The year in which Inge Hergenhahn-Dinand entered the master class can no longer be clearly reconstructed. In the 1997 publication “Malerinnen im 20. Jahrhundert”, for which the author Ingrid von der Dollen interviewed the artist, 1926 is given. More recent research, however, puts the date of entry at 1928/29.
Born in Darmstadt, Ingeborg Dinand, known as Inge, first attended a home economics school at her mother’s insistence. However, in 1925, at the age of 18, she began her studies at the Frankfurt Art School (hereinafter also referred to as the “Städelschule”) in the preliminary class with Peter Rasmussen. Inge Dinand had her first solo exhibition in Darmstadt as early as 1927. Paul Westheim’s gallery in Berlin also showed works by the painter that year. She was a master student of Max Beckmann from the end of the 1920s until the class was closed in 1933. A further success was that she was able to take part in an exhibition at the Reckendorfhaus in Berlin in 1929. The art critic Paul Westheim wrote in “Das Kunstblatt” about the exhibition that fellow students from Beckmann’s class had also submitted works, but these were rejected by the jury.
She also met Walter Hergenhahn in the master class, whom she married in 1933. In 1930 and 1932, Hergenhahn-Dinand was able to exhibit at the Frankfurt gallery F. A. C. Prestel. After the dissolution of the master class by the National Socialists in 1933, Inge and Walter Hergenhahn withdrew into private life and spent a lot of time away from Frankfurt on Sylt. Beginning in 1933, she spent a year in Paris. Their sons Michael and Kay were born in 1935 and 1939.
Although the painter’s exhibition activities came to a standstill in the first few years after the seizure of power, Hergenhahn-Dinand does not appear to have been banned from exhibiting from 1936 at the latest. She was thus able to officially take part in exhibitions in 1936, 1940, 1941 and 1942. However, the war years that followed were a major turning point in her life, which was characterized by bombing, evacuation and flight. Almost all of the work she had created up to that point was lost during this time. After the war-related destruction of her Frankfurt studio in 1942, she and her sons fled to friends in Warthegau in what is now Poland. In 1945, they fled west again via Stettin and Hamburg to Wedel.
After the end of the war, the family settled in Niederstein am Rhein from 1946 to 1956. From 1946 onwards, she established contacts with the Neue Darmstätter Sezession, in whose exhibitions she repeatedly took part. Between 1951 and 1953, she traveled to Spain and Paris. Her post-war work is particularly well received in the USA. She trained as a weaver at the Werkkunstschule Offenbach and received commissions for tapestries and paraments for churches in the Darmstadt area.
In 1956, she moved back to Frankfurt am Main, as her husband succeeded Theo Garve as director of the Städel Evening School. From 1957, she led summer courses in painting and drawing on Sylt. In 1958, however, she divorced Walter Hergenhahn. In 1965, she and her former classmate Georg Heck received a study trip award and traveled to Provence. At the end of the 1960s, Hergenhahn-Dinand opened her own gallery in Frankfurt. From 1976, together with Georg Heck, she was one of the founders of the “Frankfurt Circle”. She spent the last years of her life in Frankfurt, where she died in 2003.
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