Ruth Baumgarte Werkverzeichnis Band I | Catalogue Raisonné Volume I

Ruth Baumgarte Werkverzeichnis Band I Catalogue Raisonné Volume I Essayband | Essay volume Herausgegeben von | Edited by Wiebke Steinmetz und | and Viola Weigel mit Beiträgen von | with contributions by Ralf M. Fischer Rolf Giesen Eckhart J. Gillen Helmut Lethen Beate Reifenscheid und | and Angela Stief KUNSTSTIFTUNG RUTH BAUMGARTE

Inhalt | Contents 8 10 17 18 42 86 112 134 148 168 170 172 176 Dank | Acknowledgements Vorwort | Preface Angela Stief Handreichung zum dreibändigen Werkverzeichnis | Practical Information for the Three-Volume Catalogue Raisonné Ruth Baumgarte im Strom der Zeitgeschichte | Ruth Baumgarte in the Stream of Contemporary History Helmut Lethen Kunst als Lebensmittel. Ruth Baumgarte – eine Künstlerin zwischen Diktatur und Protest | Art as Nourishment. Ruth Baumgarte—An Artist between Dictatorship and Protest Eckhart J. Gillen Ruth Baumgarte und ihr Blick auf den afrikanischen Kontinent | Ruth Baumgarte and Her View of the African Continent Beate Reifenscheid Filmische Effekte im Werk von Ruth Baumgarte | Cinematic Effects in the Work of Ruth Baumgarte Ralf Michael Fischer Ruth Baumgartes Station im Zeichenfilm-Studio von Wolfgang Kaskeline | Ruth Baumgarte’s Time in Wolfgang Kaskeline’s Animation Film Studio Rolf Giesen Biografie | Biography Ausstellungen (Auswahl) | Exhibitions (Selection) Bibliografie Ruth Baumgarte (Auswahl) | Bibliography Ruth Baumgarte (Selection) Kurzbiografien der Autoren und Autorinnen | Short Biographies of the Authors Impressum | Imprint Fotonachweis | Photo Credits

“A myriad of subjects move me; far too many for one human life to suffice to lend form to all of them.” Ruth Baumgarte, 1989

The publication of the catalogue raisonné of the oeuvre of Ruth Baumgarte, now available in three volumes, marks the end of a work process that has spanned many years and involved numerous supporters. We also offer our thanks to Heiko Aping and Yvonne Pfeifer from the graphic design office BrücknerAping for the inspiring design of the present three volumes, as well as for the excellent cooperation at all times. The project was initiated in 2014 and accompanied with determination throughout the entire process by Alexander Baumgarte, the youngest son of the artist. It is thanks to him that this extensive research project could be realized. Thank you, too, to Hirmer Verlag, Munich, represented by Thomas Zuhr, and the staff of the publishing house, in particular Jürgen Kleidt and Cordula Gielen, for coordinating the project. The result now provides full insight into the complete We are also sincerely grateful for the extremely productive cooperation of the German and English editorial staff, including Katrin Pollems-Braunfels, Danko Szabó, and Jane Michael, as well as Gérard A. Goodrow for the translations into English. We also received excellent support from Markus Kersting for the work on the texts. Karoline Volkmann actively supported us with scholarly research and image editing. The graphic artist Mirko Israel was responsible for processing the images. We are grateful to both of them. Wiebke Steinmetz & Viola Weigel Bielefeld, August 2022 works of Ruth Baumgarte and is at the same time the first comprehensive presentation of her multifaceted life and multilayered oeuvre. In addition, the catalogue raisonné offers researchers numerous starting points for future discussion and for locating Ruth Baumgarte’s artistic position within art history. Between 2015 and 2018, Dr. Jürgen Schilling developed the first scientific artistic ideas and texts for the drawing up of a catalogue raisonné in his capacity as consultant art historian. Prior to 2019, it was above all Martin Fenner, Director of the Ruth Baumgarte Art Foundation at the time, together with the research assistant Viktoria Nixdorf, who devoted themselves to sifting through and cataloguing the material in the artist’s estate preserved by the foundation. In the process, they produced numerous valuable references and structures, for which we thank them sincerely. Based on this preliminary work, the editors have been able to continue the efforts intensively since late 2019. We are grateful to Wolfgang Henze, administrator of the estate of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, who provided us with groundbreaking advice at the beginning of our work and gave us an important orientation for the entire work process. We would especially like to thank the authors of the scholarly texts in Volume I for their in-depth study of the life and work of Ruth Baumgarte, through which important new insights were gained; they include, in particular, Angela Stief, Helmut Lethen, Eckhart J. Gillen, Beate Reifenscheid, Ralf M. Fischer, and Rolf Giesen. This scholarly expertise was expanded in Volume III by Christmut Präger, who also deserves our thanks. We would like to thank the numerous private owners and collectors of works by Ruth Baumgarte for their kindness and support during the scholarly evaluation. Most of the works were photographed by Ulrich Helweg and then evaluated and recorded with the greatest care and expertise by the restorers Anja Brigitta Haase and Silvia Behle. We should like to express our grateful thanks to them all. 9

“The world is everything that is the case,” is a famous statement by the philosopher of language Ludwig Wittgenstein. The existence of facts, in turn, admits the possibility of setting in motion a process of personal adaptation and medial transformation of everything that exists. In this sense, Ruth Baumgarte, née Kellner (Coburg 1923 – 2013 Bielefeld), was a tireless and incorruptible documentarian of what is “the case” for more than seven decades. She was incorruptible in the sense that she neither submitted to artistic fashions nor followed the changing ideological appeals in the Germany of the immediate postwar period and the decades that followed; instead, her work clearly demonstrated a sense of empathy with the marginalized members of society. Ruth Baumgarte expressed her artistic credo most succinctly in a conver- sation on the occasion of her seventy-fifth birthday: “I am not a Käthe Kollwitz type. Politics moves me, but I cannot move the world, cannot change it, only observe it.”1 She was relieved of financial worries by her second marriage to the industrialist Hans Baumgarte. Not being obliged to offer her art for sale on the marketplace, she was able to hone her aesthetic profile independently of the booms and crashes of the art industry—although commercial and advertising art, book illustrations, and other forms of applied art (altogether some 2,280 drawings and watercolors, which are recorded in Volume III of the catalogue raisonné) did indeed play a significant role in the development of her formal language during the first phase of her career. Ruth Baumgarte trained her aesthetic sensibility by closely observing the everyday world that surrounded her, especially the technical production processes in her husband’s iron foundry, which found expression in the cycles The World of Employment and Factory Worlds from 1952 to 1969; later, she traveled to other countries in Europe and especially Africa, creating primarily oil paintings which, with their expressive forms and eruptions of color, are generally considered the apotheosis of her art. Throughout her career, she essentially remained what is called a representational painter—although the spirit of the times, especially in the 1960s and ’70s, called for quite different forms of artistic expression, such as conceptual, action, and media art. Above all, however, the dichotomy established in the decade before between a Western art committed to the paradigm of abstraction and an Eastern art anchored in the figuration of Socialist Realism within the political sphere of the then Soviet Union shaped for many years those art debates that circled around the possibilities of the avant-garde. This conflict was not only about artistic modes of representation, but also about a front line in the ideological struggle between capitalism and communism. Helmut Lethen’s contribution, which places Ruth Baumgarte’s aesthetics in the context of the history of mentality and culture,2 explains that the “prescriptive art” that was de rigueur in both the East and the West was not executed without gaps: In the GDR, there had been the continuation of the Bauhaus tradition and niches of abstract art; in West Germany, in turn, there had been more and different artistic styles apart from Art Informel, monochrome, and color field painting. Ruth Baumgarte’s art, which underwent great transfor- mations over the decades, also fits into this open creative field. She experimented in figurative drawings and water- colors and created in the last decades of her life large- scale oil paintings with an expressive coloristic palette that could oscillate between flaming reds and somberly shadowed earth tones, especially in the Africa cycle. This is all documented in Volume II of the catalogue raisonné. Although the artist also produced still lifes and landscapes, her preferred genre was portraiture in all its many forms and facets. Baumgarte was a precise observer. Her attention to detail and razor-sharp perception were grounded in a high degree of objectivity and fidelity to the subject, as it were. She did not judge what she saw, drew, or painted. She was characterized by a kind of distanced sympathy. In the center of her oeuvre is the human being: humankind in its “thrownness” (Martin Heidegger), trapped in its existence, caught up in the dilemma and the eternal cycle of life and death. With her art, Baumgarte not only grasped social contexts, but was also able to sensitively capture emotional and psychological moods. Beyond typecasting, mimic and gestural representation, faces and hands, were important as organs of expression. In the drawings of men conscripted into the Volkssturm in the last days of the war, works created just before the end of National Socialist regime, Ruth Baumgarte succeeded not only in capturing the individual forms of melancholy and hopelessness, but also in revealing a kind of spiritual contour of the epoch through the physiognomies with her precise strokes and exact powers of observation. In the reconstruction period of the 1950s, she turned to the world of Homo faber, probably also due to her privileged access to her husband’s working environment. The depictions of the activities of welders, drillers, millers, crane operators, and engineers that appeared in the Baumgarte company calendars have nothing to do with the images from the heroization 11

Vorwort | Preface machinery of Socialist Realism, as Eckhart J. Gillen explains in his historically oriented essay. With Ruth Baumgarte, a certain “disinterested pleasure” (Immanuel Kant) would dominate instead, which definitely also reveals a certain fascination with the closed functional cycles of technically standardized production processes. Her portraits of workers are otherwise characterized by a pleasant objectivity. “They concentrate on the well-observed technical details of the activity in question; there is no trace of pathos.”3 The artistic depiction and reflection of the technical functional contexts that made Germany a wonderland of economic success, that structure of which Heidegger wrote quite critically, was a rarity in the first postwar decades and, if it did exist, was more at home in, for example, the industrial photography of Bernd and Hilla Becher. With her more than 100 calendar illustrations and other images from the world of labor, Ruth Baumgarte occupies a special role in German art after the Second World War. The fact that she succeeded so impressively in capturing the dynamism of the awakening economic life and later the turbulence of the socio-political upheaval in the wake of the ’68 unrest certainly has something to do with the fact that movement and kinetic energy played a significant role in her artistic formation process. As the daughter of the film director Kurt Rupli, she was introduced to the moving image at an early age. And in the 1940s, she worked as a draftswoman in the animated film studios of Wolfgang Kaskeline, who, although of Jewish origin, was to take on the role of a kind of German Walt Disney under the Nazi regime. The contributions by Rolf Giesen and Ralf Fischer explore Ruth Baumgarte’s complex relationship to the moving image and its effects and impacts on her art, with the latter also bringing into play the motion studies of Eadweard Muybridge and the nineteenth-century chronographic multiple exposures of Étienne-Jules Marey. Over the course of the decades during which the long- repressed German question of guilt suddenly came into focus, the artist’s fascination with the enclosed spaces in which humans and machines interact effectively and productively changed into the experience of an “ice age” in which the enduring sense of a transcendental habitation gave way to a feeling of being imprisoned. The 1970s and ’80s were the time in which Ruth Baumgarte turned to the excluded and marginalized members of society, for example in the Vagrants series, and indirectly sought to take up the mood of the “leaden” time and reflect it artistically with somber, dark hues. Otherwise, however, her motto was Friedrich Hölderlin’s “Come! Into the open, friend!” as she strove to expand the all-too-narrow spectrum of life in the Federal Republic. She intensified her travel activities, especially to numerous countries on the African continent, expressing her experiences in a late oeuvre that may well have been linked visually with the neo-expressionist convulsions of color and form of the Nouveaux Fauves. The successful works of the “young savages” lent a new urgency to the long-ostracized medium of painting and led to the culmination of Ruth Baumgarte’s work. In addition to the Spanish Sketchbook, the approximately seventy oil paintings of the Africa cycle are especially noteworthy. Here, the artist, who since the 1940s had helped to pro- mote the artistic dignity of watercolor, often ridiculed as “girl’s art,” found once again a completely new, heightened aesthetic expression. Central to Baumgarte’s Africa cycle, which reveals an almost magical quality in landscape painting, is above all the relationship between humans and nature, the fusion of figure and landscape. One could also refer to the notion of contextual painting, which gained particular relevance in the contemporary art of the 1990s. Ruth Baumgarte produced her Africa paintings at a time when questions of artistic appropriation and cultural dispossession were far from being as widely discussed as they are today in this age of postcolonial discourse. Nevertheless, she intuitively recognized that political asymmetries, which manifest themselves as a culture lash, cannot be resolved in superficial harmony, but must be problematized creatively in tension-laden color compositions. She thus created a coloristic cosmos which flows into the depths—starting from flaming red tones and rich orange- ochre through yellow, pink, and violet to decided violet-blue tones. In this way, the very special light of the African landscapes finds painterly expression, while the dissolution of forms and an allegorization of motifs speak of the artist’s unease in experiencing a continent between awak- ening and persistent inequality. Ruth Baumgarte did not strive to exaggerate the exotic nature of “the Other,” nor did she use the rhetoric of superiority with which former colonial powers gladly sought to perpetuate the old relationships based on power and domination. Instead, she stands for a transgressive art that is capable of transcending aesthetically the tensions between the urban context and the wilderness, between the individual and the collective, between everyday banality and magical-surreal counterworlds. In particular, the depiction of the African woman in her living environment plays a major role. The blending of cultures, of the foreign one with the artist’s own, is illustrated vividly through a fluid exchange 13

This comprehensive catalogue raisonné now offers the possibility of traversing Ruth Baumgarte’s oeuvre in both thematic breadth and historical depth. The preliminary work of recording and cataloguing some ninety paintings, 440 watercolors, 820 drawings, and 2,280 illustrations in numerous techniques was carried out by Martin Fenner and Viktoria Nixdorf between 2014 and 2018 and continued by Wiebke Steinmetz and Viola Weigel from 2019. It was also during that year that the decision was made to add a third volume, dedicated to the illustrations and other applied works created by Ruth Baumgarte. It is thus possible to take a hierarchy-free look at a comprehensive oeuvre between fine and commercial art and to show that these are by no means separate spheres, but rather different fields of activity that mutually fertilize each other. In a note from 1984, Ruth Baumgarte expressed most sustainably and poetically what had kept her creative energy so alive over the course of more than seven decades: “… with my pictures, I am handing over to you my life; my fears, my joys, my longings, good fortune, and grief. My life has been a colorful, confusing, exciting – and do not believe unhappy – film that occasionally frightened me, very often amused me, and never left me feeling lonely.”5 of impressionistic and expressionistic gestures—freely adapted from a dictum by the French cultural theorist Edouard Glissant, who argued: “No culture today is isolated from the other. There are no pure cultures; that would be ridiculous. The clue to life is not laid by the identical, but by the different. The identical produces: nothing.”4 Looking at Ruth Baumgarte’s life’s work from the distance of a few years after her death, it is striking that she followed her path with great consistency and without compromising with the art market or the various fashions of the art industry. This allowed her to continue to develop her aesthetic in terms of conceptual continuity and to vary and refine the representational paradigm, although she worked within it throughout her life—all the way to that creative eruption in the form of the Africa cycle, which inscribed her work with a completely new guiding principle that had hitherto remained unrecognized. It can be benevolently acknowledged as an act of poetic justice that within the framework of the neo-expressionist tendencies of the 1980s, the revaluation of painting, which had all too often been pronounced dead, suddenly afforded Ruth Baumgarte’s work more attention than it had received in the decades before. Ruth Baumgarte’s permanent (self-)reflection, her ongoing confrontation with a conception of the world and her own self, and her uncompromising artistic production were not only extraordinary, but also made her a pioneer of the emancipatory movement, of self-empowerment, and the liberation of women in the twentieth century. In numerous self-portraits such as Life (CR 250), she addressed her role as a woman, mother, and artist as early as around 1950 and, by means of the self-portraits, confidently positioned herself up within a male artist genealogy. The thematization of women’s multiple burdens in art only gained significance in the feminist avant-garde in the 1970s. The struggle against patriarchal structures in society, against the oppression of women, against stereotypical role distributions, and in favor of gender equality continues to this day. Avant la lettre, Baumgarte did not see being a woman and a mother as a contradiction to her artistic career, but rather did what she had to do in a self-determined way, against social conventions and family expectations. For her, to work as an artist was an elixir of life. With her art, she dealt with social grievances and injustices, discussed in many ways topics such as environmental pollution and refugee movements, which only much later reached social explosiveness and determined the culture of discourse. 15 Vorwort | Preface 1 Quoted in: Martin Bodenstein, “Die Künstlerin Ruth Baumgarte wird heute 75. Werk als Laudatio auf das Leben. Faszinierende Farben der Erinnerung,” in: Neue Westfälische, June 27, 1998 [translated]. 2 Helmut Lethen, “Ruth Baumgarte in the Stream of Contemporary History,” see p. 18 onwards. 3 Eckhart J. Gillen, “Art as Nourish- ment. Ruth Baumgarte—An Artist between Dictatorship and Protest,” p. 64. 4 Édouard Glissant, quoted in: Werner Bloch, “Das archipelische Denken,” in: Süddeutsche Zeitung, October 22, 2007 [translated]. 5 Ruth Baumgarte, quoted in: exh. cat. Dortmund 2020, p. 26 [translated].

Handreichung | Practical Information Handreichung zum dreibändigen Werkverzeichnis Das Werkverzeichnis ist in drei Bände gegliedert. Band I umfasst kunst- und kulturhistorische Essays von Fachautoren und Fachautorinnen zu wichtigen Aspekten in Leben und Werk der Künstlerin. Eine bebilderte Biografie zu Ruth Baumgartes Leben und Schaffen von 1923 bis 2013 und ein Anhang mit Ausstellungsverzeichnis und Bibliografie sowie Kurzbiografien der Autoren und Autorinnen aller drei Bände runden Band I ab. Band II dokumentiert das autonome künstlerische Schaffen von Ruth Baumgarte von 1935 bis 2011 und führt alle Einzelwerke sowie die erhaltenen Skizzen- bücher von 1955 bis 2000 auf. Band III enthält Werke der angewandten Kunst und dokumentiert Auftragsarbeiten und Illustrationen sowie einzelne Werke der Innen- und Außendekoration. Die im vorliegenden Band I verwendeten Werkver- zeichnisnummern (WV) verweisen auf die vollständig abgebildeten Werke von Ruth Baumgarte in Band II und III. Im Zuge der Arbeiten an den vorliegenden drei Bänden wurde jedem Werk eine Werkverzeichnis- nummer neu zugewiesen. Die wichtigsten Quellen für die Erstellung des Werk- verzeichnisses stammen aus dem Nachlass der Künstlerin, der von 2014 bis 2020 aus dem Archiv in eine Datenbank überführt wurde. Zusätzlich kamen wesentliche Hinweise aus dem Umkreis der Familie und von Besitzern und Besitzerinnen einzelner Arbeiten. Ab 2019 wurden diese Vorarbeiten von Christmut Präger, Wiebke Steinmetz und Viola Weigel um das Werkverzeichnis der Illustrationen, die in Band III gezeigt werden, erweitert. Es ist geplant, das Werk- verzeichnis in ein digitales Werkverzeichnis zu über- führen, um allen Interessierten die Möglichkeit zu geben, die Forschung zu Ruth Baumgartes Schaffen digital nachzuvollziehen, zu erweitern und zu ergänzen. Practical Information for the Three-Volume Catalogue Raisonné The catalogue raisonné is divided into three volumes. Volume I features art and cultural historical essays by specialist authors on important aspects of the life and work of the artist. Volume I is rounded off by an illustrated biography of Ruth Baumgarte’s life and work from 1923 to 2013 and an appendix with a list of exhibitions and a bibliography, as well as short biographies of the authors of all three volumes. Volume II is devoted to the autonomous artistic work of Ruth Baumgarte created between 1935 and 2011, with all individual works as well as the surviving sketch- books from 1955 to 2000. Volume III focuses on works of applied art and documents commissioned works and illustrations, as well as individual works of interior and exterior decoration. The catalogue raisonné numbers (CR) used in the present Volume I refer to the fully illustrated works by Ruth Baumgarte in Volumes II and III. In the course of preparing the present three volumes, each work was reassigned a catalogue raisonné number. The most important sources for the compilation of the catalogue raisonné were found in the artist’s estate, and were then transferred from the archive to a database between 2014 and 2020. In addition, essential references came from the family circle as well as from owners of individual works. Beginning in 2019, this preliminary work by Christmut Präger, Wiebke Steinmetz, and Viola Weigel was expanded to include the catalogue raisonné of the illustrations (Volume III). A digital catalogue raisonné is also in the planning, in order to give all interested parties the opportunity to digitally follow, expand, and supplement the research on Ruth Baumgarte’s oeuvre. 17

Ruth Baumgarte im Strom der Zeitgeschichte | Ruth Baumgarte in the Stream of Contemporary History The life and work of Ruth Baumgarte, née Kellner, span an arc from the Weimar Republic through the postwar years in Germany to the 1990s. This essay traces the creative work of the draftswoman and painter in light of biographical and cultural-historical landmarks and makes visible the forces at work here in her oeuvre. Had she been a man, Ruth Baumgarte’s birth year 1923 would have been associated with the so-called Stalingrad generation. In the winter of 1942/43, the Red Army surrounded and devastated the 6th Army of the German Wehrmacht. Nearly 700,000 people (soldiers of both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army, as well as civilians) lost their lives, most of them Soviet soldiers.2 In the year of Ruth Kellner’s birth, there was hyperinflation, which left a longer-lasting mark on many citizens of the Weimar Republic than the experiences of World War I. The fate of the painter touches both extreme poles. On August 16, 1945, she wrote in her diary about the “empty space of the ego.” Her psyche, however, was not empty, but marked by a traumatic experience that, for the time being, found no expression. The echo chamber of her soul was filled—as her poem from the summer of 1945 documents—only by a “cry” for “light,” the search for a way out.3 Ruth and her mother experienced the invasion of the Red Army from the basement of their apartment building in Berlin-Karlshorst.4 Her student friend Eduard Busse, whom she had married in 1943 shortly before his deployment to the front, had advised her in a field letter to take her own life should “the Russians” come. He may have known what crimes the Wehrmacht was involved in during its war of extermination and therefore able to consider the soldiers’ revenge likely. There are many eyewitness accounts of the dire situation of women in Berlin during the last weeks of the war.5 In her notes Days of Survival. Berlin 1945, Margret Boveri impressively describes the horror to which many women were subjected. She herself had procured cyanide to escape rape.6 Fear was rampant. In the basement of Rheingoldstrasse, Margarethe Kellner-Conrady attempted suicide together with her daughter, but failed because she made the wrong cuts on her own wrists and those of her daughter.7 Both of them escaped the atrocities of the Red Army without being raped. When one imagines the young Ruth Kellner with her artistic sensibility, one can envision the reverberations of the traumatic event in which she found herself in late April 1945. 21 Family Background Ruth was born Ruth Johanna Kellner in Coburg on June 27, 1923, to a family of actors. Her mother was the actress Margarethe Kellner-Conrady (1899–1969). Her father, Kurt Rupli (1899–1960), soon separated from her but kept in touch with his daughter. Kurt Rupli was a director of feature films and documentaries.8 The mother moved to Berlin with her young daughter in 1925, initially to Berlin-Mitte. The girl grew up in the political and social field of tension between the imperial era, the Weimar Republic, and the Nazi dictatorship, a period marked by housing shortages, unemployment, and hunger. During the stabilization phase of the economy from 1924 to 1929, however, she was able to experience the atmosphere of the “Roaring Twenties” in Berlin, the heyday of German culture on the ruins of war and civil war—a happy childhood, she would later say.9 As a child, she was close friends with the later conductor Heinz Struve (1925–2015), whose liberal family home also had Jewish roots.10 Her mother often left the care of her daughter to her sister, Anna-Marie Schubert. Ruth later recalled the big city lights and the extensive walks in the Lustgarten of the Berlin Palace and on the Brandenburg Heath. Throughout her life, Ruth Baumgarte was fascinated by the atmosphere of the metropolis. The bombing of the city from 1942 on and the expanse of ruins toward the end of the war caused her lasting distress. She experienced the exclusion of the Jewish population directly through her childhood friendships. In conversations with her son, Alexander, Ruth Baumgarte recalled that she had found it appalling that people were forced to wear the Star of David and were sent to “labor camps”, without knowing precisely what that meant. In the Krkonoše Mountains, she once observed a group of Jewish girls lined up on the railway platform waiting to be deported. In such situations, she may have had an inkling of the deadly fate that awaited them. From 1939 on at the latest, Ruth attended Emmy Stalmann’s Private Art School of the West for Drawing and Painting on Kantstrasse in Berlin, which emphasized a broad education for its students. For the summer semester of 1941, she was accepted at the State Academy of Fine Arts on Hardenbergstrasse, where she enrolled in Gerhard Ulrich’s illustration class, among others. Then, in the summer semester of 1942, she met Kurt Wehlte, an expert

Ruth Baumgarte im Strom der Zeitgeschichte | Ruth Baumgarte in the Stream of Contemporary History in painting technology and material art, from whom she received the requisite know-how for her painting.11 Her ability to capture motion sequences in drawings, which she learned from Wilhelm Tank at the State Academy of Fine Arts, would later serve her well at Wolfgang Kaskeline’s animation studios. Ruth Baumgarte had to find her own way. Under the extreme psychological pressure of the years 1942 to 1946, she found in her diary—like many other people in her day12—a secret space for open and innermost emotions.13 In her poems, she sought a means of expression for her fears and worries; they may have been external supports for her silence, with which she sealed away the situations she faced during the war and the postwar period. In 1946, she jotted down a sentence that expresses her survival technique in times of crisis: “Standing a little on the outside, looking to the side when others pass by (June 12, 1946).”14 This was not to become her motto in life by any means. We will get to know her as an unerring observer of reality. In a conversation on the occasion of her seventy-fifth birthday, she said: “I am not a Käthe Kollwitz type. Politics moves me, but I can’t move the world, can’t change it, only observe it.”15 Throughout her life, she would take on the role of an attentive but detached observer. During the war, she wrote poems that revolved around loneliness, depression, and longing. Melancholy in shades of gray, occasionally illuminated by flashes of silver. She cut any direct connecting threads to war and postwar experiences, the hallmarks of modern poetry in those years. In her poems, she constructed semantic islands of sensibility. A letter to her husband, Eduard Busse, from July 1945 bluntly conveys the turmoil of the young woman on the threshold of final disillusionment.16 She observed the treks of the displaced persons17 and scenes of German women fraternizing with soldiers of the occupying army,18 which ultimately culminated in a longing for the distant loved one, a yearning “for the garden of your childhood, for things you once touched, for the round, white arms of your mother. And I want to go.”19 Her husband came back as a defeated soldier. Days of disenchantment. She had met Eduard Busse while studying, had married him hastily before his deployment to the front, and after the war had moved from Berlin-Lichtenrade to Bielefeld, where her husband’s family lived. “I came from completely destroyed Berlin to completely destroyed Bielefeld, which told me nothing at all about where it was. I only knew the city through Dr. Oetker baking powder.”20 Her husband’s family remained strangers to her. Her relationship with Busse, who had returned from the war, apparently cooled after a short time. This was not unusual. At the end of the war, many women experienced the crash of a love story that had begun in a frenzy during the war. In late April 1945, the journalist Marta Hillers noted the reasons in her diary: “A kind of collective disappointment is preparing itself beneath the surface among women. The Nazi world, dominated by men and glorifying the strong man, is tottering—and with it the myth of the man. In earlier wars, men could insist that they alone had the privilege of killing and being killed for the fatherland. Today, we women participate in it. This reshapes us, makes us impudent. At the end of this war, among many other defeats, is the defeat of men as a gender.”21 Now, as a mother and alone, Ruth Baumgarte had to support her son Thomas, born in 1947, as well as her aunt and her aunt’s adopted son in a one-and-a-half-room apartment. Thanks to various fields of work, she managed to keep the family financially afloat. In her learned profession as an illustrator, she worked for magazines and newspapers, for example, for the feature section of the Freie Presse in Bielefeld.22 Another publication she worked for was the weekly Magazin der Hausfrau,23 which was distributed free of charge in large numbers in retail stores. In addition to cooking recipes and useful information regarding household appliances and modern fashion design, there were also melodramatic stories about postwar daily life and advice for women about suitable behavior after the end of the Nazi regime. She produced nearly a dozen book covers and hundreds of illustrations for book publishers, and there were also commissions for advertising brochures. Within a few years, she drew more than 1,000 illustrations which demonstrate the astonishing range of her skills.24 With regard to many of the illustrations—especially the movement images—she undoubtedly benefited from her experience as a freelancer during the war at the Berlin animated film studios of Wolfgang Kaskeline. The Jewish artist and director Kaskeline, who needed a special permit to produce, was considered the German Walt Disney of the animation industry.25 23

1 Ruth Baumgarte Frühes Selbstbildnis | Early Self-Portrait, um | around 1947 WV | CR 199 develop herself further. The cigarette, added to present her as a bohemian, seems strangely out of place—she is not at home in this role. Her inner distance protected her from getting caught up in the mills of the opposing fronts into which the Cold War dragged many arts during those years. “Wolfszeit” At the end of the war, the painter was twenty-one years old. After brief denazification processes, theaters, cinemas, and concert halls were once again dominated by the older generation. A rare exception to this was Wolfgang Borchert’s drama Draußen vor der Tür (The Man Outside)—which premiered in Hamburg on November 21, 1947, the day after the young poet’s death.28 One is unlikely to find a more merciless picture of the beaten warriors in those years. The youngest of the writers who later came together as “Gruppe 47”—Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Günter Grass, Martin Walser, and Peter Rühmkorf—were all born between 1927 and 1929 and belong to the so-called Flakhelfer-Generation—each of them brilliant in his own way. Baumgarte’s year of birth, 1923, includes comparable fates. Hildegard Knef, two years younger than Ruth Baumgarte, moved from Ulm to Berlin as a child, was trained as a draftswoman in the animation department of the UFA film studios in Berlin-Mitte, succeeded as a film actress in Wolfgang Staudte’s Die Mörder sind unter uns (The Murderers Are among Us) in 1946, emigrated to Hollywood, became an American citizen in 1950 and, as the leading actress in the German film Die Sünderin (The Sinner), was the subject of a scandal triggered by nude scenes and the taboo subjects of prostitution and suicide. One can easily imagine Ruth Baumgarte’s appreciation of the refugee movements and border violations of these peers.29 Ingeborg Bachmann, born in 1926, came from a Klagenfurt household of tacit supporters of the Nazis or even sympathizers, a milieu from which she managed to break away with considerable struggle. Maria Lassnig, born in Carinthia in 1919, fought her way out of the rural Catholic region. All these women artists, who later became famous, were strangers in the cages of their own biotopes. “Wolfszeit” (A Time of Wolves) is what Harald Jähner called postwar Germany between 1945 and 1955, a time without any recognizable state order. The “Wolfszeit” was a time “in which everyone cared only about themselves or their own pack.”30 This attitude was to shape the country until well into the 1950s. In her early years in Bielefeld, Ruth Baumgarte also made fashion designs for Bielefeld-based textile manufacturers and fashion houses such as the Modehaus Ilse-Lore. She had already become interested in costumes during her studies,26 and she pursued this interest in fashion throughout her life and created a private archive of fashion drawings. In the late 1940s, she met the Swedish entrepreneur Carl-Erik Pihl, and the idea was born to go to Sweden with him. A textile factory was to be set up there and Ruth Baumgarte was to draw the designs for its products, but since these plans did not include her mother, she declined to go and decided to stay in Bielefeld. Even later, she never wore ready-made clothing, preferring instead to have her clothes tailored according to her own designs. In addition, the artist was able to earn extra money by painting numerous portraits.27 In this way, the young painter fed her small family with the virtuosity of her left hand, as it were. A closer look at her paintings and watercolors of this time, however, reveals a different artist. Her Self-Portrait (fig. 1) from 1947 already stands out from the fashionable images of women that appeared in illustrated magazines after 1945—as the cover of Constanze would soon show. In her self-portrait, her focus is not di- rected toward the new fields of consumer goods, to which the women’s magazines of the time strove to direct the in- terest of their readers. Rather, the artist offers a glimpse of an enigmatically closed interior. She barricades herself be- tween the diagonally arranged wooden handle of the paint- brush and the counter-diagonal line of dolls in the background. She remains in her studio space, a retreat be- tween childhood and workshop, where she endeavors to 25

Ruth Baumgarte im Strom der Zeitgeschichte | Ruth Baumgarte in the Stream of Contemporary History maintained intensive contacts with the art and theater scene; the actor Hans Wintrath was a close friend. Through him, she became interwoven with the cultural world of her new city. She also kept in touch with former friends and acquaintances in Berlin. Her relationship with Hans Scholz, author of the successful book from 1955, Am grünen Strand der Spree (On the Green Beach of the Spree), is particularly intense. Scholz’s family had lived on Fasanenstrasse in Berlin since 1924. Ruth Baumgarte met him while attending the Private Art School of the West, where he had succeeded Gerhard Ulrich in 1937.33 After a period as a prisoner of war, Hans Scholz resumed teaching there in 1946. Was in the time they had spent together under the Nazi dictatorship in Berlin against the background of the atrocities which Scholz examines in his bestseller through the literary figure of the Jewish Ruth?34 Was it a friendly intellectual relationship that repeatedly took Ruth Baumgarte to visit him in Berlin? Or was it love? A reason for the intensity of their friendship may also have been anchored in the Cold War of the arts. Coming from American and Russian captivity, Scholz found himself forced to pursue painting only part-time in the West in order to earn his living as a writer and journalist. In postwar Berlin, he had encountered “two worldview systems” to which two “art doctrines”35 corresponded, as he explained in a lecture, grounded in black humor, that he gave at the German Academy of Sciences and Arts. In the East, he had painted realistic murals. In the West, representational painting was considered “reactionary.” The “exclusion of the younger representational artists from all art activity” seemed, he concluded, a done deal. Scholz felt this to be “mental terror” and decided to “try writing,” switching from painting in the East to writing in the West, without giving up his painting altogether. He later became editor-in-chief of the feature section of the Tagesspiegel in Berlin. In 1960, he received the Heinrich Stahl Prize from Berlin’s Jewish community for his novel. Asked about the things he was most opposed to, Scholz wrote in the 1970s: “Against the fetishization of the arts, against the praising of artists, who belong behind the work and not in front of it. Against the arrogance of artists, self-stylization, the overestimation of so-called cultural life, cultural manage- ment, partisanship, sectarianism, cliquism, clubby cronyism, the cult of personality.”36 Qualities that were just as unappealing to Ruth Baumgarte as they were to the writer. Scholz, a man of distance, had found his rescue in the field of words; she found her freedom in painting. They both understood that. 2 Ruth Baumgarte Zigeuner im Regen | Gypsies in the Rain, 1943 WV | CR 30 However, looking back on the misery of the postwar period usually obscures the “tremendous elevation of the feeling of being alive brought on by the permanent proximity of death,” which Margret Boveri speaks of in her diary with reference to the last days of the war in Berlin.31 Ruth Baumgarte’s early self-portrait from 1947 seems to radiate the moment of defiance and the “eruptive joy of existence” that Boveri registered in a postwar moment. Why not stylize oneself after the youthful bohemian? The failed attempt at suicide in the basement remained encapsulated in the darkness of the psyche. The pain of separation from the once beloved, who returned from the front as an unfamiliar, a foreign soldier, and from whom she separated two months after his homecoming, seems to have left no traces in the airy facture of the picture. Only in her diary are discreet shadows of her pain perceptible. For Ruth Baumgarte, giving up was out of the question. In this atmosphere, the certainty arose for the young woman that the intensity of her life would be realized only by maintaining a distance from her surroundings. Only in this way could she preserve traumatic experiences in a capsule of silence. Her marriage in 1952 to the industrialist Hans Baumgarte in Bielefeld did not change this attitude.32 She 27

