The Norwegian Olaf Gulbransson (1873-1954) was a natural draftsman and painter. There is already a museum dedicated to him in his adopted home of Tegernsee. But a biography of the muscular man, who preferred to walk around naked in summer, has not yet been published. Now the literary scholar Gerd Holzheimer has closed the gap and has written a very readable, 328-page book with numerous illustrations about the artist.
SZ: You look astonishingly similar to Olaf Gulbransson.
Gerd Holzheimer: My grandson thinks that too. He saw the book lying there and immediately identified the man on the cover as his grandpa. But the resemblance is, of course, unintentional.
Gerd Holzheimer wrote the biography about Olaf Gulbransson. The decisive factor for the book was not the similarity between the painter and the literary scholar, but the feeling of an inner friendship.
(Photo: Carmen Kubitz)
Wasn’t she the reason to write a biography about the painter and draftsman?
Of course not. Rather, it arose out of a feeling of inner friendship. I’ve loved Gulbransson for a long time. He is an ingenious master of allusions, of minimalist drawing, of smiling lines, of recesses and of empty areas, which can express more than so many dashes. There is so much humor in his drawings, and humor is a gift from God. I also always feel the love for his counterpart, for the person he is portraying. Basically, his ridicule is never acidic.
The title page in the satirical magazine Simplicissimus, published on August 25, 1913, brought Olaf Gulbransson the charge of lese majesty. Does he show King Ludwig III. in a bent position and in a completely rumpled outfit.
(Photo: Allitera-Verlag, Olaf Gulbransson / VG Bild-Kunst Bonn 2021)
This also applies to his caricatures in the Satirical magazine Simplicissimus?
Naturally. For example, if he was King Ludwig III. draws, who receives two men in immaculate Prussian uniforms at the entrance of a beer tent with shivering trousers and a rumpled uniform skirt, then the king comes across as a nice guy, as a person who was completely disinterested in military raggedness.
In 1913 Gulbransson and the were accused Simplicissimus but therefore the lese majesty?
Of the Regensburg scoreboard was very upset about the ‘almost unbelievable lack of taste’, especially because the paper had allowed ‘a foreigner’ to degrade the regent and thus the Bavarian state and the people. But by and large, Gulbransson only drew people he liked. What has always fascinated me about him are the two sides of his personality. On the one hand the desire for anarchic failures, on the other hand a very contemplative moment that shaped him in the same way and made him paint the Hirschberg again and again in an almost Zen Buddhist manner.
Hasn’t his third wife, Dagny Björnson-Gulbransson, who is 30 years younger than him, already written a biography?
This is a wonderful source, but it was written from the point of view of the loving wife, even if it is by no means uncritical. And the book doesn’t cover the artist’s entire life, after all, he lived in Norway for 25 years. I was interested in the whole person, the whole artist Gulbransson. Just as I got to know him as an incredibly diverse, whimsical man in my research, I wanted to pass him on to the readership.
Why did he come to Germany at all?
Simplicissmus-Publisher Albert Langen, made aware of the draftsman by his father-in-law, the Norwegian poet and Nobel laureate Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, invited him in 1902 to work on the satirical magazine. He integrated quickly, although he couldn’t speak a word of German. In the first year he also came to the Tegernsee, at the invitation of Ludwig Thoma. He used the opportunity for his beloved skiing and even ski jumping.
Allegedly he didn’t stand a jump.
No wonder, he provisionally built the hill himself, the inrun was extremely steep. But he always did everything himself, and later dug the swimming pond himself at the Schererhof, his refuge on Lake Tegernsee.
In your book you devote yourself in detail to the years of National Socialism. It looks like you’re struggling to get a rating.
Anyone dealing with this topic will always struggle if they are not just trying to confirm their own prejudices. Actually, I tried not to evaluate anything, to gloss over anything or even to cover it up, but also not to wave the moral finger, but to present everything as differentiated as possible. Gulbransson was a very contradictory person. But yes, there are allegations that he risked the Nazis a bit, which is not the case in this generalized way.
You quote from a letter to Walter Buch, the highest party judge for purges within the NSDAP, in which Gulbransson behaves unrestrainedly and opportunistically and blasphemed his former editorial colleague Thomas Theodor Heine. He writes “A Jew will always find someone who does the work for him without knowing it.”
