Maria Bauer - Klimbacher

20.08.1911 Wien - 19.02.2000 Nuremberg

Jürgen Gürtzgen

Maria Bauer-Klimbacher was born in Vienna on August 20th, 1911. She was the eldest of five, and showed love and responsibility towards her brothers and sisters. This disposition accompanied Maria Klimbacher, who was a shy person, all her life, and could particularly be seen in the motifs of her artistic works.

As her parents wished, she first finished commercial school and then went into training to become a civil servant at the Post Office Savings Bank, which was regarded as a "secure" position. However, she was already thinking about her future artistic work.

In September 1927, 16-year-old-Maria Klimbacher started studying at the "School for Graphic Arts" [Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt (Bundesanstalt)] in Vienna, at the department for manual graphics, and graduated cum laude on July 5th, 1930. During her studies she joined the youth alliance "Eagles and Falcons" [Adler und Falken] and manifactured her first woodcut.

As she explains elsewhere, it is an initial of "Mutter Witsch", a round dance, which she had danced herself to a Low German text: "Modder Witsch, Modder Witsch, kiek mi mol an..." [Mother Witsch, Mother Witsch, look at me ...].

At the "School for Graphic Arts", an institute with the best known teaching staff, Professor Leo Frank taught her artistic and technical skills in the practical subject of woodcut. Other teachers included Franz Renner and Erwin Puchinger.

Her artistic activity began directly after her studies, and it was Karl Haselböck, a student of Alfred Cossmann, who showed her the way to the woodcut.

Up to the year 1937, Maria Klimbacher worked in her original profession. However, she took lunch breaks long enough to dedicate herself to art. Versatile as she was, she worked for publishing houses, illustrated print magazines and books, made designs for a weaving mill and worked for exhibitions (fonts and displays).

Between 1930 and 1937, woodcut (wood engraving) emerged as a popular technique for bookplates as well as a number of works in the field of small-graphics, such as birth, engagement and wedding announcements.

In 1937 she worked extensively as a self-employed artist in Austrian cities and provinces in order to foster folk craft. An impressive example was the youth-hostel at the Lake Faaker [Faakersee] in Carinthia, Austria, whose furniture and walls she equipped with native farmers’ painting. In this creative phase, she repeatedly had the possibility, during crafts courses, to pass on her knowledge to other enthusiasts.

Later, in the years 1943 to 1945, she extensively taught in the Bavarian Forest, so that she hardly found any time and peace for her own work. She worked in Bayreuth (Bavaria), Germany, between 1945 and 1946. Retrospectively, she considered that time to have been very productive.

In the autumn of 1946 she went to Nuremberg [Nürnberg], Germany, to look after two small orphan girls whose mother had been one of Maria Klimbacher's friends.

On August 2nd, 1947, she married the widower Fritz Bauer. Maria (Mitzl) Bauer-Klimbacher gave birth to a son and a daughter.

The children, the house, the household and the garden left only little time for her artistic skills. Only when the children grew older and became more independent, Maria Bauer-Klimbacher found time again for her beloved woodcut. She produced various pieces of art work over the years, children being her favourite subject. Skillfully and softly she gave artistic form to them and coloured them with special care.

In the last years it became quiet around Maria Bauer - Klimbacher. The delicate, little lady was exhausted. She was mentally active to the very end, but her eyesight had become weak. However, her interest in art remained. She fostered her contacts predominantly via telephone and stayed in touch with many friends in Germany and Austria until her death. Although she had lived in Germany many years, she had a close and lifelong relationship to her homeland, Austria.

On February 19th, 2000, the modest artist's beautiful, though not always carefree, life came to an end.

On February 22nd, 2000, Maria Bauer-Klimbacher was burried in Nuremberg.