Ruth Baumgarte im Strom der Zeitgeschichte | Ruth Baumgarte in the Stream of Contemporary History Two Spheres of the Cold War The figurative painter Ruth Baumgarte was also indirectly exposed to the incompatibility of the two art doctrines of which Scholz spoke—a reason to take a closer look at this field of tension. The early sketches, portraits, illustrations, and landscape depictions by the young artist show that after 1945, Ruth Baumgarte, unlike other artists, did not need to undergo a denazification of her artistic work. Her drawings lack any Nazi-friendly subject matter; mother and daughter had always avoided the Hitler salute.37 Barely concealed, one can discern subversive contents in her drawing of fleeing “Gypsies” (fig. 2, p. 27). However, the painter suddenly found herself in a field of tension for which she was not prepared. Hans Scholz could have explained it to her: The artists of both German states were under the influence of the incompatible educational models of their respective occupying powers.38 On the one hand, the Cold War resulted in a split into the art of the West and of the East; on the other hand, the art of the West lamented with great vehemence the “loss of the center” (Hans Sedlmayr, 1948), of which the abstract artists were accused. Neither seems to have affected the young painter much, since she calmly pursued her own path and experimented in figurative drawings and watercolors. In the 1950s, however, living in Bielefeld, she also lost the resonating chamber of “art of the West,” in which she could have felt an echo of her own art and picked up on impulses from avant-garde contemporaries. She was temporarily isolated from the art market, which was an advantage in that she was able to develop her style away from the fronts. Politically speaking, the 1950s were about the contrast- ing “aesthetic endowment of the two German republics.”39 Abstraction was the artistic beacon of the West, while realism was considered the aesthetic imperative of socialism in the GDR. Abstraction was declared the “world language of art.” It provided the decorative furnishings for the social market economy and was considered the guiding culture with which the young Bonn Republic was to open itself up to the world market.40 At the 1946 Allgemeine Deutsche Kunstausstellung (General German Art Exhibition), all styles were still represented. The 1950 Kongress für die Kulturelle Freiheit (Congress for Cultural Freedom) at the Titania Palast in Berlin-Steglitz set the course for the art of the West. No elaborate criminalistic effort is required to detect the CIA’s hand behind the associations for the “defense of freedom.” With military precision, pictures by Jackson Pollock and other representatives of Abstract Expressionism from the United States were sent to the Western occupation zones.41 In the Federal Republic, the abstract paintings of Heinz Trökes, Willi Baumeister, Fritz Winter, and Emil Schumacher set the tone. At documenta II in 1959, which with few exceptions exhibited non-represen- tational pictures, the triumph of the abstractionists reached a temporary climax. But it was also a last burst of strength of abstraction, whose triumphant march soon tended toward the decorative in some cases. Ruth Baumgarte observed this current and decided to stick to figurative art. Women in Art Did women even have an opportunity to pursue an artistic career in Germany after the war? In 2001, Uta Grosenick put it in a nutshell: “At the beginning of the 20th century, women artists were already reaping the benefits that other women had fought for in the 19th century. They were able to study at the same art academies as men, apply for scholarships, participate in life classes, enter competitions, and win prizes. Furthermore, they could present their work at inter- national exhibitions and sell it in galleries, they received commissions, and they played an active part in the art scene.”42 Seen from this perspective, superficially at least, there were no longer any gender differences. But the reality was far from equal opportunities for men and women. Positions at art schools and academies were largely held by men, and exhibitions were predominantly given to male colleagues, which also meant that women appeared less frequently in public and private collections and in art literature. Nevertheless, there were women who were able to assert themselves internationally from the second half of the twentieth century onwards, although less so in Germany.43 In some cases, their public recognition did not become apparent until the 1960s: Sonia Delaunay and Natalia Goncharova in the avant-garde of the early twentieth century; Meret Oppenheim conquered and satirized Surrealism, and Hannah Höch shone with the Dadaists, as was recognized relatively late; and also Georgia O’Keeffe, Germaine Richier, and Barbara Hepworth in the field of sculpture, as well as Lee Krasner and Agnes Martin in the United States and Canada—to name 29

Ruth Baumgarte im Strom der Zeitgeschichte | Ruth Baumgarte in the Stream of Contemporary History but a few examples. It was not until the 1960s, with the expansion of the traditional concept of art and the strengthening of feminism, that the male-dominated structures were gradually broken open.44 This was, however, far from being the end of the process, and true equality of opportunities had yet to be achieved. During this time, Ruth Baumgarte had to struggle with the practical problems of everyday life and the multiple burdens of being an artist, an entrepreneur’s wife, and a mother. Only the night hours remained for artistic work.45 The Condemnation of Realism One can hardly imagine the harshness of the criticism of representational painting common among art critics in the Federal Republic, which affected all artists in both parts of Germany. Even in the subtle text Negative Dialectics by the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno from 1966, there are statements that nourish the idea that, in the East, there was not the slightest room for artists to breathe, that they were all committed to socialist realism and followed this dictate. Adorno’s assessment corresponded to the political situation. The Western art establishment’s judgment of the East was as “ironclad as the curtain in the Cold War.”46 Adorno also transferred his anathema to the arts in the West, which was “papering over its guilt,”47 did not scrape off the semblance of the real, and obscured the Nazi past.48 The revolution of modern art was a highly contentious topic, as is illustrated by the controversial first “Darmstadt Dialog,” Das Menschenbild in unserer Zeit (The Image of Man in Our Time) in 1950, with leading figures as diverse as Willi Baumeister, Hans Sedlmayr, and Theodor W. Adorno taking part in the symposium.49 Beyond the Static Blocks The image of a clear division into socialist-realist art of the East and abstract art of the West obscures and distorts the wide-ranging world of artistic creation in both German states.50 It overlooks the “non-synchronicity of the layers of reality” in both East and West.51 In the East, the aesthetic orthodoxy of socialist realism was imposed as the guiding culture and led to an “art of validity,”52 by which all the arts were to be included in the ordering arrangement of the state. However, the state’s efforts to create a homogeneous landscape of an art dictated by the political word also met with irrevocable claims to autonomy on the part of artists who did not want to bow to the normative guiding idea. The prescriptive art of the East extended as little as that of the West without gaps over the broad field of all forms of artistic representation. In the GDR, there was a continuation of the Bauhaus tradition and niches of abstract art. The world of artistic creation in the GDR was not a politically correct model institution. In the West, too, there was more and different art than only Art Informel, monochrome, lyrical abstraction, and color field painting. The “postmodern” era from 1945 onwards (Jost Hermand)53 included forms of magical, socio- critical, and surrealistic realism, the perceptual acuity of which was directed against ideological appropriations. This is precisely where Ruth Baumgarte’s domain can be found. Work Environments Whereas the fathers of the Grundgesetz (the “basic law,” or constitution, of the Federal Republic of Germany) had demanded for the immediate postwar situation that the vacancy of an unoccupied, identity-creating center of postwar society be filled anew with the educational model of democracy, in the 1950s, a symbolic machine that promised to erase all elements of guilt and grief at being excluded from world culture moved to the center of the self-confidence of West German society. In the first “Wolfszeit” years, one presumably “played” the imposed civil form of life of the West—with no fundamental change in the mentalities, and the identity- creating center having remained empty.54 In the 1950s, 31 4 Ruth Baumgarte Zur Veredelung des Erdöls bewähren sich Baumgarte-Apparate aller Art | Baumgarte Apparatuses of All Kinds Prove Their Worth for the Refinement of Crude Oil, 1953 WV | CR 3155

5 Ruth Baumgarte Später Winter | Late Winter, 1975 WV | CR 401 and the workers do not merge with their workpieces, they handle them. Unlike typical depictions of industrial workers in socialist realism, which were meant to show more than could be seen, Baumgarte’s drawings lack any form of heroization. Her portraits of workers do not depict allegories of the aphorism: “All wheels come to a halt when your strong arm wills it.” She shows what is: Bearers of an uprising are not in sight, there is hope enough in industrial work itself. Was her rejection of the ideologization of the working world one reason why she did not take up the offer of the draftsman and portraitist Gerhard Kettner to go to Dresden in 1989 to accept a teaching post? At the time, Kettner was rector and professor at the academy of art in Dresden.57 Ice Age Due to her age, the artist was not directly involved in the turmoil of the generation of 1968. Their “desire to explore the world” (Heinz Bude),58 which spurred on the younger rebels, had already drawn her for many years to other places and continents, especially Africa. The light that the African continent opened up to her was an entirely different cosmos. In contrast to her later Africa paintings with their open horizons, her allegorical watercolors from 1970 on in the closed horizon of the German environment tell of an “ice age,” by which she felt trapped in her own homeland. After years of economic prosperity, the social and environmental hazards in the country became visible in the 1970s and ’80s. Recession, domestic tensions, and feelings of threat from environmental crises created tears in the social fabric.59 With her new imagery, Ruth Baumgarte opened up the fissures in the mirror of the self-confident Federal Republic. Works such as Industrial Metropolis (fig. 3, p. 30) from the early 1960s already pointed to the progressive overbuilding of cities and the neglect of the environment. In a series of milieu studies, Baumgarte took up forms of expression of society’s outsiders, youth culture, and the homeless. Allegory became the preferred device, lending her works an unfathomable dimension (fig. 5). During this time, Ruth Baumgarte became increasingly involved in the regional art scene in Bielefeld. In 1975, she founded the independently run gallery Das Fenster (The Window), which at the same time represented a a new center of meaning provided a relief from the years of calamity and the “Wolfszeit”, filled the void, and at the same time assured the continuity of the Germans’ identity. That new center of meaning was LABOR, namely the heavy labor of the coal, iron, steel, and automobile industries. The European Coal and Steel Community was its political frock. Between 1951 and 1968, Ruth Baumgarte turned her attention to the workers in the industrial halls of heavy industry and, with her commissioned drawings, entered the sphere of the West German search for identity.55 The objects of her observation were not entirely new in her artistic work. She had already been preoccupied with the motif of the worker during her student days. Access to the interior spaces of heavy industry at the Baumgarte Ironworks in Bielefeld was easy for the painter.56 The red chalk drawing Refinement of Crude Oil (fig. 4, p. 31) and other industrial illustrations reveal what may have attracted her to the situations of heavy labor she captured on paper. They depict the closed spaces of a functional context in which she visualizes welders, drillers, milling cutters, crane operators, and engineers. The conciseness of the technical details is just as striking as the character studies of the workers, who seem at home in the technical space without being absorbed by it. Nevertheless, one senses no trace of alienation of the workers from their machines. Instead, the drawings allow a glimpse into a dimension of industrial work that generally falls out of public perception. Craft activities are embedded in the industrial manufacturing process, 33

Ruth Baumgarte im Strom der Zeitgeschichte | Ruth Baumgarte in the Stream of Contemporary History liberation from private dependence for her as a woman. In more than fifty exhibitions, she presented a cross-section of German art and supported the artists by purchasing one work by each of the exhibiting artists.60 of the “other,” but rather experiential spaces in which the painter gave the dominant white concept of apartheid no chance. Ruth Baumgarte’s travels took her to Egypt, South A “leaden time” (Margarethe von Trotta)61 was also underpinned by the filmmaking that influenced the artist with its radical themes and gave her essential impulses: Ingmar Bergman revealed people’s emotional and relational catastrophes. She encountered xenophobia and anti-Semitism in films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Nicolas Roeg’s hypnotically staged, convoluted film dramaturgy, which shatters common narrative patterns and editing models, also disturbed Ruth Baumgarte. In his plays, Rolf Hochhuth criticized the reappraisal of National Socialism, and this was passionately discussed in those circles with which Ruth Baumgarte was associated. Within the field of contemporary literature, she was fascinated by the author Ingeborg Drewitz, who was born in Berlin in 1923. The leitmotif of her books is abandonment. In her book Gestern war heute: Hundert Jahre Gegenwart (Yesterday Was Today: One Hundred Years of the Present), published in 1978, Drewitz reviews three generations of women from the twentieth century. In her “Letter to Bettina von Arnim,” the author writes: “For me, it is important that you were as I try to be: unassimilated, sensitive to those on the margins, angry toward the slick routine, awake to the intuitive feelings of person to person.”62 Perhaps these lines reveal what captivated Ruth Baumgarte in the works of the author from her own generation. During her travels in the 1980s, she directly experienced the consequences of the apartheid regime in South Africa, which increasingly moved her in her visual work. She turned her interests to the continent of Africa. Africa: A Showroom of Movement Colonial and national stereotypes apparently continue to shape images and literature about Africa to this day. What is forgotten is that a German painter had been setting out on journeys to Africa since 1955 and eventually visited the continent for a total of forty times. In her work, the stereotypical images of Africa are broken down. Her direct contact with the African continent enabled Baumgarte to create images of Africa without the Western rhetoric of superiority used to justify colonial domination. These are not exoticizing constructions Africa, Namibia, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, and Sudan. She was thirty-two when she took her first trip to Egypt. Undisturbed by national and colonial prejudices, she explored the continent in the way that a white European travelling abroad was able to.63 At the age of seventy-two, she painted six large-format African paintings. From 1995 to 1997, she created the masterful triptych (fig. 6): in the center section, the face of an African woman, frightened and seeking flight; on the left panel, the buzzing plumage of large vultures in the wind; and on the right panel, eagles watching the flight movement in deathly serenity. To visualize the vital force of her destruction of prevailing stereotypes of Africa, it helps to look back at the presence of the colonial image of the “dark continent” in the postwar decades. In the 1950s, Africa was part of the “moral geography” of Europe. The Schuman Declaration of May 9, 1950 saw the “development of the African continent” as one of Europe’s “essential tasks” of Europe.64 It was the beginning of a development policy according to which Africa would provide raw materials for Europe’s industry as well as food for its own population. “Africa for the Europeans” was a catchphrase of the interwar period. As vice president of the German Colonial Society, Konrad Adenauer hoped that the Sahara could become “a second Ruhr region.”65 In the 1950s, the possibility of decolonizing Africa seemed not only distant but unthinkable. When it was founded, the European Economic Community already wanted to reach out toward Africa, and the continent gradually became the “battleground of a particularly intense and vicious modality of hostility and cold war.”66 Cuban forces were in Ethiopia and Angola, the Soviet Union (like China later) seemed to be involved in the background in the takeover of Africa, and the Federal Republic maintained relations with apartheid regimes in South Africa and Rhodesia. In the 1950s, the decolonization of Africa was neither envisaged nor planned for. In the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, the West German public was overwhelmed by reports of famine in Biafra, and tribal feuds throughout the continent, to be followed a decade later by the genocide in Rwanda, and revelations of corruption that threatened to completely consume development aid funds. 35

8 Ruth Baumgarte Wanting to Build a House, 1994 WV | CR 959 9 Ruth Baumgarte Adrinka’s Song, 2003 WV | CR 1044 “transformation process in African societies”,67 perhaps they are already anticipations of national and, later, transcontinental migration scenarios. Her pictures do not know in which direction the dynamics will turn. The painter gazed through the eyes of the sitter into the mysterious interior of the African figures. And these in turn behold the painter, who resides among them as an equal. She shows the “merging” of the figures “with the African habitat,”68 from which they seem to be torn away at the same time by flight or “inferno.” A paradoxical situation of fleeing and standing still that normally paralyzes. In Baumgarte’s paintings, it is dissolved in color dynamics, in which the fluidity of light crystallizes. Even at an advanced age, Baumgarte continued to travel to Africa. Her last trip, in 2003, then eighty years old, took her to Lake Victoria, Nairobi, Arusha, Dodoma, and Lake Malawi. Ruth Baumgarte was almost ninety when she died in 2013. The artist’s German and international resonance began with her Africa paintings. Her works are presented in national and international museums and galleries. On the occasion of an exhibition at the Städtisches Museum in Braunschweig (2019), reviews highlighted her “visionary view of the Black Continent.” The afterlife of her work has begun. It has broken free from power- ful social force fields and liberated itself from the vicissitudes of life history in order to gift us with the felicity of contemplation. An enigmatic, a troubled continent, difficult to judge from afar, it had to be experienced on the ground. During her sojourns, Ruth Baumgarte observed the homeless, the non-residents (as in her cycle of works Vagrant (1986/87; fig. 7). She rarely depicted her African figures resting in a homestead, in a tent, a mud hut, a brick house, rarely on the outskirts of a big city. Occasionally, under the title Wanting to Build a House (fig. 8), we see an individual with a water jug and a bundle of reeds wandering in an unknown direction in a desolate no-man’s-land, often as refugees, in aggression or the despair of isolation, occasionally in the pride of standing firm. Men whose bodies are used to physical exertion, at work with the spade, in leaden fatigue, or leaping into the unknown. African women seeking a brief resting place in a state of melancholy—once, in Adrinka’s Song (fig. 9) as a paragon of sensuality. What does His Land (CR 961) mean when the landscape is in turmoil? Rarely did she depict men and women in collective or loose formations of communal life. African Vision (CR 1028) depicts a group of women possibly engaged in a ritual. Possibly, because Ruth Baumgarte never adopted the gaze of an anthropologist who seeks to capture indigenous life in the ethnological patterns of their rituals. From the margins, she observed work processes in daily life. The images of people in Baumgarte’s Africa pictures are completely detached from her images of working men and women, whom she depicted in functional contexts in her illustrations of industrial work. Her Africa knows no functional contexts in closed spaces, neither of resistance nor of assimilation. She depicted a showroom of movement, filled with light as if with a liquid. When those she portrayed stand still, they seem compelled to do so only for moments. The different manners of walking that Baumgarte captured presumably hint at a 37

Ruth Baumgarte im Strom der Zeitgeschichte | Ruth Baumgarte in the Stream of Contemporary History 1 I owe most of the information 8 In 1934, he became head of 17 She wrote in her diary: “Tangled on Ruth Baumgarte’s life to reports by Alexander Baumgarte. Wiebke Steinmetz and Viola Weigel supported my essay by pointing out hidden sources. They also provided me with materials I had not thought of and were strict editors, for which one should always be grateful as an author. 2 Gebhardt Handbuch der deutschen Geschichte, vol. 10, completely revised edition (Stuttgart 2004), p. 221. No exact figures are mentioned here with regard to the Wehrmacht; concerning the Red Army, 650,000 casualties are noted. 3 From a poem by Ruth Baumgarte, August 16, 1945, Estate of the Ruth Baumgarte Art Foundation [translated]. production at Rota-Film AG in Berlin, created documentaries for UFA from 1937 on, and later produced short films for the Third Reich as head of the cultural film department at Prag-Film AG. After the war, he became UFA’s administrative director and became its head of production in 1959. 9 According to the recollections of her son Alexander (see note 4). 10 Heinz Struve moved to Karlshorst in 1932. Cf. the auto- biography of Heinz Struve, which provides interesting descriptions of life in Berlin at that time. Heinz Struve, Im Dschungel – Zwischen Nazis und Stalinisten. Autobiografie (Frankfurt/Main 2013), pp. 37, 39, 41–44, 49, 57, 66–67. 4 This report is based on infor- 11 For more on her training, see mation provided by Alexander Baumgarte (conversations with the author in June 2020), the article by Martin Fenner: “Auf jedem Stein erglänzt das Silberlicht,” in: Ruth Baumgarte. Herkunft/Prägung/Zäsuren (Karlshorst 2017), pp. 13–32, and the notes made by Ruth Baumgarte in her diary, unpublished manuscript, Estate of the Ruth Baumgarte Art Foundation. 5 Anonyma, Eine Frau in Berlin. Tagebuch-Aufzeichnungen vom 20. April bis 22. Juni 1945 (Frankfurt/Main 2003). An impression of more recent research can be found in: Miriam Gebhart, Als die Soldaten kamen (Berlin 2015). 6 Margret Boveri, Tage des Überlebens – Berlin 1945, (Munich/Zurich 1968), p. 147. 7 Cf. Fenner 2017 (see note 4), p. 14. the essay by Eckhart J. Gillen in this volume, pp. 42–85. 12 Cf. Harald Jähner, Wolfszeit – Deutschland und die Deutschen 1945–1955 (Berlin 2020), which quotes from numerous diary entries. 13 A total of four diaries and books with study notes from the period 1942–47 have survived. Most of the entries are poems written by the artist herself. They are now in the Estate of the Ruth Baumgarte Art Foundation. 14 Ruth Baumgarte’s diary from 1942 to 1947, p. 1, Estate of the Ruth Baumgarte Art Foundation [translated]. 15 Quoted in: Martin Bodenstein, “Die Künstlerin Ruth Baumgarte wird heute 75. Werk als Laudatio auf das Leben. Faszinierende Farben der Erinnerung,” in: Neue Westfälische, June 27, 1998 [translated]. 16 Ruth Baumgarte, “Brief an Eduard Busse,” July 1945, in: exh. cat. Karlshorst 2017 (see note 4), p. 128. hair and faces struggling to understand; the looks of small children resemble those of old men.” Poetry Collection from 1944 to 1946, supplement 11, Estate of the Ruth Baumgarte Art Foundation [translated]. 18 Ibid., supplement 12: “Strange soldiers with strange faces stand laughing and firm in the wind of fast travel—their foreheads gleam, and their limbs bend in playful strength as they speak to the girls on the street corners whose breasts greedily offer themselves to strange hands.” [translated]. 19 Ibid., supplement 13, from a letter of July 1945, Estate of the Ruth Baumgarte Art Foundation [translated]. 20 Information provided by Alexander Baumgarte (see note 4). 21 Marta Hillers, quoted in: Jähner 2020 (see note 12), p. 158 [translated]. 22 In 1952, however, she was forbidden to work for this “left-wing” newspaper by her husband, the entrepreneur Hans Baumgarte. Information provided by Alexander Baumgarte (see note 4). 23 Magazin der Hausfrau. Die älteste und führende unabhängige Hauszeitschrift deutscher Einzel- händler und Gewerbetreibender, Quellen-Verlag, Frankfurt/Main, Bad Kissingen, and Berlin. 24 Christmut Präger goes into detail about the illustrations in the magazines and their commissioned works in volume III of this catalogue raisonné. 25 Recently published: Herma Kennel, Als die Comics laufen lernten. Der Trickfilmpionier Wolfgang Kaskeline zwischen Werbekunst und Propaganda (Berlin 2020). 26 CR 22–29 27 It was in this context that she also met her second husband, Hans Baumgarte, in the late 1940s. Information provided by Alexander Baumgarte (see note 4). 28 In the text “Unterwegs Generation ohne Abschied” (Underway, Generation without Farewell), Wolfgang Borchert (1921–1947) formulated the ambivalent attitude to life in postwar Germany: “We are the generation without attachment and without depth. Our depth is the abyss. We are the generation without happiness, without a homeland, and without farewell. Our sun is narrow, our love is cruel, our youth is without youth. […] We are a generation without homecoming, for we have nothing to return home to. But we are a generation of arrival. Perhaps we are a generation full of arrival on a new star, in a new life. Full of arrival under a new sun, to new hearts. Perhaps we are full of arrival to a new life, to a new laughter, to a new God. We are a generation without farewell, but we know that all arrivals are ours.” https://www.signaturen- magazin.de/wolfgang- borchert-generation-ohne- abschied.html [translated; accessed on August 1, 2021]. 29 Information provided by Alexander Baumgarte (see note 4). 30 Jähner 2020 (see note 12), p. 10 [translated]. 31 Boveri 1968 (see note 6), quoted in ibid., p. 14 [translated]. 39

Ruth Baumgarte im Strom der Zeitgeschichte | Ruth Baumgarte in the Stream of Contemporary History Against any form of indoctrination. For reverence for the creation and the creatures of creation. For objectivity, for sobriety. For viewing history on a collective-psychological basis. For inclusion of the present in the course of history. Against the overestimation of the current daily affairs and their protagonists.” [translated]. 37 Information provided by Alexander Baumgarte (see note 4). 38 Jähner 2020 (see note 12), p. 14. 39 Ibid., p. 15 [translated]. 40 Ibid., p. 349. 41 Harald Jähner, “Wie die abstrakte Kunst die soziale Marktwirtschaft ausstattete,” in: ibid., pp. 344–62, here pp. 359ff. 42 Uta Grosenick, Women Artists in the 20th and 21st Centuries (Cologne and elsewhere 2001), p. 14. 43 The proportion of women in the documenta II and III exhibitions was very low. 44 Grosenick 2001 (see note 42), p. 15. 45 Hans Baumgarte brought two sons into the marriage, Ruth Baumgarte her son, Thomas. The couple had two more children together: Janine and Alexander. She had a stately home to run and representative duties to fulfill as the wife of an entrepreneur. In the late 1960s, she wanted to free herself from domestic duties and economic dependence on her husband. However, signed contracts and the legislation of the time made this step impossible. Information provided by Alexander Baumgarte (see note 4). 46 Sebastian Preuss, “Triumph der Westkunst,” in: Berliner Zeitung, November 20, 1997 [translated]. 47 Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton (London/New York 2004), p. 368. 48 Eckhart Gillen (ed.), Deutsch- landbilder. Kunst in einem geteilten Land (Berlin 1997), p. 50. 49 Das Menschenbild in unserer Zeit, ed. Hans Gerhard Evers on behalf of the Magistrate of the City of Darmstadt and the Darmstadt Dialog Committee (Darmstadt 1950). 50 Gillen 1997 (see note 48), p. 50. 51 Karl-Siegbert Rehberg, “‘Westkunst’ versus ‘Ostkunst.’ Geltungskünste und die Flucht aus der geschichtlichen Kontinuität im geteilten Deutschland,” in: Beziehungs- analysen. Bildende Künste in Westdeutschland nach 1945: Akteure, Institutionen, Ausstellungen und Kontexte, ed. Gerhard Panzer, Franziska Völz, and Karl-Siegbert Rehberg (Berlin 2015), pp. 15–41 [translated]. 52 Ibid. [translated]. Cf. Karl- Siegbert Rehberg, “Kunst- autonomie als (historische) Ausnahme und normative Leitidee,” in: Uta Karstein and Nina Tessa Zahner (eds.), Autonomie der Kunst? Zur Aktualität eines gesellschaftlichen Leitbilds (Berlin 2009), pp. 51–65, here p. 60. 53 Jost Hermand, “Freiheit im Kalten Krieg. Zum Siegeszug der abstrakten Malerei in Westdeutschland,” in: ’45 und die Folgen: Kunstgeschichte eines Wiederbeginns, ed. Hugo Borger, Ekkehardt Mai, and Stephan Waezoldt (Cologne/Weimar 1991), pp. 139–40 [translated]. 54 A hypothesis posited by Hans-Joachim Maaz in his book Das gespaltene Land. Ein Psychogramm (Munich 2020). 55 Sandra Mühlenberend, “Farbrausch am Kessel,” in: Farbrausch am Kessel, exh. cat. Städtische Kunstsammlungen Salzgitter, 2015, pp. 5–13. 56 Ruth Baumgarte was commis- sioned by the Baumgarte Ironworks from 1951 on to create illustrations for the company calendars and documentation. 57 Information provided by Alexander Baumgarte (see note 4). 58 Heinz Bude, Adorno für Ruinen- kinder (Berlin 2018) [translated]. 59 Cf. Axel Schildt, Deutsche Kulturgeschichte. Die Bundes- republik von 1945 bis zur Gegen- wart (Munich 2009), p. 338. 60 Ruth Baumgarte, statement in: Helene Homilius. Eine fast ver- gessene Künstlerin, Germany, 2005, director: Christel Heermann. 61 In 1981, Margarethe von Trotta shot the film Die bleierne Zeit (Marianne and Juliane) about the Red Army Faction (RAF) activist Gudrun Ensslin and her sister, Christiane. 62 Ingeborg Drewitz, Brief an Bettina von Arnim: “... darum muss man nichts als leben”, Berlin 2002. 63 Ruth Baumgarte undertook her extensive travels accompanied by with her jour nalist friend Matthew Koczek Miller and a driver. 64 Robert Schuman, “Declaration of 9 May,” in: https://www.robert-schuman.eu /en/declaration-of-9-may-1950 [accessed on August 5, 2021]. 65 Quoted in: Manuela Boatca, “Von (un)bedeutenden und vergessenen Europas,” in: Zeit- schrift für Kulturwissenschaften, no. 1, 2019, pp. 107–10, here p. 109 [translated]. 66 Reinhart Koselleck, “Raum und Geschichte,” in: Koselleck, Zeitschichten (Frankfurt/Main 2000), p. 94 [translated]. 67 Beate Reifenscheid, “Ruth Baumgarte − Annäherung an den fremden Kontinent,” in: Ruth Baumgarte. Turn of the Fire, exh. cat. Ludwig Museum, Koblenz, 2017/18 (Munich/ London/New York 2017), pp. 15–28, here p. 85. 68 Ibid. p. 82. 32 Ruth Baumgarte agreed to marry Hans Baumgarte, although she said to her son Alexander that she was not sure whether her feelings of being in love would develop into an enduring love as her mother assured her they would. After her daughter's marriage Margarethe Kellner- Con rady lived with the family and concentrated on bringing up her little grandson Thomas. Ruth Baumgarte was torn between her sense of responsibility toward her mother and feelings of gratitude toward Hans Baumgarte for providing for her mother and her son Thomas, and her longing for the freedom to be able to live as an artist (see also the correspondence in the estate of the Ruth Baumgarte Art Foundation). 33 Details from biographies of Hans Scholz available in the Archive of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 34 Further research will need to be carried out to investigate why numerous elements in novels refer to the life of Ruth Baumgarte, including for example the shared name with the figure “Ruth Esther Loria”, pp. 21f., “Busse”, pp. 232f. and “Sonne berger Puppen”, p. 9, in: Hans Scholz, Am grünen Strand der Spree. So gut wie ein Roman, Hamburg 1955. 35 Hans Scholz, “Self-Introduction” at the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung, https://www.deutscheakademie .de/en/academy/members /hans-scholz/selbstvorstellung [accessed on August 3, 2021]. All subsequent quotations are from this text [translated]. 36 Handwritten biographical information for the publishing house IATAS AG. Archive of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Here, it reads further: “For the unity of life and work, e.g. against the libertine individualism of the way of life that goes hand in hand with socialist measures for the rest of humankind. 41

Kunst als Lebensmittel | Art as Nourishment Years of Training Ruth Johanna Baumgarte, née Kellner (born on June 27, 1923 in Coburg), belongs to a generation whose artistic training and first influences were determined by the Nazi era. Thanks to her parents, however, who were also active as artists, she never fell into the rough waters of the nationalistic ideology. Early drawings made during her art studies are clear evidence of this, prime examples being Gypsies in the Rain, (fig. 1) and Workers on the Roof (CR 35).1 These are first tentative—as well as courageous—attempts to find an independent view of her surroundings. One can also see in these early works a covert resistance to the racist, inhumane politics of the Nazi era. The interest in social outsiders and the socially disadvantaged would become a constant of her artistic work, as also revealed by the later series of drawings on Vagrants, 1986–88 (cf. CR 764, 767–774, 798–799, 840). Her parents met at the municipal theater in Sonne- berg, Thuringia. Her mother, Margarethe Kellner-Conrady (1899–1969), performed there as an actress under the stage name Gretel Conrady, and her father, Kurt Rupli (1899–1960), was a director and managed the municipal theater in Sonneberg during the 1922/23 season. The relationship did not last long. However, both parents felt responsible for their daughter’s education and well- being. As musically inclined individuals active in cultural life, they recognized their child’s artistic talent at an early age and strongly encouraged her. Her mother moved to Berlin in 1924 and to Berlin-Karlshorst in 1935. Her father also came to Berlin in 1934 after several stations in the west of Germany, where he worked as the managing director of various film production companies (UFA) and as a freelance director.2 live figure drawing, and costume classes” and its “courses in preparation for admission to the Royal Art School.” Hans Scholz, who was born in Berlin in 1911 and to whom we will return later, also taught there from 1937 to 1939. With the support of her mother, Ruth Kellner enrolled on April 22, 1941, to study free graphic art and painting at the State Academy of Fine Arts3 at Hardenbergstrasse 33. There, she received classical academic training in drawing from life.4 Despite the dismissal of senior faculty members that began in April 1933, including Karl Hofer and Oskar Schlemmer, who were associated by the Nazi regime with the enemy image of “Cultural Bolshevism,” the art school ranked alongside the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf as the leading training institution for artists in Prussia and the Reich. With her teacher Wilhelm Tank, she drew nudes and learned movement theory and anatomy; and with Carl Michel, she acquired knowledge of lithography and copperplate engraving. After completing her basic training, she studied painting techniques with Kurt Wehlte.5 Above all, however, she learned the art of drawing and illustration from Gerhard Ulrich.6 Trained by Hans Meid, Ludwig Bartning, and Emil Orlik, the graphic artist and illustrator influenced her confident and precise, but also light-handed drawing style. While Tank was a convinced Nazi, Ulrich had an extensive education and was also interested in literature and architecture. The nudes from this period by the young woman seem unacademic, are already very free in style, and loosely sketched compared with the Late Nazarene naturalism cultivated at the time.7 While the father advocated training in home economics While working with the Reichsarbeitsdienst for his daughter, the mother ensured that the highly gifted girl received the best possible artistic training available in Berlin at the time. Around 1938, after Ruth had graduated from the Karlshorst Lyceum with the secondary school leaving certificate known as the Einjähriges, Margarethe Kellner enrolled her fifteen- year-old daughter in Emmy Stalmann’s Private Art School of the West for Drawing and Painting at Kantstrasse 154a, at the corner of Fasanenstrasse. Founded in 1904, the school enjoyed a very good reputation in the imperial capital. In a flyer from 1911, it advertised its basic training in “drawing and painting according to nature and art forms,” with its “portrait, (Reich Labor Service) from early April to mid-August 1943 at the Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labor Service), Ruth Kellner continued her studies in Berlin until February 1944.8 After the partial closure of the school, she and her fellow student Florian Breuer, a pupil of Max Kaus, transferred to the School of Industrial Design and Applied Arts in Sonneberg, Thuringia, near her birthplace, Coburg. Here, she continued her close study of nature, producing pencil drawings such as Sonneberg and Old Mill (1944, CR 125, 128). Florian Breuer inspired her to paint in watercolor, a technique she soon mastered to perfection. She had 45

Kunst als Lebensmittel | Art as Nourishment Her unerring eye captured her subject precisely and full of empathy. As early as 1943, she produced astonishingly lively portraits of children and adolescents that immediately appeal to the viewer.10 The seriousness of life seems to be deeply inscribed in the features of all these children, even when they are holding their dolls and stuffed animals in their hands (fig. 2). We thus encounter the frightened look of the Boy with Cap (1943; CR 36) and a cautiously self-contemplative Portrait of a Boy (1944; CR 101). The same is true for the portraits of old men, which she painted at the same time, and in whose faces the resignation towards the end of the war is evident.11 The Portrait of a Man (CR 152) gazes pensively into an undefined distance. With a charcoal pencil, Ruth Baumgarte modeled his physiognomy—into which the years of his life have inscribed themselves—in a way that is both powerful and extremely sensitive. In a letter to her first husband, the painter Eduard Busse, whom she had met during her studies in Berlin, Baumgarte wrote in July 1945: “The gazes of small children resemble those of old men, forlorn and firmly held in the clutch of a hot, bright sky. Often among them, soldiers returning home, those searching—oh, the beloved ones—if one could only lead them over gentle meadows, the grasses and flowers gently brushing the tired, stumbling feet—cradling their heads to sleep in one’s lap, their agonies soothed by stroking their forehead and cheeks. You pass by, seeking to read in eyes lost in a distance never known. Their lips lie narrow on top of each other, and their dark hands hold bundles. And as I stand and gaze after them, it overwhelms me: the urge to rush to them, to grasp their gray coats, and to kiss them.”12 Here, Ruth Baumgarte articulated a remarkable attentiveness to the people she encountered. In her diary, she recorded her observations and the strong feelings associated with them in view of the human misery that marked the faces of the soldiers returning home. All the portraits are united by a certain melancholy. None of her models smiles, which is also true of her self-portraits. All are marked by the battering of the war. This characteristic of the war years and the postwar period would accompany her throughout her life (figs. 4 and 5, p. 49). Baumgarte’s drawings of children and adolescents are comparable to those of Lea Grundig, who was born in Dresden in 1906 and who became a leading portraitist 2 Ruth Baumgarte Heidi, 1949 WV | CR 245 a lifelong friendship with him, as can be seen from numerous letters and postcards in her estate. In their later lives, both became “globetrotters.” While Ruth Baumgarte was drawn to Africa, Florian Breuer traveled to India for more than half a year at a time starting in 1964. Together with Florian Breuer, Ruth Baumgarte applied to continue her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden in early August 1944. But on November 1, 1944, she received a negative reply, since studies during the war years were possible only for disabled veterans.9 Portraits Despite the fact that, without a high school diploma, she was denied the status of a so-called master student, during her art studies, she received a solid academic education that became a secure foundation for her life’s work. The experience of drawing after life allowed her to create very impressive portraits of people she met on the streets or in the family environment. Her craftsmanship and curiosity about meeting people enabled her to capture her models’ individual features accurately and sensitively in settings that characterized them. 47