As far as I can see, this is the only derailment of its kind. It should definitely not be taken for your entire attitude. But there is actually no apology for the letter. The argument between Heine and Gulbransson lasted until after the war. The fact is that under pressure from the Nazis, the former Simplicissmus-Colleagues in March 1933 distance themselves from Heine and claim that they were only seduced into their hitherto critical attitude towards Hitler by the Jew Heine. Heine has to sign that he will renounce any editorial activity, he has to give up his shares in the magazine and soon flee. From then on, Heine is of the opinion that Gulbransson in particular was responsible for his exclusion. What Gulbransson rejects.
Who was right?
One cannot do justice to the dispute. There are two different sides, in the end they only argued through a lawyer. They were good friends, and it is probably also the story of a disappointed love. In the literature about it, however, Olaf Gulbransson has so far got off badly. I wanted to illuminate it from both sides, as far as the sources allow; none of us was there.
They said Gulbransson had a special strategy for dealing with situations he felt uncomfortable in: he got drunk quickly, rolled over in a corner, and slept. Has he done that often?
Yes already. Once also to avoid a meal at Joseph Goebbels’. He got drunk, rolled around on the carpet with his friend, actor Paul Wegener, and sang loudly. He had an emissary sent by Goebbels informed that Goebbels could see him … Incidentally, he never concealed when he was enthusiastic about other artists, such as the painters and sculptors in the “Degenerate Art” exhibition. He expressed his enthusiasm very loudly on a tour of the show in 1937, regardless of his audience.
Why did he sign the “Protest of the Richard Wagner City of Munich”, a journalistic attack against Thomas Mann, in 1933?
According to his wife, Dagny, an appeal was made to his collegiality at the academy meeting where this happened. The signature was immediately terrible to him, after all, he was friends with Mann. He tried to withdraw it immediately, but the story could not be saved. The world press immediately attacked Olaf. Basically he was not interested in politics – also a peculiar paradox: a draftsman who depicts political issues, but is not at all political himself.
Olaf Gulbransson with his third wife Dagny, the granddaughter of the Norwegian Nobel laureate Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, who in 1902 brought the young draftsman’s attention to the Simplicissimus publisher Albert Langen.
(Photo: Private, Allitera Verlag)
For that he was very interested in the women. He was married three times and had many loves. You tell in detail about the wives, but little about the affairs. Is the source situation so bad?
At least not as well as with the wives. It does appear in the book, but only in the margin. It could also be that Dagny has cleaned up a few things. One of the three estates is still blocked. This shows that she didn’t want certain things published. She knew about his stories and it hurt her too. Still, she was always loyal to him.
Different from wife number two, Grete Jehly?
It was incredibly sociable, extremely extroverted and easily flammable. She didn’t let anything burn, and she also had liaisons. At some point that became too much for him.
And the first marriage with Inga Liggeren?
There are hardly any sources. It is possible that Grete, who was terribly jealous of Inga, or even Dagny, took away letters or documents.
Gulbransson writes that she never spoke a word at all.
It is a dubious source, it tends to form legends. One thing is certain: Inga couldn’t speak a word of German when she came to the roaring Schwabing in Munich with him and their two little daughters. She came from a tiny, remote place in Norway. Today it can only be reached on foot. That couldn’t go well. The marriage ended in divorce in 1906 and went to Denmark with the children. Gulbransson never lost contact with his daughters and Inga, the girls also visited him from time to time. In spite of all his infidelity, he was a faithful, loving person.
So a man of contradictions?
You can say. He had so many sides to it. In his later years he just sat there and looked over at the Hirschberg. Every now and then grabbed a scythe, split wood or went for a walk with the dog. He didn’t draw much anymore. And if so, then for example a pile of wood. He took it just as seriously as a human face. He finally becomes the “tender universe soul”, as Ringelnatz once describes him in a poem. When asked about his favorite artist, he replies: “Good Lord, because he’s from the good old school.”
Gerd Holzheimer: Olaf Gulbransson. A biography, Allitera Verlag, Price: 28 euros