Werner Schubert-Deister

Werner Schubert-Deister (1921 - 1991) was a German painter and sculptor.

Between 1937 and 1940 he studied double bass and piano at the Music Academy in Bad Frankenhausen. He was seriously injured in World War II and has suffered from a stiff knee ever since. He continued his music studies in Sondershausen from 1946 to 1949. Between 1950 and 1952 he attended the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, where he was a student of Professor Elisabeth Voigt and Käthe Kollwitz. 

Self Portrait

Between 1952 and 1986 he lived as a freelance painter and graphic artist in Friedrichroda . The building of The Wall in 1961 ended the acquisition of paintings by art museums such as the West Berlin National Gallery and contact with West German artists. Visits from the West were not allowed again until 1974. A married couple who were friends brought part of his work to Germany and enabled exhibitions in Hamburg, Speyer, Constance and Neuburg an der Donau in 1978 and 1979, which Schubert-Deister himself was not able to visit.

In 1979, when they visited again, his sponsors were imprisoned for two months by the GDR authorities, who used this to blackmail the return of the 190 pictures that had been brought to the FRG. Several exit applications from the GDR submitted since 1981 have been rejected. It was only in 1986 - after intervention by the UN Human Rights Commission - that he was able to move to Borsum near Hildesheim with his wife Christa and his children, where he spent the last few years ascetic and lived a very busy life. As a politically disillusioned person who saw in himself and his work the only political task, he also maintained a great deal of scepticism towards the western side of the Iron Curtain.