Heinrich Zille

Heinrich Zille – Self-financed drawing studies with Theodor Hosemann

Heinrich Zille was born in Radeburg near Dresden on 10 January 1858. The son of a clockmaker, he grew up in extremely modest circumstances and had to do odd jobs as a child in Berlin to contribute to the household. Zille’s interest in drawing was awakened by William Hogarth’s social critical engravings he found printed in penny magazines, and he financed by himself his first private drawing lessons before studying at the Royal School of Art under the painter and caricaturist Theodor Hosemann. Hosemann encouraged his students to go out onto the streets and to observe life - free drawing from reality is much better than all strict academic teaching. Following his studies, Zille initially found work as a draughtsman for women’s fashion, advertising motifs, and kitsch pictures, and for pleasure he portrayed his work colleagues. During this time, Zille learnt further techniques, familiarising himself with etching, colour and collotype printing, heliogravure, block printing, retouching and zincography. 

Heinrich Zille finds his Milljöh (milieu) in the Berlin underclass

Heinrich Zille became acquainted with the animal painters Richard Friese and Oskar Frenzel and joined the Berlin Photographic Society, to which he remained faithful for 30 years. His military service was an unpleasant experience which he processed in a number of sketches and notes. Although his war and soldier paintings exhibited a satirical tone throughout, they were also patriotic and therefore classified as glorifying war, which was not the artist’s intention. Encouraged by Otto Nagel, he created a series of anti-war pictures, the so-called Kriegsmarmelade (war jam). When he discovered for himself the proletarian milieu around the turn of the century and immortalised it in numerous drawings and sometimes photographs, he came into conflict with his employer which ultimately led to his dismissal. Heinrich Zille was deeply hurt and troubled by this but was emboldened by his artist friends such as Paul Klimsch and Max Liebermann to exploit his artistic potential at last. He now created his famous combinations of image and text so characteristic of Zille, earning him the affectionate nickname ‘Pinselheinrich’ (brush-Heinrich).

Modesty despite many honours and much success

Heinrich Zille often masked deep chasms of tragedy and misery behind the humorous surface of his drawings. His pictures were published in magazines such as Simplicissimus and Jugend, and as a member of the Berlin Secession and the German Artist’s League he eventually reached national prominence, going from local phenomenon to celebrated national artist personality. He remained modest, however, and was not changed by his appointment as professor at the Prussian Academy of Arts. Zille loved children, was godparent to many, and often made them the subject of his drawings. He was friends with the greats such as Käthe Kollwitz, Ernst Barlach, Lyonel Feininger, August Gaul, August Kraus, and others, whom he sensitively portrayed without slipping them entirely into a caricature. Less well known is his interest in pornography which led to picture series such as Hurengespräche (Whore Talk).

Heinrich Zille died on 9 August 1929 in Berlin. Whilst many of his companions were defamed and banned by the National Socialist cultural policy, Zille’s artistic estate was used in a different way: Numerous pictures were simply given a new commentary in tune with National Socialist ideology, which, however, had nothing to do with the artist’s original intention.