Welcome
This site is dedicated to my grandfather, Martin Erich Alfred Ideler. Like many of my family, he was an artist and teacher.
Contents of this site
Timeline: with categories "personal," "political" and "art."
Biography: Mom loved to talk about her childhood and what she learned from living through World War II in Germany. I've posted some interviews I did with her. In the future, I may formalize them into a more readable form, but for now, I think her style is pretty charming.
Paintings: Martin has five grandchildren. We all have portions of his legacy. I have begun with mine. Unfortunately, the work that has come down to me is not the work he was proudest of. He exhibited and sold his best pieces. But there's enough lying around the house to give a good feel for what he was interested in. Dating it is another problem....
Letters: There are four boxes of them. Some are charmingly illustrated. Most are illegible to me. As I become more familiar with German, it will be easier to figure out what his scribbles must mean. To translate, I type out what I think I am reading into translate.google, and then compare the result with the original and with what I imagine he must have meant. I heartily recommend this technique for language learning!
Library: The library is an intellectual's prosthetic brain. What is not immediate in the mind can be found in the library.
Lovis Corinth: He was a founding member of the Berlin Secession movement and one of Martin's mentors.
Arnold Haase: is a brief summary of Martin's mutually life-saving friendship with his former student.
Kakuzo: Some of Martin's books are thick with annotations. Since some of my own books are too, I know that this has to do less with their relative importance and more with the proximity of a pencil and the irregular prompts of an irregular mind. However, surely something can be gleaned from Martin's underlining and remarks. "Kakuzo" is the first of what I hope are several explorations into Martin's marginalia.
References: Useful books.
Biography: Mom loved to talk about her childhood and what she learned from living through World War II in Germany. I've posted some interviews I did with her. In the future, I may formalize them into a more readable form, but for now, I think her style is pretty charming.
Paintings: Martin has five grandchildren. We all have portions of his legacy. I have begun with mine. Unfortunately, the work that has come down to me is not the work he was proudest of. He exhibited and sold his best pieces. But there's enough lying around the house to give a good feel for what he was interested in. Dating it is another problem....
Letters: There are four boxes of them. Some are charmingly illustrated. Most are illegible to me. As I become more familiar with German, it will be easier to figure out what his scribbles must mean. To translate, I type out what I think I am reading into translate.google, and then compare the result with the original and with what I imagine he must have meant. I heartily recommend this technique for language learning!
Library: The library is an intellectual's prosthetic brain. What is not immediate in the mind can be found in the library.
Lovis Corinth: He was a founding member of the Berlin Secession movement and one of Martin's mentors.
Arnold Haase: is a brief summary of Martin's mutually life-saving friendship with his former student.
Kakuzo: Some of Martin's books are thick with annotations. Since some of my own books are too, I know that this has to do less with their relative importance and more with the proximity of a pencil and the irregular prompts of an irregular mind. However, surely something can be gleaned from Martin's underlining and remarks. "Kakuzo" is the first of what I hope are several explorations into Martin's marginalia.
References: Useful books.