4 Ruth Baumgarte Knabenportrait | Portrait of a Boy, 1944 WV | CR 88 5 Ruth Baumgarte Portrait Fritz | Portrait of Fritz, 1944 WV | CR 105 of Proletarian Realism in the late 1920s. Lea Grundig, too, focused entirely on graphic art and portraiture, using black chalk, ink, pen and brush, and later linocuts and etchings. She made portraits based on models she found in the streets and public squares of Dresden. Like Ruth Baumgarte, she developed an early interest in characteristic details of physiognomy, which show how the individual is shaped by his or her social environment (fig. 3). We will encounter her again in connection with Ruth Baumgarte’s portraits of workers. In contrast to Lea Grundig’s communist, politically motivated, veristic view of proletarians, Ruth Baumgarte’s gaze is exclusively compassionate, turned toward the individual, but neither ideologically committed nor one to take sides politically. She herself described her position in retrospect: “I’m not a Käthe Kollwitz type. Politics moves me, but I can’t move the world, can’t change it, only observe it.”13 As early as the sixteenth century, the act of drawing (disegno in Italian, from which the English word “design” is derived) was considered to be the actual creative moment of invention and therefore the basis of all the arts, from architecture to painting and sculpture; this also applies later to storyboards for films, or fashion and furniture design. To grasp the world with the eyes and the pen in hand as a source of knowledge in the literal sense requires that the consciousness switch from the mode of passively storing perception to the active process of observing and grasping reality. The greatest adventure lies in the accuracy of perception, which is the prerequisite for the later abstraction of all dispensable details in the reproduction. In the end, Ruth Baumgarte’s portraits in particular resemble the rhythm of a poem in the sense of condensing a concrete moment, a personally felt impression of a person, a timelessly valid statement that speaks to us personally and seizes us. I perceive her pictures from the war years and the immediate postwar period as unsentimental declarations of love for a person, but also for an object, a landscape, a building, a characteristic detail. Designing According to Nature Baumgarte would adhere to the practice of designing according to nature throughout her life, although the gesture of her art changed several times: from the intimate portraits of the 1940s, which also included the social environment, via the objective, object-oriented industrial pictures of the 1950s and ’60s to the symbolist, allegorical, and expressive depictions of her fears for the future in the 1970s and ’80s and the boldly colored, expressive images of longing in her utopia of Africa at the end of her creative career. Baumgarte’s artistic career thus differed fundamentally from that of her contemporaries in West Germany. While Hannah Höch and Jeanne Mammen, in the circle around the Galerie Rosen in postwar West Berlin, held fast to their figurative art influenced by New Objectivity and the art of collage from the time of the Weimar Republic, other artists of their generation, such as the painter Manfred Bluth, who was born in Berlin in 1926, found themselves permanently blocked by the dogma of abstraction internalized during the Cold War: “When he gazes out of his dormer window, he can make out the bizarrely jagged, not-yet-blasted ruins of more houses, which look particularly strange and unreal in the white light of the moon. Does he reach for the drawing pencil even once to capture such haunting images? No, because he has blocked himself by wanting the other. In the meantime, he experiments in his tiny garret with elements and set pieces from the storehouse of abstraction.”14 49

Kunst als Lebensmittel | Art as Nourishment By contrast, the painter Thomas Grochowiak, who in 1948 founded the artist group junger westen and was later director of the art exhibitions presented in conjunction with the Ruhrfestspiele (Ruhr Festival), claimed: “Realism didn’t stand a chance, not because one was against the realists; we had all been trained in realism.” Instead, the reason lay in the “fact of the cruel realism surrounding us and the mood: we once again got off lightly.”15 These personal moods were, however, increasingly influenced—if perhaps only unconsciously—by the ideological and political division of Germany and Europe during the Cold War. Those active in the creative sector could not escape the polarization between the postulate of equality in the East and the slogan of freedom in the West. The ideologues discovered abstract painting as a weapon in the Kulturkampf of the Cold War.16 Abstraction was seen by authoritative art critics and exhibition organizers such as Will Grohmann and Werner Haftmann17 as the logical culmination of a long art development and as the new (Western) universal language. The narrative of the universal language of art became an ideological formula in both the United States and Europe. In the exhibitions and publications of the 1950s, avant-garde art—which, as Hans Richter and Viking Eggeling put it in 1920, saw itself as a “universal language” because its foundation lay “in the collective tendency of all humans to recognize familiar forms”18—became a medium in the global culture war between a liberal market economy and a collectivist planned economy. A popular cultural magazine such as magnum, published by DuMont Verlag in Cologne since 1957, saw abstract painting as Körperschrift (literally “body writing”). It was “the signature of a stimulation, a piece of biography […]. Therefore, this painting is the strongest and absolutely one-sided emphasis of the human-individual aspect. […] Painting thus places itself in the hardest opposition to all the collectivist tendencies of our time.”19 Ruth Baumgarte remained unaffected by such considerations. She was not conflicted between the inclination to realism and the unspoken demand to paint abstractly. She also had no inhibitions—after her marriage to Hans Baumgarte—to devote herself to her husband’s industrial world, to draw and paint portraits of his workers in the style of a social realism. But as the drawing Life (around 1950; CR 250) reveals—and which I will discuss in more detail later—she was obliged by her husband, who was bound to a traditional image of women, to do housework, raise children, and perform representational tasks. Only at night was she truly free for her artistic work. In the immediate postwar period, she focused her artistic work on memorable portraits of people close to her.20 First and foremost are the strikingly large number of portraits of her mother from the 1940s, who was Ruth Baumgarte’s most important caregiver during this period of her life. Due to the early separation from her father, whom she could meet only occasionally in Berlin,21 a lifelong close bond developed with her mother, with all the ups and downs of familiarity and distance. A drawing from 1940 (CR 10) depicts the mother sitting pensively on a chair with her hands clasped together, looking into an uncertain future. In 1946, after having survived the war, Ruth Baumgarte honored her mother with one of her first oil paintings (fig. 6). In the portrait, she gazes earnestly and insistently at the viewer. A gouache from the same year (fig. 7) shows the mother— lost in thought and dreamy, wrapped in a blue cloth—gazing inwardly. War Experience In both portraits, the serious and contemplative gaze only hints at what this woman and her daughter went through during the war and in the postwar years. Left to fend for themselves separately, both survived the 51 7 Ruth Baumgarte Portrait Margarethe Kellner-Conrady | Portrait of Margarethe Kellner- Conrady, 1946 WV | CR 173

Kunst als Lebensmittel | Art as Nourishment reached the Lichtenberg district, where the Karlshorst neighborhood was located. The arrival of the Red Army had already been preceded by rumors of mass rapes by Russian soldiers.28 A “suicide epidemic”29 that had been raging since February claimed more than 700 victims in May 1945 alone.30 In this situation, Ruth Baumgarte and her mother also attempted suicide.31 These traumatic fears and the sudden, unannounced forced evacuation of large parts of Karlshorst, including their house on Rheingoldstrasse, by the Russian occupiers at six o’clock in the evening of May 5 in order to set up the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) there,32 obviously welded mother and daughter together into a partnership of companions in distress. Together, they moved to the Lichtenrade neighborhood. Only on the outskirts could they still find a decent roof over their heads in order to survive. The city center was devastated and unbearable: “The smell of decay from the corpse-filled branch rivers and canals of the inner city causes nausea. Add to that the stench of the dead in the rubble.”33 Ruth Baumgarte provided for the joint household with a job as a press illustrator for the newspaper Berliner Zeitung34 and as a drawing teacher at the Ulrich von Hutten Gymnasium in Lichtenrade. The two aforementioned portraits of Baumgarte’s mother from 1946 emphasize her regained dignity and bourgeois composure after the chaos and terror. Only the thin-lipped mouth betrays the self-imposed discipline and the iron will not to reveal her true feelings. She wears the same blouse with a red bow in both the oil painting and the gouache, an indication of the modest living conditions at that time. In another portrait, the mother already appears in bright pastel colors, with a white veil and red painted lips—like a young bride (CR 179). In 1948, a painting follows that depicts her relaxed and youthful while playing the piano. With her hair precisely parted down the middle, she turns away from the keyboard in a cultivated and distanced manner and gazes out at the viewer with benevolent interest. The colors are restrained, and only the warm red of the dress is emphasized (CR 229). However, we do not know with absolute certainty whether this is indeed Baumgarte’s mother. Ten years later, a watercolor from 1957 depicts the mother as a Spanish noblewoman (CR 320). Here, the facial expressions and the stern gaze turned to the left 8 Ruth Baumgarte Lesende Frau [Modell: Anna-Marie Schubert] | Woman Reading [Model: Anna-Marie Schubert] Um | around 1945 WV | CR 156 bombing war with its carpet bombings, including—ten days before the baroque old town of Dresden was wiped out—what was probably the heaviest American air raid on Berlin on February 3, 1945, in which 937 Flying Fortresses and Liberators were involved, accompanied by 600 fighter planes. The daytime attack took Ruth Baumgarte by surprise while she was working on maps with cartographers in a bunker in the government quarter.22 With the greatest anxiety, she walked for nine hours through the destroyed, blazing city to Karlshorst, where she found her mother and the house fortunately unscathed.23 The attack claimed 2,500 lives.24 Bombs “as big as concrete mixers” are said to have smashed through even massive bunker ceilings and penetrated cellars.25 These air raids triggered a “pronounced existential angst.”26 The population lived day and night in constant fear of further bombardments, which were announced hourly on the radio. The flak towers and subway shafts were besieged by people who immediately tried to find safety under the concrete ceilings of the public bunkers whenever the alarm was sounded.27 The street fighting during the “Battle of Berlin” from April 16 to May 2, 1945 took an even higher toll of civilian casualties than the air raids. On April 23, the first soldiers of the Soviet 8th Guards Combined Arms Army 53

Kunst als Lebensmittel | Art as Nourishment betray a completely different side of her personality, a tight-lipped implacability with which she is said to have dominated the family as mother-in-law. Ruth Baumgarte’s son Alexander remembers stories told by his mother about how his grandmother tried, at times quite theatrically, to dominate and control the colorful patchwork family with five children from three marriages.35 Ruth Baumgarte’s relationship with her mother’s sister, Anna-Marie Schubert, her Aunt Dada, of whom she made numerous pen and ink drawings in 1944/45, was much more intimate and lighthearted. These drawings capture fleeting moments of a pensive woman (fig. 8, p. 53). After her aunt’s death in 1976, Baumgarte wove the facial features of the deceased into an icy, white winter landscape, which was not finished until six years later (Winter Death I, 1982; CR 590). From this example, we see how long Ruth Baumgarte worked on some of her more important works. During the war, Anna-Marie Schubert had taken on a young boy, Dieter, also called Didi. Ruth Baumgarte accompanied the boy’s development with numerous loving portraits in watercolor, beginning with the pastel portrait from 1944 (Portrait of a Boy (Dieter/Didi; CR 104) and followed by a watercolor from 1945 (CR 135), the picture Boy, Reading, with Monkey (Dieter/Didi); from 1947 (CR 210), and a watercolor from 1960 (CR 328), which depicts an already very serious young man. All four portraits reveal how lovingly Ruth Baumgarte accompanied her aunt’s foster son. Her expressive depiction of his tragic suicide in 1978 (The Decision; CR 465–469) is one of her major works from the 1970s. There is a double portrait study from 1943, which most likely depicts her fellow student Eduard Busse (1914–2003), whom she had met at the university during the life drawing course given by Wilhelm Tank in 1941 (CR 39). The picture presents him once as a student, completely absorbed in his reading and resting his head on his right hand. The study above presents him reflecting on what he has read. release from captivity, since she assumed that he would visit his parents first. In the year of his return from captivity (probably July/August 1946), she painted a spontaneous, very emotional portrait of her husband (Portrait of Eduard Busse; fig. 9) with sketchy, impetuous brushstrokes that leave parts of the paper surface visible. The cigarette in the corner of his mouth and the floppy hat lend him the bearing of an artist bohemian. His eyes, which gaze out of the picture to the right, seem strangely extinguished and traumatized by the war and the hardships he has suffered. His facial expression is wistful and full of melancholy. In contrast to all the other oil paintings from this period, this portrait, which can be described as an unfinished oil sketch, is an indication that she obviously found it difficult to form a clear and unambiguous image of the man she once loved. The experience of war service as a mountain ranger and the imprisonment had alienated him from his wife and separated him from her world. Characteristic of this alienation on the home front is perhaps the anecdote of the wedding night in the air-raid shelter, about which Busse is supposed to have said that, because of the threat of bombing, he felt more at ease at the front than he did here at home.36 On August 13, 1946, almost three years to the day after the wedding, Baumgarte divorced Busse in Bielefeld. Here, the profound estrangement typical of the time is revealed between spouses who had to live in completely different worlds for many years and could no longer find their way back to each other.37 Self-Discovery in Portraiture Baumgarte formulated her aspiration to become an artist in her early self-portraits from the years 1940 to 1947. After this, she created self-portraits at key turning points in her career, for example in 1979 (CR 483) and at the end of her life (Self-Portrait [unfinished], 2011; CR 1056). That same year, Eduard Busse was called up to Her first self-portrait from 1940 resembles a phantom the front in Greece. During a short furlough, he and Ruth Baumgarte married on August 17, 1943. The wedding night took place in an air-raid shelter. From April 1945 onwards, she received no more signs of life from him and moved with her mother to his parents’ home in Bielefeld at the turn of the year 1945/46 to wait for his image (CR 5). Her facial features appear hazy, like a photographic print in a developing tray. The left eye is strikingly detailed, the right eye merely hinted at. It is no coincidence that this unadorned bust portrait, devoid of attributes and references and concentrating entirely on the facial features, is reminiscent of a classical 55

Kunst als Lebensmittel | Art as Nourishment portrait from the Renaissance, a time when individual self-awareness was virtually “invented.” We are witness to her dreamy gaze in the mirror in search of herself. The artist depicts herself in a non-space, isolated from her environment, lonely, exposed to herself. Routine and self-confidence are lacking, and a certain feeling of alienation towards herself is clearly perceptible. We are confronted here with a first self-testimony to her own existence, an attempt to initiate a silent dialogue with herself and the viewer. A drawing from 1940 presents her as a concentrated draftswoman (CR 11). With a certain irony, she titled the self-portrait Peter the Tiny Tot, a nickname her husband Eduard Busse gave her in his field letters because of her occasionally tomboyish demeanor.38 Under the glow of the table lamp, she is focused on her work with a pointed brush and watercolor box. Three years later, we find her sitting across from the viewer en face in ladylike attire (CR 251). The Self-Portrait from 1944 (fig. 10), a chalk drawing, immediately captivates the viewer. With wide-open eyes, she gazes out at the viewer attentively, insistently, and challengingly, as if she were questioning herself. Her hair, tousled by the wind, corresponds to the churning waves of the sea and a threatening wall of clouds rising in the background. Her clenched fist in front of her chest is, in the sense of the topos of the “speaking hand,” a symbol both of willpower39 and of the ability to create something with one’s hands. With this body language and the nature metaphors of a turbulent sea and a bank of dark, menacing clouds in the background, Ruth Baumgarte provides insight into her “troubled” emotional state in the midst of the war, which can be interpreted as a public demonstration of her willingness to now compete as an artist, despite troubled times. In the Self-Portrait with Cap from 1945 (CR 130), Baumgarte gazes out at the viewer questioningly and with a certain melancholy. Wearing overalls, a beret, and a reddish scarf, her outfit suits her new role as a skilled press illustrator for the Berliner Zeitung. In the oil painting Early Self-Portrait from 1947 (CR 199), Ruth Baumgarte presents herself much more confidently. She positions herself in the tradition of the studio painting with all the attributes of an artist on the foremost picture plane. These include the brush in her left hand and the palette in her right. The casual cigarette in the corner of the mouth and the beret fit the image of the existentialist Parisian intellectual and artist scene, which was considered exotic in Germany at the time. Along with the painting of her mother created a year earlier, this self-portrait is among her first oil paintings. The choice of the noble genre, the frontal view, the reduction to a bust portrait, and her open gaze in a white smock and striped sweater seem like an appeal to the local Bielefeld art and theater scene, by which she already felt well received, having participated in her first exhibition there in 1947,40 followed by another in 1948. She regularly attended performances at the municipal theater and found contacts in the theater milieu, including the actor Hans Wintrath,41 who would become a lifelong friend. By contrast, the Self-Portrait with Hat, also from 1947, a watercolor on paper (CR 207), comes across as Biedermeier-like and decorous. Here, she does not present herself to the viewer frontally as in the oil painting, but in a complaisant three-quarter view. Her face looks girlish: she is twenty-three years old. Interiors and Still Lifes The longing for a sense of security in the face of Berlin in ruins is expressed in her watercolor Studio Corner, 1945 (CR 166). She directs the viewer’s gaze to a reading chair with a bookshelf above it. Positioned opposite the easel, it becomes a place to retreat with a book, but also to contemplate one’s own work from a distance. In the center of the composition, she has placed a pitcher with a plant. The black electric cable that cuts through the room pays testimony to the improvisational art of the immediate postwar period and prosaic every- day life. Other works, such as still lifes with candles, apples, and flowers (CR 218–220), were also created during this period. The Still Life with Candle and Apples (CR 219) features a candle stump on a matchbox, which tells of the barrenness of the living conditions and the hardship of the new beginning in Bielefeld. These interiors and still lifes could be interpreted as symptoms of the search for a familiar bourgeois life. Even under the Nazi dictatorship, there was a tendency on the part of the regime, in the “constant alternation of 57

Kunst als Lebensmittel | Art as Nourishment caring and threatening messages,” to refer the members of the “national community” to the “inwardly directed living-room warmth of the ‘state-free sphere’” as a refuge.42 Despite the repressive measures, Nazi ideologues attached great importance to idealizing “intimacy with family or friends” as “the actual purpose of life,” “whereby the outside world, perceived as chaos, lost more and more of its closeness.”43 After his return from emigration in 1949, Theodor W. Adorno expected to find only the trail of destruction left by Nazi barbarism, which had left nothing but “stupor, lack of education, and cynical distrust of everything intellectual,”44 and was astonished by “the voraciously in-depth conversation.” At the same time, he noted the “compulsion to internalize” and the longing for a crown-glass coziness, an “eerie traditionalism without a binding tradition.” He warned against the “ambiguous comfort of security in the provincial” as a distraction from daily misery.45 The drawing Life, around 1950 (fig. 11), which was preceded by three sketches, reflects—not without a certain sarcasm—the “bourgeoisification” of the artist Baumgarte, whose day job as an illustrator depicted in the lower right corner is superimposed by dozens of other activities between household, child-rearing (she reads to her son while knitting), social obligations, and arts and crafts commissions—all of which rotate like a whirl around her self-portrait in the pose of a melancholic woman with her head resting on the hand of her propped up right arm. Her actual artistic work on the easel appears only as a shadowy dream image in the center of the composition. One year after her marriage to Hans Baumgarte on August 30, 1952, she drew a portrait of herself (CR 282) in red chalk as an attractive, young, thoughtful wife and partner. She has discarded the attributes of an artist shown in the portraits of 1945 and 1947—beret, overalls, cigarette, and brush—in favor of her new role at the side of the entrepreneur, whom she portrayed in oil in the same year in bourgeois attire with suit and bow tie (CR 283). Looking at both portraits side by side, the couple appear very serious and aware of their social role and responsibility. There is little or no room here for infatuation and joy in the relationship.46 A later portrait of Hans Baumgarte from 1974 (CR 396) depicts him in frontal view as senior director in his factory. Wonderlands of the Economic Miracle Her relationship with Hans Heinrich Wilhelm Baumgarte (1917–1999), who was still married, and her marriage to him on August 30, 1952, gave Ruth Baumgarte deep insights into the world of West German industry. The industrial milieu had previously been completely foreign to her, despite the fact that she had already shown her interest in depicting working people during her studies—with ink drawings such as Workers on the Roof, (1943; CR 35) and Work Break from the On-Site Loading of the Salt Blocks onto the Shaker Conveyor, (around 1943; CR 33). Parallel to the factory, however, she was also com- mitted to the design and conversion of the private house in the south of Bielefeld. The property became her refuge and also created a certain distance from her husband's work and the extended family (see footnote 35), for whom she worked tirelessly as a wife and mother. In 1932, after the world economic crisis, Hans Baumgarte’s father, August Baumgarte, a long- standing managerial employee, had taken over the old K. & Th. Möllersche Eisengießerei from the bankruptcy assets and, as an independent entrepreneur, transformed the iron foundry on January 1, 1935 into the Eisenwerk Baumgarte GmbH, Dampfkesselbau-Apparatebau-Eisengießerei, Brackwede i. W.47 The policy of forced rearmament during the Nazi regime enabled a rapid upswing of all companies active in heavy industry. The Berlin representation of the Baumgarte company was also able to establish the appropriate contacts with Wehrmacht procurement offices and obtain corresponding orders.48 As potential clients, the state authorities “encountered the goodwill of many steel companies. It was the Ruhr industrialists with whom Hitler was able to succeed early on.”49 Behind the nationalist facade of the Nazi ideologists, Germany experienced a massive second surge of rationalization and modernization starting in 1933. The “national community” was to be deceived about this continuity of development from the “system era” of the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich through the “Heimatschutzstil” (homeland protection style)50 and the integration of nature and technology with the participation of architects, painters, and filmmakers. 59

Kunst als Lebensmittel | Art as Nourishment rule of the USSR became increasingly hostile toward each other. Overshadowed by the emerging Cold War, the economic development of the Western zones began even before the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany,52 also because most of the industrial concerns in Germany had largely escaped damage during the air raids.53 During the year in which the Federal Republic was founded, August Baumgarte and his son Hans celebrated the delivery of the 10,000th boiler on 27 January 1949. This remarkable upswing of the Baumgarte Ironworks was a visible sign of the legendary postwar “Economic Miracle”. The economic resurgence of heavy industry was primarily due to the European Coal and Steel Community—first proposed in 1951 and formally established a year later—which linked the potential of West Germany’s heavy industry with that of its neighbors: the Benelux countries, France, and Italy. In the spirit of this economic upturn, and psychologically encouraged by the “private initiative” propagated by Ludwig Erhard,54 Hans Baumgarte introduced electric welding of all pressurized boiler parts in 1950. In addition to the previous plant at the Kupferhammer, he purchased a large site in Brackwede South for a foundry, which he and his wife, Ruth, inaugurated on September 26, 1953 (fig. 13), and We Are Further Expanding Our Production, 1958 (CR 3182).55 In 1952, a year before Ruth Baumgarte began her large series of illustrations around her husband’s working environment, the heavy industry sector initiated a major art exhibition in Düsseldorf titled Eisen und Stahl (Iron and Steel) in an effort to rid itself of its image as the armorers of the past world war. German President Theodor Heuss was the patron of the exhibition, and Prime Minster Karl Arnold of North Rhine-Westphalia sponsored a generously endowed art competition. The captains of industry discovered their new role as patrons of art and culture. Particularly striking are the full-page advertisements in the appendix of the exhibition catalogue, in which the participating industrial groups professed their commitment to humanism, an example being the Duisburger Kupfer- hütte AG’s slogan: “The goal of economics is the free individual”.56 Unlike in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the paintings and sculptures submitted by the 1,500 participants of the competition did not take sides with the class-conscious proletarian. They avoided any hint of pathos and presented themselves as testimonies of a 13 Ruth Baumgarte Brackwede Süd | Brackwede South, 1956 WV | CR 3172 A painting such as Bernd Templin’s The Mannes- mann Company’s Heinrich-Bierwes Steelworks in Huck- ingen, painted before 1939 (fig. 12), demonstrates the propagated unity of technology and nature, industry and landscape. As in the pictures of socialist realism in the Soviet Union, Templin’s picture shows farmers harvesting grain in the foreground against the backdrop of a mighty steel mill. This was meant to conjure up the unity of steel and grain, city and country- side, workers and peasants. Compared with this propaganda work, Ruth Baumgarte’s drawing Brackwede South,(1956; fig. 13)—depicting the modern factory premises of the Eisenwerk Baumgarte GmbH, which opened in 1953 in then still rural Brackwede (now a district of Bielefeld)—seems almost idyllic. The foreground and middle ground are dominated by rural scenery with a cow and a traditional half-timbered farmstead. The brand-new factory, on the other hand, which was to expand the capacity of the old manufacturing facilities at the Kupferhammer, is pushed far into the background. In 1939 the son Hans Baumgarte, naval architect and engineer, became a co-owner of the firm. At the beginning of World War II production was expanded to include equipment essential for the war effort (see Hanno Sowade in the corporate history of the Baum garte ironworks).51 The firm’s period of expansion came to an end when American forces entered Biele feld on 4 April 1945. The situation in postwar Germany did not change fundamentally until 1946/47, when the Western world under the leadership of the United States and the Eastern bloc under the hegemonial 61

16 Gustav Deppe Überlandzentrale | Grid Power Station, 1949 Tempera auf gipsgeschlämmter Leinwand | Tempera on canvas primed with gypsum, 46,5 x 66,5 cm, Kunsthalle Recklinghausen 17 Harald Duwe Sonntagnachmittag | Sunday Afternoon, 1956–60 Öl auf Leinwand | Oil on canvas, 130 x 180 cm, Leihgabe an die Hamburger Kunsthalle disillusioned, skeptical generation of artists—an attitude that is also characteristic of Ruth Baumgarte’s depictions of factories. Despite the large number of entrants, the exhibition remained a one-off event. The magazine Der Spiegel noted that “up to now, hardly any artists had come up with the idea on their own of going to a steel mill.” The suggestion was therefore made to give the painters commissions to help them both financially and artistically,57 but this instrument, which replaced the free art market in the Soviet Union and its allies, such as the GDR, did not prove popular in West Germany. In addition to Karl Hofer’s dystopian painting Industrial Plant (fig. 14), which depicts a skeleton-like corpse and demonic beasts of prey in front of a reactor plant as an early warning against an uncontrollable technology,58 Thomas Grochowiak (fig. 15), Gustav Deppe (fig. 16), and Emil Schumacher from the artists’ group “junger westen,” founded in 1948, were particularly concerned with industrial topics and images of workers. However, all three of these artists ultimately bowed to the dictates of art politics under the influence of the Cold War and painted abstractly from 1952/53 onwards at the latest. Only the painter Harald Duwe remained committed to a drastic realism, with which he depicted the world of industry—such as in The Great Welder, 1969/70—and the self-abandoned affluent society during the “food frenzy” of the 1950s (fig. 17).59 In contrast to this, Duwe drew Myself with a Cap in black and white ink in 1946: a worker type with an earnest expression60 who, in comparison with the challenging gaze of Otto Nagel’s Young Bricklayer from Stalinallee61 from 1953, pensively contemplates his own situation. After 1945, realism was allowed only in photography.62 In the Ruhr region, the photographers who were primarily concerned with industrial images—in addition to Albert Renger-Patzsch as a traditional figure from the pre-war period and Chargesheimer (Carl-Heinz Hargesheimer)—included Otto Steinert and the fotoform group with Peter Keetmann, Siegfried Lauter- wasser, Toni Schneiders, and Ludwig Windstosser and, last but not least, Bernd and Hilla Becher. Anonymous industrial photographs also documented production and the work of Baumgarte’s employees in the annual customer calendar. It thus made sense for Ruth Baumgarte, possibly inspired by the exhibition Eisen und Stahl, to offer her husband illustrations of the inner workings of his factory. What sets them apart is that the artist had direct access to all areas and facilities of the plant. She could freely choose her models and sketch and draw them directly “from life.” Her pictures appeared alongside the already existing photographs in the company calendars produced between 1952 and 1967. Ruth Baumgarte’s pictures were thus commissioned works in the best sense of the word. They advertised products in the fields of steam-boiler construction, foundry operations, and apparatus engineering, for modern technical equipment and, not least of all, the productive capacity and technical know-how and craftsmanship of the employees and workers of her husband’s company. In addition to advertising, her illustration work also psychologically strengthened the bond between the workforce and the company (fig. 18, p. 64). Ruth Baumgarte benefited, of course, from her ample experience with creating illustrations for the Berliner Zeitung in 1945, the Magazin der Hausfrau63 from 1949 to 1954, and the Freie Presse in Bielefeld from 1949 to 1953.64 Above all, however, she was able to apply her special talent for portraiture. The calendar illustrations always focused on the people at the plant, those who pro- duced the boilers and foundry products (figs. 19, 20, p. 65). With this cycle of works, Ruth Baumgarte occupies an absolutely unique position in West Germany, for no other artist there, let alone a woman artist, has continuously dealt with the steel industry and its workers in portraits over a period of almost fifteen years. 63

19 Ruth Baumgarte Konstrukteur | Draftsman, 1967 WV | CR 3230 20 Ruth Baumgarte Kranführer | Crane Operator, 1967 WV | CR 3232 Socialist realism in East Germany was especially dedicated to this topic. In sharp distinction to the “formalist” art of the West, the artists of the GDR were to serve the people and depict the heroes of labor at work on the construction of socialism. Above all, it was important to show a perspective on the future. As the new social contracting authorities, the party manage- ments in the industrial plants and agricultural production cooperatives of the GDR demanded that the artists reflect an idealized world of work. The portrait of the worker as co-owner and the group portrait of the “autonomously” discussing brigade were preferred subjects. While the detailed rendering of the worker at the workplace was to be committed to “civil realism,” the adjective “socialist” denoted the perspective of unalienated labor, which was “objectively” already realized through the revolutionization of property relations, but “subjectively” could not yet be perceived by the worker, who had to struggle daily with, among other things, obsolete means of production and a stagnant influx of materials. The function of socialist realism was to allow the “socialist character of labor and of our whole society in every sphere and at every workplace also to be experienced subjectively and vividly.”65 The painting Competition Winner (Factory Worker) by Hermann Bruse depicts precisely this type of determined, forward-thinking worker who was to be established as a role model. The GDR had adopted the idea of the competition for the best worker (Stakhanovite) from the Soviet Union. Even though Ruth Baumgarte’s Happy New Year! Baumgarte Ironworks (CR 3159) does indeed depict a young worker, comparable to Bruse’s proletarian, resolutely looking to the future, her portraits of workers are otherwise characterized by a pleasant objectivity. They concentrate on the well-observed technical details of the respective activity—with no trace of pathos. In the foreground of a watercolor from 1958, Morning (Going to Work) (CR 3178), a worker is depicted on his way to the factory in the early morning. A work such as Workers (Man-to-Man Exchange of Experiences) (fig. 21, p. 66) reveals numerous parallels to a photograph by Ludwig Windstosser, Miner with Apprentice (Ruhr Coal)(fig. 22, p. 66), in the sober, unembellished juxtaposition of an experienced master with a younger worker still looking uncertainly into the future. The engineer in the charcoal drawing Boiler Construction Discussion (fig. 23, p. 67) finds his counterpart in the drawing The Physicist (Peter Nerlinger) (fig. 24, p. 67) by Alice Lex-Nerlinger. Equally comparable are Baumgarte’s pensive Portrait of Artur Henze (fig. 25, p. 68) in profile and Lex-Nerlinger’s far from optimistic and confident Klaus Graskovski, Apprentice Lathe Operator at the October 7th Vocational Combine (fig. 26, p. 68). Sitting frontally at a table, he looks out at the viewer, his head resting on his right hand. In front of him is the book Technical Competence for Lathe Operators. The subject matter obviously does not come easy to him. From 1953 onwards, Lex-Nerlinger went to the factory “Grossdrehmaschinenbau 7. Oktober.” In her memoirs from 1956, preserved as a typescript in her estate, she doubted whether “real works of art” could be created at all under the conditions of factory work with tired-out “models.” “Shouldn’t a way have to be found here that […] 65 65

Kunst als Lebensmittel | Art as Nourishment doesn’t require the artist to create a lively, energetic role model for young people out of an utterly exhausted worker?”66 As a member of the Association of Revolutionary Visual Artists of Germany (ARBKD, also known as ASSO), Lea Grundig, like Lex-Nerlinger, also resisted the socialist realism imported from the Soviet Union before 1933. In keeping with the tradition of her verist portraiture developed in the late 1920s and ’30s, Lea Grundig drew portraits such as the Coke Master Oskar Schädlich, Activist at the “Karl Marx” Coal Mine in Zwickau (fig. 27, p. 69), which is comparable in its human dignity to the worker in Ruth Baumgarte’s watercolor Drilling for Oil (Industrialization I) (fig. 28, p. 69). Within the context of the GDR’s cultural experiment known as “Bitterfeld Way,” Lea Grundig became an honorary member of a brigade at the oil processing plant in Schwedt.67 Her Three Women Undergoing Training (fig. 29, p. 70) and Three from the Brigade (fig. 30. p. 70), for example, are not idealized portraits, but ones that depict skeptical, attentive women, self-confident and detached, entirely in the spirit of Ruth Baumgarte’s truthful and unembellished portraiture. The prints created by Baumgarte between 1953 and 1960 are extremely accurate, executed with great attention to technical detail. Source images for the reproductions were the original drawings on paper. What we see are skilled workers concentrating on their various activities, and their close connection with the technology of their respective tools.68 In preparation for the illustrations, Baumgarte also produced precise detail studies such as the Maschine and Lathe Study, 1967 (CR 3228). Beginning in 1964, she produced very free and dynamic watercolors, for example, Ship Loading (1964; CR 3200) and Assembly (1964; CR 3202). Both works also depict Black workers and are indicative of Ruth Baumgarte’s first discovery of the African continent on business trips with her husband. In 1964, she also created the watercolor Industrial Metropolis (CR 3204), which thematizes the ecological consequences of urbanization long before the ecological debates of the 1980s. It shows a towering smokestack rising symbolically above the branches of a bare dead tree against the backdrop of a modern metropolis. Baumgarte’s last series on a dark background are concentrated, emblematic studies of the activities of, for example, a milling cutter, a crane operator, and a design engineer in bright gouache colors that already show influences of American Pop Art, which was very popular in the Rhineland at the time. Compared with the vertical formats with their focus on individual studies of specific activities, the horizontal 23 Ruth Baumgarte Kesselbau Gespräch | Boiler Construction Discussion, 1960 WV | CR 3186 24 Alice Lex-Nerlinger Der Physiker (Peter Nerlinger 30 J. Physiker im Entwicklungslabor der B.J.W. Aktivist) | The Physicist (Peter Nerlinger, 30 Years, Physicist in the Development Lab, B.J.W. Activist), 1953–54 Bleistift | Pencil, 61,6 x 43,4 cm, Privatsammlung | Private collection 67

