Heinrich Zille
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Rudolf Heinrich Zille (10 January 1858 – 9 August 1929) was a German illustrator,
Childhood and education
Zille was born in
Career
In 1883, he married Hulda Frieske, with whom he had three children. She died in 1919.
Zille became best known for his (often funny) drawings, catching the characteristics of people, especially "stereotypes", mainly from Berlin and many of them published in the German weekly satirical newspaper
His special talent was the scathingly humorous portrayal of what were in reality quite unfunny life conditions of handicapped beggars, tuberculous prostitutes, and menial labourers, and especially their children, making the best they could of life and resolutely refusing to give up.
Zille did not consider himself a real artist: he often said that his work was not the result of talent but merely of hard work. Max Liebermann nevertheless promoted him. He called him into the Berlin Secession in 1903, featured his work in exhibitions, and encouraged him to sell drawings – and when Zille lost his job as a lithographer in 1910, he encouraged him to live from his drawings alone.
The Berlin "Common People" paid him the greatest respect, and very late in life his fame culminated when both poverty and freedom of expression reached new heights in the
Legacy and honors
Heinrich Zille Park on Bergstraße in Berlin's Mitte borough was named for him by the City of Berlin in 1948 and formerly featured a statue of him from the workshop of Paul Kentsch, but the statue's whereabouts are unknown and the park is now a children's adventure playground. There is a Zille Memorial statue created in 1964–65 by Heinrich Drake in the Lapidary within Köllnischer Park, also in Mitte. An elementary school in Berlin's Friedrichshain district is named in his honor.
A museum dedicated to Zille's work opened in Berlin's Nikolaiviertel, in Mitte, in 2002;[2] in 2007 a statue of him by Thorsten Stegmann was erected nearby.
It is less known that Zille produced many
In 1983 director
A drawing by Zille appears on a German postage stamp of 55 Euro-Cents, with the caption "Heinrich Zille, 1858–1929".
Zille's grandniece is Helen Zille, the former mayor of Cape Town and Premier of the Western Cape province in South Africa.
Gallery
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"School", by Zille
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"Beach life in Berlin" (1901), by Zille
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Monument to Zille by Thorsten Stegmann in the Nikolaiviertel
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Zille Memorial in Köllnischer Park, Berlin, by Heinrich Drake
Selected filmography
- Slums of Berlin (1925)
- The Ones Down There (1926)
- Big City Children (1929)
- Mother Krause's Journey to Happiness (1929)
References
- ^ "Heinrich Zille - Lambiek Comiclopedia".
- ^ "Zille Museum". Museumsportal Berlin. museumsportal-berlin.de/en/. Retrieved 27 May 2017.
- ^ "Zille und ick (1983)". IMDb. 1 May 2009. Retrieved 15 January 2012.
Further reading
- "From Zola’sMilieu to Zille's Milljöh: Berlin and the Visual Practices of Naturalism." Excavatio XIII. September 2000. 149–166.
External links
- Available Works & Biography Galerie Ludorff, Düsseldorf, Germany
- Documents from the life of the Zille family
- Newspaper clippings about Heinrich Zille in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW