Otto ACKERMANN-PASEGG

Otto Ackermann, born on 14 February 1872 in Berlin and died on 31 May 1953 in Düsseldorf, was an important German painter who specialized primarily in landscapes, seascapes and portraits.

Ackermann received his artistic training through private painting lessons in the studio of the renowned marine painter Hermann Eschke in Berlin. He undertook study trips to Italy, Belgium and Holland, whereby his stay in Katwijk in 1905/1906 is particularly noteworthy. From 1897 he lived in Düsseldorf, where he was part of the officers’ association of the Landwehr district of Düsseldorf and became known as a painter of Lower Rhine landscapes. In 1897, he married Gertrud Steven from Cologne, with whom he had a son named Carl-Josef (1898-1938), who later became known as an architect and government architect. During the First World War, he served with the rank of captain. In June 1915, he suffered the loss of his brother Kurt, 14 years his junior, who was 2nd in command of the airship LZ 37 and was shot down by Reginald Alexander John Warneford while flying over Ghent.

Ackermann was an early member of the Deutscher Künstlerbund and was artistically active in Düsseldorf, where he was a member of the Düsseldorfer Künstler-Vereinigung 1899 and the Künstlerverein Malkasten from 1898 to 1953. He even held the chairmanship from 1932. During the National Socialist era, the Malkasten was brought into line, with Ackermann being appointed the new chairman of the association in 1934 following a change to the statutes. In this role, nine members of “non-Aryan” descent were expelled from the association in 1935. However, due to pressure from the NSDAP, he was forced to give up the leadership of the association in 1938. Ackermann’s artistic estate is administered by the Rheinisches Archiv für Künstlernachlässe in Bonn. He died in his apartment at Hünefeldstraße 8 as a result of a domestic accident in which he suffered a basilar skull fracture.

In his paintings, Ackermann preferred motifs from the Lower Rhine, the Belgian, Dutch and German North Sea coast as well as from Mecklenburg and the North German Plain. He took part in exhibitions in Düsseldorf, Berlin and Munich well into the 1920s. One highlight was his participation with the painting “Platz im Schnee” in the 3rd annual exhibition of the Deutscher Künstlerbund at the Grand Ducal Museum in Weimar. He also exhibited his works in Dresden, Berlin, Munich and his adopted home of Düsseldorf in 1904 and 1906. He received recognition in Barcelona in 1907 and 1911, in Klagenfurt in 1912 (Austrian State Medal) and in Salzburg in 1914.