You are bidding on one handwritten, signed letter the pianist Ursula Hacker, later wife the painter and graphic artist Gunter Johl (1908-1965).

sender address Babelsberg, Königsweg 300.

dating Hardly legible on the loosely enclosed stamp, probably 1936?

addressed to the Berlin cellist and watercolor painter Heinrich Koehler (1914-2017).

Transcription:"Dear Mr Koehler! In the summer Herr Wernitz gave me your address with the remark that you would be completing your military service in October and then going back to studying music. Is that time now? I'm a panist and I want to do a lot of chamber music. Of course, it only serves a purpose if you set yourself a goal and work towards it seriously. If you would like to work together, we could meet in Berlin to discuss more details. I am free in Berlin on Tuesday between 5 and 8 a.m. and could then meet with you. In any case, I expect a call from you, always in the morning by 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 side (11" x 8").

The original envelope is enclosed (9.5 x 15 cm); the stamp is loosely enclosed.

Condition:Paper and the (damaged) cover browned and stained; the stamp is loosely enclosed. 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):

Gunter Johl (* 27. May 1908 in Potsdam; † 25 November 1965 in Berlin) was a German painter and graphic artist who belongs to the so-called lost generation.

Life and work: Günter Johl was born on 27. Born May 1908 in Potsdam. Between 1927 and 1936 he completed an apprenticeship as a sign painter with his father, who was the independent manager of an advertising studio, learned to draw, design and illustrate in evening and day courses at the Berlin-Charlottenburg School of Applied Arts and finally studied at the United State Schools for freelance students and applied art graphics, writing and painting. His teacher, the famous illustrator Hans Meid, had a great influence on the student. In his early works, Johl captured the environment and the people of his time accurately, with a quick stroke and a certain tendency to exaggerate.

After the National Socialists took power, all Jewish and dissident teachers were removed from the United State Schools for Fine and Applied Arts by 1936. Günter Johl's studies also ended abruptly because of his rejection of Nazi art policy. Under his father's business management, he now began to earn his money with commissions for advertising fairs - including the "Green Week" in Berlin - worked as a press illustrator for various local newspapers and illustrated the novel "Das Mädchen von Utrecht” by Otto Brues. Another caesura in his work then - as with so many artists of the lost generation - was the Second World War. on the 7th On September 19, 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 watercolored cityscapes and made drawings for the theater and concert sections of the local daily newspapers. In 1943 his daughter Amadee was born. 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 down as a freelance artist, set his sights on zero like so many others, took part in various exhibitions full of hope, taught art at the adult education center and founded a training workshop for weaving and appliqué in 1953 and mosaic. While in the Third Reich he came into conflict with Nazi art policy, in the young GDR he increasingly clashed with the Soviet-style realism imposed by socialist functionaries. He finally gave up his initial efforts to adapt to the state's view of art by 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 had created for the Schinkelkirche St. Nicolai in Magdeburg, which was badly damaged in the war, helped him to achieve his artistic breakthrough in church circles, so that he later helped through the art service of the Protestant church various larger and smaller orders. Away from the focal point of official art and cultural policy, he designed numerous church windows and made 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 expressive, two-dimensional and at the same time linear-dynamic, abstraction reminiscent of Marc Chagall and Georges Braque and knew how to critically contrast the statements of Christian pictorial themes with the current social and political situation in “ambiguous unambiguousness and unequivocal ambiguity”.[8] However, working for the church had the disadvantage that his works migrated directly from the workshop to the sacred rooms, where they were then used without exception to proclaim the Christian doctrine of salvation. The name and the person of the artist mostly remained unnamed and unknown.

The ever-closing inner-German border, the increasingly difficult order situation and the "restrictive exclusion" of dissidents in the GDR finally made the Johl family come to a momentous decision. on the 17th On August 1, 1961, shortly after the Wall was built, Günter Johl fled the GDR to West Berlin with false papers. A few days earlier, his daughter had traveled west across the border, which was still open. His wife did not manage to escape. She was imprisoned, from which she was only released after a year and a half.

The dramatic and traumatizing events of the flight from East to West, which resulted in the painful loss of his wife at times, were the most profound turning point in Günter Johl's life. In the end he was a broken, desperate and sick man. Together with his daughter, he lived in very cramped conditions with his mother in Berlin-Charlottenburg, fought for his wife's release and worked as a specialist teacher for lettering and window dressing and as the leader of workshops in youth centers. The monumental altar carpet with the call to the savior (Mt. 11:25 ff.) designed in 1962 for the Methodist Christ Church in Berlin-Kreuzberg is the only new commissioned work from this period that he was still able to carry out himself. In 1964 his wife was finally allowed to emigrate to West Berlin as a result of being disabled, but only a year later, on April 25, On November 19, 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: The biography of Günter Johl reveals in a rather vivid way the plight of many GDR artists of his generation: torn from artistic development by National Socialism and the war, failed in the young GDR due to the dogma of realism, excluded from official commissions and sent to the Pushed aside by 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 towards Western ideals, that he had no real connection to the development of art there either. In the case of Günter Johls, his private tragedy surrounding his escape from the GDR made matters worse, ultimately destroying his will to face life. Nevertheless, he left posterity an extremely versatile, cross-genre, even if hardly associated with his name oeuvre and thus became a typical representative of the lost generation, whose importance is only now gradually becoming known in art historytuck.

Heinrich Koehler (* 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 did an apprenticeship as a chemigrapher in the chemical institute Dr. Selle – Eisler with subsequent employment.

At the same time, Köhler studied watercolor technique with Edmund Schaefer and cello studies at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin.

Shortly after returning home in 1945, he got his first job as a cellist at the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin. There he played under the conductors Ferenc Fricsay and Lorin Maazel, among others. He was a member of the RSB from 1949 to the mid-1970s as first cellist; until his retirement he was also on the orchestra board.

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 had worked with him at the time.

His interest in painting was in Impressionism, his musical role model was Johann Sebastian Bach; he tried to combine both in his watercolors. On his many journeys and orchestra tours in northern Europe (Norway, Greenland), on the Mediterranean Sea and on the Canary Islands (especially Fuerteventura and Lanzarote) he created a work of over 400 watercolors.

Köhler was married and most recently lived in Berlin-Nikolassee.

exhibitions

Schering Art Association, House of Broadcasting “Painting Musicians”, Dresdner Bank Art Association.

Exhibition on the occasion of the 90th birthday in 2004 in Bad Reichenhall.

2005 Lüneburg Cultural Forum.

2006 2nd Exhibition in Bad Reichenhall

2014 "Lebensreisen" - landscape watercolors on the occasion of his 100th birthday. birthday in Berlin

Text from a gallery:
Heinrich Koehler was born on 1. Born in Berlin in July 1914, took piano lessons at an early age, at the expense of the family. He later switched to the cello. He discovered watercolor painting - alongside his great love and lifelong muse Gerda Wolter (* 1913, † 2013) - at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Berlin. The artist died in February 2017 at the age of 102 after an eventful and fulfilling life.

Training

Attended elementary school in Berlin-Neukölln, then Albrecht-Dürer-Oberrealschule

Graphics studies at the arts and crafts school in Berlin.

Interesting drawings and studies from this period have survived and are for sale in the gallery.

Apprenticeship as a chemical grapher at the Chemical Graphic 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 Hochschule für Musik, Berlin