were banned as ''Kaden & Comp.'' resp. cumbered as

Sarrasani Sarrasani is a German circus that reached world fame before World War II and was resident in Dresden, but also became known as the national circus of Argentina during the years of German separation. Sarrasani was founded by ''Hans Stosch'', a cl ...

. Fiedler could compensate less contracts with publishing houses to some extent by advertisement works for industrial clients. Shortly before the expropriation of the Jewish owners of ''Ilse Bergbau AG'', Fiedler was charged with the advertisement on occasion of the 50th anniversary of the company. During early Nazi years, he was still present at some art exhibitions. Instead of following Nazi taste, Fiedler visited 1937 the

Expo An expo is a trade exposition. It may also refer to: Events and venues * World's fair, a large international public exposition * Singapore Expo, convention and exposition venue ** Expo Axis, one of the world's largest membrane roofs, constructe ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

Kurt Fiedler served as translator in the prisoner of war camps at near

Brüx Most (; german: Brüx; la, Pons) is a city in the Ústí nad Labem Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 63,000 inhabitants. It lies between the Central Bohemian Uplands and the Ore Mountains, approximately northwest of Prague along the B ...

and at

Zeithain Zeithain is a municipality in the district of Meißen, in Saxony, Germany. Historically, it is known for the Zeithain Encampment (''Zeithainer Zeltlager'' or ''Zeithainer Lustlager''), which was a huge agglomeration of tents and troops, involving ...

( Stalag IV-B), which was erected by French prisoners of war from 1940. He left the army in 1942 after political conflicts and because of poor health and earned his money with technical drawings at the

Dresden University of Technology TU Dresden (for german: Technische Universität Dresden, abbreviated as TUD and often wrongly translated as "Dresden University of Technology") is a public research university, the largest institute of higher education in the city of Dresden, th ...

. The ''Dürerbundhaus'' was completely destroyed during the

bombing of Dresden in World War II The bombing of Dresden was a joint British and American aerial bombing attack on the city of Dresden, the capital of the German state of Saxony, during World War II. In four raids between 13 and 15 February 1945, 772 heavy bombers of the Roya ...

on 13 February 1945. Fiedler's sister-in-law Fanny Schuchardt, who lived next-door, used the opportunity to hide. Her transport to a concentration camp was already scheduled for 16 February. She was among the very few Jews who survived

The Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

in Dresden.

Post-war years

Kurt Fiedler and his family moved back to his parental home in Eichbusch. He belonged to the directorate of the association of fine arts (''Verein bildender Künstler'') in Dresden and was artistic staff member (''künstlerischer Mitarbeiter'') of the Saxon regional board of the

Socialist Unity Party of Germany The Socialist Unity Party of Germany (german: Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, ; SED, ), often known in English as the East German Communist Party, was the founding and ruling party of the German Democratic Republic (GDR; East German ...

. The first action on occasion of re-establishing Dresden's association of graphic designers in October 1945 was the commemoration of Bruno Gimpel, a Jewish painter and former chairman of the graphic designers who was impelled to suicide by the Nazis. At the Socialist Unity Party Fiedler's rank was formally equal to that of Wilhelm Schubert from the former Communist Party of Germany, but like nearly all social democrats who became sidelined step by step he did not receive much appreciation that time, whereas Schubert was awarded the National Prize of East Germany.

Artwork

Book illustrations

File:Juedische-witze.jpg, written by unknown author ''H. Itler'', ironizing the later Nazi dictator File:Dresden planetarium.jpg, Dresden's planetarium File:Mit-sarrasani-heft3.jpg, With

in South America File:Mit-sarrasani-heft4.jpg, With Sarrasani in South America File:Sternbilder2.jpg, ''Das Sternbilder-Buch'' by Hermann Häfker Fiedler was especially known for his cover illustrations of the adventure stories series ''Fahrten und Abenteuer'' (Travels and Adventures), edited by the director of the circus

. It is estimated that this series, consisting of about 100 booklets, reached an overall edition of 10 million copies. Together with Hermann Häfker, who later died in the

Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with nearly 100 further subcamps located throughout Austria and southern Germa ...

, Fiedler created an astronomy book (''Das Sternbilder-Buch'') for the Dürerbund in 1926. It was part of the Dürerbund's ambition to distribute knowledge and evoke love of nature among the youth. In the same year, Dresden was one of the first cities to get a projection planetarium by

Walther Bauersfeld Walther Bauersfeld (23 January 1879 – 28 October 1959) was a German engineer. Life He was employed by the Carl Zeiss Jena, who, on a suggestion by the German astronomer Max Wolf, started work on the first projection planetarium in 1912. Th ...

(Zeiss model II) and Fiedler was selected for the promotion campaign. He designed posters and newspaper advertising, and illustrated two books by the director Kurd Kisshauer. Sonja und frank

The publishing houses Steinkopff, Teubner, and Rudolph charged Fiedler with illustrations of textbooks and

bookplates An ''Ex Libris'' (from ''ex-librīs'', ), also known as a bookplate (or book-plate, as it was commonly styled until the early 20th century), is a printed or decorative label pasted into a book, often on the front endpaper, to indicate ownership. ...

