BIOGRAPHY OF GUSTAF BRITSCH
Gustaf Adolf Britsch was born on August 11, 1879 in Hedelfingen near Stuttgart, Germany, the second child and only son of Friedrich Britsch, a teacher, and his wife Emma, née Heydt. He attended the humanistic secondary school in Stuttgart, where his father transferred to teach. Gustaf Britsch began his architectural studies at the Technical University in Stuttgart after receiving his secondary school diploma and finishing a year as a volunteer. In 1903, he received his Master’s degree.
Following a brief internship, Gustaf Britsch decided in 1906 to travel to Munich to obtain the necessary background at the university to begin his theoretical research on the problem of art: to find answers to the question “what is visual art?”
At the university, he forged his way through anatomical studies and then studied philosophy, attending the lectures of Hans Cornelius, who was also dedicated to researching the problems of art theory and art education in the direction taken by Adolf Hildebrand in his Problem of Form. Britsch also attended the lectures of the art historian Heinrich Wöllflin at the University in Munich. Wöllflin invited him to discussions held at his home as well.
Captivated by the architecture, museums, location, and environment of city, Britsch relocated to Florence in the fall of 1908. While there, he developed the central core of his theory by observing, studying, and teaching small groups of students. In 1909, he presented his theory for the first time in front of a large audience at the German Institute for Art History.
Britsch married a native of Stuttgart, Luisa Johanna, in 1909 and subsequently opened a small, private “Institute for Theoretical and Applied Science of Art” located in his Florentine residence on the Via Serragli. Fearing that in Italy he would not be able to stay closely enough in touch with German science, he gave up his beloved home in Florence in 1911 and returned to Germany. He moved the Institute to a studio located on Theresienstrasse in Munich later that summer.
Britsch did not seek public employment or activity; he loved the independence provided by his own private Institute. In Munich, he gave private lessons, seminar-like group courses, and public evening lectures. He also gave highly frequented evening courses in presentation drawing from a moving model as a substitute for the usual evening model drawing as a means of earning a livelihood.
Britsch was in no rush to formulate his theory. He wanted his terminology to remain malleable, changeable, not fixed. He presented a condensed overview of the “The Idea of the Artistic Fact” in a paper to the International Congress of Aesthetic and General Science of Art in Berlin in 1903.
Britsch dedicated his entire life’s work to the development and expansion of his theory; his professional existence was directed toward this single goal: the creation of a pure science of art. His thoughts and plans went even further. His desire was to not only open a new way for a pure science, but also that the new science should also have impact on life. As much as Britsch felt he was a scientist and worked for the sake of knowledge, he felt a strong desire to see his knowledge applied to all questions of practical artistic activity. It was here that the fruitfulness of his ideas was to be proved. Finally, it was important to him that his ideas serve the work of his nation, that it concerned German science.
Britsch’s life and work were on a steady rise until World War I broke out in 1914 and destroyed his plans. The Institute closed and Britsch served as a soldier during the entire war. He served on the home front, later in the East, and finally in the West until he returned from the war at the end of 1918.
Egon Kornmann, his first student and now his coworker, had in the meantime acquired an estate in Starnberg near Munich, located high above the lake and secluded in the woods. Britsch, together with Kornmann, wanted to establish a “school for visual art” there in order to practically evaluate his theoretical findings.
Art education was the entry point at which his theory was to find an application in life: the education of young artists and the further development of that component of general education that touches the field of the visual arts.
The establishment of the Starnberg School for Visual Art could only be realized gradually due to the political, economic, and financial difficulties of the post war years. A small circle of students, however, came together in Starnberg; some of them later became teachers. The Institute in Munich made a makeshift reopening.
A number of young students assembled around Britsch; many of them were drawing instructors. He was able to provide the art educators with new meaning and value for their profession, because he saw in the drawings of children a revealing document of the structure of form. He demanded that the thinking of children about visual sense experiences should never be disrupted. All instruction should serve the logical unfolding in stages of the visual abilities of children and youth.
Britsch became increasingly in demand to give lectures and courses at teacher organizations, youth clubs, educational training institutions, and art circles. From Hamburg to Zurich, a rich opportunity for presenting lectures opened up to him. Then, suddenly, in the middle of his constructive work, he was seized by a fatal disease. Four months after an unsuccessful operation on October 27, 1923, Britsch died at the age of 44 years, in Starnberg.
The “Gustaf Britsch Institute for the Science of Art and Art Education” in Starnberg still strives to conserve and interpret his legacy.
(Excerpted from Leben und Wirken von Gustaf Brtisch, Luisa Kornmann-Britsch, Aloys Henn Verlag, Ratingen, 1952)