You are bidding on one handwritten, signed letter the pianist Ursula Hacker, later wife of the painter and graphic artist Günter Johl (1908-1965).
Return address Babelsberg, Königsweg 300.
dating barely legible on the loosely enclosed stamp, probably 1936?
Aimed at the Berlin cellist and watercolor painter Heinrich Köhler (1914-2017).
Transcription:"Dear Mr. Köhler! In the summer, Mr. Wernitz gave me your address with the comment that you would finish your military service in October and then go back to studying music. Is that time now? I'm a panist and want to do a lot of chamber music. Of course, it only makes sense if you set a goal and work towards it seriously. If you would like to work together, we could meet in Berlin to discuss more. I'm free in Berlin on Tuesday between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m. and could meet you then. In any case, I expect a call from you, every morning until 2 a.m. (806601). Hopefully it will work. Best regards, Ursula Hacker, Babelsberg 2, Königsweg 300. I might have also a violinist (Havemann student) for trio playing."
Scope: one page (28.3 x 20.3 cm).
Enclosed is the original envelope (9.5 x 15 cm); the stamp enclosed loosely.
Condition:Paper and the (damaged) envelope browned and stained; the stamp enclosed loosely. bPlease also note the pictures!
Internal note: Heinrich Köhler in corn22-3 autograph autograph
About the later husband Günter Johl (source: wikipedia) and the recipient (source: EverybodyWiki):
Günter Johl (*27. May 1908 in Potsdam; † 25. November 1965 in Berlin) was a German painter and graphic artist who can be assigned to the so-called lost generation.
Life and work: Günter Johl was born on January 2nd7. Born in Potsdam in May 1908. In the years between 1927 and 1936 he completed an apprenticeship as a lettering artist with his father, who was the self-employed manager of an advertising studio, learned drawing, design and illustration in the evening and day courses at the Berlin-Charlottenburg School of Applied Arts and finally studied at the United State Schools for Independents and applied arts graphics, writing and painting. His teacher, the important illustrator Hans Meid, had a great influence on the student. In his early works, Johl captured the environment and people of his time accurately, with quick strokes and a certain tendency to exaggerate.
After the National Socialists came to power, all Jewish and dissident teachers were removed from the United State Schools for Liberal and Applied Arts by 1936. Günter Johl's studies also ended abruptly because of his rejection of Nazi art policy. He now began to earn his money under his father's business management with orders for advertising trade fairs - including for the "Green Week" in Berlin -, worked as a press illustrator for various local newspapers and illustrated the novel "The Girl from" for Grote Verlag Utrecht” by Otto Brües. A further turning point in his work – as with so many artists of the lost generation – was the Second World War. On the 7th In September 1939, Günter Johl married the pianist Ursula Hacker, shortly afterwards he was drafted into the Wehrmacht. As a soldier, he was mainly stationed in Strasbourg, where he took part in art exhibitions with some watercolor city views and made drawings for the theater and concert sections for the local daily newspapers. His daughter Amadee was born in 1943. In 1945, shortly before the end of the war, the family moved to Stendal.
In Stendal - in the middle of the Soviet occupation zone - he settled as a freelance artist, like so many others, focused on the zero hour, enthusiastically took part in various exhibitions, taught as an art lecturer at the adult education center and founded a training workshop for weaving and appliqué in 1953 and mosaic. While he came into conflict with Nazi art policy in the Third Reich, in the young GDR he increasingly clashed with the Soviet-style realism imposed by socialist officials. He finally gave up his initial effort to adapt to the state's view of art in 1954 at the latest, when he found a more or less independent client and an artistic niche for himself in the church. The “Breaker of All Ties”, a monumental sgraffito that he created for the Schinkel Church of St. Nicolai in Magdeburg, which was badly damaged during the war, helped him finally achieve an artistic breakthrough in church circles, so that he was subsequently involved in the art service of the Protestant Church various larger and smaller orders were supplied. Away from the focus of official art and cultural policy, he designed numerous church windows and produced sacred tapestries, altar and pulpit hangings in his own workshop, which found their way to Westphalia and the Münsterland and in which he created an expressively flat and at the same time linear-dynamic, pursued abstraction reminiscent of Marc Chagall and Georges Braque and was able to critically contrast the statements of Christian visual themes with the current social and political situation in “ambiguous clarity and clear ambiguity”.[8] However, working for the church had the disadvantage that his works traveled directly from the workshop to the sacred spaces, where they were then exclusively used to proclaim the Christian doctrine of salvation. The name and person of the artist mostly remained unnamed and unknown.
