Tegernseer Tal & Tölzer Land No. 10

Olaf Gulbransson

Olaf Gulbransson Bavarian Norwegian or Norwegian Bavarian? A wonderful museum in Tegernsee is named after him, he is buried in the Rottach-Egern cemetery, but what else do we actually know about this exceptional artist, born in 1873, who came to Bavaria from Norway, applied for Bavarian citizenship in 1906 and spent most of his life here? but then he was attracted by the city, which he probably imagined as having palm trees and being very southern.The satirical magazine, which had just been founded, was unknown to him, but he had already heard of the then “Wahnmoching,“ the Schwabing of the turn of the century with its relaxed lifestyle and a colorful artistic scene. 64 He was probably a wild, unruly contemporary, who occasionally sat around naked and round as a ball on the trees of his garden in Schwabing and thus frightened the mothers of young girls. But he was also considered a gifted draftsman and caricaturist, one of the most important artists of the famous Munich satirical magazine Simplicissimus. But how did he come to move to Munich and Tegernsee in the first place? Gerd Holzheimer describes this in the excellently researched and entertaining new biography about Gulbransson: The publisher Albert Langen had made the still fairly unknown artist an offer. He should move from his Norwegian village to Munich and work for the „Simplicissimus“. Gulbransson was probably doubtful at first, So he came, saw and stayed for most of his life in Bavaria – except for a few years, which he spent in Berlin and again in his Norwegian home near Oslo. He fit into the crazy Schwabing, became known not only for his art, but also for his excesses. 2400 drawings of his appeared in 42 years in Simplicissimus, his portrait drawings of famous contemporaries were celebrated as well as his book illustrations and his few oil paintings - and he was soon able to afford a beautiful house on the English Garden, the „Kefernest“. Large exhibitions in Berlin, marriage to wife No. 3, Dagny Björnson, and in 1929 the purchase

of his beloved “Schererhof“, an ancient farmhouse on the southern slope of the Neureuth above Lake Tegernsee, followed. Here he searches, as Gerd Holzheimer describes it, out of homesickness for Norway, his “inner home“. He had skis made here by a carpenter and even built what is probably Bavaria‘s first ski jump, which he races down himself in kamikaze style. He works a lot on his magnificent, unmistakable drawings. In addition, from 1932 he was also a well-paid, civil servant full professor at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts – and this until 1943, during the period of National Socialism. This era is a dark chapter in the life of the exceptional artist. Was it naiveté, opportunism, or being a follower that made Olaf Gulbransson, a native of Norway, so uncritical of the Nazis? Although he never professed Nazi ideology and was never a member of the NSDAP, he complied and did not refuse the regime‘s honors for his artistic work. Yes, he even kept company with some important functionaries of the Nazi regime. Gulbransson exhibition at the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus was closed. In the post-war period, Olaf Gulbransson largely withdrew to Tegernsee. In 1953, on his 80th birthday, the first retrospective was held at the Wilhelm Busch Museum in Hanover, and in 1955 he was awarded the Art Prize for Painting and Graphic Art of the City of Munich, as well as a major exhibition at the Munich Kunstverein. He was once again recruited to work on Simpl, the successor to Simplicissimus (1946-1950), and worked on various illustrations and publications, including his richly caricatured published correspondence with Franziska Bilek “Dear Olaf! Dear Franziska!“. In 1958 Gulbransson published his last works. On September 18, 1958, this “giant with a child‘s mind,“ as the former Bavarian Minister of Culture Hans Maier once called him, died after a stroke at the age of 86 on his Schererhof farm in Tegernsee. 65 Once, as Holzheimer reports in his biography, the artist dared to rebel, however. In the Munich exhibition of so-called “degenerate art,“ for example, he clearly praised the works of one of the artists ostracized by the Nazis. As a result, the He is buried in the cemetery of the Church of the Resurrection in Rottach-Egern.