On February 21, the sculptor from Hohndorf in the Ore Mountains would have been 75 years old. His life’s work has not yet been honored.
In Chemnitz, in Zschopau, in Hohndorf there are some stone sculptures by Fritz Böhme in public space. They have their own unique beauty and sensuality. A sensuality whose core is the question of the meaning of life. However, most of his figures, especially the larger-than-life wooden sculptures from a cycle that he dedicated to life in all its facets, are in a barn on his family’s property in Hohndorf. Only rarely have some of them found their way into exhibitions and museums. Fritz Böhme sometimes sullenly withdrew from the art market. But anyone who discovered him for himself, visited him at the open studio days and got involved with his work, for whom he could become a humorous, good friend. And some of his characters – ascending, falling, the wounded, the loving, one never forgets.
Michelangelo as the measure of all things
Fritz Böhme was born on February 21, 1948 in Glauchau, trained as a stonemason and stone sculptor, and taught himself to become an artistic sculptor. Fritz Böhme mastered all types of his craft, could design in stone, concrete, clay, wood. He even made it into the Association of Visual Artists. As far as it was possible in the narrow-minded GDR, he informed himself about international developments in sculpture, tried out abstract designs based on Western European models, experimented with group representations and plastics. Later he traveled a lot. He found his very own style when he returned to the figurative. He admired Ernst Barlach and Käthe Kollwitz, but above all he measured himself against one thing: “As a sculptor, you automatically have to measure yourself against Michelangelo,” he once said. And so he designed human life in dozens of figures that brought to life all misery, all happiness, war, violence, conflicts, the longing for peace, love and fulfillment at the turn of the millennium.
The past as a prerequisite for the present and the future
To a certain extent, Fritz Böhme was a traditionalist who felt that the achievements of the past were prerequisites for the present and the future, but who rubbed shoulders with the present, wrested new forms from it and occasionally got involved in discussions. In the years of reunification, he wrote a concept for the cultural development of the Ore Mountains, designed his very own museum landscape, thought about the protection of monuments, which not only included eye-catching architecture, but also took into account, for example, distinctive village barns. But when he felt that hard-edged professionals like himself weren’t in demand, he quickly withdrew. Nevertheless, in the late 80s and early 90s he had some successes, exhibitions, received awards. In 1987, for example, he received the Max Pechstein Prize from the city of Zwickau, and in 1996 the Ernst Rietschel Art Prize. They were valuable to him, as they also honored his attitude towards the past, in line with the thoughts of art historian Jacob Burckhardt: “… let us also remember the magnitude of our obligation to the past as a spiritual continuum, which is one of our highest spiritual possessions. … The The relationship of every century to this heritage is in itself knowledge, ie something new, which the next generation inherits as something that has become historical, ie something that has been overcome.Only barbarians renounce this advantage… Their barbarism is their lack of history and vice versa… On the other hand, Fritz Böhme also saw, with Bertolt Brecht: “The old stupidities come from the new antennae. Wisdom is passed on from mouth to mouth.”
Renewal of the zeitgeist out of the provinces
Fritz Böhme died on September 24, 2013. It was a beautiful autumn day. His work still awaits rediscovery. A discovery that might be worthwhile. Joachim Menzhausen, former director of the Green Vault in Dresden, wrote about the “villager” Fritz Böhme in 1996: “The villagers in the age of the metropolis are not to be expected to fulfill the zeitgeist, but rather to expect it to be renewed. The figures could do with such a kind of unknown modernity Announce Fritz Boehmes.”