Hermann Otto Hoyer

Hermann Otto Hoyer (1893-1968) was a German painter. He was injured in World War I and fitted with a prosthesis hand. He joined the Nazi Party in 1931 and served as a deputy local group leader. He withdrew from public political activity in 1934 but continued to create Nazi-inspired paintings.

Life Hermann Otto Hoyer completed an apprenticeship as a glass painter and enrolled at the Dresden School of Arts and Crafts in 1914. He was a participant in the First World War and went into the field with the 1st Hanseatic Infantry Regiment No. 75. Hoyer was wounded in the First Battle of the Marne in 1914 and was taken prisoner of war by the French for three years. He made four escape attempts, including from a penal camp in Tunisia, to which he had been transferred in the meantime. During the last escape in October 1917, he lost his right arm and was exchanged for Germany. Even in his last station as a prisoner of war, he received painting utensils "through the concession of a French sub-physician", which enabled him to paint.

Due to his war disability, he trained to paint with his left hand. At the Munich Academy, where he enrolled in drawing at the end of May 1919, he was a pupil of Hermann Groeber, Carl von Marr and Franz von Stuck.

From 1925 until his death, he lived in Oberstdorf in the Allgäu and joined the Nazi Party on (membership number 386,683). However, he caused a stir several times, for example with the statement "that there are also decent Jews" and with the question of confidence during a party meeting, which as a democratic instrument violated the Führer principle and ultimately led to his withdrawal from the post of deputy local group leader.

This, however, had no effect on his work and reputation as a painter. Hoyer created numerous politically influenced paintings and, from 1940 onwards, mainly peasant paintings. In 1943, he was awarded the title of professor.

After the Second World War, in December 1948, he was classified by the Kempten Appeals Chamber as a follower within the meaning of Control Council Directive No. 38 on the basis of the Law for the Liberation from National Socialism and Militarism.

He was credited with not harming anyone, withdrew from all public political activity in 1934 and was married in church in 1936.

Works The oil painting The SA Man was erected in 1932 in the Brown House, the party headquarters of the Nazi Party in Munich. His painting Fuchstobel in the Snow, painted in 1933, was purchased by the Minister-President of Bavaria Ludwig Siebert for the Christmas exhibition "Art for All" (Munich, 1935). It is part of the holdings of the Bavarian State Painting Collections in the Pinakothek der Moderne, but is not on display (as of May 2020). which is one of the "best-known depictions of Hitler as an orator", followed. Together with around 400 other works of art from the Nazi era that are considered "politically charged", it is still in the possession of the United States Army.

For the Charité's exhibition "On a Knife's Edge" about Ferdinand Sauerbruch, which lasted a good ten months from the end of March 2019 to the beginning of February 2020, Hoyer's 1922 painting Ferdinand Sauerbruch during a chest wall operation was chosen as the motif for the front of the six-page flyer.

Reception In the context of the 2016 exhibition "Artige Kunst", in which "desirable art under National Socialism" was contrasted with "degenerate art", Sabine Oelze judged for Deutsche Welle that the "art of the Nazi regime" was stylistically "far behind the currents of the time" and that "artists such as Hermann Otto Hoyer resorted to a clumsy and falsifying realism". In addition, pictures such as the Farmer's Meal show the "mendacious imagery of the National Socialists", which has "nothing to do with the reality of the time". The taz said that rural idylls like von Hoyer are "not at all openly propagandistic".