August Robert Ludwig Macke (1887 - 1914)

Born 3 Jan 1887 in Meschede, Provinz Westfalen, Preußen, Deutsches Reich

Husband of Elisabeth Gertrud Sophie (Gerhardt) Erdmann-Macke — married about 5 Oct 1909 in Germany

Died 26 Sep 1914 at age 27 in Perthes-lès-Hurlus, Marne, Champagne-Ardenne, France

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Biography

August Macke is Notable.

August Macke has German Roots.

August Macke was a famous German Expressionist painter.

August was born in 1887.^[1] He was the only son of August Friedrich Hermann Macke (1845–1904), a building contractor and amateur artist, and his wife, Maria Florentine, née Adolph (1848–1922), who came from a farming family in Westphalia's Sauerland region. Shortly after August's birth, the family settled at Cologne, where Macke was educated at the Kreuzgymnasium (1897-1900). In 1900, when he was thirteen, the family moved to Bonn, where Macke studied at the Realgymnasium and became a friend of Walter Gerhardt and Gerhardt's sister, Elisabeth, whom he married a few years later.^[2]

August attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf from 1906 to 1908, but was far more stimulated by several trips to Paris, where he absorbed the works of the Impressionists, Fauvists and Cubists.

On 5 October 1909, he married Elisabeth Gerhardt. The couple had two sons:^[3]

• Walter Carl (born 13 Apr 1910, died 1927 of scarlet fever),
• Wolfgang (born 8 Feb 1913, died 14 April 1975).^[4]

Together with Franz Marc, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, August Macke co-founded Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) in 1911, a journal whose name later became synonymous with the circle of artists collaborating in it. In 1913 Macke was prominently featured in the First German Fall Salon in Berlin, the largest exhibition of European avant-garde art ever held in Germany up to that time. In 1914 he visited Tunisia with Klee and produced a series of brilliant watercolors that marked the emergence of his artistic maturity - one that would be tragically short-lived. Conscripted into the German Army at the start of World War I, he was sent to the Champagne front and was almost immediately killed in action^[5] near Perthes-lès-Hurlus.^[6] He was buried at the German War Cemetery Souain-Perthes-lès-Hurlus.^[7]

A cenotaph for August Macke and Elisabeth Erdmann-Macke was dedicated at Alter Friedhof in Bonn in 1991.^[5]

Sources

1. ↑ "Deutschland Geburten und Taufen, 1558-1898", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NZ4D-XVV : 26 March 2020), August Robert Ludwig Macke, 1887.
2. ↑ English Wikipedia article on August Macke
3. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20070801190536/http://www.august-macke-haus.de/01e_version/macke/augustmacke.htm
4. ↑ https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q94871054
5. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1} Find A Grave: Memorial #6909929
6. ↑ Verlustlisten 1. Weltkrieg, page 2450: Macke August (Meschede)
7. ↑ https://www.der-familienstammbaum.de/mementomori/verstorbene-prominente-1914/?id=3278_August-Macke

See also:

• Wikidata: Item Q33981
• Unsourced family tree handed down to Jim Holstein.
• German Wikipedia article on August Macke
• http://www.knerger.de/html/mackeaugbild__kunst_22.html, accessed 29 Oct 2021
• https://www.lwl.org/westfaelische-geschichte/txt/beitrwff-9791.pdf