Ernst Thälmann

Ernst Thälmann was born in Altona in 1886 and died in 1944 at the Buchenwald concentration camp. He was a member of the Reichstag in the Weimar Republic from 1924 to 1933 and chairman of the Communist Party of Germany from 1925 to 1933. In 1933 he was arrested by the Gestapo and after 11 years of imprisonment he was shot in 1944 at the Buchenwald concentration camp. Paul Betyna portrayed him. Ernst Thälmann is shown in the quarter profile with upper body. He wears a suit with a shirt and slips and a umbrella cap that was typical of him. The picture is signed at the bottom right and unframed. The lower left corner breaks off. In the lower right corner, paint breaks off. Paul Betyna was born in 1887 in Bromberg (near Berlin) and died in 1967 in Wernigerode. He graduated from the Paris Academy and Berlin, where he worked until 1943. By bombing it swallowed him to Wernigerode. He was a freelance artist and landscape painter. (Wernigerode Harz Museum)