As of: January 22, 2024, 12:00 p.m
By: Markus Schwarzkugler
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Over 100 years old: the Engelmann Villa on Eichenstrasse in Wartenberg.
© Roland Albrecht
Some streets in Wartenberg are named after artists who not only left their mark there, but also achieved greater fame.
The next member of our series is a sculptor: Richard-Engelmann-Straße in the southwest of the town is not far from the Thenner Straße axis and is surrounded by the Wittelsbacherring.
Across the street, in the southeast of Wartenberg on Eichenstrasse, the artist left behind a small villa that has caused disputes in the past.
And it was designed by another world-famous artist.
But from the beginning.
Wartenberg – Richard Engelmann is one of Germany’s most important sculptors and has close connections to Wartenberg.
His art historical era: Art Nouveau.
Engelmann was born on December 5, 1868 in Bayreuth.
However, he only came to art via a detour.
After graduating from high school, he initially began an apprenticeship at a bank in Nuremberg and worked as a bank clerk in Munich until 1892.
There he decided to become an artist and studied at the art academy with Prof. Wilhelm von Rümann.
Study trips took the young sculptor student to Florence and Paris, where he incorporated Auguste Rodin's stylistic elements into his own art.
Discovered Wartenberg for himself: sculptor Richard Engelmann first came there before the First World War, where he had a house and studio built.
© Museum of Art and Industry Hamburg
Before the First World War he discovered Wartenberg.
There he fulfilled his dream of owning his own house, i.e. the villa, and a studio.
“He was already respected and famous when he had the architectural gem built on Spatzenberg,” says Wartenberg art historian Heike Kronseder.
The world-famous Art Nouveau artist Henry van de Velde, a Flemish-Belgian architect and designer and a friend of Engelmann's, planned and drew the design.
“The fact that van de Velde, who was considered an innovator of applied art at the end of the 19th century and one of the most versatile artists of Art Nouveau, drew a design for a Wartenberg holiday and studio house may have something to do with the fact that Wartenberg was already known as a place for artists.” , assumes Kronseder.
The painters Robert Weise and Carl Hans Schrader-Velgen are just two other well-known figures in art history who discovered Wartenberg for themselves.
We have already reported on both in our series.
The Nazi era meant hard years for the German-Jew, who was banned from working in 1935 by the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts.
He is non-Aryan and therefore does not have the necessary reliability and suitability for the creation of German cultural assets.
From 1936 he lived in seclusion in Kirchzarten, near Freiburg, Baden.
Most of his works can now be found in Breisgau.
In 1937, as part of the Nazi “Degenerate Art” campaign, his etchings “Two Women” and “Standing Woman/Garment Study” from the art collections of the city of Düsseldorf were confiscated and destroyed.
After the Second World War, thanks to his rehabilitation, Engelmann received orders from the city of Freiburg.
He died on September 11, 1966 at the age of 97 and is buried in the Freiburg Günterstal cemetery with his wife Frieda Engelmann (1890–1973), who died seven years later.
His property in Wartenberg now belongs to an Erdinger family and is a listed building.
“The jewel on Eichenstrasse,” as Kronseder calls it, was completed in 1917.
“In surviving documents, Engelmann raves about the wonderful, over 10,000 square meter property with a distant view, on a good day, as far as Munich’s Frauenkirche,” says Kronseder.
The Wartenberg building contractor Joseph Brädl implemented van de Velde's plan and built the property on the Spatzenberg in the middle of the meadow.
“The studio was built around 1921, unfortunately at the time as a black building.
Fortunately, the impending deterioration was stopped by a roof created by the owner.”
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As far as the renovation of the house, i.e. the villa itself, is concerned, there has been a standstill for years.
In 1948, Engelmann regretted that he had sold his Wartenberg summer residence to a farmer for “ridiculous money.”
He sold the gem at some point, and the current owners argued for decades with the authorities about how the listed main building and the adjacent studio should be prepared.
Despite all the efforts of the State Office for Monument Preservation, the district office, the municipality and the then district curator Hartwig Sattelmair, the renovation has not yet taken place, Kronseder regrets, but is pleased that the owner has taken at least some structural security measures in recent years.
Be that as it may, important works were created in the Wartenberg studio: around 1920, for example, the stone sculpture “Farewell”, in 1927 the bronze relief of Admiral Scheer and in 1929 the bronze sculpture for the Pestalozzi School in Weimar.
Engelmann's daughter Bärbel was the model for this.
And in 1930 the artist designed a “Standing Girl” for the Bad Kissingen sanatorium.