Herbert Breiter

Herbert Breiter (21 February 1927 - 9 October 1999) was a German-born Austrian painter and lithographer. He is known, in particular, for his landscape paintings, his "atmospheric scenes" ("Stimmungsbilder") and for the many views of Salzburg, his adopted home city, that he produced. His surviving output also includes still lifes and portraits.

Life and works Provenance and early years Herbert Breiter was born at Landeshut (as it was known at that time), a country town in the Riesengebruge / Krkonoše foothills south-west of Breslau / Wrocław (Lower Silesia). He was the younger of the two sons of Richard und Anna Breiter . The boys' father, a skilled engineer originally from nearby Schreibendorf, was employed at the Rinkel textiles business in the town. Their upbringing, in the family home beside the Trautenauer Straße in Landeshut, is described as "sheltered". and sent to join a mountain regiment based in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. After the war ended in May 1945 there could be no question of returning home to Silesia, due to the ethnic cleansing of 1944/45. Landeshut, hitherto ethnically mixed, became known by its Polish name, as Kamienna Góra, and was repopulated by Polish expellees from former eastern Poland annexed by the Soviet Union and settlers from central Poland. Breiter relocated to Salzburg, which would be his home for the rest of his life. The couple's home in Salzburg-Mönchsberg became a regular meeting point for painters, musicians and theatre folk such as Caspar Neher, Gottfried von Einem, Oscar Fritz Schuh and Carl Orff. Burgi was born later that summer. Her father built a successful freelance career, and became well known in Carinthia as a (not uncontroversial) woodwork artist and painter. It is clear from his output that Breiter was still making regular trips to Italy during the later 1970s and beyond, and still painting the landscapes there, but his later Italian work is, for the most part, produced not on the islands but in Tuscany. Places where Breiter painted also included Dalmatia, Ischia, Scandinavia and Spain. Eliette von Karajan had grown up in southern France: her own artistic output indicates that she shared Breiter's love of Mediterranean landscapes.

Celebration and recognition (selection)

In 2012 the old Peterswacht-Bastion, which is a survivor from the city walls that long ago surrounded Salzburg's "old-town" quarter, was renamed as the "Herbert Breiter Terrace" and a memorial tablet commemorating Breiter was placed there.