Rudolf Wilhelm Heinisch is born in Leipzig into a social democratic family. In 1902, his family moved to Frankfurt am Main. There he trained as a lithographer at the Kornsand & Co. printing company. With the help of a scholarship from the city, he studied at the Frankfurt School of Applied Arts under Franz Karl Delavilla (1884-1967) from 1913 to 1916.
During the First World War, Heinisch was seriously wounded on the French front – an injury to his left hand led to his discharge from military service. The horrors of war are the subject of his first expressionist prints. From 1919, he worked as a freelance painter, graphic artist and stage designer and, after several study trips, moved into a studio in the Carmelite monastery in Frankfurt. The property, which was no longer used by the church, became a creative centre for Frankfurt artists, especially after the First World War. Heinisch was a member of the Frankfurt Artists’ Association until 1934 and received favourable reviews for his exhibitions.
Heinisch’s artistic career was abruptly interrupted when the National Socialists came to power. After the end of the war, he wrote in a letter to the American military government: ‘I […] favoured mainly proletarian and social themes in my paintings and was blacklisted by the NSDAP as a result.’ His works were shown in the National Socialists’ exhibition of so called ‘Degenerate Art’ in the section ‘Artistically good, but depraved attitude, Judaised’. A portrait painted by Heinisch of his friend, the composer Paul Hindemith (1895-1963), in 1931 is removed from the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, shown at that exhibition and destroyed along with other paintings by Heinisch.
After this, Heinisch’s situation became increasingly precarious. With no artistic prospects, he moved to Berlin where, thanks to the support of Karl Friedrich Brust, he was able to work as a press illustrator for the Ullstein publishing house. At a time when the regime increasingly wanted to reduce the influence of the Church, Heinisch and his wife joined the Catholic Church and, like many intellectuals and artists, set an example of moral opposition. He also joined the circle around resistance fighter Theodor Haubach (1896-1945), who was later executed by the National Socialists.
When he resumed painting after the Second World War, Heinisch was no longer able to build on the early successes of his earlier years in Frankfurt.
While still in Frankfurt, Heinisch met Paul Hindemith in 1921 and a close friendship developed. Heinisch was Hindemith’s best man in 1924, who in turn stood by his side at Heinisch’s wedding to Erika Ditt (1910-2005) in 1934. In the following years, Heinisch painted several portraits of his friend, including the 1952 portrait Paul Hindemith with Viola I, which is part of the Böhme Collection. Another version of the painting can be seen today in a lecture theatre of the music publisher Schott Music in Mainz. Hindemith was also targeted by Nazi censorship: from 1934, his compositions were banned in Germany. When his name appeared in the Degenerate Music exhibition in 1938, Hindemith emigrated with his Jewish wife, first to Switzerland and later to the USA.
Heinisch’s son Philipp (*1945) later worked as a defence lawyer, but then embarked on a career as an artist himself and donated several of his father’s artworks to the Böhme Collection and the Museum Kunst der Verlorenen Generation.
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