View of the Brocken

From the “Langen Stieg” in Oberen Hasserode, a district of Wernigerode, the view is directed towards the Harzberge with its highest elevation, the Brocken. At this point, the site still offers a clear view of the Harz Mountains, as no complete development has yet been made. In addition to the high artistic value, the painting thus represents a contemporary testimony. Both composition and composition are balanced. Especially the green occurs in several nuances of color. In the foreground, farmed fields are drawn through most of the picture. A broad road or a road, which is built on the left, runs to the left. In the background the wooded mountains with existing buildings of the Upper Hasserod. Above all, a sky with impressive clouds. The painting was made in 1939. It is labeled on the back: "Hasserode/Harz - View of the Brocken from Langen Stieg. Gottfried Brockmann 1939 " Gottfried Brockmann is born in Cologne in 1903 to a decorative painter. Brockmann grows up in a conservative-bourgeois environment, which is characterized on the one hand by values of knowledge of crafts and on the other hand by academic art history education. After the Realgymnasium he completed a two-year architecture apprenticeship (1920 - 1921). It is followed by an apprenticeship as a decorative painter, which ends Brockmann with the journeyman’s examination in 1922. First artistic works are created. From 1923 to 1925 Gottfried Brockmann is in close contact with the “Rhenish Group of Progressive Artists” (especially Franz Seiwert, Heinrich Hoerle and August Sander). In 1926 he begins a study of “Free and Applied Graphics” with Prof. W. Herberholz and Prof. E. Ausehser at the Düsseldorf Art Academy with the aim of later working in an artistic teaching profession. In 1928 Brockmann becomes a master student with Prof. H. Campendonk. His artistic work is dedicated at this time to studio interiors. In 1932 Brockmann completed his studies. The same year he marries the sculptor Marianne Reunert. At the academy he leads the basic training of the students. A later assumption into the teaching profession is promised. Brockmann becomes chairman of the “Rheinische Sezession.” In response to the burgeoning National Socialism, he joins the Communist Party. He goes to Berlin and works for a year in 1934 in the workshop Prof. Thols in the class for “Historic Preservation and Monumental Art.” Brockmann’s work is rather artisan in the period 1933 to 1943. From 1943 to 1945 Brockmann is serving as a military officer and from 1945 to 1946 he was captured in American war. In the period from 1946 to 1952 he conducts a fiduciary book printing and lithographic institution in Hof an der Saale, conducts private art lessons and builds a “trade union mentally and culturally creative.” He also resumes his free artistic activity and is thus listed in the catalog of the “Fichtelgebirgs-Kunstausfreie” (“Fichtelgebirgs-Kunstkünstler”) from 1949 as a member of the“Group of Progressive Socialists 1948.” In 1952, Brockmann moved to Kiel and became the city’s cultural adviser. From 1955 he takes over the “Magisterium for Natural Studies and Painting” at the Muthesius School of Works and later heads the department “Free and Applied Painting.” In 1975 he was appointed professor. Gottfried Brockmann dies at the age of 80 in 1983. (Wernigerode Harz Museum)