Fritz Kühn
Fritz Kühn (29 April 1910 - 31 July 1967) was an East German visual artist whose output included sculpture, metal-artwork and photography.
[1][9] 1937 was also the year in which he married Gertrud Moldenhauer (1911-1957), a clerical worker who subsequently played an important role organising the publication of his books and managing other business related aspects of his career.
[8] He managed to devise an innovative surface treatment for forged iron which one expert commentator likened to "the tachism of Yves Klein or the abstract painting of Emil Schumacher".
[18] It was also in 1954 that Kühn was a recipient of the National Prize (3rd class) in recognition of his creative artistic contribution to the post-war architecture of Berlin and other cities.
[19] Even after the sudden appearance of the Berlin Wall in 1961, Kühn was seen as a member of the artistic establishment, winning commissions from state authorities and respected for his inventive artistry in his unusual artistic niche, on both sides of the so-called Iron Curtain, despite the increasing semblance of permanence in the physical and political divisions between East and West Germany.
[10][19] Despite the church-state tensions that were a feature of life in the German Democratic Republic, Fritz Kühn was a leading producer of church art.
[21][22] One of his Christian pieces was a three meter tall dome-cross for the rebuilding of St. Hedwig's Cathedral, along with a transparent parapet of bronze and crystal glass around the central floor opening of the interior.
[10] The bodies of Fritz and Gertrud Kühn are buried together in a "Berlin grave of honour" in the Grünau Forest Cemetery ("Waldfriedhof").
One of the most remarkable, given the enduring Cold War spirit of the times, was a retrospective exhibition staged in his honour in 1969 at the Louvre Palace in Paris.
[27][28] In 1983 the East German government declared Fritz Kühn's life's work a "national cultural asset" (einem "Nationalen Kulturgut").
Following reunification the new government confirmed the designation of Kühn's work as a national cultural asset, but as far as the museum project was concerned, with Berlin city politics now dominated by parties from the west, everything changed.
[18] There have been (imprecise and vaguely supported) suggestions appearing in the press that Fritz Kühn only received the necessary permissions to start work on his new studio-workshop back in 1958 because he was inappropriately "close to" party members and officials in the East German government.
