Erich von Kügelgen – ein deutschbaltisches Schicksal. Sein Leben und die Beeinflussung durch den deutschrussischen Künstler Sascha Schneider

Abstract

For several years now, Erich von Kügelgen (1870–1945) has been emerging from the shadow of his more famous artistic relatives – Carl, Gerhard, Constantin and Sally – into the focus of art-historical interest. His sombre, surface-oriented Symbolist painting has long proved difficult for viewers to interpret, and scholarly engagement with his work was hampered by the lack of biographical material.

In preparation for the major Kügelgen exhibition of 2023–2025, previously unknown documents have come to light in the family archive, which the author has subjected to scholarly analysis. Numerous surviving letters reveal a man marked by a troubled childhood and a lifelong inner conflict between two professions, that of painter and that of physician, a tension he processed through his art.

This article situates his life within the turbulent era endured by many Baltic-Germans, who after 1914 found themselves homeless, torn between Germany, the Baltic region and the Russian Empire and caught between competing observances and loyalties. Erich von Kügelgen’s biography appears almost prototypical of these destinies.

Amid this confusion, the late-vocation artist sought orientation and found it in the German-Russian painter Sascha Schneider (1870–1927), whose life and work are likewise introduced and set in relation to Erich’s. Closer examination, however, also reveals distinctly individual narrative and humorous aspects of Kügelgen’s art.

Finally, the Tartu exhibition drew attention to Hermann von Kügelgen, Erich’s father. The son of celebrated landscape painter Carl, Hermann distinguished himself in Tartu as a teacher of drawing and design, and as a progressive spirit who anticipated Bauhaus concepts in Tartu.