Hans Thuar

Hans Thuar (1887–1945)

Hans Thuar was born on 29 November 1887 in Treppendorf (now Lübben in Lower Lusatia). His father worked in the agricultural insurance industry. As his career progressed to become the head of a division at an insurance company, his father moved with his family to Cologne, which was already home to many major insurance companies at that time. In 1893, at the age of six, little Hans started school in Cologne and transferred to the municipal grammar school in Cologne in 1897. Here he met August Macke, who was the same age as Hans Thuar and had moved to Cologne with his family from Meschede in the Sauerland region. The two became neighbours in the same class and soon formed a very close friendship.

They were together every day, playing together, until 12-year-old Hans Thuar was hit by an oncoming horse-drawn tram on 12 May 1899 – presumably while carelessly jumping off a horse-drawn tram – and was run over by it.

 The injuries were life-threatening. Hans Thuar lost both legs and, after his recovery, was only able to move around in a wheelchair. Naturally, this severe disability led to deep depression, and it was his school friend August Macke who devotedly cared for him and helped him find new courage to face life. August visited Hans in hospital almost every day.

 Macke was already an enthusiastic draughtsman and painter at that time – certainly not fully developed, but inspired by an ‘inner flame’ for art, and so the 13-year-old was able to awaken his friend’s desire to paint. While still in hospital, the two undertook their first serious attempts at painting together, and they continued to do so even after Macke moved to Bonn in 1900 and attended the municipal Realgymnasium there. 

Hans Thuar’s first oil painting was created in 1903. At the same time, August Macke painted a portrait of his friend. The picture shows a 16-year-old, introverted, perhaps even somewhat disparaging-looking young man.

Probably in order not to fall too far behind his friend August Macke in terms of painting, Hans Thuar took lessons alongside school from Professor Hermann Wegelin in Cologne, a son of the architectural painter Adolph Wegelin (1810-1881).

In 1907, Hans Thuar graduated from high school with a university entrance qualification. He applied to the Art Academy in Düsseldorf and was accepted. August Macke had already attended the Düsseldorf Art Academy before him (after dropping out of school early), but found the curriculum too rigid and one-sided, and just as Hans Thuar was starting there, Macke had ‘given up’ his studies. Hans Thuar also felt constrained by the Düsseldorf Academy and left in 1908 to continue his education ‘freely’, just like August Macke.

It is not certain where and how Hans Thuar pursued his ‘free’ education in Düsseldorf and Cologne. His friend August Macke could hardly have been of much support to him at the time, as he was travelling extensively (including to Berlin, Munich, Rome and Paris) and had to complete his one-year military service between October 1908 and October 1909.

It was not until Hans Thuar moved to Bonn-Endenich in 1911, unmarried, with his then girlfriend Else that the two friends began to see each other more frequently again. August Macke had moved from Tegernsee to his wife Elisabeth Gerhardt’s house in Bonn in 1910. (This house on Bornheimer Straße is now known as the ‘Bonner Macke-Haus’ museum). Thuar had become the father of a little daughter, Hilde Vera, and Macke had also had a son, Walter Macke, with his wife Elisabeth the year before (1910) (his second son, Wolfgang Macke, was born in 1913).

The two young fathers engaged in intensive artistic exchanges, with

Hans Thuar acting in a sense as the necessary ‘reflector’ for August Macke, enabling his friend to translate the impressions he had gathered in Berlin, Munich and Paris into his own avant-garde style of painting, which he then gradually developed into ‘Rhenish Expressionism’.

August’s tireless enthusiasm carried Hans Thuar, who often doubted himself, along with him. Together they took trips to the nearby Bonn area, painted and discussed their pictures. Thuar also professed his belief in Expressionism.

In 1911, Hans Thuar (following August Macke) participated for the first time in the exhibition of the ‘Cologne Secession’. This was followed in 1912 by the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne, in 1913 by another Cologne Secession exhibition, as well as the Exhibition of Rhenish Expressionists organised by Macke in Bonn and the First German Autumn Salon in Berlin. In 1914, Hans Thuar exhibited at the Flechtheim Gallery in Düsseldorf, thanks to August Macke’s mediation.

Of course, the exhibitions boosted Hans Thuar’s self-esteem. He saw himself – despite his disability – as part of the phalanx of more or less well-known contemporary painter colleagues. In 1913, he married Henriette Rasch, a native of Hamburg, who subsequently gave him three daughters. But happiness and despair lie close together.

On 26 September 1914, shortly after being drafted into the French campaign, August Macke fell in Perthes-les-Hurlus in Champagne, and for Hans Thuar, his world literally fell apart.

Suddenly, his hard-won self-esteem vanished. August Macke, the pole in his life that had always helped him get back on his feet, was suddenly gone. And with him gone was the driving force to develop his painting skills.

What remained was despair, an inner emptiness. His doctor sent Hans Thuar to Bad Salzufflen for treatment for his depression. The cure turns into a year-long stay. Slowly, very slowly, Thuar recovers from his paralysis, which he perceives as a stroke of fate. It is his sense of responsibility for his family that keeps him going. He can no longer support his family with his painting. The occasional portrait commissions are far from sufficient. The First World War – which began euphorically – simply does not end.

Inevitably, there are significant restrictions on food supplies. The ‘rutabaga winter’ of 1916/17, caused by a poor harvest, leads to widespread hunger among the population. The war euphoria turns into its opposite.

