Hans Bohrdt (11 February 1857 – 19 December 1945) was a German marine painter and illustrator.
Life and Career
Bohrdt was born in Berlin to a middle-class family. His father, Adolph Eduard Bohrdt, was a civil servant in the legal department of the Imperial administration. His love for the sea began at age 15 after visiting the port of Hamburg. He studied sporadically at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin but was largely self-taught, developing his skills through extensive sea voyages.
Bohrdt made his exhibition debut in Berlin in 1880 and became a permanent resident of the city again from 1886. He gained the patronage of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who purchased his paintings for both private and public collections, and to whom Bohrdt later gave private art lessons. The Kaiser funded many of Bohrdt's projects, which were often nationalistic in theme. In 1898, Bohrdt was awarded an honorary doctorate and appointed professor at the Berlin Academy. He was a member of the Imperial Yacht Club in Kiel and the Association of Berlin Artists. In 1906, the Kaiser granted him a villa in the Dahlem district of Berlin.
Artistic Work
Bohrdt specialized in marine painting, a genre that gained prominence in Germany after national unification in 1871. He frequently accompanied the German fleet on maneuvers and voyages, producing detailed depictions of naval vessels, seascapes, and maritime events. He often worked in tempera, a medium well-suited for print reproduction. His works were exhibited regularly at the Great Berlin Art Exhibitions and the Great Munich Art Exhibitions.
His most famous work is Der letzte Mann ("The Last Man"), created in 1915. The illustration depicts a German naval sailor holding up a German flag as his ship sinks during the Battle of the Falkland Islands, choosing to go down with the ship rather than surrender. It became one of the most widely recognized propaganda images of World War I. The original painting has been lost since 1924.
Five of his paintings were displayed at the Great German Art Exhibitions during the Nazi period. Adolf Hitler purchased his work Einfahrt der Fischerboote bei schwerem Wetter ("Fishermen Returning from Sea in Stormy Weather") for 4,000 Reichsmark.
Later Life
After World War I, with the loss of imperial patronage, Bohrdt earned his living producing maritime postcards, book illustrations, magazine work, and newspaper illustrations. During the 1920s, the recovery of the German Merchant Marine brought new commissions from shipping companies such as Norddeutscher Lloyd and the Hamburg-America Line. He died in a retirement home in Berlin on 19 December 1945.
Legacy
Bohrdt's works are held in several German maritime collections, with the largest holdings at the German Maritime Museum in Bremerhaven. The Institute of Prehistoric Archaeology at the Freie Universität Berlin is housed in the former Bohrdt villa in Dahlem. A comprehensive monograph, Hans Bohrdt: Marinemaler des Kaisers by Lars U. Scholl, was published in 1995.
