Adolph Jentsch

1958 Order of Merit, First Class, Federal Republic of Germany Adolph Stephan Friedrich Jentsch (29 December 1888 Dresden – 18 April 1977 Windhoek) was a German-born Namibian artist.

[1] Jentsch was in the Jäger-Reserve[2] in the First World War, but developed a crippling rheumatism that put him into a military hospital at Neustadt for a year.

[1] After the war, he married a young divorcee, Anne Ilgen, in 1920, and together they operated a small factory making spray-containers for perfume.

[1] Jentsch's antipathy to National Socialism resulted in a loss of commissions, so he took up an offer to vacation on the farm Kleepforte, near Windhoek in Namibia (then called South West Africa) owned by his friend, Helmuth Dietterle (1901-2002).

Jentsch and Dorothea von Funcke (whose husband had by now died) moved into a modest house in Windhoek for the last few years of his life.

[2] In 1975, farm workers at Brack, attempting to smoke out a wasp's nest, started a fire in the rafters of the old barn where Jentsch stored much of his oeuvre.