Marcus Behmer

Behmer was born in Weimar, son of the painter Hermann Behmer and grandson of Friedrich Behmer, Oberamtmann of Merzien (now part of Köthen in Saxony-Anhalt) and his wife Elise, youngest daughter of the poet Philippine Engelhard. His father's twin brother Rudolf Behmer (1831–1902) was known as a breeder of Merino sheep; their sister Louise was married to Heinrich von Nathusius (1824–1890). Marcus' brother Joachim Behmer was also an artist. Behmer, in a letter, dates his artistic beginnings to about 1896.

Marcus Behmer's grave in Friedhof Heerstraße, Berlin-Westend

On 1 October 1903, Behmer joined the army. He was made a corporal on 10 June 1904 and promoted on 22 September 1907 to sergeant. From 1914 he served in World War I in Flanders and in Poland. In the summer of 1917 he fell seriously ill "after an operation in the field" and spent six weeks in the field hospital at Jarny in north-eastern France. During his time in the army, he produced many so-called "comrades' portraits" , usually finely crafted miniature profile views of young soldiers.

In 1898 Behmer made the acquaintance of Karl Walser, also an admirer of Aubrey Beardsley, with whom he remained friends for the rest of his life.[4] He launched his career as a professional artist in 1900 and over the next three years contributed 66 drawings to the monthly magazine Die Insel (The Island ) for Insel Verlag, the satirical weekly Simplicissimus, and other Munich publications.[5] From 1902 on Behmer created book illustrations, designed initials and texts and was responsible for carefully planned book productions, with the Cranach Press of Harry Graf Kessler and others. With Insel Verlag he had his first major success with his illustrations for Wilde's Salome in 1903. Behmer's early works show the strong influence of the illustrative art of Aubrey Beardsley, which later allowed some negative assessments of his work as imitative, though he soon developed his own artistic language parallel to the rise of Expressionism and the new currents of the Wiener Werkstätte. He also designed an internationally recognised work, the series of illustrations for Philipp Otto Runge's Von dem Fischer un syner Fru ("The Fisherman and His Wife").

Behmer also worked for other publishers, for example the Paul Cassirer Verlag, which produced one of his major works, a series of 40 etchings created in 1912 for an edition of Voltaire's Zadig. Like many artists of the Buchkunstbewegung, Behmer ran into financial difficulties in the 1920s, but he remained committed to what he called the "small format" instead of striving for a gallery-based artistic career as did others such as Alfred Kubin, to whom Behmer compared himself in later years.

In created his own antiqua-style typeface in the 1920's and cast it in cast in the Klingspor foundry, a building that has since become a museum and houses a large collection of Behmer's work.[6][7]

Behmer was close friends with, among others, the family of the writer Ernst Hardt, with the painter Alexander Olbricht and also with the sculptor and painter Dorothea Werner (born Leiding) and her husband.

From 1903 he was a member in Berlin of the WhK (Wissenschaftlich-humanitäre Komitee),[3] the first homosexual movement in the world.[8] Behmer was arrested in December 1936 and convicted on charges of homosexuality by a court in Konstanz. He was sentenced to two years in prison and served 19 months in prisons in Stockach, Konstanz and Freiburg im Breisgau, emerging in July 1938.[3] In his prison diaries he accepted his punishment, rejecting the idea that God would punish him as the law had for sexual behavior but accepting it as divine punishment for his sins of pride and self-satisfaction. He wrote:[6]

In order to be able to endure what God has decreed for me, I have to make this one thought clear to myself with the utmost strength, so that it is present to me every second, even the most dreadful and desperate one, as the very last: that nothing can happen to me which God does not send me.

At times he was given the opportunity to work as an artist in prison. The works produced in this period are mostly calligraphically designed panels of Greek text (prayers and Bible quotations), as well as drawings full of bitterness and irony.