The ever-closing inner-German border, the resulting increasingly difficult order situation and the “limiting exclusion” of dissidents in the GDR ultimately led the Johl family to come to a momentous decision. On the 17th In August 1961, shortly after the Wall was built, Günter Johl fled from the GDR to West Berlin with false papers. His daughter had already traveled across the still open border to the West a few days earlier. His wife was unable to escape. She was imprisoned, from which she was only released after a year and a half.
The dramatic and traumatizing events of the escape from the East to the West, which resulted in the temporary and painful loss of his wife, were the most profound turning point in Günter Johl's life. In the end he was a broken, desperate and sick man. He lived with his daughter in very cramped conditions with his mother in Berlin-Charlottenburg, fought for his wife's release and worked as a specialist teacher for writing and window decoration and as a director of craft courses in youth leisure centers. The monumental altar carpet with the Saviour's call (Matt. 11.25 ff.), designed in 1962 for the Evangelical Methodist Christ Church in Berlin-Kreuzberg, is the only new commissioned work from this period that he was able to carry out by hand. In 1964, his wife was finally allowed to leave for West Berlin as a result of being invalided, but only a year later, on December 25th, November 1965, Günter Johl died of cancer at the age of 57. His grave is in the Old Wannsee Cemetery on Friedenstrasse in Berlin.
Art-historical classification: Günter Johl's biography reveals in a rather forceful way the plight of many GDR artists of his generation: torn from artistic development by National Socialism and the war, failed by the dogma of realism in the young GDR, excluded from official commissions and in the Forced away from the isolation and anonymity of sacred art, he was forced to turn his back on his East German homeland, only to realize in the Federal Republic, which was striving forward according to Western ideals, that he could not really connect with the development of art there either. In Günter Johl's case, his private tragedy surrounding his escape from the GDR was also aggravating, which ultimately destroyed his will to live. Nevertheless, he left posterity an extremely versatile, cross-genre work, even if it is hardly associated with his name Oeuvre and thus became a typical representative of the lost generation, whose significance is only now gradually entering the art historical consciousnessback.
Heinrich Köhler (* 1. July 1914 in Berlin; † February 2017 ibid) was a German cellist and watercolor painter.
Life:Despite the difficult circumstances after the First World War, Heinrich Köhler received piano lessons and later switched to the cello.
After graduating from the Albrecht-Dürer-Oberrealschule, he began studying graphics at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Berlin. From 1932 to 1936 he trained as a chemigrapher at the Chemigraphic Institute Dr. Selle – Eisler with subsequent employment.
At the same time, Köhler studied watercolor techniques with Edmund Schaefer and studied cello at the University of Music in Berlin.
Shortly after his return home in 1945, he got his first job as a cellist at the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra. There he played under conductors Ferenc Fricsay and Lorin Maazel, among others. He was a member of the RSB as first cellist from 1949 until the mid-1970s; He was also on the orchestra's board until his retirement.
One of his most important contributions is his active participation in the artistic transformation of the RSO under the direction of Ferenc Fricsay. In addition, he documented the orchestral history of today's DSO in the form of an extensive autograph collection of all well-known artists who worked with him at the time.
His artistic interest was in impressionism; his musical role model was Johann Sebastian Bach; He tried to combine both in his watercolors. On his many trips and orchestral tours to the north of Europe (Norway, Greenland), to the Mediterranean and to the Canary Islands (especially Fuerteventura and Lanzarote), he created a work of over 400 watercolors.
Köhler was married and last lived in Berlin-Nikolassee.
Exhibitions
Schering Art Association, Broadcasting House “Musicians Painting”, Dresdner Bank Art Association.
Exhibition on the occasion of the 90th Birthday in 2004 in Bad Reichenhall.
2005 Lüneburg Cultural Forum.
2006 2. Bad Reichenhall exhibition
2014 “Life Travels” – landscape watercolors on the occasion of his 100th birthday. Birthday in Berlin
Text from a gallery:
Heinrich Köhler was born on January 1st. Born in Berlin in July 1914, he received piano lessons at an early age, at the sacrifice of his family. He later switched to the cello. He discovered watercolor painting - alongside his great love and lifelong muse Gerda Wolter (* 1913, † 2013) - at the arts and crafts school in Berlin. The artist died at the age of 102 in February 2017 after an eventful and fulfilling life.
Training
Attendance at Berlin Neukölln elementary school, then Albrecht Dürer secondary school
Studied graphics at the arts and crafts school in Berlin.
Interesting drawings and studies have been preserved from this period and are for sale in the gallery.
Apprenticeship as a chemistry grapher at the Chemical Graphics Institute Dr. Selle – Eisler with subsequent employment
In the gallery you can purchase exhibits from this period.
Studied watercolor technique with Professor Heisig, studied at the University of Music, Berlin