Bäumer, Eduard

Eduard Bäumer was born in Kastellaun in Hunsrück in 1892. His family moved to Frankfurt am Main in 1895. After the early death of his father in 1904, Bäumer’s mother married again, though she, too, died in 1911. Bäumer did an apprenticeship with a decorator in Frankfurt and also attended evening classes at the School of Arts and Crafts in Frankfurt. After completing his apprenticeship in 1908, he was given a scholarship to the School of Arts and Crafts, where he studied with Ludwig Heinrich Jungnickel (1881–1965). In 1910, Bäumer began studies at the Städel Art Institute, though these were interrupted when the First World War broke out in 1914. After the end of the war, Bäumer returned to the Städel Institute in Frankfurt, where he joined the master studio until 1922. In 1923, he married a fellow student, Valerie Feix (1898–1992), who was Jewish. In 1924, the Bäumers travelled to Italy along with friends who were also painters, visiting Florence, Arezzo, Rome and Abruzzo. Eduard Bäumer’s first exhibition was held afterwards in Frankfurt, and featured paintings he had made during this trip. He became acquainted with Max Beckmann (1884–1950), Paul Hindemith (1895–1963) and Georg Swarzenski (1876–1957), who was the director of the Städel Art Institute at the time. In 1927, Bäumer got to know Johannes Itten (1888–1967), with whom he became friends for life. Bäumer attended his summer school in Allgäu in 1927 and the Itten School in Berlin. In 1930, he travelled to Paris, where he became friends with Georges Braque (1882–1963), Fernand Léger (1881–1955) and Raoul Dufy (1877–1953). After the Nazis assumed power, Bäumer’s art was vilified, and he moved with his family to Salzburg. In 1938, after the annexation of Austria into the German Reich, Bäumer was forbidden from working as a painter, and his family’s assets were confiscated. Bäumer was not willing to divorce his Jewish wife, so both were committed to forced labour from 1943 onwards. In 1942, Bäumer was still able to organise his first large-scale exhibition in Vienna, at the Würthle Gallery (at the time the Welz Gallery). In 1944, he had to flee from Salzburg with his family; they returned after the end of the war. In 1947, the Viennese professors Max Fellerer (1889–1957) and Oswald Haerdtl (1899–1959) visited Bäumer in his Salzburg studio and invited him to head the masterclass for painting at the Academy for Applied Arts in Vienna. He was made a professor in 1950. Bäumer retired from the Academy in 1963, after which he devoted himself solely to painting, working primarily in the south of Italy.

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