Carl Fischer and Walter Gebauer @museum.de

Carl Fischer and Walter Gebauer were regarded as the two most important potters of Bürgel in the mid-20th century. They both explored new forms of expression and created a considerable range of highly artistic premium ceramics.

Carl Fischer was born in 1891 in Ostrau, Central Saxony. He studied at the Royal Ceramics School in Bunzlau, Silesia. During his time as a journeyman, Fischer worked at the Bürgel pottery factory run by Max Neumann, where he first came across van de Velde’s ceramics. After the First World War, he settled in Bürgel permanently and took over the Eberstein/Hohenstein pottery in 1919. That factory was among those instrumental in producing van de Velde’s ceramic designs. From then on, the pottery was renamed as Kunstkeramische Werkstätten Bürgel Carl Fischer – Carl Fischer Art Ceramics Workshops Bürgel. Its products were impressively versatile. Rather than staying with one style, Fischer experimented with decoration and forms. His works bridge the gap between Art Nouveau, Art Déco and the New Objectivity. In the early days, he improved the quality of the drip glazes and then turned his attention to painted and sprayed decoration. He subsequently worked with monochrome surfaces and finally moved on to incised decoration and simple engobe painting to develop his own “Fischer style” within the scope of Bürgel blue-and-white, but also brown-and-white.

His daughter, Marieluise Fischer, completed a pottery apprenticeship with Otto Lindig and then with her own father in the 1940s. In 1954, she completed her master’s certificate as Bürgel’s first female potter. Five years later, Fischer’s Art Ceramics Workshops joined the producer’s cooperative. When her father died, Marieluise Fischer took over as manager of the department, which continued to operate independently with her as master craftswoman. She had almost always included blue-and-white decorations in her product range. In 1999, her business evolved into a limited company called Echtbürgel, which ensured that the legendary blue-and-white decoration has been solidly established in the market place.

Walter Gebauer, on the other hand, succeeded in operating independently throughout the years of East Germany’s existence. Gebauer, who was from one of Bürgel’s established pottery families, joined forces with his father, Paul Gebauer, to set up their own workshop in 1934.

Thanks to his experiments with plain, classic forms and novel glazes, he became one of East Germany’s most important ceramicists. He developed new crystalline glazes, became involved in training young studio ceramicists, and finally wrote the premier handbook for the training of potters and ceramicists, the textbook “Kunsthandwerkliche Keramik” – which translates as “Artisanal Ceramics”.

This is how one of his students later described him:

“When it came to the issue of training, of passing on knowledge, and to the stance that involved living and embodying ceramics, Walter Gebauer was exemplary. With Walter Gebauer, I realised, for the first time ever, that work and private life don’t have to be separate. Whether in his workshop, in his home, in his garden, he ‘lived ceramics’.“

One of the most important recipients of Gebauer’s knowledge and skills was his daughter, Christine Freigang. Her work in ceramics was ever-changing. Over the course of her career, she continuously pared back the range of colours and forms and finally arrived at refined, simple, harmoniously proportioned pots.

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Zitat zu Gebauer: Töpferspuren in Bürgel 4. Wolfgang Philler, Keramik, herausgegeben vom Förderkreis Keramik-Museum Bürgel und Dornburger Keramik-Werkstatt e.V., S. 18.