Hans Starcke

Karl Albert Hans Starcke (15 June 1875 – 18 December 1943) was a German landscape artist, illustrator, and writer of verse.

As a writer, he worked under the pen-name of Hans Huckebein, adopting the name of a character in the story "Hans Huckebein, the Unlucky Raven", by Wilhelm Busch. Life Starcke was born into a merchant family in Jena, the seat of the University of Jena, and had six siblings. He trained as an artist at the Grand-Ducal Saxon Art School, Weimar,

Starcke lived for many years in Kaufbeuren and Allstedt, where his brother Paul Starcke worked in a pharmacy. From 1906 onwards, he was listed in Jena directories as a painter.

His creative output was diverse, paintings, illustrations, postcards, and poetry. His first poems were published in 1911 in the Jenaische Zeitung under the name of Hans Huckebein.

Starcke painted scenes in and around Jena and donated many such works to the Jena City Museum, where they were destroyed during the Allied strategic bombing of Jena in the Second World War.

At the age of 52, Starcke married Marie Kittel, who was younger by nearly twenty years. He died in Jena in 1943.

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