This read­ing takes place in com­mem­o­ra­tion of Germany’s sur­ren­der on May 8, 1945—the end of twelve years of Nazi rule and of World War II, with its dev­as­tat­ing destruc­tion and the deaths of mil­lions of peo­ple. On that day, Willi Baumeis­ter, the Stuttgart painter and artist, wrote in his diary: “Vic­to­ry Day for the Allies on May 8. The end of the great­est crim­i­nals of all time.”

After a dra­mat­ic escape in the final days of the war, Willi Baumeis­ter and his fam­i­ly expe­ri­enced the end of the war at Lake Con­stance, in Horn on the Höri. There he found refuge in the home of his friend and fel­low painter Max Ack­er­mann from Stuttgart. A new begin­ning. Hour Zero. In Sep­tem­ber, he was final­ly able to return to Stuttgart to the fam­i­ly home on Gerokstraße, which had suf­fered con­sid­er­able dam­age from wartime bombs.

Despite all the oppo­si­tion and dif­fi­cul­ties he faced in the years that fol­lowed, Willi Baumeis­ter became a lead­ing pio­neer of abstract art in Ger­many, France, and beyond. His courage, his dri­ve, and his out­stand­ing body of work from the war and post­war peri­ods earned him a promi­nent posi­tion in the art world. Appoint­ed pro­fes­sor at the Acad­e­my of Fine Arts in Stuttgart as ear­ly as the spring of 1946, he shaped the young gen­er­a­tion of artists both through his work and as a gift­ed teacher. Not to be over­looked is his tire­less com­mit­ment to Fran­co-Ger­man cul­tur­al under­stand­ing, includ­ing through exhi­bi­tions of abstract art in both coun­tries short­ly after the end of the war, which were orga­nized in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Gre­ta and Ottomar Dom­nick, friends and neigh­bors on Gerokstaße. This friend­ship also gave rise to the Dom­nick Col­lec­tion, in which Willi Baumeis­ter is rep­re­sent­ed by numer­ous works.

Excerpts from Baumeister’s diaries will shed light on the years 1945 to 1955. They con­sti­tute per­son­al yet unique his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments that offer us pro­found insight into the post­war peri­od.

The read­ing will once again be accom­pa­nied by music: Math­is Krause (oboe) and Yuki Taka­hama (piano)

Admis­sion: 23 euros

Please reg­is­ter in advance—even at short notice:
Vis­i­tor Infor­ma­tion, Dom­nick Col­lec­tion
Phone +49(0)70 22 5 14 14
stiftung@domnick.de

We look for­ward to see­ing you.