Ruthild Hahne

Ruthild Hahne (19 December 1910 – 1 September 2001) was a German sculptor. Her most productive phase coincided with the early years of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).

Life

Provenance and early years Ruthild Hahne was born in Berlin. Her father is variously described as a businessman Elsewhere her parents are described as distant and domineering. Another of her teachers was Arno Breker, This period saw her produce her classically formed small sculptures and portraits of children.

Resistance Wilhelm Gerstel's other master students included Fritz Cremer and Cay-Hugo von Brockdorff. After the coming to power of the Nazis it was through these fellow students that Hahne came into contact with with whom she fell in love. In 1941 they moved in together. Since 1938 Ruthild Hahne had been identified by the Gestapo as a member of the Red Orchestra ("Rote Kapelle"), a classification used by the authorities that included those believed to be involved in political activism or espionage activities on behalf of the Soviet Union. In the case of the Berlin Arts Academy there was indeed a resistance group among the arts students and Ruthild Hahne, reflecting her socialist beliefs, participated in it. and appears to have been one of the places where she worked with comrades on production of "Die innere Front" ("The Home Front"), an illegal anti-government news-sheet.

In Autumn 1942 the resistance cell was uncovered and its members were arrested on 21 October 1942. It was only in 1985 that she was able to hold her first personal exhibition.

Legacy Ruthild Hahne's legacy has been nurtured by her adopted son, Dr. Stefan Hahne. Between 09.00 and 15.00 he works as an Egyptologist, studying hieroglyphs. The second part of the afternoon he devotes to his mother's former studio, where he still lives and curates what has become a private museum where in 2008 it was reported that visitors could sometimes take the opportunity study Ruthild Hahne's work.

Parts of the Thälmann memorial to which she devoted so many years were destroyed after 1965. Others, including notably a half sized image of Thälmann and a group of "workers and peasants" positioned behind him, can still be seen at the studio-museum curated by her son at house number 201/1 in Berlin-Niederschönhausen. The Berlin Märkische Museum also houses two quarter-sized sections of Hahne's frieze design for the memorial.