{"id":2509,"date":"2011-06-01T01:45:29","date_gmt":"2011-06-01T01:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=2509"},"modified":"2025-11-15T11:57:42","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T18:57:42","slug":"remembering-ursula-brodauf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/remembering-ursula-brodauf\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Ursula Brodauf"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nUrsula Brodauf was born on January 24, 1926 in Gr\u00fcnhainichen, a small German town near the Czechoslovakian [Czech Republic] border that was known for its fine wood carvers. She was seven years old in 1933 when Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany, engineering dire economic consequences for her family.<\/p>\n

Brodauf\u2019s father, whom she described to me in an interview eleven years ago as a \u201cpractical and quiet intelligent\u201d iconoclast, stubbornly refused to conform to Third Reich conventions, even before the \u201830s when the Nazi culture began to proliferate. \u201cMy parents lost everything when I was a little girl,\u201d she remembered. \u201cBut I never felt deprived.\u201d Her mother \u201cappreciated the fine arts. She only allowed classical music to be played in the house. I knew opera as a tiny child, but nothing else.\u201d<\/p>\n

At fourteen, Brodauf began an apprenticeship as a wood carver. \u201cI liked carving but not the repetitive assignments. It was like a trade school and I wanted to do my own thing.\u201d To her teacher, master wood carver Emil Helbig, she announced that she wanted to be a sculptor. Two years later, Brodauf received a scholarship to study sculpture, a benefit instigated by her teacher. This was unusual because the young pupil\u2019s family was not in the Nazi Party and she did not rise through the Hitler Youth ranks like her peers.<\/p>\n

Brodauf assumed her mother\u2019s arts appreciation and her father\u2019s nonconformist attitude. Motivated to become a sculptor, she left home after the war. She had earlier hoped to go to Dresden where her uncle was a professor of sculpture at the Academy of Art, but bombs had torched the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was nothing in East Germany\u2014Hanover, Dresden, Munich\u2014they were all pretty much devastated by the war. I knew that to advance my studies I had to go to West Berlin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brodauf made three dangerous border crossings \u201cunder gunfire,\u201d she said, to move her belongings and supplies. Her first load of possessions was stolen. \u201cI got smarter each time,\u201d she told me.<\/p>\n

The Academy of Art in West Berlin was not prepared to receive students when Brodauf arrived in 1948. She had to wait another year, surviving on odd jobs and primitive living, much as her family did back in Gr\u00fcnhainichen. Accustomed to hard work, Brodauf began a demanding curriculum of studio work, drawing assignments, anatomy lessons with doctors, and art history. She also met with visiting instructors, such as Marc Chagall, Henry Moore, and Alexander Calder.<\/p>\n