27 Lea Grundig Koksmeister Oskar Schädlich, Aktivist im Steinkohlenwerk »Karl Marx« in Zwickau aus dem Zyklus Kohle und Stahl für den Frieden | Coke Master Oskar Schädlich, Activist at the “Karl Marx” Coal Mine in Zwickau from the series Charcoal and Steel for Peace, 1951 Lithografie | Lithograph, 61 x 43 cm, Stadt- und Bergbaumuseum Freiberg, Inv.-Nr. 69/7 28 Ruth Baumgarte Ölbohrung (Industrialisierung I) | Drilling for Oil (Industrialization I), 1964 WV | CR 3199 formats allow deep insights into the factory halls and their complex production processes, such as Warehouse with Boiler Construction Materials (Material Warehouse) (fig. 18, p. 64), and Change of Shifts (Workplace) (1961; CR 3188). While unemployment in 1965 had reached its lowest level since 1949, so that full employment prevailed with an acute shortage of labor, the Federal Republic of Germany experienced its first economic downturn in 1967, the year Ruth Baumgarte ended her industrial cycle. Anxiety about the Future Ruth Baumgarte’s watercolors and gouaches from the 1970s and ’80s are very much in the spirit of a new culture of emotion in the Federal Republic that had been emerging since the end of the 1960s. Ruth Baumgarte participated in this, for example, through her reading of Ingeborg Bachmann’s novel Malina. And the volume Der verborgene Eros. Weiblichkeit und Männlichkeit im Zerrspiegel der Künste (The Hidden Eros. Femininity and Masculinity in the Distorting Mirror of the Arts, 1990) by the Berlin-based feminist painter Gisela Breitling in her library attests to Baumgarte’s interest in the increased attention being paid to women painters.69 After her first trip to Germany after the war (August 1949 to March 1950), Hannah Arendt still ascribed to the Germans an “inability to feel” and a “general lack of emotion.”70 She observed phenomena of “a deeply rooted, stubborn, and occasionally brutal refusal to face up to what had actually happened and to come to terms with it.”71 Seventeen years later, the psychoanalysts Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich gave the Germans a clear diagnosis in their book The Inability to Mourn, first published in German in 1967 as Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern. In their study, they showed a connection between the “political and social immobilism and provincialism” prevailing in West Germany and an “insistent suppression of memory and most importantly, the exclusion of all feelings pertaining to crucial events of the past now denied.”72 In the narcissistic identification with the Führer, which aimed at an affirmation of their self-worth, his “failure was a failure of their own ego.” As a result of “an intense defense against guilt, shame, and fear,” the mourning necessary for detachment from this narcissistic love had failed to materialize. Thus, the state of severe melancholy had been avoided and psychic energy had been diverted into reconstruction, but at what cost! The sudden and tremendous disillusionment resulted in a derealization that left its mark on the culture and mentality of the Germans until the 1960s.73 Encouraged by the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961, the Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt am Main from 1963 to 1965, the protests against the Vietnam War, which the Americans logistically waged from West German territory, and the emergency laws passed by West Germany’s grand coalition in May 1968 with a two- thirds majority, the student movement developed a new sensitivity74 to this psychological “state of emergency” in society and the injustices it entailed. “It was precisely the gap between their own sensitivity and the alleged insensitivity and emotional numbness of mainstream society that gave the 68ers their revolutionary mission.”75 69

Kunst als Lebensmittel | Art as Nourishment This societal change is also manifested in the work of Ruth Baumgarte; one need only compare the watercolors Coffee Scene (CR 3277), Worlds of Fashion (CR 3282), and Experiencing Movement (CR 3279) from 1956 with the charcoal drawing Fear (CR 752) from 1986. Baumgarte now turned to topics that weighed down on and distressed her personally—such as the fear of the arms race in the wake of the rearmament debates in the early 1980s, and the risks of nuclear power in connection with the reactor disaster on April 26, 1986 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, near the Ukrainian city of Pripyat, which had been founded in 1970. An example of this is And the White-Colored Faces Were Suddenly Black (Atomic Cloud) (fig. 31). With the watercolor Do not pass this point (CR 793), Ruth Baumgarte also dealt with the AIDS epidemic, which spread worldwide in the 1980s. Referencing the biblical story of Adam and Eve, she shows the limits in the game of erotic attraction. The watercolor Come Clean (1984; CR 674)—which depicts a Wehrmacht soldier with shouldered rifle in the foreground, red paint flowing over his uniform coat from the background, while behind him a family with children huddles together in front of an invisible danger—recalls the repressed guilt of the Germans. Ruth Baumgarte may have been inspired to address this topic by the four-part American television series Holocaust. The Story of the Family Weiss (1978), which aired on German television in January 1979. Twenty million viewers, including the Baumgarte family, watched it. The episodes were followed by “open-ended discussions.” The program represented a decisive break in German perceptions of the genocide of European Jews perpetrated by Germans. Despite criticism of the fictionalization of the horror, the film made possible for the first time emotional involvement with the Shoah on the personal level of a family story. Ruth Baumgarte probably discussed this film with her former lecturer at the Private Art School of the West, Hans Scholz. He had become a lifelong friend with whom she maintained a lively intellectual exchange. On this occasion, she would have recalled reading his 1955 novel Am grünen Strand der Spree (On the Green Beach of the Spree), published in 1955.79 She presumably also saw the five episodes of the television adaptation of this novel, directed by Fritz Umgelter, which were broadcast as a “mini-series” between March 22 and May 17, 1960.80 31 Ruth Baumgarte Folge Und die weißverfärbten Gesichter waren plötzlich schwarz (Atomwolke) | From the series And the White Discolored Faces Were Suddenly Black (Atomic Cloud), 1986 WV | CR 747 Political activism promised a liberating escape from this oppressive situation. And so in 1967, the daughter of Margarete and Alexander Mitscherlich, Monika Seifert, founded the first Kinderladen in Frankfurt am Main, an “alternative” kindergarten that became the model of a movement for a repression-free education of children. West Germans were first shown the “limits to growth” in 1972,76 and from November 25, 1973 onwards, they were made truly aware of the finite nature of resources by the memorable images of empty autobahns. A nation- wide ban on driving on four consecutive Sundays was intended to save fuel. The magazine Der Spiegel declared the “end of the affluent society.”77 The “explosion of fears” in the 1970s, revealed by a survey conducted by the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research on behalf of Der Spiegel in April 1974, was not, however, related only to the economic situation. The new status of the psychological sciences contributed “to this change, as did new notions of subjectivity that assigned a higher value to feelings” and “permitted or even encouraged the open articulation of fear.”78 71

Kunst als Lebensmittel | Art as Nourishment Especially the filming of the first episode, in which Major Lepsius, back from Soviet captivity, reads from the diary of his friend Jürgen Wilms, who witnessed a mass shooting of Jews in Poland,81 is considered to be the “first explicit visualization of the Holocaust on West German television”82—almost twenty years before the Holocaust television series—apart, that is, from the broadcast of the 1956 documentary film Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog, 1957), directed by Alain Resnais. In contrast to the American television series, Scholz was able to emphasize in interviews that he had not made anything up in his novel but had experienced everything himself or learned it from a reliable source.83 If one reads the book as a Künstlerroman (artist’s novel),84 in which Hans Scholz confronts his entanglement with the past and how to deal with it in the present, it is conceivable that the book offered Ruth Baumgarte an orientation for her own emancipation as an artist giving an account of her contemporary witnessing. Guilt and shame over the murder of the Jews is also ex- pressed in her three-part work One-Eyed David (CR 616–624). A self-portrait from 1979 (fig. 32) shows her standing in a doorway, her left hand propped against a door panel and with a very serious expression on her face as she fixes her gaze on the viewer, who is on the other side of the threshold. In the background, the view opens onto a historicist building complex and a modern glass facade on the left side. The scenery is reminiscent of Berlin apartment buildings with their spacious courtyard passageways. The self-portrait possibly signals the farewell to her regular visits to Berlin and may refer to her coming travels to Africa. At the threshold of this new phase of her life, the original, uncropped version of the drawing clearly shows her right hand making a defensive gesture, as if she now wants to resist the previous demands on her person more consistently. With this increasingly self-confident gaze, she picks up on her self-portrait from 1944 (CR 79). In retrospect, it becomes apparent that the two self-portraits are threshold images, each representing an important period of her artistic development. In both cases, she confronts the viewers and takes a direct and scrutinizing look at them, but also at herself. From 1964 on, she had increasingly distanced herself inwardly from her husband and his factory world, but a divorce was out of the question. For her generation, the motto was “Never give up and carry on.” Well into the 1980s, she worked late into the night and still got up early at six o’clock to make breakfast for the family. With the death of her mother in August 1969, for whom she had always felt responsible and who had played a very dominant role in the family, Ruth Baumgarte began to detach herself from her previous life devoted to the family.85 The watercolor Church in Killarney (County Cork) (CR 346), inspired by a trip to Ireland in 1969, depicts in dark colors the ruinous-looking church embedded in a gloomy cemetery backdrop against a dramatically illuminated evening sky. The veduta becomes an allegory of the deceased mother. The death of her mother in 1969, the death of her aunt Anna-Marie Schubert in 1976, and the suicide of her foster son, Dieter, in 1978 (cf. the watercolor The Decision, 1978; CR 465) found an echo in the winter paintings (Late Winter, 1975; Winter Death I, II, and III, 1982; Flotsam [Study for Winter Death III], 1982; CR 401, 590–593), which can be read as metaphors for a new ice age between spouses as in West German society at the time, which was paralyzed by the terrorism of the Red Army Faction. The more Ruth Baumgarte emancipated herself from her family obligations, the more radically she found in these cycles of pictures a new visual language for her ambivalent feelings in the face of the apocalyptic moods of the late 1970s and ’80s. In this process of discovery, her painting underwent a fundamental change. The professional drawings and paintings from the industrial world of her husband, which were oriented toward facts, toward the objectivity of a matter-of-fact, closely observing approach to her subject, were replaced by a completely new mode of representation. She still used watercolor and gouache, as well as drawing, but the atmosphere changed fundamentally. Gloomy, dark tones dominated, the representation moving away from a sober depiction to symbolist, even surreal compositions. Now, metaphors and allegories played an important role. The pictorial planes push together, interweave, and intertwine to form an increasingly two-dimensional composition, which is occasionally reminiscent of stained-glass windows. She was also encouraged in her ever more autonomous art by the new appreciation of painting in exhibitions such as The New Spirit in Painting at the Royal Academy 73

33 Ruth Baumgarte Nachtfalter (Circus Dreamer) | Moth (Circus Dreamer), 1990 WV | CR 873 considered a highlight of her life’s work. Here, she let expressive forms and elementary colors speak and developed her painterly autonomy further into large dynamic compositions and triptychs. Ruth Baumgarte was a woman who quite unpreten- tiously did her artistic work for herself. For her, art was not an end in itself or an object of prestige to make a ca- reer with, but a source of nourishment to be able to better bear an existence beset by war and crises: “With my pictures, I am handing over to you my life; my fears, my joys, my longings, good fortune, and grief.”88 in London in 1981 and Zeitgeist at the Martin-Gropius- Bau in Berlin in 1982. Until the end of the 1970s, painting was still considered to be completely behind the times. The art scene was dominated by Arte Povera, Minimalism, conceptual art, video art, and photography, whereas in the 1980s, a “hunger for pictures”86 prevailed once again. With Moth (Circus Dreamer) (fig. 33), 1990, executed in pastel chalk on cardboard, Ruth Baumgarte reacted to the collapse of the communist world and the triumph of the free West over communism. Behind the boy in the left half of the picture, the view is of a stage framed with yellow stars, on which circus jesters perform for a timelessly beautiful world of entertainment and prosperity. With the end of the Cold War, history had seemingly come to a halt and reached a state of general bliss. The metallic-looking fence in the foreground counteracts this feeling and disenchants the scene as a grand illusion. With this image, her cycle dealing with anxiety about the future comes to an impressive conclusion; accompanied by an oppressive feeling. Even before the end of the Cold War, Ruth Baumgarte had increasingly distanced herself from the fear-stricken West German world of the 1980s to her long-envisaged dream destination of Africa. More than forty trips between 1984 and 2004 took her to a number of countries including South Africa, Tanzania, and Namibia. In order to adequately approach the intensity of African light, she resorted to oil paint again after a long break.87 On these journeys of discovery, she created some seventy oil paintings, which can certainly be 75

Kunst als Lebensmittel | Art as Nourishment 8 After Max Kutschmann and the provisionally appointed sculptor Wilhelm Gerstel, Otto von Kursell (1884–1967), an ideolog- ically convinced supporter of the Nazi system who had been appointed in 1933 to replace the ostracized modernists, became the school’s rector. As early as 1923, Kursell had written in the NSDAP party organ Völkischer Beobachter: “The beauty of antiquity or the Italian Renaissance, on which we have educated our notion of art, […] is alien to our nature, it has […] corrupted our eyes. […] The beauty of German art is an inwardly struggling longing, not outwardly measured perfection, and its form often encloses the content jaggedly and angularly, often painfully transparent and inharmonious in the classical sense.” Otto von Kursell, “Eigenes und Fremdes in unserer bildenden Kunst,” in: Völkischer Beobachter, no. 188, September 14, 1923. Quoted in: Klaus Wolbert, Die Nackten und die Toten des “Dritten Reiches.” Folgen einer politischen Geschichte des Körpers in der Plastik des deutschen Faschismus (Giessen 1982), p. 94 [translated]. In this spirit, Kursell evacuated parts of the school to Silesia together with Wilhelm Tank as the “Kursell Group” to produce propaganda material in the sense of the “total wartime deployment” of art. in Berlin in 1933. After the war, he held professorships at the art academies in Stuttgart and Karlsruhe and made a name for himself as a trainer of painting restorers. He was an advisor to prominent artists such as Wassily Kandinsky and Willi Baumeister and was involved in spectacular forgery trials (van Gogh, Rembrandt). 6 Gerhard Ulrich (Berlin 1903–1988 Gütersloh), made a name for himself primarily as an illustrator. Cf. Gerhard Ulrich, Zeichnen nach der Natur (Darmstadt and Vienna 1963); Ulrich, Welt der Malerei. Einführung in ihr Wesen, ihre Grundlagen und Gesetze (Gütersloh 1965); Ulrich, Illustration und Buchausstattung (Berlin 1973). 7 Reclining Woman (around 1940; CR 9); Female Nude (Seated) (around 1943; CR 47); Female Nude (Kneeling) (around 1943; CR 42); Female Nude (Reclining) (around 1943; CR 43); Female Nude (Standing) (around 1943; CR 40); Nude Boy (Standing) (around 1943; CR 48); Male Nude (Seated) (1943; CR 46). By contrast, only a few semester assignments from Gerhard Ulrich for illustrations were in- fluenced by the style of the Nazi period: cf. Faust I “Valentine’s Death” (1943; CR 32), chalk and pencil on paper; 1st Illustration Attempt at the Academy: Götz von Berlichingen (around 1942; CR 17), bister chalk and pencil on paper; and Scene from Tiefland (around 1943; CR 70), chalk and India ink (brush) on paper. I would like to thank Alexander Baumgarte for the numerous references to the life and work of his mother. I would also like to thank Viola Weigel and Wiebke Steinmetz for their many suggestions and concrete advice. They gave me access to the archive and the diaries and provided insight into their biographical research, on which this text is based, unless stated otherwise. 1 Cf. the descriptions of these works in: Gerhard Charles Rump, “Mit der Zeit, über die Zeit. Ruth Baumgarte und die Entwicklung der Westkunst,” in: Ruth Baumgarte 1923–2013. Hommage zum 90. Geburtstag, exh. cat. Samuelis Baumgarte Galerie, (Bielefeld 2013), pp. 6–7. Alexander Baumgarte remembers his mother’s stories about a Gypsy family in Karlshorst. In 1943, Himmler had the Gypsy camp in Marzahn cleared. Many Roma and Sinti were deported to Auschwitz; some were able to escape. Ruth Baumgarte depicted this situation in her large drawing from 1943. The Wuhlheide train station and the allotment garden, where “Gypsies” and Jews hid, were only a good two kilometers from her apartment. (Telephone conversation with Alexander Baumgarte, March 2, 2020.) 2 Among other things, he wrote the screenplay for and directed the documentary Das Wort aus Stein (The word of stone, 1939, Universum Film AG, UFA Berlin, 18 minutes, cf. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v= DQ-0-BzZfjY [accessed on May 3, 2021]), which visualizes the conversion of Munich and Berlin into model cities of National Socialism without commentary, with tracking shots through the respective city models accompanied by music. 3 From 1939 onwards, the Vereinigte Staatsschulen für freie und angewandte Kunst (United State Schools for Fine and Applied Arts), which had been formed in 1924 from the Hochschule der bildenden Künste (Academy of Fine Arts) and the Unterrichtsanstalt des Kunstgewerbemuseums (Training Institute of the Museum of Applied Arts), were called the Staatliche Hochschule für bildende Künste (State Academy of Fine Arts). Cf. Wolfgang Ruppert, Künstler im Nationalsozialismus (Cologne/ Weimar/Vienna 2015), p. 14. 4 Parallel to her studies, she became an employee of Wolfgang Kaskeline’s animated film studio in Berlin. For more details, see the essay by Rolf Giesen in this volume (pp. 134—145). 5 Kurt Wehlte (1897–1973) studied at the Dresden Akademie der Bildenden Künste (Academy of Fine Arts), and later at the Kunstakademie München (Munich Academy of Art), including painting technique with Max Doerner. For Harvard University, he worked from 1928 onwards on painterly experiments with X-rays and has since been regarded worldwide as a pioneer of this technique. On the recommendation of Max Slevogt, he was appointed professor at the Staatliche Hochschule für bildende Künste 77

Kunst als Lebensmittel | Art as Nourishment 9 See Martin Fenner, “Auf jedem Stein erglänzt das Silberlicht,“ in: Ruth Baumgarte. Herkunft/Prägung/Zäsuren, exh. cat. Kulturhaus Karlshorst, Berlin 2017, p. 23. The negative reply was based on the decree of the Reich Ministry of Science, Education and Culture of October 11, 1944, which regulated that all “female persons born between 1920 and 1924”—insofar as they had already completed their labor service—were to be registered for “other war deployment” (see p. 24, note 92). A career as an artist in the GDR, which would have suited her figurative art, thus possibly remained closed to her. She did not accept an invitation from Gerhard Kettner, the great draftsman and portraitist in Dresden, who also had a very good reputation as a rector and university teacher, to take on a teaching position or guest professorship at the academy of art there in 1988/89. She was, however, repeatedly in Berlin and also in East Berlin, but never returned to Karlshorst. She was in contact with the East Berlin painters Harald Metzkes and Manfred Zoller, as well as with Ralf Kerbach, who was a student of Kettner. (Telephone conversation with Alexander Baumgarte, March 2, 2020). 10 Boy with Cap (1943; CR 36), pastel; Portrait of a Boy (1944; CR 81); Portrait of a Young Lady (1944; CR 80); Young Man (1945; CR 137); and, for example, the two oil paintings Untitled (Portrait of a Boy) (1946; CR 175) and Schoolboy (Way to School) (1946; CR 177). 11 Portrait of a Man (1945; CR 152); Old Man in Profile (1944; CR 95); Old Man with Cap (1944; CR 97). 12 Ruth Baumgarte, letter to Eduard Busse, July 1945, in: exh. cat. Kulturhaus Karlshorst 2017 (see note 9), p. 128 [translated]. 13 Quoted in: Martin Bodenstein, “Die Künstlerin Ruth Baumgarte wird heute 75. Werk als Laudatio auf das Leben. Faszinierende Farben der Erinnerung,” in: Neue Westfälische, June 27, 1998 [translated]. 14 Manfred Bluth, Weltbild und Bilderwelt. Notizen eines Malers am Ende von Zeit und Kunst (Munich and Berlin 1986), p. 31 [translated]. 15 Thomas Grochowiak, quoted from interview montage by Barbara Straka and Marie-Theres Suermann, in: Grauzonen/ Farbwelten. Kunst und Zeitbilder 1945–1955, ed. Bernhard Schulz, exh. cat. Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Berlin 1983, p. 292 [translated]. In 1950, Grochowiak was still painting figuratively and realistically, for example Fördermaschinist (Hoist Operator) and Trecker tankt (Tractor during Refueling). As early as 1951, abstract structures then began to dominate his paintings, such as Technischer Bezirk (Technical District, 1951). From 1953 onwards, he painted only in an abstract, gestural manner, for example Im Universum (In the Universe) from 1953/54. 16 For more on the dispute over 20 Modernist art history diagnosed abstraction and realism and the Kulturkampf during the Cold War, see the essay by Helmut Lethen in this volume, pp. 18–41; cf. also Eckhart Gillen, Feindliche Brüder? Der Kalte Krieg und die deutsche Kunst 1945-1990 (Berlin/Bonn 2009). 17 For more on Werner Haftmann’s role in the Cold War, cf. Eckhart Gillen, “Kunst als Einklang mit der universalen Harmonie. Werner Haftmanns Konzept einer ‘Harmonikalen’ Kunst auf der documenta 1955 als Versöhnung mit der NS-Vergan- genheit und Idiom einer freien Welt,” in: Historische Urteils- kraft. Magazin des Deutschen Historischen Museums, no. 2, 2020, pp. 30–35. 18 Viking Eggeling and Hans Richter, “Universelle Sprache” (Fort in der Lausitz 1920) [translated]; https://link. springer.com/chapter/ 10.1007%2F978-1-137-08032- 5_10 [accessed on July 21, 2021]. See also: Justin Hofmann, “Hans Richter – Filmemacher des Konstruktivismus,” in: Stephen C. Foster (ed.), Hans Richter. Activism, Modernism and the Avant-Garde (Cambridge/London 1998), pp. 9–15. 19 Alfred Schmeller, “Grund zu Optimismus in der Kunst,” in: magnum. Die Zeitschrift für das moderne Leben, no. 21, 1958 [translated]. a crisis in portrait painting as early as the mid-nineteenth century. The history of the portrait as an interpretation of a person, or in the case of the self-portrait as a “self-relation,” focuses on the period between the fourteenth and the nine- teenth centuries. “Just as the twentieth century no longer follows the pattern of self- referential individuality, so the Middle Ages and antiquity did not yet.” Cf. Gottfried Boehm, Bildnis und Individuum. Über den Ursprung der Porträtmalerei in der italienischen Renaissance (Munich 1985, p. 13). The portrait nevertheless experienced an unexpected renaissance in Expres- sionism and New Objectivity. 21 Although it is not possible to date precisely, a portrait of her father (CR 174) was painted between 1940 and 1958. He appears stiff in a three-quarter portrait with suit, tie, and white shirt, gazing introspectively. Here, the painter’s distance from her father, whom she admired and revered from afar but with whom she found no emotional relationship, becomes palpable. The commentary in the catalogue raisonné casts doubt on whether the portrait was painted by the artist herself. 22 As part of another labor service, she had to prepare plans together with trained cartog- raphers. Cf. Fenner 2017 (see note 9), p. 24. Eduard Busse, her husband at the time, mentions this activity in a field letter dated April 11, 1945. 79

Kunst als Lebensmittel | Art as Nourishment 23 Alexander Baumgarte’s 31 Alexander Baumgarte 35 Telephone conversation with 40 For example, in February 1947 remembers conversations with his mother in which she spoke of a suicide attempt she made together with her mother out of fear of being raped by Red Army soldiers. Fortunately, the suicide attempt failed because she had cut the artery incorrectly. Her mother is also said to have made her up and dressed her to look old; cf. Fenner 2017 (see note 9), p. 13. Many women at the time debated “whether to slit the arteries transversely or—better—lengthwise”; cf. Cornelius Ryan, Der Letzte Kampf (Munich et al. 1966), p. 30; quoted in: Schäfer 2009 (see note 24), p. 145 [translated]. 32 Cf. Deutsch-Russisches Museum Berlin-Karlshorst, catalogue of the permanent exhibition, Deutsch-Russisches Museum Berlin-Karlshorst, Berlin 2014. 33 Peter de Mendelssohn, German émigré and British press officer in July 1945 from the perspective of the Allied Officers’ Club in Zehlendorf. Quoted in: Wolfgang Schivel- busch, Vor dem Vorhang. Das geistige Berlin 1945–1948 (Munich 1995), p. 33 [translated]. 34 The Berliner Zeitung was launched on May 21, 1945 as the “Organ of the Red Army Command,” making it the first German daily newspaper after the war. From August 2, 1945 onwards, it was run as the “Official Organ of the Magistrate of Berlin” and from 1953 onwards was subordinate to the Central Committee of the ruling Communist Party, the SED. Alexander Baumgarte, April 13, 2020. In addition to Thomas (b. April 11, 1947),CR 306, from the marriage to Eduard Busse and her children from the marriage to Hans Baumgarte, Janine (CR 350) and Alexander (CR 366), the family also included two sons from her husband’s first marriage. 36 Passed on by Alexander Baumgarte from a story told by his mother. Cf. Fenner 2017 (see note 9), p. 21. 37 Cf. the chapter “Liebe 47. Heimkehr der ausgebrannten Männer,” in: Harald Jähner. Wolfszeit. Deutschland und die Deutschen 1945–1955 (Berlin 2020), pp. 149–61: “Hundreds of thousands of our mothers or grandmothers told of how, after years, their husbands suddenly stood at the front door with their discharge certificates in their hand, as if they had to identify themselves.” (p. 149) “For years after their arrival, some men were still spoken of as ‘home- comers’ because people wanted to excuse their strange behavior.” [translated] See also: Wolfgang Schmidbauer, “Ich wusste nie, was mit Vater ist.” Das Trauma des Krieges (Reinbek 1998). 38 Cf. the salutations “Mein geliebtes Peterlein” (My beloved little Peter) in a letter dated October 18, 1943, and “Mein geliebtes Peterherz” (My beloved Peter-Heart) in a letter probably from October 24, 1943. 39 I have to thank Viola Weigel for pointing this out. recollection of stories told by his mother. Quoted in: Fenner 2017 (see note 9), p. 24. 24 Cf. Laurenz Demps, “Die Luftangriffe auf Berlin. Ein dokumentarischer Bericht” (part II), in: Jahrbuch des Märkischen Museums, no. 8, 1982, p. 24; quoted in: Hans Dieter Schäfer, “Der Untergang von Berlin,” in: Schäfer, Das ge- spaltene Bewußtsein. Vom Dritten Reich bis zu den langen Fünfziger Jahren (Göttingen 2009), p. 132. 25 Fritz Lehmann in: Jochen Köhler, Klettern in der Großstadt. Volkstümliche Geschichten vom Überleben in Berlin 1933–1945 (Berlin 1979), p. 220; quoted in: Schäfer 2009, (see note 24), p. 132 [translated]. 26 Meldungen aus dem Reich. Die geheimen Lageberichte des Sicher- heitsdienstes der SS 1938–1945, ed. Heinz Boberach, 17 vols. and an index volume (Herrsching 1984 and 1985) (March 16, 1944) [translated]. 27 Hans-Georg von Studnitz, Als Berlin brannte. Diarium der Jahre 1943–1945 (Stuttgart 1963), p. 179 (April 17, 1944); quoted in: Schäfer 2009 (see note 24), p. 132. 28 Cf. Miriam Gebhardt, Als die Soldaten kamen. Die Ver- gewaltigung deutscher Frauen am Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs (Munich 2015). 29 Horst Lange, Tagebücher aus dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, ed. Hans Dieter Schäfer, with a biography compiled by Oda Schaefer (Mainz 1979), p. 193 (February 2, 1945) [translated]. 30 Josef Orlopp, Zusammenbruch und Aufbau Berlins 1945/46 (Berlin 1947), p. 28; quoted in: Schäfer 2009 (see note 24), p. 132. at the exhibition Deutsches Buchschaffen (German Book Art), for which she submitted the ink and charcoal drawing Arbeiter auf dem Dach (Workers on the Roof) from 1943 (CR 35), and in 1948 at an exhibition of children’s portraits, where she showed several of her impressive and touching portraits of boys and girls. It was there that she met her future husband, Hans Baumgarte. 41 Portrait of Hans Wintrath (CR 202) and Portrait of Hans Wintrath in costume and make-up (CR 318). 42 Schäfer 2009 (see note 24), p. 92 [translated]. 43 Ibid., p. 91 [translated]. 44 Theodor W. Adorno, “Auf- erstehung der Kultur in Deutsch- land?”, in: Frankfurter Hefte. Zeitschrift für Kultur und Politik, vol. 5, no. 5, May 1950, pp. 469–76 [translated]. On behalf of Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno arrived in Frankfurt am Main in early November 1949 to explore the possibilities of repatriating the Institute for Social Research, which had been closed by the Nazis in March 1933. Apart from the fact that the professors who had remained in Germany had little sympathy for the emigrants (it took seven years for the 1949 “associate” professor to finally become a “full” professor in 1956), Adorno soon had no illusions about the intellectual situation of the West German “colony” in the “conflict of the two total tickets.” [translated] 45 Ibid., pp. 472–74 [translated]. 46 Ruth Baumgarte told her son that she had been persuaded by her mother to enter into this marriage of convenience. In retrospect, she was convinced that she had paid for marrying a man she did not really love. Telephone conversation between Alexander Baumgarte and the author, November 2019. 81

Kunst als Lebensmittel | Art as Nourishment of the armed forces led to the inclusion of Russian prisoners of war in the work processes. … today [1944, author's note] a total of 110 Russians are employed, working in some cases as electric welders, lathe operators, auxiliary boiler forgers, molders and pattern- makers.” (ibid., p. 30, estate of the Ruth Baumgarte Art Foundation). 52 Hanno Sowade 2018, p. 42. 53 Even at the height of the American daylight bombings in 1944, for example, only 6.5 percent of the machine tools in Germany were destroyed, according to the Bielefeld-based economic historian Werner Abelshauser in his Deutsche Wirtschafts- geschichte. Von 1945 bis in die Gegenwart (Munich 2011). 54 It was not Ludwig Erhard but Chancellor Konrad Adenauer who set the course for economic policy. Against Erhard’s resist- ance, he pushed through the European Payments Union, the European Economic Community (EEC), and the major pension reform (dynamic pension). Cf. Ulrike Herrmann, Deutsch- land, ein Wirtschaftsmärchen. Warum es kein Wunder ist, dass wir reich geworden sind (Frankfurt/ Main 2019), pp. 53–80. 55 After the death of Hans Baumgarte in 1999, his son from his first marriage, Ernst-August Baumgarte, took over the business. 56 Cf. Lutz Engelskirchen, “Eisen und Stahl – Ausstellungen zum Industriebild in Deutschland,” in: exh. cat. Die zweite Schöpfung (see note 49), p. 112 [translated]. 57 “Industrie. Ein roter Klecks” (exhibition review), in: Der Spiegel, no. 19, May 6, 1952 [translated], available online at: https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/ ein-roter-klecks-a-23881cef- 0002-0001-0000-000021976794 [accessed on July 30, 2021]. 58 The world’s first nuclear power 63 Cf. the comments on this in the plant to feed electrical energy into a public power grid was built in the Soviet Union in June 1954, and the first commercial plant was built in Great Britain in 1956. 59 Wolfgang Protzner, “Vom Hunger- winter bis zum Beginn der ‘Freßwelle,’” in: Protzner (ed.): Vom Hungerwinter zum kulinarischen Schlaraffenland. Aspekte einer Kulturgeschichte des Essens in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Stuttgart 1987), pp. 11–30 [translated]. 60 The estate of Harald Duwe, comprising some 400 oil paintings and 200 drawings, is in the possession of his family in Grossensee, near Hamburg. 61 A few months after the founding of the GDR on October 7, 1949, Walter Ulbricht and the SED leadership decided on the construction of Stalinallee. They wanted to set an example and saw the boulevard as a symbol of reconstruction, also in relation to the economically stronger West after the currency reform and the founding of the state. In the following years, apartment blocks were built along a 2.3-kilometre stretch of the boulevard, the design of which deliberately took a stand against modernism. The construction of Stalinallee was accompanied with great propaganda effort. In 1952 alone, the Cultural Fund financed seven commissions for the artistic representation of Stalinallee. Otto Nagel portrayed the worker as a representative of the workers’ and farmers’ state directly in front of the construction site. 62 At that time, however, the medium of photography was not yet seen as being equal to painting as fine art. This was achieved for the first time with the photography section at documenta 6, 1977, in Kassel. essay by Christmut Präger in vol. III of the catalogue raisonné, pp. 208–223. 64 Cf. ebd., pp. 104–119. 65 Beiträge zur sozialistischen Arbeitskultur (East Berlin 1973), p. 90 [translated]. From the authentic perspective of a writ- ing worker, the crane operator K. B. reported on a visit to the studio of Professor Paul Michaelis from Dresden and his conversation about his painting Jugendbrigade Albert Einstein vom Prüffeld Robotron 300 (Albert Einstein Youth Brigade from the Robotron 300 Test Field): “What did I see? In the painting, four young people are grouped around the control panel of the R 300 electronic data processing system. […] They are calibrating and testing the completely assembled system. […] ‘It was a good cooperation,’ I heard the voice of the professor say. ‘They pointed out my mistake. Look at the young woman on the left. There was once a fourth male engineer in that place. […] A socialist collective without a woman—that is an absurdity. […] I failed to take a typical artistic element into consideration. If at present there are few women in the test field, tomorrow there will be many. That is the perspective, and we must make that visible with our painting.’ […] ‘It is not a matter of portrait-like resemblance. […] What interests me is the type of the new engi- neer, technician, or scientist […], the newness in their faces, the future-oriented aspect.” Anonymous, “Ein Bild entsteht. Der Kranführer K. B. schreibt in das Tagebuch seiner Brigade über einen Atelierbesuch bei Professor P. Michaelis,” in: Zeit der Menschenwürde. XX Jahre Deutsche Demokratische Republik, commemorative brochure of the Council of the District of Dresden (Dresden 1969), pp. 35–38 [translated]. 47 On the history of the ironworks, see Hanno Sowade, “... Arbeit gebietet die Forderung des Tages ...,” in: Ruth Baumgarte und das Wirtschaftswunder. Farbrausch am Kessel, exh. cat. Hoesch Museum, Dortmund (Cologne 2018), p. 23. 48 The company’s chronicle of 1944 calls March 16, 1935, the day of the reintroduction of “military sovereignty” and the reintroduc- tion of general conscription a decisive “day for the German economy,” p. 12 [translated]. 49 Lutz Engelskirchen, “Eisen und Stahl – Ausstellungen zum Industriebild in Deutschland,” in: Die zweite Schöpfung. Bilder der industriellen Welt vom 18. Jahrhundert bis in die Gegenwart, ed. Sabine Beneke and Hans Ottomeyer, exh. cat. Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin 2002, pp. 110–11 [translated]. 50 Fritz Todt, Inspector General for German Highways and from 1940 onwards Reich Minister for Armaments and Ammunition, who was responsible for planning the Reichsautobahn construction, described himself as the strongest “guardian of the Heimatschutz idea” and placed himself in the tradition of the Heimatschutz Association, founded in 1904. Cf. Fritz Todt, Der Mensch. Der Ingenieur. Der Nationalsozialist (Oldenburg 1943). Cf. also Erhard Schütz, “‘...Verankert fest im Kern des Bluts.’ Die Reichsautobahn – mediale Visionen einer organi- schen Moderne im ‘Dritten Reich,’” in: Faszination des Organischen. Konjunktur einer Kategorie der Moderne, ed. Hartmut Eggert, Erhard Schütz, and Peter Sprengel (Munich 1995), pp. 231–61. 51 Hanno Sowade 2018, see note 47. See also the history of the company 1944, p. 28: “The state had become the principal client in all fields.” On the employment of Russian prisoners of war: “In 1942 negotiations with the relevant departments 83

