Banat
Biographies
Banat
Biographies Index Est. 13 Feb 2010 at
DVHH.org by Jody
McKim Pharr.
Bittenbinder, Franz
Banat Painter &
Commercial Artist
|
Lachendes
Banat von Robert Glatt
In den kurzen,
humorvollen Erzählungen
und den gekonnten
Illustrationen von Franz
Bittenbinder
wird so mancher
Donauschwabe sich und
seine einstige Heimat
wiedererkennen. In den
drei Kapiteln des Buches
"Vun dr Heed un vun dr
Heck", "Zwischen
Franzdorf und Weidenthal
im Banater Bergland" und
"Echt Temeswar" geht es
um Witz, Humor, Weisheit,
Schlauheit und den
donauschwäbischen
Dialekt
E:
In short, humorous stories and skilful
illustrations by Franz Bittenbinder and many Danube
honeycombs will recognize themselves and their former
homeland. The three chapters of the
book "Vun dr Heed and v. Heck", "Between Franzdorf and
Weidenthal in the Banat Mountains" and "Real Timisoara"
are about wit, humor, wisdom, cunning and the Danube
Swabian dialect. - 216 pages -
ISBN 3-925921-16-8 |
 |
VORBERGER, Jakob
WU DIE PIPATSCH
BLIEHT
GEDICHTE IN BANATSCHWÄBISCHER MUNDART
"Where the Poppies
Blooms"
Poems in Banat-Swabian
Dialect
Hrsg.: Landsmannschaft der Banater
München; Redaktion: Walter Konschitzky;
Illustrationen:
Franz Bittenbinder. - München: Landsmannschaft
der Banater Schwaben, 1994 .- 104
ISBN 973-96022-6-6 |
 |
|
Mei Fechsung.
Gedichte und und Sprüche
in banatschwäbischer
Mundart von
Franz
Frombach, 175 Seiten,
Illustrationen von
Franz
Bittenbinder |
In search of Mr.
Bittenbinder's children: Dieter, Inge
&
Brigitte. Please contact
us, if you can help. |
[Published at www.dvhh.org, 14
Oct 2007]
Banater House Drawings
Volkskalender 1983
by
Franz Bittenbinder
Neue
Banater Zeitung, Timisoara, Romania
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Submitted
and
published
at
dvhh.org
14 Oct
2007 by Jody McKim. |
|
He
immortalized his Banat in
pictures.
The death of the painter
&
commercial artist,
Franz Bittenbinder
|
by
Erwin Lessl
Banater Post Nr.8 20.
April 2006
Translated by N. Tullius |
Franz Bittenbinder, one of the
best-known and most versatile
painters, commercial artists and
caricaturists of the Banat, died
in Hanover at the age of nearly
80 years. He left an extensive
body of work, which - scattered
among many families of our
compatriots - keeps the memory
of our old homeland alive.
A close friendship connected me
with Franz. As young people we
pursued the same hobby, the
building of model airplanes, and
we met decades later in the
editor's offices of the
newspaper Neue Banater Zeitung
and then again in Hanover. In
the meantime Franz Bittenbinder
had become a well-known painter
and commercial artist, esteemed
by his compatriots.
One day, while on my way to his
Hanover apartment of that time,
I reflected over how a
passionate painter of his
homeland, as Franz Bittenbinder
had always been, was able to
find his way as an artist, after
transplantation into a new
world. And I found him at work.
On the easel was a water color
with the city hall
Hanover drenched
in saturated green.
“It is a
necessity for me” the restless
water colorist said to me at
that time, who seemed to have
guessed my question, “to paint
from nature. My heart naturally
remains attached to our Banat
landscape, but I cannot
continuously draw only from a
past world of experience.” His
three-room apartment in a quite
busy area of the state capital
of Lower Saxony, was filled with
his own paintings and those of
his brother Fritz. One
recognized the cathedral of
Temeswar, the environment of the
Banat village periphery, river
landscapes from the heath
and the Banat
hillscape.
