The sculptor Renee Sintenis in her workshop in 1955
Photo: dpa
As a fascinating star of Weimar bohemianism and a star artist in the galleries of the 1920s, Sintenis was accepted into the Academy of Arts in 1931 and excluded by the Nazis in 1934 as “not Aryan”. Some of her works were considered “degenerate” and were removed from museums. After the writer Silke Kettelhake had her heart for Libertas Schulze-Boysen, who was beheaded by the Nazis in 1942 at the age of 29, and “Sonja, ‘negative-decadent'” who fought in the GDR opposition in 1989. Having discovered “A Rebellious Youth in the GDR” and impressively describing her life in two books, she dedicates herself with great sensitivity to the fate of an almost forgotten German-Jewish artist: Renée Sintenis (1888–1965).
The author sympathetically recalls the peculiarity of the Sintenis’ artistic work. Her talent already attracted attention at the Berlin art exhibition in 1914. Three dancers made of plaster, with high-set breasts, feet offset, with short-cut hair, arms folded behind their backs, completely dreamy and absorbed in the dance, as well as one standing woman, who, as if caught trying to pull her scarf over her naked body, thrilled the visitors.
The sculptor achieved lasting artistic recognition over decades with her small animal sculptures, which, cast in bronze, also became a bestseller. Foals instead of full-grown horses, calves and young donkeys, small deer and lying gazelles enchant with their apparent simplicity. The lightness of movement and the lively individuality are preserved in Sintenis’ creations. She did not want to appear monumental, but rather point to the interior of the object depicted.
In addition to its animal figures, the Sintenis also took up themes from Greek legends. With her little one and her big one, Daphne, she created symbols of fear and renunciation, as if she wanted to escape the emerging Nazi evil spirit, its cult of victory and heroism. The self-assurance in her own portrait accompanied her in all phases of her life. Many of her works were lost to Nazi barbarism and war; Too little attention is paid to what has been preserved.
Her most popular work, the “Sintenis Bear”, modeled in 1932 as a small sculpture measuring 13.5 centimeters high, has been greeting visitors to Berlin on the highways as a 1.60 meter tall bronze sculpture since 1957 and has been presented as an award to the winners of the Berlinale.
However, the book is by no means a simple art catalog for the Sintenis, on the contrary: the author convincingly places their works and their life path in the revival of Weimar democracy and the upheavals leading to the Nazi dictatorship. This is the real strength of the publication. Young artists in particular will find it stimulating to read how a self-determined sculptor, caught up in the changing spirit of the times and almost crushed by the political balance of power, remains true to herself in order to express her own feelings in sculptures and pictures.
The reader is introduced to the advancing art scene of the “golden” 1920s with many of its important representatives. Most notably Joachim Ringelnatz, almost as forgotten today as Renée Sintenis, but also the art dealers Alfred Flechtheim, Karl Buchholz and Alex Vömel, the sculptors Georg Kolbe and Arno Breker, the painters Max Liebermann, her husband Emil Rudolf Weiß, Emil Nolde and many others . Their very contradictory artistic and political attitudes as well as their individual fate influenced the life and thinking of the Sintenis, as Silke Kettelhake tells in detail.
Even more powerful than the depiction of the Weimar years is the discussion of the Nazis’ actions against “degenerate” art in the 1930s. There are not so many texts that so emphatically expose the vile anti-Semitism and distorted Germanness, the artistic narrow-mindedness and the meticulously organized brutality of the Nazi cultural policy. Who knows about the burning of pictures on March 20, 1939 in the courtyard of the main fire station in Berlin-Kreuzberg, to which 1,004 paintings and sculptures as well as 3,825 watercolors, graphics and drawings fell victim. It’s almost a miracle that the Sintenis survived these years and the horrors of war in Berlin afterwards.
It is a consolation that this artistic personality was awarded the Art Prize of the City of Berlin and the Federal Cross of Merit in the post-war years and was reappointed to the Academy of Arts in 1955. Silke Kettelhake deserves the honor of having rediscovered it in 2023, at a time when Nazi ideology was never completely overcome but appeared more aggressive. Your book is one of the effective remedies against current neo-Nazism and anti-Semitism.
Silke Kettelhake: Renée Sintenis. Berlin, Bohemia and Ringelnatz. Ebersbach & Simon, 144 pages, hardcover, €20.
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