Occultism and sexual magic: Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern’s pictures are at once dismal, frivolous, and fantastic. During his lifetime, the scandalous author Henry Miller was one of the big fans of this peculiar painter and prophet.
"People who have a vision should see a doctor"--actually only a rash, irritated reply to a question in an interview, this famous quote by former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt was quickly turned into a popular argument at regulars' tables and in common parlance: imbeciles, madmen, people with "visions" belong in the psychiatric ward--ideally. One secretly fears and marvels at lunatics and crazy people with their visions, and so besides serving the necessary medical function of caring for the ill and its responsibility to protect the general public from dangers, the former insane asylum also becomes an element of social and individual purification, a spatially defined custodian of the suppressed and the unconscious that is only dealt with reluctantly.
Repeated Theft, Minor and Major Fraud
Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern also had a regular psychiatric career under his belt before he produced his first drawings well into his fifties in the late 1940s. Schröder-Sonnenstern, alias Gnass, alias Elljot the Sun King, also sat behind bars: his enigmatic names, which he regularly changed over the decades, reflect his unusual life. Born Emil Friedrich Schröder in East Prussia in 1892, the man who would later become a painter and prophet exhibited an unrestrained imagination even as a boy: his school diploma states that he was "defiant" and "untruthful." He time and again hurriedly left apprenticeships and his workplace to roam the throughout the country--followed by repeated theft, minor and major fraud, stays in an insane asylum and later in sanatoriums. The diagnosis made by doctors at the time does not seem far fetched from today's point of view: Schröder had a form of schizophrenia and a considerable measure of fantasy and dreamery.
In his manic megalomania he emulated the inflationary saints, and donning the obligatory white robe and wearing his hair long he managed to attract several followers. He later changed his name from Gnass--someone he met in a youth hostel had given him his official proof of residence--to "Prof. D. Eliot Gnass v. Sonnenstern" and from then on offered all kinds of magical, esoteric treatments in his practice in West Berlin. He also made the acquaintance of other inflationary saints, participated in occult sessions, and then again preached early Christian values.Enormous Genitals and Magic SymbolsIt seems as of the paintings by Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern--this is the name he used at the beginning of his artistic career--gathered together everything that had occurred in his entire life all at once and transformed it into an anarchic potpourri: demons and children's drawings, witches and angels, prophets and magicians, sexual-magical and occult practices, dismal premonitions and sardonic mockery, social contradictions and ambiguities populate his sheets of drawing paper and canvases--as if all of the fairy-tale figures had collectively broken out of the insane asylum and taken LSD. In one drawing from 1951, the "dreifache Mondweltmeister-Universalfuhrbetrieb" (The Threefold Moon World Master Universal Transport Vehicle) travels with fantastic animals and to the melody of a violin toward the grinning sun; eyes stare out of wheels; "Die Trauung des Wahrheitssucherpaares" (The Wedding of the Truth-Seeking Couple) celebrates the marriage of two fantasy creatures under a rainbow, again with a madly grinning sun; enormous genitals and magic symbols complete the colorful ensemble. Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern furnished many of his drawings with short texts that in turn provide insight into his eccentrically associative world of thought, in which early childhood trust and dark abysses as well as excessive absurdisms go hand in hand.The prophets and magicians, the insane and the starry-eyed idealists--Schröder-Sonnenstern portrays them in all of their ambiguity: with emphatic devotion, but with biting ridicule as well. And a drawing such as "Prof. Narrgoistik" seems to confirm any premonitions and conspiracy theories: and how true they are, the stories about moon masters dressed in black that sacrifice babies and at the same time grin full of insane lust! A dystopia that almost proved itself to be overly true in light of the end of National Socialism not long before and its racial mania literally--whereby the connections and references made by Schröder-Sonnenstern are never clear due to their degree of alienation; for example, at first glance mad occultism does not at all want to agree with the cool, rational method of the National Socialists.
Yet it may well be that the older painter reveals a more deep-seated truth of suppression and death-wish passions that few people wanted to see in postwar Germany. An article in "Spiegel" from 1965 explains why Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern did not fit in with the German art scene and is at best viewed from a pathological point of view--while his works are celebrated internationally and in museums and private collections. The writers Henry Miller and André Breton are said to have been two of the biggest fans of his fantastic drawings. However, one reason for the art market's clear lack of interest, at least in Germany, was provided by the painter himself: in order to profit from the hype, Schröder-Sonnenstern later had a number of pictures made by anonymous assistants. After this became known, they rapidly lost their value.