Max Liebermann

already began at the age of nine years to banish his immediate surroundings on paper. When the famous Berlin painter Carl Steffeck Zeichnungen of the 15-year-old saw, he recommended that the talent of the boy so far as possible - should be promoted very much against the images of his parents.

Steffeck added Max Liebermann his first sign apprenticeship and encouraged him to visit Weimar academy. Liebermann studied in Weimar three years till 1872.

A trip to Dusseldorf in 1871 brought the young artist to Mihály Munkácsy, a Hungarian painter who lived here. Max Liebermann is enthusiastic in the realism Munkácsys. Still under this impression Max Liebermann painted be the first big picture, ' Them '. The genuine realism of this work which was rejected by the critics should become typically for the art of Max Liebermann. He spent 1873 till 1878 in Paris in the artist's colony of Barbizon. Here Max Liebermann studied the art of Millet whose pictures of farm workers had a strong influence on him.

The first stay in Holland in 1871 was followed by regular trips where he discovered suitable motives for his most important works. His effort to raise the life and the work of the easy man in a humble simplicity in the areas of the art was not accepted in general. Max Liebermann fought constantly for acceptance. Only after he turns to motives and scenes of the middle-class life, he becomes the famous painter in request of the liberal bourgeoisie of the turn of the century.

Max Liebermann spent 1878 till 1884 in Munich and then returned in 1884 in his hometown Berlin. Max Liebermann was an important personality, not only as an artist but also as an art politician. In the beginning of 1892 he was a member of the ' first Sezession Germany ', an organisation at which he led from 1898 to 1911 the chairmanship in Berlin. His hometown honoured Max Liebermann, while she appointed him the professor in the royal academy of the arts. Later, from 1920 to 1932, was Max Liebermann Präsident of the Prussian academy of the arts. Max Liebermann withdrew during the last years of his life of the political world. He became ill in 1934 severely and died three months later lonely in his Berlin flat.

When Max Liebermann observed a marching up SATURDAY in Berlin shortly before his death, he did the known remark: " I cannot eat at all so much as I would like to vomit! "