From 13 June 2006 to 15 April 2007 the Helms-Museum showed the special exhibition “Wolfgang Götze – Living and Working for Hundred Years”. The artist would have turned 100 at 26 February 2006. To this occasion the Helms-Museum presented a retrospective with known and unknown works from Wolfgang Götze’s legacy.

Götze’s Life

Many people of Hamburg probably remember the views of Hamburg by the illustrator Wolfgang Götze (1906-1988) from the newspaper. Götze wanted to document “the coming of the new Hamburg, the going of the old Hamburg” (quote Götze) with his drawings. In the year of his 100th birthday his daughter Bella Meyer-Götze made the whole legacy of her father for a retrospective available to the Helms-Museum. The centrepiece of the exhibition are his popular city views. Apart from that the show imparted the versatility of Wolfgang Götze’s creative work.

Götze’s Works

The exhibition at the Helms-Museum showed over 100 of these city views with scenes from Hamburg and its surroundings as well as less known works by Götze. Thus portrait drawings of regional and national personalities that Götze created for the Hamburger Abendblatt could be seen. Next to them original models for caricatures, comics and illustrations for various German newspapers and magazines were presented to show Götze’s humorous and narrative talent. This talent found its way to numerous book illustrations of which a selection was present at the exhibition to leaf through. Bills and advertising graphics (among others of the tabacco company BAT) told of the early commercials of the 1930s and 1950/60s. Early watercolour paintings showed Götze as painter.