Interview Directory 

ART

Name: Dr. Christoph Schmälzle

Occupation: Scientific consultant for art history,LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn. 

‘Kind vor Hochofen’ is a very personal painting that Felixmüller painted in 1927 without a commission and did not sell for decades, taking it with him on every move and saving it through the war. 

Conrad Felixmüller: Kind vor Hochofen (Bildnis des sechsjährigen Ludwig Wulf am Wohnzimmerfenster)

© LVR-LandesMuseum, Bonn

Why was the State Museum interested in this particular work?

 The transformation of the cultural landscape is one of the central themes of the new permanent exhibition ‘World in Transition’, which the LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn opened in September 2023. Many changes in the world we live in become clear in the mirror of art - and at the same time, art also documents time-bound perspectives on these changes. The painting ‘Child in front of a blast furnace’ by Conrad Felixmüller combines a portrait of a child with a depiction of industry in a unique way, raising questions about the future and the visual value of industry. The blast furnaces of the Hasper Hütte are at the centre of the window view. Since the plant was completely dismantled in the 1980s, only historical images remain to remind us of this important part of Westphalia's industrial history. In the course of the permanent exhibition, Felixmüller's painting corresponds with August von Wille's ‘View of Barmen’ from 1870, where a hunting party can be seen in the foreground and the smoking chimneys of the industrial town in the background.

How did ‘Child in front of the blast furnace’ come into the museum's possession?

‘Kind vor Hochofen’ is a very personal painting that Felixmüller painted in 1927 without a commission and did not sell for decades, taking it with him on every move and saving it through the war. It was not until 1974 that he sold the painting to Ludwig Wulf, who had modelled for the blond boy when he was six years old. Ludwig Wulf sold the work via a private collection in Berlin to the Senger art dealership in Bamberg, which exhibited it at the TEFAF art fair in Maastricht in 2023. We saw it there for the first time and immediately recognised its potential for our collection. Many questions had to be clarified before the LVR-LandesMuseum was able to acquire the painting in July 2024 and thus secure it for the whole of North Rhine-Westphalia. The purchase was only possible thanks to the generous financial support of the NRW Foundation and our sponsoring organisation, the Wilhelm Dorow Society, for which we are very grateful.

Along with the painting, we have also acquired five letters written by Conrad Felixmüller himself in 1927/28 and 1973/74, which tell of the painting's creation in Haspe and its sale to Ludwig Wulf.

Ludwig Wulf vor seinem Gemälde ©Loos

Die Hochöfen der Hasper Hütte mit den Wohnhäusern an der Kölner Straße, um 1920, Postkarte

© LVR-LandesMuseum, Bonn

What do you know about the genesis of the work? What do you think the artist's intentions were?

When Felixmüller received the ‘Saxon State Prize’ in 1920, he did not travel to Rome as usual, but to the Rhine and Ruhr to study heavy industry and the lives of workers. In the years that followed, he continued to travel to the West to carry out portrait commissions for the upper middle classes.

In 1927, Felixmüller lived in Haspe for three weeks as a guest of the Wulf family. He set up his studio directly in the flat, from where he had a magnificent view of the blast furnaces of the Hasper Hütte - as captured in the window painting ‘Child in front of the blast furnace’. The group of works created during this time also includes two other paintings: the depiction of a worker at the blast furnace tapping, which has been in the Museum of German History in the (East) Berlin Zeughaus since 1964, and a spectacular view of the Hasper Hütte at night, which came to the Von-der-Heydt-Museum in Wuppertal in 1992.

For Felixmüller, the work was a fundamental question that concerned society as a whole. At the same time, personal factors play a role in the child's picture at the window: the artist was fascinated by the proximity of middle-class housing to heavy industry. He himself planned to move to the big city, but lived in the countryside out of consideration for his family.

‘From today's perspective, the dirty smoke that rises from the Thomas Converters, ironically known as ‘Hasper Gold’, is particularly striking.’

Why is it so significant in the context of the Weimar Republic?

From today's perspective, it is above all the dirty smoke that catches the eye, which rose from the St Thomas converters as ironically so-called ‘Hasper Gold’. At the time the painting was created, other aspects were in the foreground: the fact that the economy was booming and the chimneys were smoking was initially good news in the crisis-ridden Weimar Republic. Felixmüller soon became convinced that ‘human labour is sacred’. He primarily recognised the skill and drive of the workforce behind the achievements of the modern age. In 1922, he portrayed his brother, who worked as a mining engineer in the Ruhr region, as a representative of a new type of person who was ‘not helplessly subject to the enormous endeavours above and below ground, but mastered them’.

In this sense, the encounter between the well-protected child at the window and the industrial plant is not a contradiction, but an expression of future-oriented forces with inherent utopian potential. Time and again, the buildings of heavy industry have been described as cathedrals of modernity, which are rightly worthy of a picture and often also of a monument.

 What do you know about the history of Ludwig Wulf?

Felixmüller's host, Eckart Wulf, was headmaster of the Oberrealschule in Haspe. His son Ludwig also went into teaching. After working for a long time at a school abroad in Chile, he settled in Meinerzhagen in the Sauerland region. In 1973, he sought contact with Felixmüller, who was living in West Berlin again after a post-war career in the GDR. Wulf not only purchased the blast furnace painting, which shows him as a young boy, for 6,000 marks, but also commissioned a portrait of his daughter Martina for a further 3,000 marks. He remained the proud owner of the painting for many years and showed it in 1997, seventy years after it was painted, as part of the exhibition ‘Hidden Art in Kierspe and Meinerzhagen’.

What is the focus of the LVR-LandesMuseum's collection?

The LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn displays treasures of archaeology, art and cultural history from over 400,000 years. It is the only cultural history museum in the Rhineland and looks back on a history of over 200 years. The world-famous Neanderthal man can already be seen in the foyer. The first floor with finds from the Ice Age, the Celts, Romans and Franks is currently being remodelled. On the second floor, we show the art history of the Rhineland from the Middle Ages to the present day. The ‘Child in front of the blast furnace’ has been hanging since the end of July as a highlight in the room dedicated to the art of the Weimar Republic, in direct neighbourhood to works by Leo Breuer, Barthel Gilles, Franz M. Jansen and Heinrich Maria Davringhausen.

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