. ''Jüdische Witze'' (

Jewish humor The tradition of humor in Judaism dates back to the Torah and the Midrash from the ancient Middle East, but generally refers to the more recent stream of verbal and often anecdotal humor of Ashkenazi Jews which took root in the United States ove ...

) was published in two editions (1928, 1930) by Rudolph under a pseudonym. Today, it is not known which author hid behind "H. Itler", an ironical reference the later Nazi dictator. Moreover, Fiedler designed various titles of ''Talisman-Bücherei'', a successful series edited by Harry Winfield Bondegger and published by Rudolph, which was bound to the New Thought movement. Some books of this series were banned by the

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

Advertising and drawings

Fiedler received an award on occasion of the World Advertising Congress 1929 in Berlin. Afterwards he became known for some of his drawings, especially of children. The tourism industry,

Villeroy & Boch Villeroy & Boch (, ) is a German manufacturer of ceramics, with the company headquarters located in Mettlach, Saarland. History The company began in the tiny Lorraine village of Audun le Tiche, where the iron master François Boch set up a pott ...

, Dresden's first newspaper, the '' Dresdner Anzeiger'', e. g. with a poster on occasion of its 200th anniversary in 1930, and the

German Cycling Federation The German Cycling Federation or BDR (in German: ''Bund Deutscher Radfahrer'') is the national governing body of cycle racing in Germany. The BDR is a member of the UCI and the UEC. History The BDR was first created in 1884 in Leipzig, only ...

belonged to his most important customers.

Socialist posters

Today, Fiedler is regarded as one of the leading poster artists of post-war East Germany.Dr. Sylke Wunderlich: ''Überklebt – Plakate aus der DDR''. Schwerin, 24 August - 21 October 2007. Exhibition catalogue p. 11, 48, 157, 173. Many of his works can be found in

Deutsches Historisches Museum The German Historical Museum (german: Deutsches Historisches Museum), known by the acronym DHM, is a museum in Berlin, Germany devoted to German history. It describes itself as a place of "enlightenment and understanding of the shared history ...

Academy of Arts, Berlin The Academy of Arts (german: Akademie der Künste) is a state arts institution in Berlin, Germany. The task of the Academy is to promote art, as well as to advise and support the states of Germany. The Academy's predecessor organization was fo ...

Hoover Institution The Hoover Institution (officially The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace; abbreviated as Hoover) is an American public policy think tank and research institution that promotes personal and economic liberty, free enterprise, an ...

and the German Federal Archive. Among his best known pieces of that period is ''Junkerland in Bauernhand'', a film poster designed for the

DEFA DEFA (''Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft'') was the state-owned film studio of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) throughout the country's existence. Since 2019, DEFA's film heritage has been made accessible and licensable on the PRO ...

, which is also part of a permanent exhibition in

Haus der Geschichte Haus der Geschichte (officially ''Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland'', i.e. "House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany") is a museum of contemporary history in Bonn, Germany. With around one million visitors ever ...

in Bonn. The ''German national picture archive of arts'' at the

University of Marburg The Philipps University of Marburg (german: Philipps-Universität Marburg) was founded in 1527 by Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, which makes it one of Germany's oldest universities and the oldest still operating Protestant university in the wor ...

documents 34 of his posters from this time.

Namesake

For many decades, Kurt Fiedler from Dresden had been confused with impressionist Kurt Fiedler (* 19 November 1878, Berlin). The latter became attached to many of the works of Dresden's Kurt Fiedler. This mistake can be traced back to ''Dresslers Kunsthandbuch'' of 1930, which confused the Dresden address with the life of Berlin's Kurt Fiedler, who lived from 1908 till at least 1943 at Bülowstraße 20. This confusion propagated even through later lexicons.

References

Literature

* Frank und Uwe Fiedler: "Zwischen Dürerbund und Kulturbund – Aus dem Leben des Dresdner Grafikers Kurt Fiedler". In: ''Sächsische Heimatblätter''. Jg. 55, 1/09, S. 10–18. Verlag Klaus Gumnior. Chemnitz 2009. ISSN 0486-8234. * James Aulich, Marta Sylvestrová, eds.: ''Political Posters in Central and Eastern Europe, 1945–95: Signs of the Times''. Manchester University Press ND, 1999

Notes

External links

Kurt Fiedler - Arts & Architecture, Research, and Dresden
at

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Biographical lexicon
at

Saxon State Library The Saxon State and University Library Dresden (full name in german: Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden), abbreviated SLUB Dresden, is located in Dresden, Germany. It is both the regional library (german: ...

(archived) {{DEFAULTSORT:Fiedler, Friedrich Kurt 1894 births 1950 deaths Social Democratic Party of Germany politicians German Army personnel of World War II German military personnel of World War II 20th-century German painters 20th-century German male artists German male painters Artists from Dresden German graphic designers German poster artists People from the Kingdom of Saxony