Hans Thuar tried his hand at business. He succeeded in one or two commercial ventures, which were more ad hoc than systematic. Ultimately, however, he realised that in order to generate economic success, he needed to be at the beginning of the value chain. And so he searched for products and business ideas that would enable him to earn an income despite his disability. Whether it was his particular sensitivity as an artist, his urge for a passion as fulfilling as painting, or simply the alleviation of his own psychosomatic illness, it remains to be seen: Hans Thuar discovers his sense of smell and in the following years researches everything to do with essential oils, the production of fragrance tinctures, specific recipes and applications of aromatherapy. The subject never left him.

In 1919, the Thuar family moved back to the Rhine, to Schwarzrheindorf, to the Wilhelmsburg (farm)stead. This move reawakened Hans Thuar’s zest for life. His painterly lethargy evaporated. He began to paint again.

It seems as if time had stood still since August Macke’s death, faded into the background and ceased to exist. His paintings seamlessly tie in with the heyday of ‘Rhenish Expressionism’ before 1914; in a way, they are the essence of that period. Perhaps more clearly and distinctly than August Macke’s continuous development would have been able to achieve, had he survived the war. Hans Thuar reflects on his skills, in particular transforming his form of Expressionism into watercolour and woodcut techniques. In 1924/25, he became a member of the ‘Bonner Künstlervereinigung 1914’ (Bonn Artists’ Association 1914) and exhibited some of his works at the Städtisches Museum Villa Obernier in Bonn.

This creative phase lasted six years, until around 1926, and was a very happy one for Thuar, despite the economic crisis and inflation. Then came another crash. Once again, he was plagued by self-doubt. He struggled with his fate as a severely disabled person, put down his paints and brushes for a long time and tried his hand at business again. He used the accident pension he had successfully sued for as start-up capital to buy a house in Ramersdorf near Bonn. In 1930, he moved into the house with his family and set up a studio there. He invested in a petrol station, rented a café and a small shop. All this was intended to secure the livelihood of his wife and daughters, but at the same time it weighed heavily on him. The effects of the economic crisis did not leave him unscathed. He worried and became depressed again. A ray of hope, and perhaps also a psychological stabiliser for Thuar, were CERAPIN A, CERAPIN B and CERAPIN T. These products, based on essential oils and waxes, are mixed according to a formula developed by Hans Thuar, filled into tubes and distributed to doctors and pharmacists in the Cologne-Bonn area for the relief of asthma and tuberculosis. For this purpose, Hans Thuar operates under the name ‘HATERA’ in the 1930s (derived from: Hans Thuar Ramersdorf). The professionally designed CERAPIN information letters for doctors with instructions for use and effects of HATERA medical products, as well as the advertising and information flyers (and the tubes themselves) mention the ‘RA Laboratories’.

However, he was not destined for economic success. In 1933, when Hitler came to power, ‘Rhenish Expressionism’ was banned as ‘un-German’. Paintings in public ownership were removed from museums. Whether it was due to Hans Thuar’s six-year abstinence from painting after the death of his friend August Macke, his disability, the limited distribution of his works from the period between 1920 and 1926, or his current entrepreneurial activities: in any case, he did not come under the ‘crosshairs’ of the Nazi henchmen during the ‘Gleichschaltung der Deutschen Kunst’ (standardisation of German art) and thus remained largely unmolested as an artist.

In 1936, Henriette, Hans Thuar’s wife, opened her own shop selling arts and crafts. Hans Thuar helped his wife in the shop, advising customers and selling them the decorative items on display. Although the business is doing well – at least adequately – it does not fulfil Thuar emotionally. Self-doubt creeps in again.

He is well aware of his dependence on his wife and her business. This gnaws at him. To his delight, his daughter Gisela marries August Macke’s (younger) son Wolfgang, which strengthens the family ties between the Mackes and the Thuars. It is his son-in-law Wolfgang Macke who finally persuades him to spend the summer of 1938 in Ried/Oberbayern, not far from Lake Kochel. Hans Thuar stays with Maria Marc, the widow of Franz Marc. During his lifetime, August Macke was a close friend of Franz Marc and, like him, a member of the Munich artists’ group ” Der Blaue Reiter” (The Blue Rider).

Together with his daughter Gisela, who devotedly cared for him, Hans Thuar spent almost three months with Maria Marc in Ried. His health and state of mind improved rapidly. Hans Thuar began painting again. He was fascinated by the mountain landscape around him and never tired of capturing his impressions of nature with pen and watercolour pad. According to his daughter Gisela, Hans Thuar later translates some of the motifs he has collected into oil paintings in his studio at home in Ramersdorf. 

Until the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Hans Thuar experiences a short but intense period of painting in his studio in Ramersdorf. Then suddenly, almost from one day to the next, he feels paralysed. The war was taking its toll on him. The psychological pressure on him was increasing. Fear and despair about his fate (and that of his family) meant that he was only able to complete a few more paintings – all of them now in dark and gloomy colours.

The intensifying air war with its bombing raids put the mentally ill painter, who was confined to a wheelchair, in immediate danger of his life. Only rarely can he be quickly taken to safe air-raid shelters. On 18 October 1944, his house in Ramersdorf is severely damaged by an aerial mine.

There is no way out: Hans Thuar is evacuated to a nursing home in Schwarza near Rudolstadt in Thuringia. His first-born daughter Hilde-Vera – herself homeless and also a new mother – later takes her severely suffering father out of the home and cares for him. Hans Thuar wastes away. Just under a year after the evacuation, Hans Thuar dies in Langensalza on 24 October 1945, shortly before his birthday. He would have been 58 years old.