Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of Claus Bergen
Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sundays (when I feel like working), I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, and the like that produced them.
Combat Gallery Sunday: The Martial Art of Claus Bergen
Born 18 April 1885 in Stuttgart, Claus Friedrich Bergen was a product of Kaiserian Imperial Germany. Studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, under the American-born master Carl von Marr, young Claus shone.
By his 22nd birthday had been selected to illustrate Karl May’s classic Teutonic fiction novels about Winnetou, the wise chief of the Apaches, and Old Shatterhand, Winnetou’s white blood brother in the American Old West, and Kara Ben Nemsi and his manservant Hadschi Halef Omar in the Sahara and Far East.
As May’s works were sold in upwards of 200 million copies, the more than 400 illustrations that Bergen did between 1907-14 for these books have been seen worldwide.
When the war came, Bergen was appointed as a naval artist to the Kaiserliche Marine and, in the weeks and months following the pivotal Battle of Jutland, created some of his best work.
High Seas Fleet setting sail 31 May 1916
German battleships passing Heligoland
SMS-Grosse-Kurfurst-
Night action
Schlacht vor dem Skagerrak, deutsche Schlachtschiffe und Torpedoboote in Aktion German battleships and torpedo boats in action during the Battle of Jutland , May 31, 1916 by Claus Bergen
SMS- Thuringen and HMS Black Prince
Bridge of SMS Markgraf
Night action
Hipper leaving the crippled Lutzow for SMS Moltke at Jutland, by Carl Becker
Inside a battleship main turret
German destroyers attack the British battleship line at Jutland 31 May
High Seas Fleet setting sail 31 May 1916
SMS-Grosse-Kurfurst-
German battleships passing Heligoland
In 1917, Bergen embarked on tiny SM U-53, a 213-foot Type 51 unterseeboot commanded by legendary Fregattenkapitän Hans Rose, who won both the Pour le Mérite and the Ritterkreuz for sending a staggering 79 Allied ships to the bottom of the Atlantic (including six while bobbing off the Nantucket Lightship in 1916) and went to sea on a two-month war cruise. The images he saw in the heavy seas were burned into his memory, and he committed them to canvas for posterity.
In den Wellenbergen
During WWII, Bergen, then in his 50s, was a party member and one of the Reich’s favored painters. He continued working, composing military subjects on the list of those approved by Berlin.
Battleship Schlesig-Holstein on 1st September 1939 fires the first naval shots of the War at Danzig
1942 U-boot Type IX
Prinz Eugen at Denmark Strait Painting by Claus Bergen
Dornier Flugboot X
After the war, he escaped his Nazi party associations and, living in West Germany at 8172 Lenggries/OBB, painted simple sea scenes and landscapes…
Mit Wind und Wellen
Though he did paint the cover of the 1950s board game Bismarck, one of the most popular in the U.S. at the time.
He donated several large pieces to U.S. and British public museums and the Admiralty after the Second World War, many of which are on display around the UK. He is also celebrated, of course, by the Karl May Society and others. The Hellmann Art Gallery in Munich contains a large body of his more famous works.
Dr. Bergen was impressed with President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 visit to Germany (Ich bin ein Berliner) and wanted to present him with one of his paintings because of the President’s love of the sea and maritime art. His gift, The Atlantic, shows the windswept Atlantic at twilight and hung in the Atlantic Room of the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum for years, making Bergen possibly the only artist to have presented canvas to Kaiser Wilhelm, Hitler and JFK.
Bergen died on 4 October 1964 in Lenggries, Bavaria at age 79.
For more Bergen pieces on Jutland, see British Battle’s excellent series of articles on the clash.
Thank you for your work, sir.
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Some of the artwork seems to have disappeared from the page.
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