Hermann Hendrich's career as an artist was not entirely straightforward. He first completed an apprenticeship as a lithographer, then devoted himself to acting and appeared on stage in Düsseldorf and Münster. Fascinated by the scenery, he then found his way to painting. He took up art studies with Eugen Bracht in Berlin and Josef Englein in Munich. He was encouraged by the fact that he had managed to sell all his works to a sponsor at a small art exhibition in America - where his numerous study trips had taken him, among other things.
Hermann Hendrich found the inspiration for his often monumental and colorful paintings in many sources: Goethe's "Faust" had done it to him. The musical dramas of the composer Richard Wagner shaped his artistic activity. He also repeatedly used material and motifs from Germanic mythology and the German saga world. It is therefore not surprising that his paintings bear titles such as "Freya's Garden" or "Parsifal". And it is even less surprising that in 1907 he also founded the Werdandi-Bund, named after the Nordic goddess of fate Werdandi. The association had around 500 members, including illustrious personalities such as the state theorist Arthur Moeller van den Bruck or Henry Thode, a son-in-law of Richard Wagner. The goal of the association: a renewal of "Germanness through art". Through the Bund, Hendrich also met the Berlin architect Paul Engler. Engler invited him to spend the summers in a villa he had designed in the artists' colony of Mittel-Schreiberhau in the Riesengebirge mountains. In 1903, another building based on Engler's design was also erected there: the Sagenhalle. The wooden building, richly decorated with imaginative carvings, was also an exhibition building. Hermann Hendrich created picture cycles for it, which focused on the legendary figure Rübezahl, the Germanic god Wotan and the Tafelrunden hero and Grail seeker Parzifal.
However, the Legend Hall was not the first and also not the last "art temple" decorated by Hendrich. Two years earlier, he had already equipped the Walpurgis Hall near Thale in the Harz Mountains with the painting cycle "Walpurgis Night". This was followed in 1913 by a cycle of paintings on the "Ring of the Nibelungs" for the Nibelungenhalle in Königswinter. And finally, for the Hall of German Legends in Burg an der Wupper, he designed, among others, the cycles "Nordic Prehistory" and "Christian Legends". Both the Sagenhalle and the Halle Deutscher Sagenring were destroyed in 1945. Also of the Hendrich Hall, housed in the Kiel villa of the art collector Paul Wassily, only individual paintings survived the Second World War. Hendrich himself did not live to see the Second World War. He was killed on July 18, 1931. Many newspapers in Germany reported on the incident. The artist had been hit by a train on the railroad line that ran close to the saga hall of his home in Schreiberhau and was so badly injured that he died at the scene of the accident. Speculations about Hendrich's death soon arose. Today it is suspected that the artist took his own life.
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.jpg "The Norns by Hermann Hendrich")
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.jpg "Wotan waits in Valhalla for the end with his broken spear, 1906 by Hermann Hendrich")
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.jpg "Set for the opera")
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.jpg "Walhalla, 1906 by Hermann Hendrich")
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.jpg "Ride of the Valkyries, 1906 by Hermann Hendrich")
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.jpg "The Funeral of Siegfried, 1906 by Hermann Hendrich")
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.jpg "Siegfried and Fafner, 1906 by Hermann Hendrich")
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.jpg "Will-o")
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.jpg "Fafner in his cave by Hermann Hendrich")
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.jpg "Daland Looked at the Stranger Keenly by Hermann Hendrich")
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.jpg "The Rhine Gold by Hermann Hendrich")
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.jpg "The Death of Siegfried by Hermann Hendrich")
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_by_Richa_-_(MeisterDrucke-987191).jpg "La maison des Ondines. Decor for the opera")
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.jpg "Dark Cavern by Hermann Hendrich")
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.jpg "Freia")
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.jpg "The Death of Siegfried, 1906 by Hermann Hendrich")
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.jpg "He Saw a Beautiful Woman by Hermann Hendrich")
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.jpg "Awakening of Brunnhilde by Hermann Hendrich")
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.jpg "As the flames rise, Odin leaves by Hermann Hendrich")
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.jpg "The Two Were Reunited in a Fond Embrace, 1906 by Hermann Hendrich")
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.jpg "The Two Were Reunited in a Fond Embrace by Hermann Hendrich")
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.jpg "Instantly a Stream of Fire Gushed Forth by Hermann Hendrich")
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