Friedrich Zundel

Vocation

Family

German painter, farmer and art patron, who painted in the social realist style in his youth, often creating very detailed portrayals of working-class people. He also designed posters and interiors of homes for workers. Later, in the 1910s, he began to focus more on religious and mythological themes. At the age of fourteen, he went to Pforzheim, where he successfully finished an apprenticeship as a painter in 1891. He then worked as a scene painter at a Frankfurt theatre for six years, before deciding to study art in Karlsruhe, later in Stuttgart, in 1897/98. He was, however, expelled from the Stuttgart Academy of Arts, after organising a student protest (strike). His rebellious behaviour was mainly sparked by socialist ideas, that he had taken up in the previous years; in this context, he wanted to fight exploitation and repression of workers. Around the same time, he began a relationship with the much older socialist and feminist editor, politician and translator Clara Zetkin. They married in 1899. From 1903 until their separation in 1927, they lived at a house in Sillenbuch, outside of Stuttgart, where many socialist leaders visited them (most famously Vladimir Lenin in 1907). They split and divorced in 1927. The following year, Zundel married Paula Bosch, daughter of the industrialist Robert Bosch, whom he had known (and once portrayed) since she had been a child. The couple moved into a farmhouse on a hill, the so-called "Berghof", near Tübingen, which Zundel himself had designed in 1921, and which had been financed by Robert Bosch for his daughters. He started to work as a farmer, painting occasionally, with the focus on idealistic and Christian themes. Their son Georg (later a famous physical chemist and philanthropist) was born in 1931. Zundel died in Stuttgart on 7 June 1948, aged 72. His widow Paula and her sister Margarete Fischer-Bosch founded Tübingen's now most famous museum, the Kunsthalle Tübingen, in honour of Zundel, in 1971. Link to Wikipedia biography