These paintings were
particularly dear to him. “I
don’t let any more out of my
hands”, he said. “These are the
only ones I have left. Where the
remaining ones are, I do not
know. I regret that I did not
keep an album
featuring merely photo
reproductions.”
Franz Bittenbinder actually came
to painting by a coincidence,
and not a happy one at that.
First, he was a favourite pupil
of the drafting teachers
Sebastian Rotsching and Viktor
and Julius Stürmer at the
Banatia. His caricatures of
professors Weresch, Valentin and
Petschawari, made him very
popular with his colleagues. In
January 1945 he was deported to
Russia like many of our
compatriots. After drawing a
caricature of the camp
commander, his talent was
recognized, and after three
months of hard labour, he was
assigned to draw
slogans for the
May Day celebration.
Bittenbinder's first paintings
were copies of paintings by
Russian masters, on cardboard,
made with
hand-mixed oil paints and a
brush for painting walls.
These literally sold like
hotcakes at the bazaar. With the
proceeds he supplemented his
meager food rations.
At the same time, while in
captivity, he became acquainted
with Martha, who was from Upper
Silesia and later became his
wife. Inge, the oldest daughter,
was born there. He continued
painting socialist slogans and
played the accordion at his
compatriots’ dances. In this
way, he managed to keep himself
alive, until he was finally
allowed to return home with one
of the last transports.
Back in Temeswar,
Bittenbinder made his living as
a technical draftsman. He,
however, found his fulfilment in
painting. “The first painting
after my return”, he recalled,
“was a copy of a forest painting
by Sischkin, which I brought to
the canvas from memory.”
In 1960 he turned to water
colours, and his works reached
thousands of people.
Bittenbinder
absorbed the rural as well as
the city landscape of the Banat,
and presented them in an
artistically meaningful form.
The last house of a little
village street, or a dream filled
corner of his home city,
fascinated him more than the
monumental buildings of
Temeswar. What impressed him was
rather the simple, the genuine,
not the monumental. Franz
Bittenbinder embodied the
homeland painter in the best
sense of the word. His paintings
show us a world that today seems
remote in time and space, but
still maintains strong emotional
values.
To be able to
create hundreds of inimitable
caricatures for the dialect
supplement of the Neue
Banater Zeitung, together
with Hans Kehrer, the author of
the texts, he shouldered the
effort of innumerable journeys.
He looked at his Swabian
compatriots in the eye, and
playfully mirrored
them. Thus he
became a known personality in
the widest Banat-Swabian
circles, and his work received
more and more attention and
appreciation.
Mentally and
artistically he remained
connected to the Banat even
after his resettlement in the
Federal Republic, which was like
a transplantation into a new
soil. The rootwork had remained
partially in the old homeland,
he remarked. A reorientation was
necessary. Initially he
inhabited an intermediate world,
but certainly not as an
indifferent observer. On the one
hand, his memories resulted in
paintings inspired by his
homeland; on the other hand, he
also had an artistic awareness
of his new environment. Over
more than two decades, many
fascinating paintings were
created, in which he represented
the area around Hanover using
many different pictorial
techniques. In this way he
overcame the interface between
the two worlds in which he lived
as an artist. His paintings were
coveted prizes at the raffles
organized as part of the annual
Swabian Balls in Hanover.
The necessity
for his wife’s care and the
subsequent move into a nursing
home weighed heavily on him. Old
ailments resurfaced. Although
during a temporary recovery
phase he started to paint again,
to eat, and even to play the
accordion for his
co-inhabitants, as he did long
ago, the death of his wife in
November 2005 took a large piece
out of his life. It sapped his
vital energy and took away his
will to live.
Franz Bittenbinder died on March
25. Mourning him are his
children Inge, Brigitte and
Dieter. All admirers of his art
lament the loss of a recognized
personality of contemporary
Banat-German culture. He will
live on in his extensive work.
Erwin Lessl.
Translated by N.
Tullius.
Published at dvhh.org, 14
Oct 2007 by Jody McKim Pharr.
