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Heinrich Zille
1858-1929
Heinrich Zille was one of the most important precursors and contributors to the new "art for the masses" that proliferated during the Weimar era. Like Käthe Kollwitz, he expressed himself primarily thorough printmaking and publication, and was revered by the political left wing and the working poor.
Born and raised in one of Berlin's poor sections, Heinrich Zille knew the city's pulse better than any artist. Throughout his life he would carry small pieces of paper and crayons or pencils to draw or, as he said, "take notes" of his surroundings. With scrupulous honesty he recorded the activities of the workers, the poor, the underprivileged, the mothers and their many children, as he saw them in streets and back yards, doorways and kitchens, brothels and taverns, amusement areas and bathing beaches. The titles and descriptive sentences with the biting wit peculiar to Berlin's populace in the city's inimitable jargon are often an intrinsic part of his pictures. At 14, Zille apprenticed to a printer, and in 1877 he began working at the prominent Photographische Gesellschaft. Soon he was supervising the printing of inexpensive popular lithographs and the newly invented chromolithographs as well as processes such as heliogravure and photogravure. After thirty years of service, he was dismissed primarily to be replaced by a younger worker who got lower wages and secondly because, as an old socialist, his presence had become disturbing to his employers. Thus, at the age of nearly fifty, Zille decided to try to support himself and family by submitting his art to papers and magazines. Especially the publications Jugend and Simplicissimus printed many drawings, and slowly Zille's reputation grew greater than he could ever have anticipated. Soon after the first World War, Zille summarized his political views: "Ever since the Communists determined to pursue the principles and purposes that the Social Democrats abandoned, I am a Communist." His pacifist convictions were expressed in the series Kriegsmarmelade (War Marmelade), and in 1928, he joined many other pacifists in their protest against Germany's rising militarism. He was a member of the communist Rote Hilfe (Red Aid) and contributed drawings to assist striking workers in their campaign for an eight-hour day. The working class which considered Zille as one of their own, approved of his pictures more readily than of the more radical art which the Expressionists created in support of the same causes. His funeral in August 1929 was attended by thousands from Berlin's poor quarters who came to say good-bye to "Vater Zille."
works by Heinrich Zille
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