Background
Ethnicity:
Thomas Heine was the son of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother.
Heine was born on February 28, 1867, in Leipzig, Saxony, Germany.
Eiskellerstraße 1, 40213 Düsseldorf, Germany
Heine began his studies of art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1884.
Akademiestraße 2-4, 80799 Munich, Germany
Thomas Heine briefly attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.
Ethnicity:
Thomas Heine was the son of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother.
Heine was born on February 28, 1867, in Leipzig, Saxony, Germany.
Thomas Heine had been interested in illustration since early childhood. His cartoons of teachers caused him to be expelled from school. So, he began his studies of art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1884, where he studied under Eduard von Gebhardt and Peter Janssen. The paintings he produced while at the Academy reveal his stylistic commitment to Impressionism. Then he briefly attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.
Heine moved to Munich in 1889. Around this time he worked for Die Fliegenden Blätter, however, he left this job in 1893. In 1896 he became a co-founder of the satirical Munich magazine Simplicissimus and was the chief illustrator employed by the magazine, for which he appropriated the stylistic idiom of Jugendstil and the graphic qualities of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Aubrey Beardsley, and Japanese woodcuts.
In his illustrations made for the magazine, he frequently criticised social orders and the monarchy in particular. This led to a six-month prison sentence in 1898. In the 1890s, Thomas Heine also began to work as a book illustrator, producing artworks for Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Der Kaiser and die Hexe and Thomas Mann's Wälsungenblut. He also worked on books for Die Insel magazine.
Later, however, Heine's illustrations took second place in comparison with his commercial graphics. Thomas Heine's supreme achievement was poster design, at that time a brand-new field of advertising. His work 11 Scharfrichter [11 Executioners] was only one utmost example, which ranks with the work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, one of the best-known painters of the Post-Impressionist period.
He subsequently displayed his drawings at major exhibitions, including those at the Internationale Kunstausstellung, Dresden, in 1926 and at the Mánes Exhibition, Prague, in 1934. In 1926 he also published his autobiography as a collection of essays in the monthly journal Uhu in Berlin. In later years Thomas Heine again devoted himself more actively to painting but many of those artworks were destroyed in bombing raids.
In 1933 he was removed from his post on the editorial board because of his Jewish background and attempts to criticize the national-socialists as Simplicissimus aligned itself with the Nazis. The same year he left Germany for Prague. In Prague, Heine tried to launch an alternative version of Simplicissimus but the magazine lasted for only a couple of months. In 1935 he published a collection of his non-political drawings.
From 1938 until 1942 Heine lived in Oslo, and from 1942 until the end of his life he lived in Stockholm. He continued to work productively and successfully until his death. In 1942 Heine published a highly cynical autobiography Ich warte auf Wunder [I Wait for Miracles].
(Thomas Theodor Heine's autobiography.)
1942The Hammock
From Thorheiten
Eifersucht
Hunger
Simplicissimus
From Thorheiten
Simplicissimus, Kiss of Peace
Cover illustration for the magazine Simplicissimus
The Flowers of Evil
The Two Dachshunds
From Thorheiten
Simplicissimus magazine
Simplicissimus
Poster for the Simplicissimus Festival Hell (Hölle)
Geneviève
The Eleven Executioners
Poster for the Berlin Secession, Art and Artist magazine
From Thorheiten
From Thorheiten
Lebewohl
Eulenburg
Die Affensprache
Versailles
Wahlrecht
Thomas Heine was opposed to right-wing nationalism. His views were vividly reflected in his oeuvre, for example, the artist's cartoons often ridiculed Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.
In 1922 Thomas Heine became a regular member of the Prussian Academy of Art in Berlin.