From 1943 Behmer lived at the family home of Donata Helmrich, the daughter of Ernst Hardt, in Berlin-Charlottenburg. He lost almost all of his possessions, including hundreds of drawings, graphics and printing plates, when the Westend neighborhood of Berlin was bombed in November 1944.[6] He then went to live at Groẞ Nuhnen, the country estate of the Werner family near Frankfurt an der Oder. The rest of his life was spent in poverty in West Berlin, where Dorothea Werner took care of him in 1958 until his death.

Behmer died in Berlin three weeks before his 79th birthday, on 12 September 1958. He was buried in the Heerstraße Cemetery in the present district of Berlin-Westend.[9]

The Senate of Berlin ordered in 1965 that Behmer's grave (plot 8-C-54) should be dedicated as an Ehrengrab ("grave of honour") of the Land Berlin. The original dedication expired in 2011; the Senate renewed it in 2018 for the usual time period of 20 years.[10]

Renowned museums and collections such as the graphics collection of the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, the Klingspor Museum for calligraphy and typography in Offenbach and the Sternweiler collection in Berlin today house works by Behmer. A critical appraisal of his work is only now being undertaken and his art-historical importance realized.

Additional sources

• "Marcus Behmer". Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (in German): 489–512. 1906.
• Max Deri: "Marcus Behmer – Berlin". In: Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, Bd. 30, April 1912 – September 1912, pp. 415–423 (online version)
• Reichshandbuch der deutschen Gesellschaft – Das Handbuch der Persönlichkeiten in Wort und Bild. Erster Band, Deutscher Wirtschaftsverlag, Berlin 1930, Neuausgabe München o. J., Saur, ISBN 3598306644
• Birnbaum, Martin, Marcus Behmer. New York 1912
  • Reprinted 2018, Forgotten Books, ISBN 978-0366701520
• "Bucheinbände von Marcus Behmer". In: Stammtischblätter der Maximilian-Gesellschaft, Jg. 1927, pp. 53–87
• Vollmer, Künstlerlexikon, Vol. I, p. 155f.
• Halbey, Hans Adolf, Marcus Behmer als Illustrator./Handeinbände von Frieda Thiersch zu Drucken der Bremer Presse. Neu-Isenburg 1970 (with incomplete bibliography of works illustrated by Behmer)
• Hans Adolf Halbey, Richard von Sichowsky: Marcus Behmer in seinen Briefen als Buchgestalter, Illustrator und Schriftzeichner. Von der Typographie zum West-östlichen Divan, den Radierungen zur Ilsebill, den Holzschnitten zum Petronius und der Hebräischen Schrift. Verlag Hans Christians, Hamburg 1974
• Marcus Behmer: Exhibition catalogue and attempt at a catalogue raisonné. With texts by Marcus Behmer, Benno Meyer-Wehlack and others. Edited by Marcus Haucke. Berlin, Galerie im Antiquariat Haucke, 12 September 2000 to 14 February 2001. Octavo, with c. 95 illustrations, 80 pages. Card covers with illustration of bookbinder's stamp and portrait of MB.
• Peter Christian Hall: Delphine in Offenbach. Marcus Behmer. Meister der kleinen Formate, Klingspor Museum, Offenbach am Main 2018.
• Renate Müller Krumbach: "Marcus Behmer, Illustrator, Buchkünstler, Briefschreiber" In: Zeitschrift der Schweizerischen Bibliophilen-Gesellschaft, Bd. 47, 2004, pp. 66–78
• Renate Müller-Krumbach: "Marcus Behmer (1879-1958). Ouvre gravé – eigenhändiges Werkverzeichnis". In: Gesellschaft der Bibliophilen (ed.): Imprimatur: ein Jahrbuch für Bücherfreunde. N.F. 19. Harrassowitz, 2005, ISSN 0073-5620, pp. 289–307

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Marcus Behmer.

• List of the contents of Behmer's estate in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek
• "Fabulous beast, 1900–58, Marcus Behmer German". Metropolitan Museum of Art.