Kunst als Lebensmittel | Art as Nourishment 81 The editor of the Hoffmann & Campe publishing house wanted to delete the depiction of the massacre of the Jews in order to spare the readers. Cf. Moritz Baßler, “Leichter werden. Zu Programm und Struktur von Hans Scholz’ Roman ‘Am grünen Strand der Spree,’” in Heck et al. 2020 (see note 79), p. 34. 82 Ibid, p. 213 [translated]. Unlike the book, the director Umgelter “shows the mass shooting as a crime of the Wehrmacht. […] In the sequence, the armbands of the soldiers of the Latvian People’s Army read ‘In the service of the German Wehrmacht’”, p. 214 [translated]. By contrast, the book speaks only of Latvian civilians with white armbands. Cf. the edition of the novel as a paperback (Munich 1976), p. 59. That same year, the book Der gelbe Stern – Die Judenverfolgung in Europa 1933–1945 (The Yellow Star – The Persecution of Jews in Europe 1933–1945) by Gerhard Schönberner was also released in Gütersloh, the first publication of 196 pictorial documents on the Shoah. 83 See “Fontane-Preis. Boccaccio in der Bar,” in: Der Spiegel, no. 12, March 21, 1956, p. 45. Quoted in: Baßler 2020 (see note 81), p. 43. 84 Cf. Antonie Magen, “Am grünen Strand der Spree – So gut wie ein Künstlerroman,” in: Heck et al. 2020 (see note 79), p. 90. 85 I follow here the memories of her son Alexander Baumgarte, which he shared with me during a telephone conversation on April 13, 2020. 86 Cf. Wolfgang Max Faust and Gerd de Vries, Hunger nach Bildern. Deutsche Malerei der Gegenwart (Cologne 1987). 87 Cf. Beate Reifenscheid, “Ich möchte nirgendwo lieber sein als in AFRIKA,” and “Ruth Baumgarte – Annäherung an den fremden Kontinent,” in: Ruth Baumgarte. Turn of the Fire, ed. Peter Joch, exh. cat. Ludwig Museum Koblenz and Ludwig Museum im Marmorpalast, State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg 2017; Ruth Baumgarte. Vision Africa. Turn of the Fire, exh. cat. Städtisches Museum Braunschweig (with texts by Beate Reifenscheid and Helmut Lethen in the catalogue raisonné). 88 “With my pictures, I am handing over to you my life; my fears, my joys, my longings, good fortune and grief. My life has been a colorful, confusing, exciting—and do not believe unhappy—film that occasionally frightened me, very often amused me, and never left me feeling lonely. I learned—without pain—to do without—I felt secure in myself—a piece of blue sky, a bird chirping, the starry sky, an unexpected joy, that was already the happiness of the world.” Ruth Baumgarte, “Aufzeichnung,” March 1984, in: Ruth Baumgarte 1923–2013. Hommage zum 90. Geburtstag, exh. cat. Samuelis Baumgarte Galerie, Bielefeld 2013, p. 4 [translated]. 66 Alice Lex-Nerlinger, “Lebens- bericht” (1956), typescript, p. 39, Estate of Alice Lex-Nerlinger, Academy of the Arts, Berlin [translated]. 67 Arnulf Siebeneicker, “Freund- schaftliche Beziehungen. Lea Grundig als Ehrenmitglied im Erdölverarbeitungswerk Schwedt,” in: Lea Grundig. Jüdin, Kommunistin. Grafikerin, exh. cat. Ladengalerie Berlin, 1996, pp. 76–80. 68 Boilermaker (1954; 3167); Electric Welder (1954; 3162). 69 In 1987/88, the Akademie der Künste (Academy of the Arts) in Berlin presented the exhibition Das Verborgene Museum (The Hidden Museum), curated by Evelyn Kuwertz and Gisela Breitling, which brought to light the forgotten art of women from the depots of Berlin museums. This became a permanent exhibition space on Schlüter- strasse, which to this day presents the works of forgotten European women artists. 70 Hannah Arendt, “The Aftermath of Nazi Rule. Report from Ger- many,” in: Commentary, no. 10, 1950, p. 342; available online at: https://www.commentary.org/ articles/hannah-arendt/the-after- math-of-nazi-rulereport-from- germany/ [accessed on July 31, 2021]. 76 The eponymous study, commis- sioned by the Club of Rome in 1972, sold millions of copies. Founded in 1968 by the Italian industrialist Aurelio Peccei and the British OECD director Alexander King, the private club was to study the consequences of forced industrialization and warned even then about the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere. 77 Quoted in: Herrmann 2019 (see note 54), pp. 153ff. The suspension of delivery was triggered by the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War between Israel and its Arab neighbors Syria and Egypt. The cutback in oil production was intended to force a revision of the “pro-Israel” policies of Western Europe and America. 78 Biess 2019 (see note 75), p. 299 [translated]. 79 In August 1939, Scholz vol- unteered for the Wehrmacht, but was not drafted until 1940. After returning from captivity, he resumed teaching at the Private Kunstschule des Westens from 1946 to 1950. Cf. Stephanie Heck, Simon Lang, and Stefan Scherer (eds.), “Am grünen Strand der Spree.” Ein populär- kultureller Medienkomplex der bundesdeutschen Nachkriegszeit [Edition Kulturwissenschaft, vol. 176] (Bielefeld 2020), pp. 312–13. 71 Hannah Arendt, Besuch in 80 “Around 1960, not only the ‘filmization’ of television begins, but also a first […] wave of serialization of the program.” Christian Hißnauer, “Spiel/Film. Fernsehspiel, Kinofilm und der Fernsehroman AM GRÜNEN STRAND DER SPREE. Zur Spezifik des westdeutschen Fernsehens um 1960,” in: ibid., p. 204 [translated]. Deutschland [1950] (Berlin 1993), p. 25 [translated]. 72 Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich, The Inability to Mourn. Principles of Collective Behavior [1967], (New York 1975), p. XXIV. 73 Ibid., pp. 63, 34. 74 Reimut Reiche, “Verteidigung der ‘neuen Sensibilität’”, in: Die Linke antwortet Jürgen Habermas (Frankfurt/Main 1968), pp. 90–103. 75 Frank Biess, Republik der Angst. Eine andere Geschichte der Bundesrepublik (Reinbek 2019), p. 273 [translated]. 85

Ruth Baumgarte und ihr Blick auf den afrikanischen Kontinent | Ruth Baumgarte and Her View of the African Continent For Ruth Baumgarte, the confrontation with cultures beyond the “Western world,” especially those of the African continent, played an important role throughout her artistic life. She was interested in sociopolitics and deepened her knowledge through extensive travels from the beginning of the 1950s on.1 On these trips, she produced mainly watercolors and drawings, some of which were later sold undocumented. One can speculate that the trips to Africa made primarily between 1980 and 2007 encouraged her to develop a significantly transformed artistic repertoire with new modes of expression. With her so-called Africa cycle, she analyzed what she saw, experienced, and interpreted in a unique and personal way, bringing together all that had previously existed in various areas of her artistic personality. More than any other works, they offer a colorful and at the same time thoughtfully reflected condensation of her perception. Within her oeuvre as a whole, this cycle, created over a period of more than twenty years, is akin to the grandiose final movement of an elegiac symphony. Ruth Baumgarte lived on the one hand as an artist and on the other in upper-class circumstances. Accordingly, she does not fit into the usual pattern of a woman living in a “middle-class” environment. As an artist and a woman she was an outsider in the social life of the time. Her great interest in Africa, which was not a matter of course in those days, represented a possibility for her to escape from the conservative female role models of the 1950s. Attempts to lead even a partially self-determined life almost inevitably resulted in family and societal conflicts. The resulting tensions, even in the confrontation with mostly internalized norms, had to be endured personally. It is possible that this dilemma of identity explains the sometimes protracted work processes associated with many of Baumgarte's paintings. During and after World War II, few artists from Europe undertook trips to African regions to work, and only grad- ually did individual countries become destinations for travelers. At the same time, the great shadow of colonial rule lay over any diplomatic relations and made it difficult for people from the former—and during Baumgarte’s lifetime often still effectively—imperial countries and the populations they oppressed to come closer together. Baumgarte gained her first impressions of the African continent already in the late 1950s with trips to Egypt and South Africa (fig. 1).2 It is very likely that she was also widely informed on the subject by reading relevant newspaper articles published over decades by Marion Dönhoff in the German newspaper Die Zeit and those in the American magazine Life, and that she deepened this interest through her own experiences. In Baumgarte’s works with African subjects from the early 1990s on, however, the original orientation in dealing with the range of topics shifted. Over the course of her many years of travels, the idealized, at times transfiguring African motifs of the early 1980s receded into the background as she became aware of conflicts and the culture clash and transferred these into her own visual language. An examination of these works below will demonstrate that Baumgarte simultaneously sought an ever-stronger penetration of what she saw during her expeditions in an almost obsessive manner, thereby modifying her artistic technique and emphatically taking up socially critical themes. If one keeps these two developments in mind—the increasingly subtle painterly approaches and the variance in the choice of motifs and, connected to this, the understanding of world events based on contemporary witnessing—then this late work reflects a current position and can claim for itself a continuing interest.3 Ruth Baumgarte’s preoccupation with the African continent is characterized by a gradual increase in artistic expression. Having long been successful as an illustrator and painter, she found new artistic possibilities on her numerous journeys to Africa: possibilities to intensify events scenically and narratively and to provoke a visual enhancement—indeed even intensification—of colors, which she used as an equivalent to the color sensations of African landscapes and their specific light, but also to the fabric patterns and textures of African garments. She increasingly charged the colors with symbolic and emotional meaning beyond that which, for example, the Expressionists of the early twentieth century dared to do. From the early 1980s on, Baumgarte began to travel specifically to various African countries, at times staying there for several months at a time. She undertook these trips as an emancipated female artist and thus joined the ranks of a small number of committed European artists. This applies above all to Irma Stern, who had commuted between South Africa and Germany since her youth. As a South African by birth and a painter who had trained in Germany before World War I, she had a natural connection to the subjects of her homeland. Among the women artists who lived and worked in Africa, Georgina Beier, who went to Nigeria in 1959 and taught art courses there, clearly stood out. Her husband, Ulli Beier, founded the Iwalewahaus in 1981 for the Africa focus of 89

Ruth Baumgarte und ihr Blick auf den afrikanischen Kontinent | Ruth Baumgarte and Her View of the African Continent the University of Bayreuth. Also from 1959 on, the ZERO artist Heinz Mack realized an unusual land art project in the Sahara.4 Controversial and highly charged in the context of her biography are the photographs of the Nuba in Sudan by the photographer and filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, which she published in several volumes from the 1960s on. Riefenstahl’s closeness to the Nazi regime and her heroization of the physical, still evident even in her Africa photos, have brought her ongoing criticism to this day.5 The sculptor Emy Roeder, who came from Würzburg, also traveled to North Africa several times in the 1960s, when she was already over seventy years old, but this can hardly be compared to Ruth Baumgarte’s stays in various African countries, which spanned more than twenty years. Never- theless, the artistic interconnections between Africa and Europe from the mid-nineteenth century on are obvious and far more significant than they might seem at first glance.6 The analysis of Baumgarte’s Africa cycle is complicated by the fact that despite her intensive engagement and deep fascination with this continent in its complexity, she no longer kept a diary after 1946 and did not compile any longer written travel reports. Her sketches have, however, survived.7 Not even from letters is it possible to reconstruct without gaps where she actually was in a given year, often several times. In this respect, it is primarily the works of this corpus alone that are to be considered and deciphered against the background of current postcolonial issues. Their interpretation results from their genesis and in dialogue with the artist’s other works, which exhibit different interweavings and interferences. Last but not least, contemporary events provide further clues to key motifs. For the understanding of some themes, a role is being played by the emerging art-historical examination of the colonial legacy, which from the beginning of the 1980s on initiated a new discourse on African cultures in several museums and exhibitions. Only the sum of possible influences and events, read together with the multilayered themes that become vivid in these paintings, makes it possible to read Baumgarte’s work as something other than a personal enthusiasm for Africa. Rather, Ruth Baumgarte was always searching for a visualization of the essence, for a distillate that appears as something supra-individual and with which she projected her impressions as an echo of experience into her works. When discussing Ruth Baumgarte and her Africa cycle, one cannot avoid a brief recourse to African motifs that already played a role in Expressionist painting, in that they confronted the arts for the first time with something that had hitherto been overlooked. The atten- tion to African artifacts owes much to the preoccupation with sculptures and objects that were brought from the—not only German—colonial territories to the newly established ethnological museums toward the end of the nineteenth century. For the Fauves in France and the Expressionists in Germany, the reference to the Oriental subjects that had become fashionable and romanticized in the nineteenth century by the likes of, among others, Eugène Delacroix and the Orientalists, already no longer applied. An exception can be found at best in Paul Gauguin’s Tahiti subjects. In early-twentieth-century Paris, Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, and Pablo Picasso discovered the fascinating appeal of African and Oceania sculptures for their own artistic expression in the ethnographic department of the Musée de Trocadero.8 The artists of the Brücke group—like those of the Blauer Reiter—also found their direct encounter with the sculptures that had arrived in Europe from Africa to be an essential source of inspiration. Impressed by the aesthetics of the works exhibited in Dresden, Berlin, and Munich,9 they projected their own ideas of “immediate and unadulterated” design onto these artifacts and transferred them as formal inspiration or representational quotations into their own pictorial creations.10 They saw in this a completely new, never before acknowledged originality and directness of expression, which they strove to emulate.11 The artists of early modernism used African art for the construct of an anti-civilizational attitude, through which they strove to do away with all conventions and restrictions.12 In a postcolonial art historiography, this attitude is being increasingly critically questioned.13 Decisive for the entire approach to African art, from a purely aesthetic consideration through to artistic appropriation, was the publication Negerplastik (Negro Sculpture, 1915) by the German philosopher and art critic Carl Einstein. Despite its title, now perceived as discriminatory, the book provided a fundamental summary of his intensive study of African sculpture at the time and had a lasting influence on its reception by Pablo Picasso and his circle of artists in Paris.14 This groundbreaking work, published in the midst of World War I, was the first approach to African cultures based on appreciation.15 Expressionism and Cubism opened up the perspective of a newly defined perception of qualities, which gave decisive impetus to the artist’s own philosophy of life—going back to a sense of originality, 91

2 Ruth Baumgarte Montage | Assembly, 1964 WV | CR 3202 She made her first documented trip to South Africa in 1958, but there are hardly any echoes of this in her work. Two years later, eighteen African states succeeded in as- serting their independence against their respective colonial powers. This brought large parts of Africa increasingly to the attention of the global public, and many Europeans hoped that the newly won independence would enable these states to establish new paths of economic and cultural exchange. However, some African states, especially Algeria, remained embroiled for years in bloody conflicts with their colonial powers or relapsed into civil war.19 Nevertheless, interest in African cultures increased in Europe, and Ruth Baumgarte now also traveled regularly to various countries on the continent. The first verifiable “documents” of a trip to Africa are found in 1964 in water- color drawings for the company calendar of the Baumgarte Ironworks (fig. 2). After her marriage to Hans Baumgarte in 1952 and during her work as a freelance artist in the 1950s, she also turned to designing calendars, some of which were created in close collaboration with the graphic artist Werner Kuhnert. The drawings are part of a series in which Ruth Baumgarte depicted the various facets of human labor during or before the phase of heightened technologization of industry.20 From today’s perspective, this cycle of drawings, created over a total of seventeen years, is more than merely a contemporary document or an advertising accompaniment to the development of Hans Baumgarte’s company. Three drawings can be assigned to an Orientalized context—although not clearly focused on Africa—because the 1967 calendar was dedicated to the topic of “Baumgarte apparatus construction products at home and abroad.” Although the technical achievements and the course of economic expansion were clearly in the foreground with regard to the individual motifs, it was her decision to not merely show the technology, but to always relate this to people using it (fig. 3, p. 94).21 In two ink drawings, Baumgarte positioned women in front of enor- mous industrial backdrops. In doing so, she combined technical modernity with the traditional image of work in the respective countries—more as a juxtaposition than as a contrast. She sketched veiled women with baskets on their heads, the cattle they led along, and the beggar sitting by the roadside. Here, two essential currents within her artistic oeuvre visibly flowed together, as it were: the spontaneity of her stroke in the situational recording of events and her proximity to industrial design and marketing, whereby she related drawing and color ground to one another in a differentiated manner. The result was a whole and to nature, however conceived. This also appears to be important in the context under discussion here, as it provided Baumgarte with an essential foundation on which she could build when, beginning in the late 1950s, she discovered her interest in the African continent. For there is no doubt that Baumgarte’s paintings and drawings—with all their individual handwriting and the thematic expansions in her late work—reveal stylistic references to Expressionism in their expressive colorfulness, as well as a proximity to Surrealism in several collage-like compositions and an occasionally diaphanous conception of figures.16 It will become apparent that for Baumgarte, two traits always came to the fore in her artistic work: the draftsmanship, with which she established the basic narrative structure and tenor, and the colorism, which rose as if to a crescendo. At the end of her numerous trips to Africa, there would be a color cosmos that left behind all the restrained colorfulness of the earlier years and with which she found an innovative chromaticity. With regard to her first Africa motifs on the calendar pages, her quick grasp of the situational came in handy to- ward the end of the 1950s, revealing her outstanding draw- ing skills. Her experience as an illustrator for daily newspapers and book publishers, and before that, while still a student in the early 1940s, as an animator in Wolf- gang Kaskeline’s studios, proved helpful.17 Here, an indi- vidual view of social contexts was always expressed, which also testified to her social commitment and enabled her to sketch even the most neglected marginal events and bring them to the attention of a broad public. The numerous ink sketches and the early watercolors often intertwined the- matically.18 93

Ruth Baumgarte und ihr Blick auf den afrikanischen Kontinent | Ruth Baumgarte and Her View of the African Continent that functioned pithily and memorably and was reduced to the essentials. Advertising and PR for the ironworks were at the forefront of the pictorial ambitions, and yet they are not presented coolly and smoothly, but rather reveal a personal characteristic style.22 These works on paper are, however, in no way comparable to Baumgarte’s artistic reaction to African landscapes or the social aspects that emerged in her paintings from the 1980s on. In fact, she initially proved herself here as an accomplished illustrator who, with the contrast between high industry and agrarian population, presumably tended to follow the clichés common at the time. More than a decade passed before she turned se- riously and emphatically to Africa. The artist titled one of the first significant watercolors—which is to be read like a prototype for many subsequent compositions in the wider context of the Africa cycle—The Decision (fig. 4). It was created in 1978 together with several preliminary studies. From here, Baumgarte transformed her style from a narrative to a distinctly metaphorical conception of the image, especially in her paintings. She would intensify this kind of complex, ambiguous basic disposition of her motifs, especially in the works she produced from 1980 on. The watercolor The Decision is based on a pyramidal geometry that determines the brightly colored sheet. As an abstract counterpart of the representational, it serves to visualize the visionary. From this point on, Baumgarte repeatedly used abstract elements to establish the pictorial direction and create clear references in the process. Compositional inter- twining enabled her to reconcile the complexity of the play of colors, the representational nature of the subjects, and surreal moments. With regard to The Decision, this is the triangular configuration of arms and hands that defines a foreground parallel to the picture plane and opens like a window to the depth of space, in the center of which the face of a young man becomes visible. In the background, a tree and a blood- red sky are hinted at. Only at second glance does it become clear that the man putting his hands defensively and protectively in front of his face is bound with heavy iron chains. Ruth Baumgarte sketched various detailed studies for this in advance, in which she particularly emphasized the language of the hands, as well as the heavy shackles and the originally different composition, which was intended as a square set at an angle of forty-five degrees. The preliminary studies in particular reveal how intensively Baumgarte searched for a formal structure that would make the motif seem plausible. The final version is clearly dynamized and more concentrated in its symbolic energy. Although this work, which was obviously significant for Baumgarte, does not belong to the series of motifs originating in Africa, it explores formal elements into epic possibilities of representation, as these would take on great importance for later paintings. The story behind this watercolor is the suicide of a young man within the artist’s family. A year later, in 1979, she drew Self-Portrait (… at the Door) (CR 483), in which she depicted herself as serious, with a melancholic gaze. The position in the open door- way, through which one sees set pieces of architecture, and the restrained gesture of the right hand suggest, as a transitory situation, along the lines of putting something behind oneself and a sense of seriousness toward whatever is to be expected beyond the threshold of the door. In the broader context, her at times tragic African scenes of the later years are to be seen in connection to these emotional experiences, on which the watercolors Winter Death I and Winter Death II (both 1982; CR 590–591), among others, are based. Documents show that Baumgarte did not intensify her travels to Africa until the mid-1980s.23 One of her first works from this period is the watercolor Come Clean from 4 Ruth Baumgarte Der Entschluss | The Decision, 1978 WV | CR 465 95

6 Ruth Baumgarte In Ägypten | In Egypt, 1985 WV | CR 710 portraiture are evident, seeming to represent the sitter as though he were alive. She framed his dark skin with flowing fabrics, a white turban, and a light outer garment, which make the figure appear like an apparition. The white shimmers in a multitude of individual hues—from blue, brown, and milky violet to delicate matte green and a pink that slips into cream—which are heightened in the scenic pictorial space to rich, highly vibrant color constellations. When one speaks of Baumgarte’s special sense of color in her Africa cycle, it is tangible here for the first time: The composition suggests how impressed she must have been by the natural spectacle of light in the desert landscape, for the nature that surrounds the young Egyptian is clearly a color space that vividly loses itself in depth, flowing from rich orange-ochre through yellow, pink, and violet to ever more decisive violet-blue tones. The glow of the sun ignites these colors, which are balanced with an idiosyncratic coun- terpoint in the ultramarine blue of the detail of the shirt. Baumgarte also processed her Egyptian experiences in a large number of charcoal sketches, which are preserved in her estate. In Cairo, she developed oil studies and sketches in which she turned to the people and their work, but also to their poor living conditions. She devoted two drawings to bargaining and haggling (Cairo: Baksheesh II), which, because of the large number of people depicted, she reduced almost exclusively to the gesticulating hands (fig. 8, p. 99). With Africa I (fig. 9, p. 100), she created a watercolor that now focuses on the human figure itself. It depicts the character study of a muscular man dressed in African robes, apparently in conversation with a counterpart who is not visible in the picture. Small, thatched huts in the right background and towering modern skyscrapers in the left background highlight the social contrasts. The harsh contradictions that Baumgarte experienced during her travels are still echoed rather tentatively. Here, too, the rich color scheme is striking, culminating in the blue-green- yellow shades with which she interprets the skin. Despite strong contouring, the man’s head in particular is imbedded into nature by color matching it with the back- ground. It is presumably due first and foremost to the technique that this watercolor hints at what would later prevail in her oil paintings and merge there in a deliberate fusion of figure and nature: the intensification of colors as a sensory extension of reality. This becomes particularly clear when one compares drawings and water- colors that were created at the same time but deal with other thematic areas, such as The Friend (1986; CR 717), 1984 (CR 681), when apartheid was still in force in South Africa.24 The scene depicted is reminiscent of feature films about Africa, in which the conflicts between Whites and Blacks, between colonial masters and slaves are echoed. A hint of Tanja Blixen’s Out of Africa hovers over the scenery.25 The focus of the work lies on the anxious gesture of the kneeling Black man and the dominant posture of the White man, which once again visualizes Baumgarte’s interest in sociopolitical conditions, especially their dissonances.26 Numerous narrative elements are still predominant, which she clearly reduced in subsequent works and thus made her own artistic intentions clearer. In the following year, she created two small-format oil paintings, which were sketched so quickly and full of verve that they place their own emphasis on the situational nature of the scene and, above all, on the unique mood of the light. Street Scene Cairo (Bazaar) (CR 711) and Luxor (fig. 5) thematize the hustle and bustle of the market and the trading of goods, with men squatting on the ground and conversing with each other, while in the background, veiled women balance large baskets on their heads. It is the picturesque charm, the aura of light and color, that interests her artistically in these scenes. At the same time—so it seems—and with the help of the chosen medium, she penetrated behind the visible surface for the first time and revealed the coloristic diversity of the garments, each of which appeared differently in the sunlight according to the situation. Baumgarte worked swiftly on these two small formats, which, like other small sketches and paintings, were created in front of the motifs depicted.27 In this respect, they are exceptions within the oeuvre of the artist, who always preferred to recompose the lived experiences in her studio—far removed from the journey itself. That same year, she painted the small-format work In Egypt (fig. 6), characterized by a calmer, more planar style of painting supported above all by the character study and the coloration that shines as if from within. Here, once again, her precise powers of observation and precision in 97

Ruth Baumgarte und ihr Blick auf den afrikanischen Kontinent | Ruth Baumgarte and Her View of the African Continent Catalan Legend (1987; CR 775), and Relicts (1987; CR 783). The more intense colors attest to the artist’s emotional connection, while also transferring her own sense of inwardness onto the viewers. The artist’s mode of expression subsequently consolidated into the style that characterizes her Africa cycle as a whole.28 On the River Bank (CR 776) and Rest by the Way (fig. 10, p. 100), both from 1987, are motifs that Baumgarte took from the agrarian environment of a barren landscape. Here, format and color scheme are still close to the watercolors created earlier, and yet the first innovations in the artist’s painterly style are apparent, preluding some of what was to become increasingly prevalent in the following years. These include the multifigure compositions, such as the one here showing the interaction between the pensive, sitting mother and the boy standing further in the middle ground. Behind the woman’s back, so to speak, another seated male figure becomes visible. A sense of leaden fatigue and melancholy lies over the scenery. That same year, she created the watercolor Relicts, 1987 (CR 783) in a similar format. Following earlier, clearly surreal pictorial versions, it features the superimposition of several narrative layers. In the enigmatic interpenetration of the pictorial levels, an almost hopeless struggle unfolds between the protagonists, who, similar to the figure group of Laocoön and His Sons in the Vatican, are entangled with each other. It seems almost as if they have already sunk into the depths of a sea. Once again, uncertainty, despair, and doom are staged here—themes which run through Baumgarte’s oeuvre as basic melodies and are also increasingly prominent in her later Africa paintings. With her watercolors, she tests primarily lighting moods and color constellations for their emotional impact. This becomes clear in the rather restrained watercolors, which are determined more by violet and blue-green tones, such as On the River Bank (CR 776) and Mood on the Zambezi River (CR 779), and those in which the yellow-red colors dominate, such as Mother and Child (1987; CR 778) and Red Flower Africa III (Floral Fire) (1988; fig. 11, see p. 101). Through the color combination, she approaches pictorially what confronts her visually as landscape and encounter with the native population. By forcing the tonal values, however, she creates memory images and reflects moods. In between, small-format watercolors were created, loosely sketched, leaving much white background, and possibly created in front of the motif. In these, too, a great inwardness is expressed, especially when she focuses on people: African Landscape I, preliminary study, (1987; CR 781); Port Elizabeth, South Africa (1986; fig. 7); African Woman (1993; CR 943). With the pencil drawing Conflict/Dispute (1986; CR 744), which she accentuated with only a few colors, she addressed a conflict for the first time. The quarrel between the two young men, who seem almost to fall out of the picture, recalls Cain’s fratricide of Abel from the Old Testament Book of Genesis (Genesis 4:8). It anticipates, as it were, the later motifs of conflictual constellations and life circumstances. Around the same time, Baumgarte created other charcoal drawings, now accentuated with only one additional color. The black of the charcoal pencil, paired with a chalky red tone, heightens motifs to a dramatic basic chord, as in the multipart series Red Flower Africa (CR 822, 831–836). With the first sheet, the motif of the red flower is literally translated, which in turn outshines the head and right shoulder of a man. The facial expression and hand gesture express a sense of melancholy. With the second sheet (CR 832), Baumgarte associated the motif in the constellation of a female figure seen from a highly unusual perspective and laid out in black chalk, and a man gazing upward in profile, both of whom are caught in a diffuse red mist of color. Between her, the reclining figure, and the man, the landscape mutates into the image of a 8 Ruth Baumgarte Folge Kairo Backschisch (Bakschisch II) | From the series Cairo Baksheesh (Baksheesh II), 1985 WV | CR 705 99

Ruth Baumgarte und ihr Blick auf den afrikanischen Kontinent | Ruth Baumgarte and Her View of the African Continent pool of blood. In view of the threatening appearance, it can be assumed that this motif thematizes sexual assault or male dominance over women. This is supported by the fact that the woman is depicted only as a body without a head. The subsequent sheets also deal with scenes of conflict and violence, misery and loneliness. The eponymous watercolor, also painted in 1988, thus corresponds to a counterpart to the “blue flower” as developed by the Romantics as a motif of longing. It can be conjectured that Baumgarte drew and painted a protea flower here, which also serves as a national symbol for South Africa (fig. 11). Only a short time later, Baumgarte’s painterly style changed once again.29 Her own handwriting now emerged much more strongly than before, and the illustrative aspect, which she had long used predominantly for the narrative structure, was withdrawn in its constitutive function. Individuality and distinctiveness became more present than previously. With great naturalness, Baumgarte used a color scheme which is supported by richly luminous color values and celebrates its own, almost orgiastic magic of coloration. With her trip to South Africa in 1991, she finally arrived at this formal language characteristic of her expressive will. She detached the local colors from the actual appearance of the respective object and used these as carriers of pictorial moods with which she could make vivid her view of Africa, the African landscape, or the people taking an active part in things. She understood the strongly interwoven narrative structures that she had developed less as an illustration than as a symbolic moment. By no longer sticking to studies, she succeeded all the more—back in her studio in Bielefeld—in visualizing these almost mythical statements and formulating them as her personal reflection on the African continent. As a result, concrete places and situations became insignificant; instead, in the artistic resonance space of what she saw in Africa, the remembered, the impressions, and the experiences merged into a cosmos of preceived and therefore subjectively necessary colors. One is automatically reminded of the euphoria Paul Klee felt on his trip to Tunis in 1914, when he became aware of the key position of his visual experiences in Kairouan for his life as a painter: “It penetrates so deeply and so gently into me […]. Color possesses me. […] Color and I are one.”30 With Baumgarte, the heightened use of color in relation to the natural appearance of things went beyond what the Expressionists and the Fauves ever intended. It cannot be ruled out that she was also inspired by the paintings of the so-called Neue Wilde and Neo- Expressionists during her creative period between 1980 and 1990. Several of her works are reminiscent of the intensely colored paintings by Karl Horst Hödicke and Rainer Fetting.31 Strong contrasts and a rapid, at times rough application of paint are essential features of their works. It is also possible that the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe played a role for her. Despite these conceivable impulses, however, Ruth Baumgarte remained unwaveringly true to her own style, which became more distinctive and intense from this period on. At the same time as Baumgarte’s extensive travels in Africa, the artworld was opening up internationally to non-European art, which resulted in a vital interest in a reassessment of African and non-European “tribal art.” Two exhibitions were decisive impulses: William Rubin’s exhibition Primitivism in 20th Century Art. Affinities of the Tribal and the Modern at The Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1984 and Jean-Hubert Martin’s Magiciens de la terre at the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Grande halle de la Villette in Paris in 1989, which contradicted each other in their tenor. What was interesting about Martin’s orientation was the way he looked beyond the borders of Europe. As a first attempt at a brief stocktaking, it took place precisely in the significant year of upheaval—1989—the year the Berlin Wall came down and in which the various republics of the Soviet Union subsequently declared their independence. These important years of liberation also culminated in the gradual abolition of apartheid in South Africa by 1994, which Baumgarte perceived with enthusiasm. It could only have encouraged her to return there more often. In 1991, she produced paintings in rapid succession, including In the Desert (CR 910), Morning I (CR 909), 101 11 Ruth Baumgarte Rote Blume Afrika III | Red Flower Africa III, 1988 WV | CR 822

Ruth Baumgarte und ihr Blick auf den afrikanischen Kontinent | Ruth Baumgarte and Her View of the African Continent The Bride Price (CR 915), The Water Carrier (CR 907), and The Mid-Day Rest (CR 912), whose visual force is evoked by an idiosyncratic, flaming flood of color that exists beyond any realistic coloration of objects. The color creates com- plexity in the spatial division of the compositions; themati- cally, it contributes significantly to the interpretation of nature, which is understood as the still unbroken elemental force of creativity. Humans appear only as a marginal part of a greater whole. Though just how radical the painterly upheaval actually was in this year of 1991 is made clear in particular by the paintings African Landscape I and African Landscape II (figs. 12, 13), in which the color spectacle more than anything else opens up real and surreal aspects of nature. In African Landscape II, the glowing red sky dominates over green savannah. The gnu in the foreground, like the tree in the middle ground, seems to physically dissolve into transparency; together, they create the impression that a merging with the natural environment is taking place. It is the evocation of a spiritual nature, in which proximity and distance merge into a chromatic whole. As a bright counterpart, Baumgarte’s African Landscape I opens up a broad prospect of seemingly infinite expanse to this nature shimmering in the midday glow. Incidentally and almost completely absorbed by the landscape, a mother with her child wrapped in a sling on her back wanders barefoot over rocks depicted in color as glowing hot. What is special about these works from 1991 is not only the intensity of the coloring, which consists of both pure colors and mixed intermediate tones and does not shy away from complementary contrasts, but that it also suggests the rhythm of African patterns and colors. Moreover, Baumgarte concentrated on only a few pictorial figures. More resolutely than before, these are integrated as ciphers into their surroundings and merge formally into nature. It is obvious that this is an echo of her extended stays in Africa. The complexity of these paintings would be inconceivable without an intensive involvement with situations, events, and perceptions, without being emotionally overwhelmed by natural phenomena, and finally, without the direct experience of life in the cities and villages characterized by poverty, and without her own experience of apartheid. It is precisely because Ruth Baumgarte did not paint directly in front of her motifs but waited until she was back in her studio to develop her compositions and compose them thoughtfully from a multitude of impressions that they are visible expressions of her reflections and not—as one might erroneously assume—the result of spontaneous expression. For Ruth Baumgarte, the artistic examination of African life was a conscious act of working against conventions.32 This certainly also had to do with her own urge for free- dom, her self-evident, unagitated emancipation, but also her search for originality and closeness, which are to be understood in contrast to economic progress and industrialization, with which she had dealt professionally for years. She never saw her travels as escapism, nor as a maudlin search for an idyll that she, as an enlightened witness of the times, knew did not exist. On the contrary, they became for her a discovery and an inner awakening. The vitality of her late work reflects her own personal attitude to life. Her extensive travels in Africa delineated the possibility of a counterworld in a visible and at the same time intangible otherness compared with her sphere of life in Germany. Between 1991 and 2003, Baumgarte developed pictorial concepts for the merging of nature and humans into symbolic figures: The African (1993; CR 957), African Landscape III (CR 954), African Landscape IV (fig. 14, p. 105), and above all Anatomical Landscape II (1991; CR 908). With The African, Baumgarte presents a furious figure in undulating spheres of color who seems to race through space and time like the Grim Reaper on a rocket with a tail of fire. In somber colors, the work speaks of menace and doom. African Landscape III and African Landscape IV are also pictorial metaphors, the fantastic basic disposition of which is essentially defined by the artificial yellow-red tones, as well as the violent complementary contrast of red and green. As a yellow-red vortex of lines and planes, nature builds up before the viewer, shielding itself, then—in 103 13 Ruth Baumgarte African Landscape II, 1991 WV | CR 906

