Günther Strupp (March 6, 1912 – 1996) was a German artist, illustrator, and art director. He was a survivor of the Kemna concentration camp and of Gestapo imprisonment in Stadelheim Prison.
Life and work
Strupp was born in Johannisburg (now Pisz, Poland) in Masuria, East Prussia. He grew up in Duisburg and in 1930 began studying art in Essen at the Folkwangschule alongside his long-time friend Heinz Kiwitz. In 1931, Kiwitz and Strupp went to Cologne for a few months. He studied at the Folkwangschule until 1933.
Strupp joined the Communist Party, which led to his arrest in 1933 after the Nazis seized power. He was held at Kemna concentration camp for several months, an experience he later depicted in a woodcut illustration. After his release in 1933, he fled to Paris, where he stayed until 1936. In 1940, with the help of Wilhelm Fraenger, he found work painting scenery at the Schiller Theater in Berlin. Fraenger also commissioned Strupp to illustrate Ludwig Tieck's Merkwürdige Lebensgeschichte Sr. Majestät Abraham Tonelli, but its publication was forbidden by the Reichskulturkammer; it was eventually published after the war.
Strupp moved to Augsburg, hoping it would be safer than Duisburg, but was swept up by the Gestapo in the wave of arrests following the July 20, 1944 plot to kill Hitler. He was liberated from Stadelheim Prison by American troops on May 1, 1945.
After World War II, Strupp was housed in the Holbein Haus in Augsburg and worked as a building superintendent. He became a contributor to the postwar German satirical magazine Ulenspiegel, founded by fellow Nazi detention survivors Herbert Sandberg and Günther Weisenborn. During the 1950s and 1960s, he worked on several film productions as a set decorator and art director, including Schneewittchen und die sieben Zwerge (1955) and Hänsel und Gretel (1954). He corresponded with Bertolt Brecht. In 1962, he received Augsburg's art award for pictorial art.
Selected filmography
- Der Apfel ist ab (1948) – assistant production designer
- Schneeweisschen und Rosenrot (1955) – art director
- Hänsel und Gretel (1954)
- Rotkäppchen (1954) – set decoration
- Schneewittchen und die sieben Zwerge (1955) – set decoration
Selected publications
- Ludwig Tieck, Günther Strupp, Merkwürdige Lebensgeschichte Sr. Majestät Abraham Tonelli, W. Rau (1947)
- So leben wir!: Pelztiere belauscht, RIFRA-Verlag (1954)
- Malerei und Graphik von Günther Strupp, 1930 bis 1960, Verlag Die Brigg (1961)
- Der Nachtwächter vom Holbein-Haus, Verlag Die Brigg (1967)
- Henryk Keisch, Struppzeug. Die kuriose, unheile Bilderwelt des Günther Strupp, Eulenspiegel Verlag (1970)