14 Ruth Baumgarte African Landscape IV, 1993 WV | CR 958 is infused with vibrant yellow-orange tones, to which Baumgarte added a complementary green and a soothing blue-purple. The colorfulness of the compositions in particular clearly shows how much the African impulse and—for European eyes—the unusual mood of the colors were a matter of concern to her, not least also because, in Baumgarte’s optics, color was able to transport many different intentions in addition to those specific to the picture (that is to say, the purely painterly)—namely emotions, the connectedness of landscape and humans, and the dominance of nature and light in Africa, along with a sense of belonging, a theme she took up time and again, for example in Rain (CR 963). In her compositions created after 1994, the mood changed drastically. Baumgarte apparently saw the continent in its brokenness and literally confronted with the “dynamite” of its own history. With Anything Crowing Had Once Been an Egg (1995; CR 971) and The Daily Chat (1995; CR 972), for example, her color palette tipped into an ominous red. A triptych created between 1995 and 1997 (Even the Elephant’s Death Will Occur on a Single Day, Turn of the Fire, The Stream of Time, fig. 15, p. 106) uses a few motifs with obvious symbolic connotations to depict a situation of threat, in which the combination of giant birds of prey with the fearful gaze of a woman in the everyday situation of lighting a fire evokes associations of mysterious doom. Nature and the people living in it are the focus of attention, and there is nothing to suggest anything resembling Western civilization. The titles of the three paintings clearly reflect the artist’s point of view. Baumgarte hints at much here, without fixing her statement one- dimensionally. In particular, the events in Pretoria and Johannesburg, the riots and street fighting, burning houses, and numer- ous deaths shocked the world at the time. Baumgarte reacted with images of a society that was leaving traditional customs and values behind. At the same time, she felt these repeated riots to be threatening—not only for herself, but primarily for all those countries she had come to know better through her travels. Her subsequent pictures of burning landscapes and villages are so shocking because they are like a swan song to what had motivated her enthusiasm for the continent years before. The fire now becomes a symbol of destruction and loss of former hopes: Rift Valley (1997; fig. 16, p. 107), Burning Sky (1998; CR 1021), and Inferno (2003; CR 1045). The conflagration in these paintings symptomatically marks African Landscape IV—lowering itself into the distance. The bands of color ripple like waves through the pictorial spaces. With His Land (CR 961), Baumgarte once again varied this undulation and circling in the natural land- scape and contrasted it with a male figure on the foremost pictorial plane. The young man’s arm and robe seem to be woven into the landscape behind him. This depiction of penetrations of the representational remained part of Baumgarte’s pictorial repertoire, but instead of the landscape, the human figure increasingly returned to the center of her artistic work. This may have been due in part to the fact that the gradual repeal of apartheid laws from 1990 on, and especially the release from prison of Nelson Mandela, who became the first Black president of South Africa in 1994, heralded a policy of reform and opening. The long-awaited radical changes and the repeal of the regime of injustice came about through him. Baumgarte traveled to southern Africa more frequently during these years and experienced firsthand the advent of democracy, but also the social and societal tensions. That same year, she painted Return (CR 962), depicting a female figure seen from behind and wrapped in luxuriant cloths, with her head in profile, from which the view is led into the landscape. The proud, beautiful woman looks attentively at the scene that presents itself. In the middle ground, two vultures can be seen on layered rocks, perching and in flight; three men idly occupy a hilltop. The scene is dominated by the young woman with her orange-red robe and voluminous headdress. Similar to A Man without Livestock Isn’t a Man (CR 964), the composition 105

Ruth Baumgarte und ihr Blick auf den afrikanischen Kontinent | Ruth Baumgarte and Her View of the African Continent It will be interesting to see Ruth Baumgarte’s painting in relation to the different artistic positions of the African continent. This appears to be more topical than ever, since African art from a wide variety of countries has clearly gained presence in the international dialogue in recent years.34 This is not least of all also rooted in the painful debate about the colonial legacy and its fatal consequences, which are controversially discussed and vehemently negotiated by all sides involved. Against this background as well, Ruth Baumgarte deserves a clear positioning that does justice to the intentions of her oeuvre. the great identity crisis of various African ethnic groups, which tore down their traditional structures or set them ablaze. The drama in the scenes of these paintings is fueled by glowing, dynamically applied colors. As a “cacophony” of red tones, they resemble the trauma of the Expulsion from Paradise. As a counterpoint to these male-dominated conflicts, Baumgarte staged self-confident women in many of her works and especially in her last Africa paintings: African Vision (fig. 17), The African III (2000; CR 1043), and Adrinka’s Song (2003; CR 1044). Even the last completed work of the Africa cycle, Morning II (CR 1047) from 2004, describes the journey of women in the light as a departure and opportunity for the future of the continent. It sets an almost conciliatory end point of Baumgarte’s encounters with Africa. Walking, wandering, moving through large natural landscapes—all this marked for her at the same time the process of transformation of the numerous societies and cultures of Africa. One last painting, African Composition (2004; CR 1051), remained unfinished.33 The indeter- minate color gradients and the sketchily outlined female figures document the beginning of a work process that still holds a multitude of development possibilities. This corresponds to the ambivalence of Baumgarte’s experi- ences in Africa between euphoric perception of nature and skepticism with regard to the future. As an artist, she encountered this spectrum of impressions and reflections derived from them with a passionate effort to visualize them and transferred her sense of being touched into im- ages of thematically and formally suggestive power. 16 Ruth Baumgarte Rift Valley, 1997 WV | CR 1002 17 Ruth Baumgarte African Vision, 1998−99 WV | CR 1028 107

Ruth Baumgarte und ihr Blick auf den afrikanischen Kontinent | Ruth Baumgarte and Her View of the African Continent 8 When, in 1906, Henri Matisse gave his friend Pablo Picasso a sculpture from what is now the Republic of Congo, the latter began to look intensively at African sculptures, which he found in large numbers at the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro, now the Musée de l’Homme in Paris. From then on, Picasso collected African sculptures himself. 9 Within a very short time, hundreds of thousands of objects, sculptures, fabrics, and even human body parts, primarily from the German colonies, had been collected here and presented to the public. In the ethnological museums opened in Munich, Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, and Bremen between 1862 and 1896, the “Brücke” artists were also able to view artifacts from the South Seas and African countries. 10 “Everyone who reproduces that which drives him to creation with directness and authenticity belongs to us.” From the program of “Die Brücke,” 1906. 11 Cf. Oliver Kornhoff, Studien zum bildhauerischen Werk von “Brücke.” Über den “zwingenden Rhythmus der im Block geschlos- senen Form” bei Erich Heckel und Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, PhD. diss. University of Freiburg, 2003, pp. 105–13; available online at: https://freidok.uni-freiburg.de /fedora/objects/freidok:850 /datastreams/FILE1/content [accessed on October 31, 2021]. 12 Cf. Andrea Rüht, Auf der Suche nach der ursprünglichen Einheit von Mensch und Natur. Eine Untersuchung zum antizivilisa- torischen Aspekt im deutschen Expressionismus am Beispiel der Künstlergruppe “Brücke,” PhD. diss. University of Munich, 2008, pp. 119–49. For Max Pechstein and Emil Nolde, this originality became so significant that they themselves set out to experience this, and a new way of life, in the South Seas and on the Palau Islands (at that time also counted among the German colonies); ibid, p. 131. 13 Cf., for example, the corresponding contributions on this topic in: Annick Haldemann et al. (eds.), Kirchner neu denken. Internationale Tagung Davos 2018 (Munich 2020). 14 Carl Einstein, Negerplastik, ed. Friederike Schmidt-Möbus (Stuttgart 2012), first published by Verlag der Weißen Bücher, Leipzig, in 1915; for more on Einstein’s importance for the avant-garde, see: Nicola Creighton (ed.), Carl Einstein und die europäische Avantgarde (Berlin et al. 2012). 15 In the epilogue of the cited edition of Einstein’s Negerplastik, the editor states: “Einstein thus ultimately propagated the idea of a universally human world art that would create a sense of community” [translated]; cf. Einstein 2012 (see note 14), p. 177. 16 In Surrealism, elements of the psychic and those of optical superimposition appear that were novel. One need only recall René Magritte and Salvador Dalí, both of whom often depicted people and landscapes as if they were permeable. 1 In 1952, Ruth Baumgarte began 4 Dieter Honisch and Beate Reifenscheid (eds.), Licht der ZERO-Zeit, exh. cat. Ludwig Museum, Koblenz (Bielefeld 2010). 5 Publications in books from 1964 onwards, as well as in magazines such as Stern, Paris Match, and Life. 6 See Jakob Vogel, “Minotaurus – Ein afrikanisches Phantom? Künstlerische Verflechtungen zwischen Afrika und Europa im 20. Jahrhundert,” in: Léopold S. Senghor – ein Webprojekt der Uni Köln, URL: http://www.uni-koeln.de /phil-fak/khi/senghor-projekt /download/Vogel_Minotauros _ein_afrikanisches_Phantom.pdf [accessed on October 31, 2021]. 7 Baumgarte brought back from her travels numerous brochures, notes, books, and sketches (studies of people)—some of these even on napkins. The collection is part of the estate and has yet to be fully catalogued. Especially in Southern Africa, she traveled with her journalist friend Matthew Koczek Miller through different countries. Together with his driver, she had the necessary male companionship, without which she could not have made these often dangerous journeys. Throughout her life, she rarely took photographs, but recorded her observations in drawings and paintings. her intensive travels, which included several weeks of trips through Spain and Italy, as well as numerous stays in many major international cities. As early as 1957, she had an exhibition in Tehran. In the mid-1950s and early ’60s, she was repeatedly in Cairo and Alexandria and, around 1964, visited the pyramids of Giza. Around 1960, she traveled again to Turkey and Iran, there to Tehran, Isfahan, and the Caspian Sea. 2 Later on, among others three small-format paintings In Egypt (CR 710), Street Scene in Cairo (CR 711), and Luxor (CR 709), all created in 1985, refer to this. References to the travels come from conversations between the author and the artist’s son Alexander Baumgarte. 3 However, the postwar years already all too obviously reveal the pressing problems of that time in the focus of global public opinion, and this was now directed at a reality that no longer had anything in common with the illustrative image of Africa and its illusionistic distortions (as was still the case in the 1920s and ’30s). For the sake of brevity, we will refer here only to central events: to the Suez Crisis (1956) overshadowing the late 1950s; the struggle for freedom and the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in Congo; the civil rights movement against racism that emerged in the early 1960s, led in America by the Baptist pastor and civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. and culminating in his assassination (1968); and the Nigerian Civil War (1967–70), which triggered a devastating famine that shook the world community. 109

Ruth Baumgarte und ihr Blick auf den afrikanischen Kontinent | Ruth Baumgarte and Her View of the African Continent 17 See the essays in this volume by Rolf Giesen (pp. 134–145) and Ralf Michael Fischer (pp. 112–133) in this volume. 18 One of her most unusual chalk drawings, executed during the war years, depicts fleeing “Gypsies in the Rain” (Zigeuner im Regen, 1943; CR 30), whereby the narrative density of the details and the drama of the moment seem to reflect her own consternation. Cf. Ruth Baumgarte. Herkunft, Prägung, Zäsuren, ed. Martin Fenner, exh. cat. Kulturhaus Karlshorst, Berlin, 2017/18, pp. 57, 18–19 (Fenner). 19 Martin Evans, Algeria: France’s Undeclared War (Oxford 2012); Georges Fleury, La Guerre en Algérie, 2nd ed. (Paris 2006). 20 Hanno Sowade, “… Arbeit gebietet die Forderung des Tages,” in: Ruth Baumgarte und das Wirtschaftswunder. Farbrausch am Kessel, ed. Michael Dückerhoff, exh. cat. Hoesch Museum, Dortmund (Cologne 2018), p. 31. From 1952 to 1969, Ruth Baumgarte designed the company calendars of the Eisenwerke Baumgarte. She drew in the factory halls and through this work discovered her fascination for technology and the world of factory production. The originals of the calendar images were later “exhibited” in the factory buildings. 21 As early as 1943, she created Workers on the Roof (CR 35) and Work Break from Loading of the Salt Blocks On-Site onto the Shaker Conveyor (CR 33), featuring observations of the world of work. 22 Cf. Sowade 2018 (see note 21), p. 31, note 2. 23 The focus of the trips from the 1980s on was always Southern Africa, in particular Johannes- burg (Soweto), Botswana (among other places, the Chobe National Park), Zambia, Swaziland, and Namibia, as well as Zimbabwe. In 1988, she stayed twice in South Africa, first in Cape Town, Stellenbosch, Worcester, Saldanah Bay, Springbok, and Verneukpan, and later in Outshoorn, Port Elizabeth, East London, Queenstown, and Middelburg. 24 Baumgarte had already drawn a similar composition in 1951 for the illustration of the novella Der Schuß von der Kanzel by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer for the newspaper Freie Presse; cf. CR 1875. 25 The book was published in 1937 and became a worldwide success in 1985 with the film adaptation. See also: Beate Reifenscheid, “Ruth Baumgarte – Annäherung an den fremden Kontinent,” in: Ruth Baumgarte. Turn of the Fire, exh. cat. Ludwig Museum, Koblenz (Munich et al. 2017), pp. 15–26, here in particular pp. 19–20. 26 Cf. the other works created at the same time, such as Doubt (CR 719). 27 Information provided by Alexander Baumgarte. 28 Ruth Baumgarte was familiar with the term Africa cycle; she spoke of it in a film document by Christel Heermann in 2005. As early as 1992, the newspaper Westfalen-Blatt used the term “African cycle” in the context of a review of her exhibition at Frost & Reed in London. It is, however, not a cycle in the strict sense, with a defined beginning and end. Rather, the works that have a concrete reference to Africa present themselves as a distinct group of works. 29 In 1989, Baumgarte traveled to Southern Africa three times, including Johannesburg, and visited Soweto, Klerksdorp, Pretoria, Standerton, Howick, Durban, Natal, Lesotho, and Transkei several times. In 1990, she was in Southern Africa three times, including again Johannes- burg, Swaziland, Phalaborwa, Transvaal, Pietersburg (now Polokwane), Lake Sibaya, Lake St Lucia, and Mozambique. 30 Paul Klee, Tagebücher 1898–1918, ed. Felix Klee (Cologne 1957), pp. 307–08 [April 16, 1914]; quoted in English in: Paola Valenti, “Paul Klee’s Journeys to Italy and Tunisia,” in: Mediterranean Studies, vol. 15, 2006, pp. 190–209, here p. 200. 31 In 1997, she showed her paintings in the context of, among others, Neue Wilde such as Rainer Fetting in the exhibition La Pelle nera at Galleria Marieschi in Monza, Italy. 32 In the 1990s, she visited the Maasai, who fascinated her. She also traveled through Kenya and Tanzania. From 1993 on, further trips followed to Southern Africa, including sojourns in Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda, and Malawi, and along the African Rift. Tourist places did not interest her, since she was more interested in originality and authenticity, and in the indigenous rites and ways of life of African communities. 33 From 2003/04 on, Ruth Baum- garte took a creative break and ceased painting. After that, she planned five more large paintings but her deteriorating health in 2011 left her unable to to execute them. 34 Cf., for example, the innovative exhibitions in this context: Global Conceptualism. Points of Origin, 1950s to 1980s, Queens Museum, New York, 1999 and Postwar, Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2016. 111

2 Ruth Baumgarte Vorstudie zu Zigeuner im Regen | Preliminary Study for Gypsies in the Rain, um | around 1943 WV | CR 31 3 Ruth Baumgarte Zigeuner im Regen | Gypsies in the Rain, 1943 WV | CR 30 Can one call Ruth Baumgarte’s aesthetic a cinematic one? This effect does indeed arise when viewing some of her pictures. She sometimes arranges figures in the pictorial space in such a way that the tension between foreground and background seems like a staging in front of a motion-picture camera (fig. 1). In this opening example from 1965, much is only hinted at, but its visual dynamics are reminiscent of a Hollywood musical of the 1950s or 1960s, leading the viewer to expect a cut to the audience, as is common in such movies. This staging, or “mise-en- scène,” can be explained by Ruth Baumgarte’s passion for the theater; a film-based interpretation is therefore not compelling. To complicate matters, there are neither documents nor statements by the artist to prove that she was inspired by the moving image. Also missing are explicit “cinematic” characteristics, such as those in the work of the American realist Edward Hopper, who was recently declared the “greatest filmmaker in painting.”1 Nevertheless, it could be argued here that specific aspects of Baumgarte’s aesthetic are difficult to imagine without film. Several indications suggest that this aspect should be pursued. The profession of her father, Kurt Rupli, as a film director and producer, together with Ruth Baumgarte’s collaboration with the pioneer of animation film Wolfgang Kaskeline, are biographical factors that give reason to expect a heightened awareness of the medium. This is supported by her only known statement about her experiences at Kaskeline’s studios, the gist of which is that hundreds of drawings occasionally had to be made for a single scene.2 She had thus internalized the difference between projected moving images and their synthesis from individual images (also known as “frames”). As her son Alexander Baumgarte reports, she was “a regular moviegoer well into old age,” who was often seen at the Bielefeld art house cinema, Kamera, founded in 1950, and who was also open to experimental films.3 While a list of her favorite movies has been reconstructed, the most recent one on it, Carol Reed’s The Third Man, was not made until 1949.4 Information about her cinematic socialization until at least the age of twenty-six is thus unfortunately missing. Overall, the list contains numerous classics from more than five decades, including many auteur movies, such as those by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. It is, however, fruit- less to reduce cinematic effects in her work to specific quotations or allusions. When it comes to understanding the cinematic potential of Ruth Baumgarte’s aesthetic, a great deal more is to be gained by using distinctive examples in a form-oriented analysis of the constituents of Baumgarte’s visual aesthetic. With this in mind, no distinction will be made between applied and artistic works, since only a synopsis of all her media will reveal the important lines of development and continuities of her oeuvre for our argument. The following search for traces in Ruth Baumgarte’s oeuvre must, however, be preceded by another central premise, one that can be understood as a further reason why it is worthwhile tracking down the presumably cinematic effects in her paintings: She grew up in a visual culture that had been increasingly shaped by cinematic viewing habits since the birth of cinema in 1895. That is why it can be assumed that the aesthetic of “lebende Bilder” (“living pictures”), as film was initially called in German, was reflected artistically to a much greater extent, but often less obviously, than has been explored to date.5 Given the complexity of the subject, only core aspects and developments can be highlighted here. Aggregate States of Movement As a starting point, we can compare the early chalk drawing Gypsies in the Rain and its preparatory sketch, both dated to 1943 (figs. 2, 3).6 Baumgarte’s wish to depict figures in 115

Filmische Effekte im Werk von Ruth Baumgarte | Cinematic Effects in the Work of Ruth Baumgarte motion and to achieve lively pictorial effects is already evident in the striding motif of the hurrying men in fig. 3. The arrangement of the bodies parallel to each other suggests a rapid running pace to the left. If the men were actually to run, one could even imagine the picture frame following them, like an accompanying panning shot to the left. At the same time, the two men appear frozen as if in a snapshot or an instantaneous image.7 The meticulous details and the clear contours of the figures contribute to this frozenness, as does the sophisticated composition, whose contrivedness is apparent. The striking dominance of the backdrops distracts from the main subject, an aspect that will be taken up later. By contrast, the quickly and confidently sketched lines of the drawing convey a greater liveliness and emphasize the “process” of walking. The greater dynamism is also due to the absence of a background. The two drawings visualize two concepts of movement that can be described in cinematic terms. While the finished drawing looks like a frame that could come from a filmstrip and emphasizes a specific body posture, the preparatory sketch suggests the process of movement as in a projected moving image. However, dynamized depictions of moving bodies, such as the ones here, have belonged to the artistic repertoire for centuries. This is confirmed by Baumgarte’s training at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin between 1941 and 1944. Under Gerhard Ulrich, Baumgarte “perfected” her “unerring strokes,”8 and from Wilhelm Tank, she learned to rapidly capture bodies in motion in a drawing.9 For this reason, Fenner interprets the sketch as a reproduction of an event that Baumgarte actually witnessed.10 A cinematically trained eye is not required for this. Animation Film Exercises in the Spirit of Muybridge and Marey Two drawings overlooked until now—Greyhound at a Stretched Gallop, around 1942, and Horse at a Trot, around 1942—can help to advance our argument (figs. 4, 5). Baumgarte’s stroke is noticeably unspontaneous, for she is visibly concerned with rendering the individual phases of the animals’ movements in an almost formulaic manner. What stands out in the depiction of the greyhound is the superimposition of the individual phases into a process of continuous movement. She apparently conceived of the analysis of the gallop and its resynthesis into the illusion of motion on the canvas simultaneously—that is to say, the two concepts that were separated in Gypsies in the Rain. In fact, these and presumably other similar drawings could only have been made for Wolfgang Kaskeline, in whose animated film studios she worked from 1941 to 1944 during her art studies.11 They served to practice the resolution of movements into the twenty-four frames per second common in film, perhaps as a “homework assignment”, as Rolf Giesen suspects.12 The chronophotographic series that Eadweard Muybridge published in 1887 in his influential work Animal Locomotion served as models and were used extensively, especially in artistic circles, as templates for the anatomically correct depiction of moving human and animal bodies.13 For animators, Muybridge’s series were considered standard models, for a long time offering the only comprehensive way of studying complex motion sequences that were too fast for the human eye. Tableaux of running dogs, such as Plate 710 in Animal Locomotion, could have been used by Baumgarte as direct models (fig. 6). A final proof that the two drawings originated in the Kaskeline sphere are the 6 Eadweard Muybridge Animal Locomotion, Plate 710: Dog Maggie galloping, 1887, Fotogravüre | Photogravure, Los Angeles, University of Southern California Libraries, Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection 117

Filmische Effekte im Werk von Ruth Baumgarte | Cinematic Effects in the Work of Ruth Baumgarte different colors. They were used to demarcate main phases, or “keyframes,” from the intermediate phases necessary to perform a movement, in order to efficiently manage the mass production—based on a division of labor—of images for an animated film.14 In our visual culture, which is deeply shaped by film, it is not unusual to perceive series and individual images from Animal Locomotion primarily as cinematic. This is equally true for images derived from them. An example is the painting A Dash for the Timber, which the Western painter Frederic Remington created in 1889, before the birth of film (fig. 7). From today’s perspective, it could be a frame from a Western film, although the reverse is true, in that it was Remington’s works that influenced the visual design of this popular genre.15 The connection between (chrono-)photographic image and its filmic effect becomes evident when one learns that Muybridge developed the so-called zoopraxiscope as early as 1879, in order to project his photo series as short moving image sequences for an astonished audience.16 The drawings for Gypsies in the Rain (figs. 2, 3, p. 115) must have been created at least in temporal proximity, perhaps even parallel, to the exercise sheets. In this respect, the conclusion of the previous section requires revision: The assumption of a cinematic effect in Gypsies in the Rain is by no means false, since Baumgarte’s involvement with Kaskeline may have made her even more sensitive to movement effects in reality and to their visualization—for Rolf Giesen a kind of “postgraduate study.”17 From Setting to Film Montage—the Expansion of the Repertoire Between 1945 and 1954, one finds further design strategies that can be explained in cinematic terms, especially in Ruth Baumgarte’s illustrations, which she produced while working for the Freie Presse or the Magazin der Hausfrau from 1947 on. Her free line and the resulting dynamic style stand out—like a trademark—from the bulk of the other illustrations. Those of Baumgarte’s motifs that focus on spaces also live from this. Particularly in the body of illustrations, depictions that give weight to the backdrops, such as fig. 8, could date back to Baumgarte’s family penchant for the theater. This is perfectly compatible with the suggestion of so-called establishing shots, that is to say, long shots or medium long shots, which offer a first spatial orientation at the beginning of a feature film sequence, before the action takes its course.18 In such shots, the setting has already become an image, in contrast to the theatrical backdrop. Spatial relationships are also important for drawings with figures or groups of figures, which Baumgarte meaningfully arranges in the pictorial space. A narrative tension that evokes action between foreground and background—as is also familiar with mise-en-scènes on a theater stage and in front of a movie camera—often emerges in her work (fig. 9).19 Baumgarte goes one step further, once again suggesting temporality and movement, in two other remarkable illustra- tions (figs. 10, 11, p. 120). In the former, a woman waits in the foreground on the right, while in the center, a man comes to an advertising pillar, looks at it, and suddenly hurries away in haste. The artist condenses an action into one image through the repetition of figures and objects, with the three tilted and overlapping advertising pillars vividly visualizing that something has come apart. Baumgarte astonishes the viewer with a pluriscenic, or simultaneous, image.20 This strategy of pictorial narrative has been known since at least the sixth century, but after the advent of film, it was often dis- cussed retrospectively for its cinematic qualities.21 Around 1900, pluriscenic images gained new popularity, stimulated by the chronophotographic multiple exposures with which 8 Ruth Baumgarte Freie Presse, Ein Tag | One Day, s. d. WV | CR 3300 9 Ruth Baumgarte Freie Presse, 7. Jg., Nr. 39 | Vol. 7, no. 39, Bielefeld, Sa. | Sat., 16.02.1952, S. | p. 11 WV | CR 1977 119

Filmische Effekte im Werk von Ruth Baumgarte | Cinematic Effects in the Work of Ruth Baumgarte the French physiologist Étienne-Jules Marey, like Muybridge, analyzed the movements of living beings (fig. 12). With the popularization of film, they came to be regarded over the course of time as cinematic images, not least because they focused more on the process of movement and were also produced with apparatuses considered precursors of the motion-picture camera.22 They inspired the Futurists and Marcel Duchamp in particular to produce their clearly abstracted “cinematic” representations of movement in the traditional medium of painting.23 The movement studies by Ruth Baumgarte discussed above (figs. 4, 5, p. 116) have Muybridge as their basis, but she presents the greyhound in the manner of Marey. Consequently, cinematic effects in static images are not limited to figuration, but can even be aug- mented by abstracting tendencies to the point of abstraction. Baumgarte’s pluriscenic illustration also allows another cinematic interpretation, which, in contrast to the previous explanatory approaches, refers to the linking of shots by means of montage (fig. 10). One can also see the threefold repetition of the man and the woman as a synthesis of different cinematic shots, transferred onto each other by means of dissolves. In a variant of this pictorial solution, Baumgarte superimposes the rear view of a boy at a window with a landscape that is probably just before his eyes (fig. 11). With the layering of two images, outer and inner movement enter into an inseparable synthesis—the dynamized landscape becomes legible as a visual expression of being emotionally moved. This is confirmed by Maria Felice Pfeiffer’s poem Jahres-Ende – Neue Wende (Year’s End – New Turning Point), which Baumgarte has illustrated here.24 Beginning in the 1940s, Ruth Baumgarte also created collages or collage-like condensations. As in fig. 13 (p. 122) from 1945, she repeatedly placed small drawings on a surface in relation to one another. The sequence of loose visual connections between the depictions of children seems like an adaptation of the shot/reverse-shot technique. This crucial, genuinely cinematic technique is essentially used in dialogue situations and consists of cutting back and forth between two people facing each other while they speak with one another and appear to be looking at each other.25 The latter must be emphasized because normally even people telephoning with one another, who cannot see each other at all, can be cinematically involved in a virtual dialogue of gazes by means of a shot/reverse-shot, from which a continuous narrative cinematic space emerges. Indeed, the coherence of film narratives is predominantly based on the coordination of gaze relationships, which need not exist in reality, by means of montage.26 With her well-thought- out compilation of individual drawings, Baumgarte evokes a narrative coherence, yet this remains associative and without the logical plot connection of a feature film. Calendar Designs of the Working World Ruth Baumgarte contributed numerous drawings and watercolors to her husband’s company calendars for the years 1952 to 1969.27 They primarily depict workers perform- ing their duties for the Baumgarte ironworks, alternating with photographs, usually devoid of people, of the factory facilities. The focus is on men working, concentratedly and 12 Étienne-Jules Marey Bewegung beim Stabhochsprung | Movement in Pole Vaulting, um | around 1890, Chronofotografie auf fester Platte | Chronophotogra- phy on firm plate, Paris, Archives du Collège du France 121

Filmische Effekte im Werk von Ruth Baumgarte | Cinematic Effects in the Work of Ruth Baumgarte collaboratively. The staging of the figures, together with their industrial surroundings, is meticulously attuned to the viewer, its frame-like character encouraging the viewer to mentally continue the implied activities. Baumgarte partially broke away from industrial motifs, especially in the calendar of 1966, from which the opening example of this essay is taken (fig. 1, p. 114). The illustrations for this calendar in particular convey an intensified cinematic effect through their distinct landscape format. This can be associ- ated with what is known as the widescreen movie, which was introduced in the 1950s to deal with the competition from television. The 4:3 aspect ratio that had dominated until then was increasingly replaced by wider film images, in order to lure audiences back into cinemas with the resulting “larger-than-life” effect.28 The parts of the calendar illustrations that are left blank are an important design element, because they bring about an additional dynamic. It should be noted at this point that cinematic effects can also occur in vertical formats. One of the prime examples for the affinities in Baumgarte’s style to film is the illustration Morning (fig. 14), created in 1958 for the 1959 calendar. Unusually somber, it presents people going to work in muted colors that suggest a relationship to the black-and-white film aesthetic of Italian Neorealism of the 1940s and 1950s.29 This association is reinforced, incidentally, by its resemblance to the 4:3 aspect ratio in which these films were usually shot. In the case of the man in the foreground, one actually expects him to raise his head and then disappear to the right, followed by a so-called “match on action” cut to a rear view—a switch to another perspective, suggesting an uninterrupted movement and showing the man continuing on his way.30 The dynamic streetscape, the lack of clear contours, and the many unfinished areas also help to vitalize the scene. What was spread over two sheets in Gypsies in the Rain (figs. 2, 3, p. 115) is fused here into an electrifying synthesis: the effect of a film frame and the evocation of an unfinished process of movement. In the calendar illustrations, Baumgarte consistently developed the dynamic drawing style of her early years, which she had based on suggestions. Together with a reflective mise-en-scène of the figures and pictorial spaces, animated-looking images emerge that could have come from industrial or feature films—or from a storyboard for the planning of film shootings.31 The 1961 work Change of Shift (Workplace) (fig. 15)—for the 1962 calendar—could show an “establishing shot” that follows up on the walk to work in Morning, but we should be interested in another aspect. The visible layering of colors, a result of the watercolor technique, creates dynamically vibrant transitions. Especially the ghostly transparency of some of the figures produces an effect of superimposition, or more precisely, that of a dissolve, so that the constella- tions of figures in the factory workshop are permanently transformed in the imagination. With this strategy, Baum- garte ensures that the viewer does not perceive the scenery as frozen in time, as in a frame, but rather has the feeling of witnessing a longer period of time, which can span several minutes. This impression stems from the fact that movies often use dissolves to signal the passing of time. What is unusual in Baumgarte’s calendar pictures is a pronounced tendency in the use of color. In Change 14 Ruth Baumgarte Der Morgen (Gang zur Arbeit / Morgen) | Morning (Walk to Work / Morning), 1958 WV | CR 3178 15 Ruth Baumgarte Schichtwechsel (Arbeitsplatz) | Change of Shift (Workplace), 1961 WV | CR 3188 123

Filmische Effekte im Werk von Ruth Baumgarte | Cinematic Effects in the Work of Ruth Baumgarte actually aim at a clear and smooth direction of the gaze and therefore favor hierarchical and immediately comprehensible visual compositions. The combination of dissolve-like effects and “all-over” leads to a taut synthesis of effects that simultaneously promote and contradict a perception that is cinematic. We have already encountered the roots of the de- hierarchizing tendencies in Gypsies in the Rain (fig. 3, p. 115), but they can also be found in watercolor portraits from the 1940s in the form of color accents distributed over the entire face. Now, however, there is an additional mobilization of the gaze that shifts the dynamics even more into the perception of the observer. Unfortunately, no reactions to Baumgarte’s calendar illustrations are known to us. While they possess distinctly eye-catching qualities, their all-over approach makes them difficult to “read” instantly and they require attentive viewing. It would be interesting to know whether the calendar illustrations would have been accepted if Baumgarte had produced them not for her husband’s company, but for an external client. Growing Enigmatization of Images In the 1970 and 1980s, Baumgarte intensively addressed the crises of her time and her biography. The latter in particular are visually striking for outsiders, but difficult to access in terms of content. This is due to a very personal and symbolic visual language that is far removed from established iconographic patterns. As Alexander Baumgarte notes, his mother was generally reticent when it came to her work.34 Relatively easy to understand is the anti-racism water- color Come Clean from 1984 (fig. 16). The confrontation of a standing White man with a stooped Black boy in a lurking position generates a narrative tension that could instantly erupt into a fight. The situation corresponds to what was discussed in eighteenth-century art theory as a “fertile moment,” namely that meaningful moment before the climax that summarizes the backstory and anticipates the action to come.35 This proves once again that even before the invention of film, pictorial strategies were developed that from today’s perspective seem cinematic. Come Clean, however, is an exception in Baumgarte’s work, which favors the transitory—in other words, sequences and processes rather than “fertile moments” or climaxes. Even so, Come Clean is not free of irritations. For example, the role of the woman standing far too close and 17 Ruth Baumgarte Der Zweifel (Zweifel) | The Doubt (Doubt), 1985 WV | CR 719 of Shift, for example, she distinguishes between different zones of depth, but otherwise refuses to use clear color contrasts, aerial or color perspective to direct attention, as is otherwise common—even in films.32 Instead, she distributes the color accents over the entire picture surface, so that it is difficult to concentrate on a specific area. All elements of the image and all the areas appear to be of equal importance. This de-hierarchizing dispersion of the gaze, known as “all-over,” is one of the foremost artistic achievements of the twentieth century. Although one usually associates this pictorial arrangement with the great Drip Paintings of Jackson Pollock from around 1950, it is by no means reserved for radically abstract works. Baumgarte provides excellent examples by combining her figurative, ultimately conservatively trained style with this profoundly modern pictorial principle.33 This results in images that are not immediately discernible to the eye and therefore provoke an active seeing, one that also explores ignored zones beyond the figures and pictorial narrative, and acknowledges more than just the representational value of pictorial means. This unconventional and demanding approach to habits of seeing can hardly be explained by cinematic design conventions, since these 125

19 Ruth Baumgarte Wanting to Build a House, 1994 WV | CR 959 figures involved in conversation, or moving through the pictorial space or even directly toward us. The “medium close-up” of a man in Africa I (fig. 18) fuels expectations of a reverse-angle shot of a virtual dialogue partner, while Wanting to Build a House (fig. 19) shows a man walking, cut off at the feet, in an unusual view from above, an overhead perspective familiar from films. In both images, the positioning of the figure activates the invisible “off-screen space” beyond the canvas, because that is where one expects to see what is essential for the completion of the visual narrative. From an art-historical point of view, cropping and perspectives like those in fig. 19 are not a novelty—quite the contrary. Although the roots of these compositional means go back much further, under the influence of photography, they became popular strategies for reflecting the fleeting nature of modern (metropolitan) perception in images, particularly in Impressionism and especially in the work of Edgar Degas.37 In film, however, it is common to move away from the everyday perspective, to express a character’s strength and power, for example, with a low-angle shot. Cutting to a high-angle view, as in Wanting to Build a House, suggests that the person is being observed by someone. And cropped feet in a so-called full shot, which shows the whole figure, are equally common. Overall, many design aspects in film images are not entirely new, but their conventionalized and ubiquitous occurrence can contribute to the reception of static images, like those of Ruth Baumgarte, as cinematic. No less enigmatic than the works mentioned above are His Land (fig. 20, p. 128), and Morning II (fig. 21, p. 129), in which Africans walk unerringly toward us through an inconsistently flowing landscape, without it being clear whether they are mirages or integral components of the environment. Baumgarte separates figures and ground, but the all-over tendency already noted in the calendar illustrations is still present through the color distribution. The presumably cinematically inspired effect of vividness, which already appears in her early works, reaches its culmination in the Africa cycle. Contributing to this, on the one hand, is her preference for vivid yellow, red, and green tones, and on the other, the layering of groups of figures—recalling film frames—over formations of dynamic brushstrokes that oscillate between abstraction and landscape depiction and which appear to be in a state of constant change. What still seemed to be frozen in Gypsies in the Rain (fig. 3, p. 115) is now transformed into a liveliness that the eye—in its search for points of orientation—can like a ghost behind the Black boy is not entirely clear. As for the pavement or carpet on which they are all standing, an abyss seems to open up beneath it, with no indication of how much this effect is supposed to contribute to the meaning of the picture. In this phase of her work, Ruth Baumgarte not in- frequently resorts to collage-like compositions, already present in her early work. The watercolor Doubt from 1985 is a good example of this strategy, for several figures and situations in it cluster together like a burden above a young man (fig. 17, p. 125). The generalized title allows for a wide range of interpretations, since the relationship of the doubter to the individual scenes is not further specified. In this work, too, the watercolor technique is a central factor, since it contributes to a great extent to making the arrangement appear like a condensation of cinematic dissolves in a static image. The vertical format is indispensable to visualizing the pressure to which the main character is subjected. To express this understandably in a conventional narrative film, one would work with a sequence of successive dissolves.36 The works of this phase, which began in the 1970s, also mark the beginning of the most ambitious period of Ruth Baumgarte’s work. She adds personal and often hermetic content to her aesthetics and thus brings it to full flowering. Color Intensive Layering between Figuration and Denial of Figuration The typically large-format Africa pictures, created over two decades from the 1980s on, are regarded as the culmination of Baumgarte’s oeuvre. The intensely colored layering of moving figures over dissociated, rudimentarily recognizable landscapes of brushstrokes do not evoke any immediate association with film. The pictures do, however, evoke a déjà vu experience of documentaries or feature films that cannot be named more specifically. The reason for this are the photorealistic, semitransparent 127

Filmische Effekte im Werk von Ruth Baumgarte | Cinematic Effects in the Work of Ruth Baumgarte the process of movement, whereby even images recalling frames are increasingly interpreted in the direction of the moving image through the use of dynamizing means. Baumgarte also explored pictorial devices that have long been familiar from art history and which not only gained new attention in the nineteenth century under the impact of photography, but were increasingly characterized as cinematic with the spread of movies from 1895 on. These include figure repetitions, dissolve effects, and (collage-like) pluriscenic condensations, familiar from the movement analyses of Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey. Also contributing to the cinematic effect are the unusual perspectives and open compositions of her images, which seem as if taken from a larger, not exactly explicable cinematic context and appear to call for an addition that will never come, for instance through a virtual reverse-angle shot. Ruth Baumgarte adopted a pictorial effect that Thomas Koebner has characterized as a “dialogic conception” or as a “bipolar [...] formal construction of film images.”39 She adopts their unfinished nature, which takes up a previous event and awakens the expectation of a continuation so as to guarantee its interconnectedness into a narrative. Finally, among Baumgarte’s most radical articulations is the mobilization of visual perception by means of dynamic all-over structures through color. These offer a formal counterpart to her works from the late 1970s on, in that their content is not readily accessible and demands active engagement. On this basis, she arrives at a completely independent conception of “living pictures” by using the almost abstract backgrounds of her Africa pictures to undermine the promise of realism that is still associated with film in many places today.40 Seemingly photographic-filmic figure representation and evocation of a landscape, in the spirit of the denial of representation, enter into a synthesis here, in which cinematic and supposedly uncinematic effects flow indissolubly into one another. The “cinematic” in Ruth Baumgarte’s works is so difficult to grasp because an explicit reflection on media, such as one can assume for Edward Hopper’s quasi-filmic aesthetics, was not her goal. If she herself had engaged in photography and thus evolved a corresponding gaze, her pictures would probably have turned out somewhat differently than they did under the presumably formative school of Wolfgang Kaskeline.41 Ultimately, Ruth Baumgarte understood the film medium primarily as a moving image, whose potential, for her, represented a means to an end, in order to increasingly condense visual spaces into vital layers of image. 21 Ruth Baumgarte Morning II, um | around 2004 WV | CR 1047 hardly get enough of. Baumgarte’s images of Africa confront us with a world that is both foreign and fascinating. With regard to the last major phase of the artist’s work, the question arises as to the inspiration from the visual cultures of the 1970s and 1980s. Related phenomena can be found in the field of video, for example in abstract- experimental dissolve effects and nervous background textures, like those that occasionally appeared in music videos back then.38 At this point, however, it is worth raising the objection that not all of Baumgarte’s pictorial solutions can be reduced to mere influences, for she was independent enough to arrive at her own visual language autonomously. Cinematic Effects as a Means to an End The present argument has highlighted the development of Ruth Baumgarte’s visual language as a consequential process, in which decisive early impulses from theater, the art academy, film, and photographic articulations from before the birth of cinema overlap. The search for vivid effects in the medium of the static image has been identified as a basic creative intention of the artist. A translation of cinematic means and effects in her work seems plausible, not least due to biographical factors such as her collaboration with Wolfgang Kaskeline. This results in strategies that oscillate between freezing and 129

Filmische Effekte im Werk von Ruth Baumgarte | Cinematic Effects in the Work of Ruth Baumgarte 1 Holger Liebs, “Wenn die Kunst 5 See Daniel Wiegand, Gebannte ins Kino geht,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, January 26, 2020, p. p. 40. The terms “filmic” and “cinematic” are used synonymously here. 2 Verbal information provided by Alexander Baumgarte on August 24, 2021. 3 Verbal information provided by Alexander Baumgarte on August 24, 2021. On the history of the Kamera cinema, see: https://www.filmhaus-bielefeld.de /beitraege/kamera -filmkunsttheater/#toggle-id-1 [accessed on November 20, 2021]. 4 See the list with Ruth Baumgarte’s favorite movies in the Estate of the Ruth Baumgarte Art Foundation. Bewegung. Tableaux vivants und früher Film in der Kultur der Moderne, PhD diss., Zurich, 2014 (Marburg 2016), pp. 46–49, on the term “lebende Bilder” (“living pictures”). The majority of relevant publications focus on the interchange between film and art after 1945, above all the dialogue with photography and video art. Studies on art and film before 1945, in particular on the impact of film in visual art, primarily focus on the USA but neglect visual-aesthetic analyses. See Nancy Mowll Mathews, Charles Musser, et al., Moving Pictures. American Art and Early Film 1880–1910 (Manchester VT, 2005); Katherine Manthorne, Film and Modern American Art. The Dialogue Between Cinema and Painting (New York/London, 2019). The same lack of visual analysis applies to the work of Edward Hopper, although hardly any of the numerous publications neglects to offer a discussion of his “cinematic” style. Especially stimulating in this aspect is Bernd Growe, “Fotografische Aufmerksamkeit. Edward Hopper, die Momentfotografie und Edgar Degas,” in: Die Wahrheit des Sichtbaren. Edward Hopper und die Fotografie, ed. Georg-W. Költzsch and Heinz Liesbrock, exh. cat. Museum Folkwang Essen (Cologne 1992), pp. 72–82. 6 See Martin Fenner, “Auf jedem Stein erglänzt das Silberlicht,” in: Ruth Baumgarte. Herkunft/ Prägung/Zäsuren, ed. Bezirksamt Lichtenberg, exh. cat. Kulturhaus Karlshorst, Berlin (Berlin 2017), pp. 13–32, here pp. 18–20 on the context of its creation and on the explosive nature of the motif in Nazi Germany. 7 On the term “Momentfoto- grafie”—a German synonym for “instantaneous photography” or “snapshot”—see Marlene Schnelle-Schneyder, Photographie und Wahrnehmung am Beispiel der Bewegungsdarstellung im 19. Jahrhundert, PhD diss. Bochum, 1988 (Marburg 1990), pp. 56–62. On the concept of “Moment- fotografie” and the history of the term, see also Michel Frizot, “The New Truths of the Snapshot,” in: Snapshot. Painters and Photography, Bonnard to Vuillard, ed. Elizabeth W. Easton, exh. cat. Indianapolis Museum of Art/The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C./Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (New Haven, CT/London 2011), pp. 23–35. 8 Fenner, “Auf jedem Stein” (see note 6), p. 17. 9 See ibid. 10 See ibid., p. 18. 11 Verbal information provided on September 8, 2021 by Rolf Giesen, who sheds light on the background on Wolfgang Kaskeline in his essay in this catalogue raisonné, see vol. 1, pp. 134–145. 12 Verbal information provided by Rolf Giesen on September 8, 2021. 13 Verbal information provided by Rolf Giesen on September 8, 2021. On the relationship between Muybridge and visual art, see, among others, Jens Ruchatz, “Momentaufnahme und Kunst: eine historische Begegnung,” Fotogeschichte vol. 17, no. 66 (1997): pp. 3–22. 14 See Rolf Giesen, Lexikon des Trick- und Animationsfilms (Berlin 2003), pp. 240, 468, as well as verbal information provided by him on September 8, 2021. 15 See Estelle Jussim, Frederic Remington, the Camera & the Old West (Fort Worth, TX 1983), pp. 41–50; Ralf Michael Fischer, “The Significance of the Frontier in American Art”. Zur Darstellung und Reflexion der Frontier in der nordamerikanischen Malerei zwischen 1725 und 1930 [manuscript], habilitation thesis (Tübingen 2017), pp. 398–401; on the reception of Remington in the Western, see Edward Buscombe, “Painting the Legend: Frederic Remington and the Western,” Cinema Journal vol. 23, no. 4 (1984): pp. 12–27. 131

Filmische Effekte im Werk von Ruth Baumgarte | Cinematic Effects in the Work of Ruth Baumgarte 2012), on the history, function, and aesthetic of storyboards. 32 See Barbara Flückiger, “Spielformen der Figur/ Grund-Interaktion im Farbfilm. Eine typologische Bestimmung,” in: montage AV vol. 29, no. 2 (2020): pp. 81–114. 33 See Gerhard Charles Rump, “Mit der Zeit, über der Zeit. Ruth Baumgarte und die Entwicklung der Westkunst,” in: Ruth Baum- garte 1923–2013. Hommage zum 90. Geburtstag. Wichtige Werke aus sieben Jahrzehnten, ed. Ruth Baumgarte Art Foundation, exh. cat. Samuelis Baumgarte Galerie, Bielefeld, (Bielefeld 2013), pp. 5–15, here pp. 13–14, which cites the all-over tendency only in the Africa pictures. All- over should not be misunder- stood as an absolutely uniform distribution of all picture elements across the image field, since this criterion does not even apply to the most radical of Pollock’s pictures; see the fundamental discussion on this in William Rubin, “Jackson Pollock and the Modern Tradition” (original 1967 edition), in: Jackson Pollock. Interviews, Articles, and Reviews, ed. Pepe Karmel (New York 1999), pp. 118–75, here pp. 128–33. 34 Verbal information provided by Alexander Baumgarte on August 24, 2021. 35 See Ernst H. Gombrich, “Moment and Movement in Art,” in: Gombrich, The Image & the Eye. Further Studies in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (London 1994, reprint of the original London 1982 edition), pp. 40–62. 36 One can also associate such scene condensations in Ruth Baumgarte's work with the aesthetics of movie posters, which are not infrequently based on a similar principle. However, movie posters have a different function, as they serve as a central advertising medium to present the main characters and stars of a film and to arouse curiosity about its plot. 37 On the issue of perspective in visual art and photography, see Scharf, Art and Photography (see note 23), pp. 165–209. See also Wolfgang Kemp, Foto-Essays zur Geschichte und Theorie der Fotografie, expanded edition (Munich 2006), pp. 49–98. See furthermore the most recent publication on the development of film within the context of the arts and the visual culture of the 19th century: Enfin le cinéma! Arts, image et spectacles en France (1833–1907), ed. Dominique Paini, Paul Perrin, and Marie Robert, exh. cat. Musée d’Orsay, Paris (Paris 2021). 38 An example that points remotely in this direction is the official video to F. R. David’s song Words from 1982: https://www.youtube .com/watch?v=PTsSk0r_Tq8 [accessed on November 20, 2021]. 39 Thomas Koebner, “Koexistenz durch Sukzession. Zur bipolaren Bauform von Filmbildern,” in: Bildtheorie und Film, ed. Thomas Koebner and Thomas Meder (Munich 2006), pp. 62–73, here pp. 62, 69. 40 See ibid., pp. 62–64. 41 According to verbal information provided by Alexander Baumgarte on August 24, 2021, his mother never practiced photography. 16 See Schnelle-Schneyder, 26 See Ralf Michael Fischer, Raum Photographie und Wahrnehmung (see note 7), pp. 78–79. 17 Verbal information provided by Rolf Giesen on September 8, 2021. 18 See Ira Konigsberg, The Complete Film Dictionary, 2nd expanded edition (New York 1997), pp. 122. 19 See David Bordwell, Figures Traced in Light. On Cinematic Staging (Berkeley/Los Angeles/ London 2005), especially pp. 1–42 on cinematic strategies of staging. The close relation between film and theater is also evident in that comparisons between these two media are a topos of classical film theory. 20 See, among others, Jens Thiele et al., Das Bilderbuch. Ästhetik – Theorie – Analyse – Didaktik – Rezeption, 2nd expanded edition (Bremen/Oldenburg 2003), pp. 59–60. 21 See Karl Clausberg, Die Wiener Genesis. Eine kunstwissenschaft- liche Bilderbuchgeschichte (Frankfurt/Main 1984) on the quasi-cinematic illustrations of the Wiener Genesis from the sixth century. 22 See Schnelle-Schneyder, Photographie und Wahrnehmung (see note 7), pp. 112–42. 23 See Aaron Scharf, Art and Photography (New York, 1986; reprint of the original edition, London 1968), pp. 255–68. 24 Freie Presse, January 1, 1950, p. 14. 25 See David Bordwell, Poetics of Cinema (New York/London 2008), pp. 57–82, on the technique of shot-reverse shot, which first arose in the 1910s and in no way corresponds to “natural” human perception, as is often wrongly claimed. und Zeit im filmischen Œuvre von Stanley Kubrick, PhD diss. Marburg, 2006 (Berlin 2009), pp. 32–52, on cinematic space in general and in its dominating form in Hollywood cinema. Of course, numerous examples of film exist, usually from beyond mainstream cinema, which play with irritating and even “fake” connections between gazes and shot-reverse shot sequences. See Ralf Michael Fischer, “Diskontinuierliche Bild- und Filmräume im Dialog. Joel Pizzinis Kurzfilm Enigma de Um Dia und Giorgio de Chiricos Pittura Metafisica,” in Film als Raumkunst. Historische Perspektiven und aktuelle Methoden, ed. Henning Engelke, Ralf Michael Fischer, and Regine Prange (Marburg 2012), pp. 266–93. 27 See Ruth Baumgarte und das Wirtschaftswunder. Farbrausch am Kessel, ed. Michael Dückershoff, exh. cat. Hoesch-Museum Dortmund (Cologne 2018). 28 See John Belton, Widescreen Cinema (Cambridge, MA/London 1992), one of the standard works on widescreen film. 29 See the exposition on the work on the website https://ruth -baumgarte.com/oeuvre /fabrikwelten-1954-1967 /der-morgen-gang-zur-arbeit -1958/ [accessed on November 11, 2021]. 30 See Fischer, Raum und Zeit (see note 26), p. 47, on the concept of “match on action.” 31 Whether Baumgarte was familiar with storyboards, that is to say, with preliminary drawings in regard to cinematic effects, is unfortunately not documented. See Zwischen Film und Kunst. Storyboards von Hitchcock bis Spielberg, ed. Katharina Henkel, Kristina Jaspers, and Peter Mänz, exh. cat. Kunsthalle Emden/Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fern- sehen, Berlin (Bielefeld/Berlin 133

1 Fotograf unbekannt | Photographer unknown Wolfgang Kaskeline, Schwarz-Weiß-Fotografie, Privatbesitz | Black-and-white photograph, Private collection Wolfgang Kaskeline and the Rise of Animated Film in the 1920s Wolfgang Kaskeline was born in 1892 into a Jewish family of industrialists (fig. 1). He was well organized and at an early age had already gained insight into manufacturing processes based on a division of labor. At the Kunst- gewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts) in Hamburg, he initially studied commercial graphic art but later switched to music at the conservatory. Kaskeline served as a soldier in World War I, was seriously injured early on, and classified as war-disabled. In 1916, he passed the examination to become a drawing teacher and was engaged a year later by an upper secondary school in Berlin. Even then, he was already looking around among his students for those with technical and drawing talent. After World War I, the new visual medium of film boomed, stimulated by numerous investments. A large number of variously specialized firms were created and the industry flourished and expanded, but collapsed dramatically during the German hyperinflation of 1923. With the support of his students, Wolfgang Kaskeline carried out his first film experiments in 1922 at his home in the Berlin district of Tempelhof. For this, he employed cut-out animation, photographing paper figures on a board in various stages of movement, and stencils—only later using the more sophisticated animated cartoon technique.1 Cut-outs and stenciling did not require many people—a few persons sufficed to produce short visual sequences. One needed only a camera for single photographs, an animation table, and some artistic equipment. In 1923, he founded the company Kaskeline GmbH. Wolfgang Kaskeline’s inspiration to enter the field of animation as a graphic artist did not come from Walt Disney.2 The first animated Mickey Mouse film with sound to be publicly released in the United States, Steamboat Willie in 1928, was not screened in Germany until 1930. Rather, the pivotal model for Kaskeline was Julius Pinschewer, a Jewish film producer who had already made advertising films before World War I, using animation technique in the process. Pinschewer had an affinity for experimental animated film and employed artists such as Walter Ruttmann and the silhouettist Lotte Reiniger. Pinschewer emigrated to Switzerland in 1933 after the Nazis came to power. Hans Fischerkoesen was another key figure in animated film production. Advertising films proved to be lucrative. Leading manu- facturers were interested in using the popularity of animation Preliminary Note The time that Ruth Baumgarte spent in Wolfgang Kaskeline’s animation studio in Berlin remains largely unresearched. Although the artist noted in her artistic biography that she had been a permanent staff member of the “Kaskeline Animation Film Studio,” she never spoke in detail about her experiences, the working procedures in the studio, or the insights and knowledge she gained during her three years there. Hardly any publications until now have studied Wolfgang Kaskeline, his work for various companies, and his operating principles with the studio teams. In 2020, Herma Kennel brought out a first biography of the illustrator and film director. While the book took Kaskeline’s estate into account, documents stored at the Deutsches Filmmuseum in Frankfurt am Main have yet to be fully explored. Research has been hampered by the losses suffered by the Kaskeline studios during the war. The fundamental publication on the history and use of animated visualization during the Nazi dictatorship is Rolf Giesen’s Animation Under the Swastika. A History of Trickfilm in Nazi Germany, 1933–1945 from 2012, based on notes taken by J. P. Storm during interviews with contemporary witnesses. In June 2021, Rolf Giesen discussed with Viola Weigel the context, atmosphere, and production conditions of the Kaskeline animated film studio in Berlin under which the young Ruth Baumgarte presumably worked from 1941 to 1944. His comments are summarized below. 137

3 Ruth Baumgarte Faust I, Valentins Tod | Faust I, Valentine’s Death, 1943 WV | CR 32 Ruth Baumgarte at the Animated Filmmaker Wolfgang Kaskeline In 1941, Ruth Baumgarte introduced herself to Wolfgang Kaskeline as an art student. He found in her an out- standing draftswoman who could support him in all the processes in the animated film business. On her mother’s initiative, she had begun attending Emmy Stalmann’s Private Art School of the West in Berlin at the age of fifteen. From there, she moved on to the State Academy of Fine Arts. As early as 1942, her “first attempt at illustration” was awarded a prize in the drawing course taught by Professor Ulrich (CR 32). Two years later, a study certificate highlighted her “above-average talent for drawing and painting” (fig. 3).4 As part of her drawing class under Professor Wilhelm Tank, it is possible that Ruth Baumgarte made motion studies of animals reminiscent of chronophotography around 1900 (fig. 4, p. 140). In addition to her gift for drawing, Kaskeline was impressed by “Ruth’s family background”—she came from an old theater family—[which corresponded to Kaskeline’s] “ideas about the ideal prerequisite for artistic professions.”5 How Ruth Baumgarte came to Wolfgang Kaskeline has yet to be established. Since the animation studios were constantly looking for talented staff, one can assume that she was referred to the studio via the academy or her teachers. One advantage that Kaskeline’s small operation had over large enterprises, such as Deutsche Zeichen- film GmbH, is obvious.6 Unlike the strict work process at the UFA companies, Kaskeline’s tasks varied: he drew the types or main phases himself and left the rest to employees (fig. 5, p. 140). We know from word of mouth that he apparently lost his appetite for projects easily and therefore needed a team that was capable of taking over entire work processes from one day to the next. Members of his team were guided by an exposure sheet, which recorded everything that had to be done in terms of timing, drawing, music, and images, frame by frame and second by second (fig. 6, p. 141). The types were designed in advance and approved by the customer. Given those circumstances, the young Ruth Baumgarte may quite possibly have worked in all areas of production, which would not have been possible at Deutsche Zeichenfilm GmbH, where employees were restricted to a specific task without being able to influence the overall product. technology for their modern product advertising. Kaskeline, too, got into drawn or 2D-animated film for commercial reasons. The production of advertising films ensured financial security and steady orders. Unlike Lotte Reiniger, Kaskeline almost never made autonomous productions but was essentially a commissioned producer focusing on advertising. Accordingly, he worked for fixed fees and turned concepts that had previously been agreed upon into a film, a common procedure throughout Europe. Advertising films, which were often opulently staged at the time, were shown as part of the supporting program at cinemas. Some of these productions, such as Oskar Fischinger’s Muratti greift ein (1934; Muratti Gets in the Act), were so popular that they even outshone the main film and viewers went to the cinema for the accompanying program alone. Animated cigarette commercials were the audiences’ favorites. UFA and the Precarious Situation under the Nazi Regime In 1927, Kaskeline incorporated his company into the UFA- Werbefilm film advertising studio and became head of his own department at the studio just one year later. “UFA- Kaskeline” soon became a household name (fig. 2). After disputes with the parent company, Kaskeline was compelled to go into business for himself again and he worked from 1937 on for the companies Epoche Gasparcolor-Film AG and Tolirag (Ton- und Lichtbild-Reklame AG), among others. As a so-called half-caste according to the Nazis’ racial cate- gories, however, he was constantly in danger and dependent on the protection of the Ministry of Propaganda. The risky status of his uncertain situation may have had not only personal, but also economic consequences for him. Only later was he accepted into the Reichsfilmkammer (Film Chamber of the Reich).3 Towards the end of the war, despite being unpopular with the regime because of his Jewish origins, Kaskeline became head of production at Deutsche Zeichenfilm GmbH (German Animated Films company], which had been founded on Goebbels’s orders in 1941. 139

Ruth Baumgartes Station im Zeichenfilm-Studio von Wolfgang Kaskeline | Ruth Baumgarte’s Time in Wolfgang Kaskeline’s Animation Film Studio The Significance of Animated Film In those days, animated films were considered “cultural films.” The supervising manager at Deutsche Zeichen- film GmbH, Karl Neumann, had been responsible for cultural film at the Ministry of Propaganda and proved his worth there. At Deutsche Zeichenfilm GmbH, investments were made primarily in infrastructure, while production stagnated. As a senior government advisor, Neumann was expected to set up a Disney-like animated film production studio. Neumann was therefore desperately looking for a product to expand the program, and Wolfgang Kaskeline in turn was looking for employment. That is probably how Neumann came to reach an agreement with Kaskeline in 1944 on the management of Deutsche Zeichenfilm GmbH’s Berlin production group, which was technically well equipped. In the absence of a steady stream of advertising contracts, Kaskeline was in the process of developing two independent animated film projects in his studio on Blumenstrasse, in Berlin’s Friedrichshain district, in addition to handling the last of his projects from this period: Hänschen klein (Little Hans) and Walzer- märchen (Waltz Fairy Tale), a humorous story, with dance interludes, about the origins of the waltz. These projects were taken over by Neumann. The Fischerkoesen Studio in Potsdam had overtaken him with no fewer than three animated shorts commissioned by German newsreels, which were considerably cheaper and more popular.7 Despite Kaskeline’s involvement, the production company was unable to meet the self-imposed demands because it lacked a qualified artistic director, while the leading employees were only commercial graphic artists with no artistic ambitions. The latter came from the world of advertising film, having mostly crossed over from other fields. They worked according to set routines, and altogether lacked the Disney format requested by the Ministry of Propaganda. Walt Disney and Wolfgang Kaskeline Disney’s indirect influence on German production was immense. Entire sequences from Disney films were copied, the style and aesthetics imitated. Not by Kaskeline, though, whose types are completely different—anthropo- morphically designed animals did not exist in his work, as they did in films made by Deutsche Zeichenfilm GmbH. Accurate outline drawings—exact contours—were important to Kaskeline. At Walt Disney’s studios, on the other hand, there was dynamic scribbling. If ever there existed an anti-Disney, then it was Wolfgang Kaskeline. What formed the link between Disney and Kaskeline was sound. Overall, animated film became more attractive worldwide with the advent of music and sounds—sound design. Sound and color, crucial elements at Walt Disney in the 1930s, were also defining factors for Kaskeline, and yet he never completed a cartoon film that would have stood comparison with American ones. He made only advertising films. It was entirely different with Walt Disney, who entered the feature-length film business at enormous commercial risk involved. All that remained unfamiliar and foreign to Kaskeline, who opted for a safe course throughout most of his life. It is both significant and paradoxical that in spite of all its efforts, the German animation industry was unable to rival Walt Disney with similar-quality animated films of its own, even though the National Socialists controlled production facilities and cinemas in large parts of Europe. There was a lack of willingness to take risks, of experienced illustrators with their own style, and of producers who granted artistic freedom. The Role of Draftswomen in the Animated Film Industry Three quarters of the workforce in the training workshop of Deutsche Zeichenfilm GmbH were female. However, little is known about the role of draftswomen in the animated film industry who worked at UFA, Tobis, and Deutsche Zeichenfilm GmbH and were registered with 141 6 Wolfgang Fischerkoesen Beispiel eines Zeichenfilm-Fahrplans (exposure sheet) zum Zeichenfilm Verwitterte Melodie, 1942/43, Dokument, Sammlung J. P. Storm | Example of an exposure sheet for the animated film Weatherbeaten Melody, 1942/43, document, J. P. Storm Collection

Ruth Baumgartes Station im Zeichenfilm-Studio von Wolfgang Kaskeline | Ruth Baumgarte’s Time in Wolfgang Kaskeline’s Animation Film Studio the Film Chamber of the Reich (fig. 7). Unfortunately, no personnel records have survived from Kaskeline’s time. The employees, who must have been registered, were paid salaries of 400 to 700 reichsmarks per month. It can be assumed that Wolfgang Kaskeline’s company was not as thoroughly supervised as the Deutsche Zeichenfilm GmbH, but by the time Kaskeline’s company merged with Deutsche Zeichenfilm GmbH in the final phase of the war, Neumann had lost track of things. Kaskeline worked largely independently, bringing in his own material and technique8—and presumably his own female employees as well. Which film productions Ruth Baumgarte was actually involved in cannot be conclusively determined. Neither interviews with animation filmmakers nor documents or personnel files record the work of Kaskeline and his collaborators at the time. The films have only partially survived and are not completely documented in film- ographic terms. Since Ruth Baumgarte was back in Berlin in 1943 after her time in the Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labor Service) and was certainly employed full-time as a “permanent employee,” it is not unlikely that she was involved in the preliminary work on Hänschen klein and Walzermärchen (fig. 8), the latter being Kaskeline’s most personal and ambitious project in terms of its musical subject.9 It is possible that she was already involved in Hinter den Kulissen (1941; Behind the Scenes), a promotional animated film for the weekly magazine Frankfurter Illustrierte, but most certainly in the Gasparcolor-Film Eine Frau spricht zu den Frauen (1942; A Woman Speaks to Women), which promoted fashion but, unfortunately, has not survived. As is the case with many of the draftswomen who worked for Kaskeline, we do not know whether Ruth Baumgarte was an employee, on Kaskeline’s premises or directly at Deutsche Zeichenfilm GmbH, nor when and at what stage of production the projects had to be abandoned. If Ruth Baumgarte in retrospect recounted that she “often made up to 100 individual drawings for a single scene,” then she probably had a large share in the animation work. At Deutsche Zeichenfilm GmbH, it was a matter of tens of thousands of drawings. The advertising films had a running time of two to three minutes. Wolfgang Kaskeline usually worked with a one- frame system, twenty-four frames per second—3,000 to 4,000 drawings per film. This number was reduced by using repeated cycles of animation loops. Moving and still sections of a character were separated. The contours of the figures were first drawn on paper, then inked on transparent cels and colored. The key frames were drawn first, then the in-betweens. A key frame marks the beginning of a movement, its middle, and end. For example: a person raises an arm and points to a product. The beginning and end of this motion are filled in by several in-betweens. Kaskeline had his own color drama- turgy: colors that were considered particularly expressive with regard to the film’s impact were carefully selected. Ruth Baumgarte was possibly influenced by the color design of these commercials. This process based on the division of labor—“serial painting”—resulted in a serial production that was still artistically oriented in the 1920s, but lost artistic content during the Nazi era. What was important to the clients was the music, the advertising message, and the color, which was still something relatively new and unfamiliar at that time. There were only a few feature films in color. The heyday of the animated advertising film lasted until about 1943, by which time many products had already become scarce commodities. After that, on account of the war and on the orders of the Ministry of Propaganda, advertising film was restricted and those involved had to look for other jobs. After the closure of Deutsche Zeichenfilm GmbH in 1944, Wolfgang Kaskeline worked for Mars-Film GmbH in the Berlin district of Ruhleben, which produced solely educational films for the Wehrmacht. Heinz Kaskeline remembers that his father worked on technical drawings for the use of a fighter plane. Again, nothing was finished. 143 8 Einziger überlieferter Entwurf des Kaskeline-Projekts Walzermärchen, Zeichnung, um 1944, Sammlung J. P. Storm | The only surviving draft for the Kaskeline project Waltz Fairy Tale, drawing, around 1944, J. P. Storm Collection

Ruth Baumgartes Station im Zeichenfilm-Studio von Wolfgang Kaskeline | Ruth Baumgarte’s Time in Wolfgang Kaskeline’s Animation Film Studio When Ruth Baumgarte moved to Sonneberg, in Thuringia, in 1944 because of the evacuation of the Berlin State Academy of Fine Arts, and continued her studies as a guest student at the State School of Industrial Design and Applied Arts, Wolfgang Kaskeline was deeply saddened by the departure of his “best and most talented animated film draftswoman.” Her early work with Kaskeline surely had an influence on her further artistic development. The serial reproduction machinery of an animation studio and the integration into a team working closely together fostered her drawing versatility and her ability to adjust to demanding work processes. Just a few years later, she would make a career for herself as a freelance artist, graphic designer, and book illustrator.10 8 From a letter by Wolfgang Kaskeline to UFA Central Book- keeping of June 18, 1954: “At the time when the Deutsche Zeichenfilm was destroyed, a large number of personal items of mine were in the offices, such as papers, acetate materials, drafting tables, light tables, and suitcases with valuable personal contents, as well as various apparatuses.” 9 This assumption is shared by Kennel, Als die Comics (see note 2), p. 162. 10 See also the essays by Ralf M. Fischer in Volume I and by Christmut Präger in Volume III. 1 In Germany, most people refer to 2D-animation as “Zeichen- film” or “Zeichentrickfilm.” 2 Herma Kennel, Als die Comics laufen lernten – Der Trickfilm- pionier Wolfgang Kaskeline zwischen Werbekunst und Propaganda (Berlin, 2020), pp. 22ff. 3 Ibid., p. 61, and Rolf Giesen and J. P. Storm, Animation Under the Swastika, A History of Trickfilm in Nazi Germany, 1933–1945 (Jefferson, NC /London 2012), pp. 42ff. 4 Ruth Baumgarte’s school certificate from the Staatliche Industrieschule Sonneberg, 1944, see the document in the Estate of the Ruth Baumgarte Art Foundation. 5 Kennel, Als die Comics (see note 2), p. 139. 6 The Deutsche Zeichenfilm GmbH was a state-owned enterprise initiated by Josef Goebbels and attached to the Ministry of Propaganda and the UFA. 7 To avoid any misunderstanding, I quote here from the contractual agreement between Deutsche Zeichenfilm GmbH and Wolfgang Kaskeline dated October 27, 1944: “Referring to our personal conversation, we herewith confirm the agreement that you will be active as head of production. You will assume the technical and artistic supervision of the company. Your field of activity will include the following: Accepting assign- ments, carrying out all measures necessary for their correct implementation. Meetings with clients, maintaining a per- manent connection with the respective offices. Assigning work to the individual production units, along with the relevant instructions and designs. Checking their implementation, making sure that deadlines are met. Taking measures to ensure the cost effectiveness of the company.” 145

“Every day something happens that startles, shocks, delights, and keeps me alert. Encounters, insights, observations, events, coded messages of visual perceptions. Months can pass, sometimes a year, before an image is formed from this mosaic. Everything then becomes tangible; sketches, studies form the basis of the representations. The immersion in memory often goes so far that even my sense of smell is included in the yet-to-be-explored territory of the new picture.” Ruth Baumgarte, 1989

Ruth Kellner und ihre Tante | and her aunt Anna-Marie Schubert Ruth Kellner und ihre Mutter im Grunewald in Berlin | and her mother in Grunewald in Berlin, 1936 1935–39 1935 Umzug nach Berlin-Karlshorst. Schülerin am Karlshorster Lyzeum (ab 1938 Marie-von- Ebner-Eschenbach-Schule). Sie schließt mit dem »Einjährigen« (Mittlere Reife) ab. Mit ihrer Mutter zieht sie 1939 in die Rheingoldstraße 32 in Karlshorst, wo sie häufig auch ihre Tante mit dem angenommenen Sohn Dieter trifft. 1939–40 Besuch der Privaten Kunstschule des Westens von Emmy Stalmann in der Kantstraße 154 A in Berlin- Charlottenburg. An der Kunstschule unterrichtet Hans Scholz (1911–1988) seit 1937 als Nachfolger von Gerhard Ulrich (1903–1988). Mit ihm verbindet sie eine lange Freundschaft. 1955 erscheint von ihm der Erfolgsroman Am grünen Strand der Spree, dessen Verfilmung bei seiner Fernseh- ausstrahlung 1960 zum Straßenfeger wird. 151151 The family moves to Berlin-Karlshorst in 1935 Student at the Karlshorst Lyceum (from 1938 on at the Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach School). She graduates and obtains her “Einjährige” (secondary school leaving certificate). In 1939, Ruth and her mother move to Rheingoldstrasse 32 in Karlshorst, where she also often meets her aunt and Dieter, her aunt’s foster son. Attends Emmy Stalmann’s Private Art School of the West at Kantstrasse 154 A in Berlin-Charlottenburg 1939–40. Hans Scholz (1911–1988) has been teaching at the art school since 1937 as the successor to Gerhard Ulrich (1903–1988). Ruth enjoys a long friendship with him. His novel Am grünen Strand der Spree (On the Green Beach of the Spree), published in 1955, becomes a best seller and, in 1960, a big hit as a television film.

Biografie | Biography 1942 1943 Sie begegnet Sinti und Roma in der Kleingartenanlage Wiesengrund in Karlshorst. An der Akademie lernt sie Florian Breuer (1916 –1994), einen Schüler von Max Kaus (1891–1977), kennen, mit dem sie eine jahrzehntelange Verbindung hatte. Er ver- mittelt ihr die Aquarellmalerei und prägt sie damit stark. Die Arbeit Zigeuner im Regen (WV 30) entsteht. Nahe Karlshorst befindet sich das Sinti- und Roma-Zwangslager Berlin-Marzahn. Von hier wurden 1943 die Menschen nach Auschwitz deportiert und dort ermordet. Sie lernt ihre Kommilitonin Annemarie Stübler (verh. Kranz) kennen, die sie mehrfach porträtiert. Stübler lebt nach dem Krieg in der DDR. Beide bleiben in engem Kontakt. Den Sommer 1943 verbringt sie mit dem Reichsarbeits- dienst bei Lauenburg, Pommern (heute: Le ˛ bork/Polen). zum Torfstechen. Später wird sie diese Zeit als »ausgesprochen bereichernd« bezeichnen. Sie heiratet den Studienkollegen Eduard Alfred Gustav Busse (1914–2003) aus Bielefeld, der unmittelbar nach der Heirat an die Front zurückkehren muss. She meets Sinti and Roma in the Wiesengrund allotment gardens in Karlshorst. She meets Florian Breuer (1916 –1994) (a student of Max Kraus (1891–1977)) at the academy and remains in contact with him for decades. He teaches her watercolor painting and strongly influences her work. Creates the Work Gypsies in the Rain (CR 30). The forced labor camp for Sinti and Roma in Berlin-Marzahn is located near Karlshorst. In 1943, people were deported from here to Auschwitz and murdered there. Meets her fellow student Annemarie Stübler (later Kranz), whom she portrays several times. After the war, Stübler lives in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Both remain in close contact with each other. Spends the summer of 1943 cutting peat with the Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labor Service) near Lauenburg, Pomerania (today: Le ˛ bork, Poland). She later describes this time as “extremely enriching.” Marries Eduard Alfred Gustav Busse (1914–2003), a fellow student from Bielefeld, who must return to the front immediately after the wedding. Ruth Busse mit den Kommilitonen Florian Breuer und Annemarie Stübler in Spindlermühle (heute Špindler v Mlýn/Tschechien) um 1943 | with fellow students Florian Breuer and Annemarie Stübler in Spindlermühle (today: Špindler v Mlýn/Czech Republic), um | around 1943 Ruth Busse beim Reichs- arbeitsdienst | working for the Reich Labor Service, 1943 153

1946 Anfang des Jahres siedelt sie nach Bielefeld über und ernährt allein ihre Familie, die ihr nach Bielefeld nachreiste. Sie pendelt aber regelmäßig nach Berlin. Moves to Bielefeld in early 1946 and becomes the sole provider for her family, who later join her in Bielefeld. She nonetheless commutes regularly to Berlin. Jugendheim (Lortzing-Club), Lichtenrade | Youth Centre (Lortzing-club), Lichtenrade, 1950er-Jahre | 1950s Ruth Busse mit dem Buchhändler Erich Vogel | Ruth Baumgarte with the bookseller Erich Vogel, um | around 1947 1947 Die Ehe mit Eduard Busse wird geschieden. Sie lernt den Feuilletonchef der Freien Presse in Bielefeld, Dr. Steff Koch, kennen. Geburt des Sohnes Thomas Christian Busse. Auftakt ihrer Karriere als Illustratorin, angewandter Grafikerin und freischaffender Malerin. Es entstehen Illustrationen für Zeitungen und Magazine wie der links- gerichteten Freie Presse (1949–1953) und das Magazin der Hausfrau (1949–1954). Sie gestaltet eine Reihe von Kinder- und Jugendbüchern, aber auch Belletristik, wie etwa Werke von Alfred Döblin und Oscar Wilde. Verbindung zu den Bielefelder Buchhändlern Erich Vogel (1906–1956) und Otto Fischer (1907−1995) sowie dem aus Theresienstadt zurückgekehrten Rechtsanwalt Albert Daltrop (1886–1977). Erste öffentliche Ausstellungsbeteiligung mit Tusch- zeichnungen an der Ausstellung Deutsches Buchschaffen in Bielefeld. Sie tritt dem Landesberufsverband Bildender Künstler Nordrhein-Westfalen bei und nimmt bis 1952 an zahlreichen Gruppenausstellungen teil. 155 The marriage with Eduard Busse ends in divorce. Meets Steff Koch, head of the features section of the Freie Presse in Bielefeld. Birth of her son Thomas Christian Busse. Launch of her career as an illustrator, commercial graphic designer, and independent painter. She creates illustrations for newspapers and magazines, such as the left-leaning Freie Presse (1949–1953) and Magazin der Hausfrau (1949–1954). She designs a number of books for children and young people, as well as works of fiction, including books by Alfred Döblin and Oscar Wilde. Establishes connections to the Bielefeld-based booksellers Erich Vogel (1906–1956) and Otto Fischer (1907–1995), as well as to the lawyer Albert Daltrop (1886–1977), who had returned from Theresienstadt. Her first participation in a public exhibition, with ink drawings, is in Deutsches Buchschaffen (German Book Design) in Bielefeld. She joins the Landesberufsverband Bildender Künstler Nordrhein-Westfalen (North Rhine-Westphalian Association of Professional Visual Artists) and takes part in numerous group exhibitions through 1952.

Ruth Busse in Brüssel | Brussels, 1952 Anstich an den neuen Öfen durch Ruth Baumgarte und Johann Salm, Direktor der Eisenwerke Baumgarte, 1953 | The first tapping at the new furnaces by Ruth Baumgarte and Johann Salm, director of the Baumgarte ironworks, 1953 Ruth und | and Thomas Baumgarte, 1953 1952–53 Heirat mit dem Industriellen Hans Baumgarte (1917–1999). Aus der Ehe gehen die Kinder Janine und Alexander hervor. Der Patchwork-Familie gehören seine Kinder aus erster Ehe Ernst-August und Hans-Hermann an. Die Hochzeitsreise führt sie zu den olympischen Spielen in Helsinki und durch ganz Skandinavien. Es beginnt eine Zeit intensiver Reisetätigkeit, u. a. durch ganz Europa, mehrwöchige Rundreisen durch Spanien und Italien. Zahlreiche Aufenthalte in vielen internationalen Großstädten, immer wieder auch in Berlin. Es entstehen Reisebilder wie die Aquarelle Finnische Impression (1952; WV 263), Blick auf Vesuv (1955; WV 296) und Istanbul (1960; WV 329). Marries the industrialist Hans Baumgarte (1917–1999). They have two children, Janine and Alexander. The patchwork family includes his sons from his first marriage: Ernst-August and Hans-Hermann. For their honeymoon, they travel to the Olympic Games in Helsinki and throughout Scandinavia. A period of intensive travel activity begins, including trips across Europe, and tours through Spain and Italy lasting several weeks each. Numerous stays in many international cities, frequently also in Berlin. Creates travel pictures such as the watercolors Finnish Impressions (1952; CR 263), View of Vesuvius (1955; CR 296), and Istanbul (1960; CR 329). Im Auftrag der Eisenwerke Baumgarte entstehen Kalenderillustrationen (bis 1969), die zum Werkzyklus Fabrikwelten führen, die sie zusammen mit dem be- freundeten Bielefelder Grafiker Werner Kuhnert umsetzt. Für das Theater Apollo in Düsseldorf, das von ihrem Vater für die UFA geleitet wird, gestaltet sie 1952 das Cover für das Programm (WV 3268). Weitere Aufträge u. a. für die Firma Dr. Oetker. Aus gesellschaftlichen Gründen wird ihr die Illustrations- Arbeit für die politisch linksgerichtete Freie Presse von ihrem Mann untersagt. Commissioned by the Baumgarte Ironworks, she creates calendar illustrations (until 1969) that lead to the cycle Factory Worlds, realized with Werner Kuhnert, a graphic artist friend from Bielefeld. In 1952, she designs the cover for the opening brochure of the Apollo theater in Düsseldorf, which is managed by her father on behalf of the UFA (CR 3268). Further comissions follow, including from the Dr. Oetker company in Bielefeld. For social reasons, her husband forbids her to do any illustration work for the politically leftist Freie Presse. 157

Biografie | Biography Ruth Baumgarte in Ägypten, bei den Pyramiden von Gizeh | in Egypt, near the Pyramids of Giza, um | around 1960 Ruth Baumgarte auf | in Ischia, um | around 1963 1960–69 Um 1960 Reisen in den Iran, u. a. nach Teheran, Isfahan und an das Kaspische Meer. 1960 stirbt ihr Vater Kurt Rupli. 1965 Tod des engen Freundes und Schauspielers Hans Wintrath. 1966/67 bekommt sie Kontakt zur Kulturszene in Prag aufgrund des Werkzyklus Fabrikwelten. Ihr wird ein Lehrauftrag an der Kunstakademie Prag angeboten. Trennungsabsichten des Ehepaares Baumgarte. Ruth Baumgarte erwägt, nach München zu ziehen. 1969 Tod der Mutter Margarethe Kellner-Conrady. Around 1960, trips to Iran, including Tehran, Isfahan, and the Caspian Sea. 1960: Death of Baumgarte’s father Kurt Rupli. 1965: Death of her close friend, the actor Hans Wintrath. In 1966/67, she comes into contact with the cultural scene in Prague due to the work cycle Factory Worlds. She is offered a teaching position at the Academy of Arts in Prague. The couple plan to separate. Ruth Baumgarte considers moving to Munich. 1969: Death of Ruth’s mother, Margarethe Kellner-Conrady. 159

1975–79 1975 Wiedereintritt in den Bundesverband Bildender Künstler Ostwestfalen-Lippe. Bis 1985 Teilnahme an zahl- reichen Ausstellungen des Verbandes. 1975 Gründung der Produzentengalerie Das Fenster in Bielefeld, die sie bis 1982 betreibt. Damit fördert sie auch die regionale Kunstszene. Der ehemalige Feuilletonchef der Neuen Westfälischen, Martin Bodenstein, schrieb in seinem Buch Mimen, Maler und Mimosen: »Das Fenster besaß eine winzige Sitzecke für Enthusiasten, die nicht auf Kunstkomfort, sondern auf komfortable Kunst und obendrein auf Konversation mit ihren Schöpfern Wert legten. Mit ihrer legendären Galerie habe Ruth Baumgarte ›die Butzen- scheiben der Provinz aufgestoßen‹.« In 1975, she once again becomes a member of the Bundesverband Bildender Künstler Ostwestfalen-Lippe (Federal Association of Visual Artists East Westphalia- Lippe). Participates in many of its exhibitions until 1985. In 1975, she founds the gallery Das Fenster in Bielefeld— which she manages until 1982— in the process also promoting the regional art scene. The former head of the features section of the newspaper Neue Westfälische, Martin Bodenstein, writes in his book Mime, Maler und Mimosen (Actor, Painter, Mimosa): “Das Fenster had a tiny sitting area for enthusiasts who did not value art comfort, but rather comfortable art and, on top of that, conversation with its creators. With her legendary gallery, Ruth Baumgarte ‘pushed opened the bull’s-eye pane windows of the province.’” 1975 Selbstmord ihres Cousins Dieter Noack (geb. 1938). 1978 entsteht das Werk Der Entschluss (WV 465), in dem das gesellschaftlich tabuisierte Thema Selbstmord verarbeitet wird. Her cousin Dieter Noack commits suicide (1938–1975). In 1978, she paints The Decision (CR 465), a work that deals with the socially tabooed subject of suicide. 1976 Tod der Tante Anna-Marie Schubert (Dada). Death of her aunt Anna-Marie Schubert (Dada) in 1976. Biografie | Biography Ruth Baumgarte in ihrer Galerie | in her gallery Das Fenster, um | around 1975 161

Ruth Baumgarte am Kap der Guten Hoffnung Mitte der 1980er-Jahre | Ruth Baumgarte at the Cape of Good Hope, 1980s Ruth Baumgarte in Amalfi, 1986 Ruth Baumgarte am | at the Bethesda Brunnen I Fountain, Central Park, New York, 1993 Häufige Begegnungen mit Nichtsesshaften, so auch in New York, wo sie einem Mann, in Eiseskälte nur mit einer Schulterdecke bekleidet, begegnet. Die Erlebnisse führen zu der achtteiligen Zeichnungsserie Nichtseßhaft (ab 1986; WV 764–774 und 798–799). Frequent encounters with “Nichtsesshaften” (vagrants), such as in New York, where she meets a man wearing only a blanket over his shoulders in the freezing cold. These experiences lead to the eight-part drawing series Vagrant (1986; CR 764–774 and 798–799). 1986 Mitverantwortliche Gründung der Samuelis Baumgarte Galerie, Bielefeld. Is among those responsible for the founding of the Samuelis Baumgarte Galerie, Bielefeld, in 1986. Um 1987 Kontaktaufnahme zum staatlichen Kunsthandel der DDR und zur ostdeutschen Kunstszene. Von Gerhard Kettner, Rektor der Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden, wird ihr ein Lehrauftrag angeboten. Seit Ende der 1980er-Jahre freundschaftliche Verbindung zu dem renommierten New Yorker Kunsthändler Joachim Jean Aberbach (1910–1992) und dessen Frau Susan. Ab 1992 intensive internationale Ausstellungstätigkeit, u. a. Ladengalerie Berlin (1991), Frost & Reed Ltd., London (1992), G. W. Einstein Company Inc., New York (1993), Galleria Giulia di Roma, Rom (1994). 1990–94 Establishes contacts with the state art trade in GDR and the East German art scene. Gerhard Kettner, rector of the University of Fine Arts in Dresden, offers her a teaching position. Since the late 1980s, has friendly ties to the renowned New York art dealer Joachim Jean Aberbach and his wife, Susan Aberbach. From 1992 on, intensive international exhibition activity, including Ladengalerie, Berlin (1991), Frost & Reed Ltd., London (1992), G. W. Einstein Company Inc., New York (1993), Galleria Giulia di Roma, Rome (1994). Es entstehen die mehrteilige Werkreihe African Landscapes sowie die Werke Wanting to Build a House (1994; WV 959), A Man Without Livestock Isn’t a Man (1994; WV 964) und His Land (1994; WV 961) Creates the multipart work series African Landscapes, as well as the works Waiting to Build a House (1994; CR 959), A Man without Livestock Isn’t a Man (1994; CR 964), and His Land (1994; CR 961). 1993 Erste Präsentation der Afrika-Bilder im Kunstverein Paderborn. First presentation of the Africa images at the Kunstverein Paderborn in 1993. 163

Biografie | Biography Ruth Baumgarte mit | with Susan Aberbach und | and Alexander Baumgarte, New York, 2001 Ruth Baumgarte und die Schauspielerin Gisela Uhlen bei einer Ausstellungseröffnung in Bielefeld | and the actress Gisela Uhlen at an exhibition opening in Bielefeld, 2005 2000–04 2000 Reisen nach Afrika, Italien, Spanien (Ibiza), USA und Großbritannien. 2000 Einzelausstellung Visiones Africanas, Sala Pelaires Galeria d’Art, Palma de Mallorca. 2001 Einzelausstellung African Visions, Susan Aberbach Fine Art, Fuller Building, New York 2002 Einzelausstellung Galerie Schloss Mochental, Ehingen. 2011–13 2004 Einzelausstellung Galleria Marieschi di Milano, Mailand. 2011 Letztes Selbstbildnis (unvollendet; WV 1056). Das letzte Werk des Afrika-Zyklus, Afrikanische Komposition (WV 1051), bleibt unvollendet. From 2000 on, travels to Africa, Italy, Spain (Ibiza), the USA, and Britain. 2000: Solo exhibition Visiones Africanas, Sala Pelaires Galeria d’Art, Palma de Mallorca. 2001: Solo exhibition African Visions, Susan Aberbach Fine Art, Fuller Building, New York. 2002: Solo exhibition, Galerie Schloss Mochental, Ehingen. 2004: Solo exhibition, Galleria Marieschi di Milano, Milan. 2011: Last Self-Portrait (unfinished; CR 1056). The last work in the Africa cycle, African Composition (CR 1051), also remains unfinished. 2012 Gründung der Kunststiftung Ruth Baumgarte. Am 7. Februar 2013 verstirbt Ruth Baumgarte in Bielefeld. 2012: Establishment of the Ruth Baumgarte Art Foundation. Ruth Baumgarte dies in Bielefeld on February 7, 2013. 165

“I always start with an open approach, but I want something that is self-contained ... Color is like the air we need to survive, it enriches and frightens at the same time: This is how I feel about it. What I see, I realize with my possibilities. I have always been true to my own style; I try to be honest with myself.” Ruth Baumgarte, 1998

Ausstellung des Lippischen Künstlerbundes e.V., Daniel-Pöppelmann-Haus, Herford, 24.05.–22.06.1986 Herford 1992 Jubiläumsausstellung 75 Jahre Lippischer Künstlerbund, Kunstmuseum Herford im Daniel-Pöppelmann-Haus, Herford, 05.09.–04.10.1992 Ruth Baumgarte. Turn of the Fire, Ludwig Museum im Deutschherrenhaus, Koblenz, 12.11.2017–07.01.2018 Kruishoutem 1998 Ruth Baumgarte. Paintings, Stichting Fondation Veranneman, Kruishoutem (Belgien | Belgium), 24.10.–12.12.1998 Ruth Baumgarte. Paintings & Works on Paper, Frost & Reed Ltd., London, 19.03.–10.04.1992 Lyon 1974 Aquarelle, Galerie Chamoizzi, Lyon, 1974 Milano 2004 Ruth Baumgarte. Il tamtam del colore, Galleria Marieschi, Milano, 25.03.–30.04.2004 Monza 1997 La pelle nera, Galleria Marieschi di Monza, Monza, 16.04.–30.06.1997 Afrika. Gemälde, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Kunstverein Paderborn e. V. im Adam-und-Eva-Haus, Paderborn, 10.01.–21.02.1993 Lemgo 1984 Paderborn 1984 Jahresausstellung des Lippischen Künstlerbundes in der Volkshochschule Lemgo, Alte Abtei, Lemgo, 20.10.–10.11.1984 Lippischer Künstlerbund. Malerei – Graphik – Plastik, Kunstverein Paderborn e. V. im Adam-und-Eva-Haus, Paderborn, 26.08.–05.10.1984 London 1992 Paderborn 1986 Ruth Baumgarte. De Africa. Pitture, acquarelli, disegni, Galleria Giulia di Roma, Roma, 23.09.–25.10.1994 Salzgitter 2015/16 Ruth Baumgarte. Farbrausch am Kessel, Städtisches Museum Schloss Salder, Salzgitter, 22.11.2015–31.01.2016 St. Petersburg 2018 Ruth Baumgarte. Turn of the Fire, Ludwig Museum im Marmor- palast, Staatliches Russisches Museum | The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, 05.09.–22.10.2018 Künstler sehen den Paderborner Dom. Ausstellung anläßlich des Libori-Festes 1986, Städtische Galerie Am Abdinghof, Paderborn, 13.07.–10.08.1986 Paderborn 1987 Teheran 1957 Gruppenausstellung, Kunst- verein Paderborn e. V. im Adam-und-Eva-Haus, Paderborn Aquarelle und Zeichnungen, Galleries Dr. Khalili, Teheran, 1957 Wien 2022 Ruth Baumgarte. Africa: Visions of Light and Color, Albertina, Wien, 08.12.2022–05.03.2023 Hinweis: Die Daten und die ausgestellten Werke in den Ausstellungen konnten nicht vollständig ermittelt werden. | Note: It has not been possible to ascertain the full details of dates and works shown at all Baumgarte’s exhibitions. Herford 1986 New York 1993 Paderborn 1990 Ruth Baumgarte. African Paintings, G.W. Einstein Company, Inc., New York, 01.05.–28.05.1993 New York 2001/02 Ruth Baumgarte. African Visions, Susan Aberbach Fine Art, New York, 18.10.2001–04.01.2002 Paderborn 1980 Handzeichnung und Plastik. Ausstellung des Berufsverbandes Bildender Künstler (BBK) Bezirksverband Ostwestfalen-Lippe, Städtische Galerie Am Abdinghof, Paderborn, 26.10.–23.11.1980 Ausstellung des Lippischen Künstlerbundes, Städtische Galerie Am Abdinghof, Paderborn, 18.03.–29.04.1990 Paderborn 1993 Afrika. Gemälde, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Kunstverein Paderborn e. V., Paderborn, 10.01.–21.02.1993 Palma de Mallorca 2000 Ruth Baumgarte. Visiones Africanas, Sala Pelaires, Galeria d’Art, Palma de Mallorca, 09.06.–09.07.2000 Paderborn 1983 Roma 1994 Ehingen-Mochental 1997/98 Koblenz 2017/18 Düsseldorf 1958 Tanzstudien, Galerie im Apollo-Theater, Düsseldorf, 1958 Ehingen-Mochental 1994 Ruth Baumgarte. Bilder aus dem Afrika-Zyklus. Ölbilder, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Galerie Schloss Mochental, Ehingen-Mochental, 15.05.–03.07.1994 Ernte 97. Atelierfrische Bilder und Skulpturen von 32 Künstlern der Galerie, Galerie Schloss Mochental, Ehingen-Mochental, 30.11.1997–18.01.1998 Ehingen-Mochental 2002 Ruth Baumgarte – Afrika, Malerei und Zeichnung, Galerie Schloss Mochental, Ehingen-Mochental, 17.03.–05.05.2002 Essen 1977 Von Land und Leuten. Landesausstellung des BBK Berufsverband bildender Künstler, Gruga-Halle, Essen, 14.05.–29.05.1977 Estoril 1954 Kinderporträts, Galeria Machico, Estoril (Portugal), 1954 Herford 1978 Handzeichnungen und Plastik. Ausstellung des Berufsverbandes Bildender Künstler (BBK) Bezirksverband Ostwestfalen-Lippe, Daniel-Pöppelmann-Haus, Herford, 20.05.–25.06.1978 169

Ausst.-Kat. | Exh. cat. Palma de Bodenstein 2017 Joch 2019 Rump 2013 Maren Bodenstein, »Über das Erwidern von Ruth Baumgartes Blick« | “On Returning Ruth Baumgarte’s Gaze”, in: Ruth Baumgarte. Turn of the Fire, hg. vom | ed. by the Ludwig Museum im Deutschherren- haus (Ausst.-Kat. | Exh. cat. Ludwig Museum im Deutsch- herrenhaus, Koblenz), München/London/New York 2017, S. 29–32 | pp. 87–89 Bütow 1995 Kurt Bütow, Europäisches Künstlerlexikon. Malerei und Zeichenkunst (Bd. 1 (A–F)), Königsbrunn 1995, S. | p. 73 Fenner 2017 Martin Fenner, »Auf jedem Stein erglänzt das Silberlicht« | “On Every Stone the Glow of Silver Light”, in: Ruth Baumgarte. Herkunft/Prägung/Zäsuren, hg. vom Bezirksamt von | ed. by the District Office of Lichtenberg (Ausst.-Kat. | Exh. cat. Kultur- haus Karlshorst, Berlin), Berlin 2017, S. 12–33 | pp. 34–55 Froning 2000 Hubertus Froning, »Afrikanische Visionen« | “African Visions”, in: Ruth Baumgarte. Visiones Africanas, hg. von | ed. by Sala Pelaires Galeria d’Art (Ausst.- Kat. | Exh. cat. Sala Pelaires Galeria d’Art, Palma de Mallorca), Palma de Mallorca 2000, S. 8– 11 | pp. 12–15 Peter Joch, »Phantomwelt – Ruth Baumgartes Visionen von Afrika«, in: Ruth Baumgarte. Vision Afrika. Turn of the Fire, hg. von | ed. by Peter Joch (Ausst.-Kat. | Exh. cat. Städtisches Museum Braunschweig), Petersberg 2019, S. | pp. 8–21 Lippischer Künstlerbund 1991 Lippischer Künstlerbund, Lippischer Künstlerbund (Fest- schrift zum 75jährigen Jubiläum des Lippischen Künstlerbundes), Detmold 1991 Mühlenberend 2015 Sandra Mühlenberend, »Ruth Baumgarte. Farbrausch am Kessel« | “A Rush of Color at the Boiler”, in: Ruth Baumgarte. Farbrausch am Kessel, hg. von der Stadt | ed. by the City of Salzgitter (Ausst.-Kat. | Exh. cat. Städtische Kunstsammlungen, Salzgitter), Salzgitter 2015, S. 5–13 | pp. 15–23 Mühlenberend 2018 Sandra Mühlenberend, »Ruth Baumgarte. Bilder zu Wieder- aufbau und Expansion« | “Ruth Baumgarte. Images of Reconstruction and Expansion”, in: Ruth Baumgarte und das Wirtschaftswunder. Farbrausch am Kessel, hg. von | ed. by Michael Dückershoff (Ausst.- Kat. | Exh. cat. Hoesch-Museum, Dortmund), Köln 2018, S. 9–18 | pp. 39–45 Gillen 2020 Reifenscheid 2017 Eckhart J. Gillen, »Werde, die du bist! Ruth Baumgarte – Lebenskunst« | “Become who you are! Ruth Baumgarte – The Art of Living”, in: Werde, die du bist! Ruth Baumgarte – Lebenskunst | Become who you are! Ruth Baumgarte – The Art of Living, hg. von | ed. by Viola Weigel und | and Wiebke Steinmetz (Ausst.-Kat. | Exh. cat. Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Dortmund), München 2020, S. | pp. 10–23 Beate Reifenscheid, »Ruth Baumgarte – Annäherung an einen fremden Kontinent« | “Ruth Baumgarte – Approaching a Foreign Continent”, in: Ruth Baumgarte. Turn of the Fire, hg. vom | ed. by the Ludwig Museum im Deutschherrenhaus (Ausst.-Kat. | Exh. cat. Ludwig Museum im Deutschherren- haus, Koblenz), München/ London/New York 2017, S. 15–26 | pp. 75–85 Gerhard Charles Rump, »Mit der Zeit, über der Zeit. Ruth Baumgarte und die Entwick- lung der Westkunst« | “Within The Times And Beyond. Ruth Baumgarte And The Development Of Western Art”, in: Ruth Baumgarte 1923–2013. Hommage zum 90. Geburtstag. Wichtige Werke aus sieben Jahr- zehnten, hg. von der | ed. by the Ruth Baumgarte Kunststiftung | Art Foundation (Ausst.-Kat. | Exh. cat. Samuelis Baumgarte Galerie, Bielefeld), Bielefeld 2013, S. 4–17 | pp. 18–27 Schumacher/Lohmann 2008 Bielefeld – Senne. Ein Stadtbezirk wie gemalt, hg. von | ed. by Hans Schumacher und | and Hans Lohmann, Bielefeld 2008 Sowade 2018 Hanno Sowade, »›… Arbeit gebietet die Forderung des Tages …‹« | “ ‘… Work Dictates the Challenges of the Day …’ ”, in: Ruth Baumgarte und das Wirtschaftswunder. Farbrausch am Kessel, hg. von | ed. by Michael Dückershoff (Ausst.- Kat. | Exh. cat. Hoesch-Museum, Dortmund), Köln 2018, S. 21–35 | pp. 47–55 Strauß 2019 Bianca Strauß, »Zwischen Erinnern und Vergessen. Re- Animationen und Gedächtnis- kultur im Afrika-Werk von Ruth Baumgarte«, in: Ruth Baumgarte. Vision Afrika. Turn of the Fire, hg. von | ed. by Peter Joch (Ausst.-Kat. | Exh. cat. Städtisches Museum Braun- schweig), Petersberg 2019, S. | pp. 16–21 Mallorca 2000 Ruth Baumgarte. Visiones Africanas, hg. von | ed. by Sala Pelaires Galeria d’Art (Ausst.-Kat. | Exh. cat. Sala Pelaires Galeria d’Art, Palma de Mallorca), Palma de Mallorca 2000 Ausst.-Kat. | Exh. cat. Roma 1994 Ruth Baumgarte. De Africa. Pitture, acquarelli, disegni, hg. von | ed. by Galleria Giulia (Ausst.-Kat. | Exh. cat. Galleria Giulia, Roma), Roma 1994 Ausst.-Kat. | Exh. cat. Salzgitter 2015 Ruth Baumgarte. Farbrausch am Kessel, hg. von der Stadt | ed. by the City of Salzgitter (Ausst.-Kat. | Exh. cat. Städtische Kunstsammlungen, Salzgitter), Salzgitter 2015 Ausst.-Kat. | Exh. cat. St. Petersburg 2018 Ruth Baumgarte, hg. von | ed. by Evgenia Petrova (Ausst.-Kat. | Exh. cat. Staatliches Russisches Museum | The State Russian Museum, Sankt Petersburg | Saint Petersburg), St. Petersburg 2018 Ausst.-Kat. | Exh. cat. Wien 2022 Ruth Baumgarte. Africa: Visions of Light and Color, hg. von | ed. by Klaus Albrecht Schröder und | and Angela Stief (Ausst.-Kat. | Exh. cat. Albertina Wien), München 2022 Berg 2019 Lars Berg, »Aquarell und Zeichnung im Werk von Ruth Baumgarte«, in: Ruth Baumgarte. Vision Afrika. Turn of the Fire, hg. von | ed. by Peter Joch (Ausst.-Kat. | Exh. cat. Städti- sches Museum Braunschweig), Petersberg 2019, S. | pp. 22–31 Bodenstein 1986 Martin Bodenstein, »In Bildern sehen. Die Malerin Ruth Baumgarte« | “Viewing in Pictures. Ruth Baumgarte, the Painter”, in: Ruth Baumgarte. In Bildern sehen, hg. von | ed. by Galerie & Edition Ruth Baumgarte (Ausst.-Kat. | Exh. cat. Galerie & Edition Ruth Baumgarte, Bielefeld), Bielefeld 1986, S. 25 | pp. 24–26 171

Dr. Eckhart J. Gillen (geb. 1947 in Karlsruhe) ist freischaffender Kunsthistoriker und Kurator. Er studierte Kunstgeschichte, Germanistik und Soziologie in Heidelberg und Berlin, kuratierte Ausstellungen, u. a. Deutschlandbilder – Kunst aus einem geteilten Land, 1997/98 im Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. Seine Arbeitsschwerpunkte liegen auf der Kunst im Kalten Krieg zwischen Amerika und Russland, Ost- und Westdeutschland. Er publizierte u. a. Feindliche Brüder? Der Kalte Krieg und die deutsche Kunst 1945–1990. Seine Arbeit wurde durch zahlreiche Preise und das Bundes- verdienstkreuz gewürdigt. Er ist Lehrbeauftragter an der Filmuniversität Babelsberg in Potsdam. Seit 1972 lebt er in Berlin. Prof. Dr. Helmut Lethen (geb. 1939 in Mönchengladbach) ist Germanist und Kulturwissenschaftler. Er studierte Literaturwissen- schaft in Bonn, Amsterdam und an der FU Berlin. 1970 promovierte er zum Thema »Neue Sachlichkeit 1924–1932. Studien zur Literatur des Weißen Sozialismus«. Von 1971 bis 1976 war er Assistent an der FU Berlin, von 1977 bis 1995 Professor an der Universität Utrecht, von 1995 bis 2004 Professor in Rostock, von 2007 bis 2016 Leiter des Internationalen Forschungszentrums Kulturwissenschaften (IFK) in Wien. Diverse Gastprofessuren u. a. in Chicago, Los Angeles, Bloomington und Berkeley, von 2016 bis 2022 an der Kunstuniversität Linz. Er publizierte u. a.: Verhaltenslehren der Kälte (1994), Sound der Väter (2006), Der Schatten des Fotografen (2014), Die Staatsräte (2018). Er lebt in Wien. (b. 1947 in Karlsruhe) is a freelance art historian and curator. He studied art history, German philology, and sociology in Heidelberg and Berlin, and curated exhibitions, including German Art from Beckmann to Richter: Images of a Divided Country at the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin (1997/98). His work focuses on art during the Cold War between America and Russia, East and West Germany. His publications include Feindliche Brüder? Der Kalte Krieg und die deutsche Kunst 1945–1990. His work has been honored with numerous awards, as well as with the Federal Cross of Merit. He is an assistant professor at the Babelsberg Film University in Potsdam. He has lived in Berlin since 1972. (b. 1939 in Mönchengladbach) is a German philologist and cultural scholar. He studied literature in Bonn and Amsterdam, as well as at the Free University of Berlin. In 1970, he received his doctorate with a thesis on the topic of “Neue Sachlichkeit 1924–1932. Studien zur Literatur des Weißen Sozialismus” (New Objectivity 1924–1932. Studies on the Literature of White Socialism). From 1971 to 1976, he was an assistant at the FU Berlin; from 1977 to 1995, professor at the University of Utrecht; from 1995 to 2004, professor in Rostock, and from 2007 to 2016, director of the International Research Center for Cultural Studies (IFK) in Vienna. He has held various visiting professorships at the universities of Chicago, Los Angeles, Bloomington, Berkeley, and elsewhere; and from 2016 to 2022, at the University of Arts in Linz. His publications include Cool Conduct: The Culture of Distance in Weimar Germany (1994/English trans. 2002), Sound der Väter (2006), Der Schatten des Fotografen (2014), and Die Staatsräte (2018). He lives in Vienna. 173

Kurzbiografien der Autoren und Autorinnen | Short biographies of the Authors Angela Stief (geb. 1974 in Augsburg) ist Kunsthistorikerin, Kuratorin und Kulturpublizistin. Sie studierte Kunstgeschichte und Philoso- phie in Wien. Von 2000 bis 2003 leitete sie die Vermittlungs- abteilung der Wiener Secession in Vienna. Von 2002 bis 2013 war sie Kuratorin an der Kunsthalle Wien, von 2013 bis 2020 arbeitete sie als selbstständige Kuratorin und Kulturpublizistin und veranstaltete Ausstellungen u. a. in zwischengenutzten Räumlichkeiten. Seit 2019 ist sie kuratorische Beraterin der Vienna Art Week und verantwortet das Programm der Out- siderkunst in der OEGGK. Seit 2020 ist sie Gastprofessorin für kuratorische Praxis an der Kunstuniversität Linz. Seit 2021 ist sie Chefkuratorin für Kunst der Gegenwart der Albertina und Direktorin der Albertina Modern. Sie lebt in Wien. Dr. Viola Weigel (geb. 1966 in Karlsruhe) ist Kunsthistorikerin und Kuratorin. Sie studierte Kunstwissenschaft, Ältere/Neuere Literatur- wissenschaft und Linguistik in Frankfurt/Main, Bonn, Manchester und Basel und promovierte 2000 zum Thema »›Die Wiedergewinnung des Sichtbaren‹. Studien zur Visualität in der englischen Malerei zwischen 1910 und 1920«. Von 1997 bis 2005 war sie wissenschaftliche Assistentin und Projektleiterin der Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, und von 2006 bis 2009 als Nachlassbear- beiterin und Co-Kuratorin am Zürcher Museum für Gestaltung (Museum Bellerive) tätig. Von 2007 bis 2017 Direktorin der Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven, Geschäfts- führerin des Kunstvereins und Kunstbeauftragte der Stadt. 2018 Kustodin für Malerei und Skulptur an den Kunst- sammlungen Chemnitz. Seit 2019 ist sie für die Kunststiftung Ruth Baumgarte tätig. Sie lebt in Bielefeld. (b. 1974 in Augsburg) is an art historian, curator, and cultural publicist. She studied art history and philosophy in Vienna. From 2000 to 2003, she headed the educational department of the Wiener Secession in Vienna. From 2002 to 2013, she was curator at the Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna; from 2013 to 2020, she worked as an independent curator and cultural publicist, and arranged exhibitions in interim spaces and elsewhere. Since January 2019, she has been curatorial advisor to the Vienna Art Week and is responsible for the program of Out- sider Art at the OEGGK. She has been a visiting professor for curatorial practice at the University of Arts in Linz since 2020, and the chief curator of contemporary art and director of the Albertina Modern in Vienna since 2021. She lives in Vienna. (b. 1966 in Karlsruhe) is an art historian and curator. She studied art history, older and modern literature, and linguistics in Frankfurt am Main, Bonn, Manchester, and Basel and received her doctorate in 2000 with a thesis on the topic of “‘The Revaluation of the Visual’. Studies on Visuality in English Painting between 1910 and 1920”. From 1997 to 2005, she was a research assistant and project manager at the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen near Basel; and from 2006 to 2009, she worked as an estate manager and co-curator at the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich (Museum Bellerive). From 2007 to 2017, she was director of the Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven, managing director of the Kunstverein and art commissioner of the city. In 2018, she was curator for painting and sculpture at the Kunstsamm- lungen Chemnitz. Since 2019, she has been working for the Ruth Baumgarte Art Foundation. She lives in Bielefeld. 175