Gehfeldstraße
At Gehfeldstraße 5, the only indication that this house used to belong to the Lüftlmalerei painter Heinrich Bickel is a metal banner on the wall outside the yard bearing his last name.
While there was once a self-portrait of the artist as Saint Luke on the wall facing the street, the only lüftlmalerei visible at the address now is a scene painted by Guggemoos above the balcony.
On the wall of Gehfeldstraße 10, the Hotel Garni Alpengruss, one of my personal favorite lüftlmalerei’s in all of Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
In this picture, two men from opposite sides of the Garmisch and Partenkirchen border back in the day are about to get into a fist fight. (While a sly Partenkirchner steals their wife on the left — notice how she’s switching the tell-tale tie on her apron?)
The mural was painted about 25 years ago by Stephan Pfeffer. Unfortunately, the person who commissioned it has passed on, but when I contacted the hotel, they suggested that the hotel, itself, is on the border of Garmisch and Partenkirchen, and perhaps that was why the owner wanted this particular lüftlmalerei.2
The legendary feud between the people of Garmisch and Partenkirchen supposedly goes back to the two cities’ founding, when the people of Garmisch were considered backward farmers by the snobbish, (comparatively) wealthy Partenkirchen merchants.
Legend has it that, even to this day, there are natives who have never crossed the border from one side to the other, and, as reflected in the lüftlmalerei here, woe to the Juliet from Garmisch who fell in love with a Partenkirchen Romeo.
Someone told me that there is in fact a separate dialect between the two towns. When he told me this story, he specifically noted that the traditional calf socks worn with lederhosen — seen in the painting here on the fellows on the right — are known as “Fasseln” in Garmisch, but “Fassen” in Partenkirchen. However slight, some natives here swear that residents of the two towns literally speak two separate languages.
On the wall of Gehfeldstraße 21, a lüftlmalerei of Saint Anthony and an infant Jesus in the clouds above a Bavarian couple.
In the bottom corner, the coat of arms for the town of Partenkirchen.
In the very bottom right corner, this signature of the artist, Eberhard Hülsmann, with a date, “1967”.
At the Bavarian State Archives online, you can see two photos taken of the address by Franz Kölbl, one listed as part of a collection from “1970” and another from “1971“.
In the 1971 photo, you can see the lüftlmalerei as it looks today. However, in the 1970 photo, you can see that there had been an entirely different painting of Saint Anthony in the same space before.
Gehfeldstraße 23, an image of putti in the clouds above Jesus as a shepherd painted by K.M. in 1989.3
- Härtl, Rudolf. Heinrich Bickel - Der Freskenmaler von Werdenfels. Adam Verlag, 1990, p. 123: "A 115 Gehfeldstraße 8, (Haus Bickel vor Umbau): Tondo: Hl. Georg als Drachentöter; nach 1945."
- Niefnecker, Gabi. “AW: Frage zum Wandgemälde an der Außenwand Ihres Gebäudes". Message to the author. 2 March 2020. E-mail: "Diese Malerei hat der Vater meines Mannes vor ca. 25 Jahren in Auftrag gegeben. Gemalt wurde es von Stephan Pfeffer einem Lüftlmaler aus Mittenwald. Da unser Hotel wohl direkt auf der Grenze zwischen Garmisch und Partenkirchen steht war das wohl das Motiv das Bild in Auftrag zu geben. Mein Schwiegervater lebt nicht mehr, daher können wir leider keine genaueren Angaben machen."
- Bierl, Hermann. "Garmisch-Partenkirchen und seine Lüftlmalereien." Mohr, Löwe, Raute. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Landkreises Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Band 18, Verein für Geschichte, Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte im Landkreis Garmisch-Partenkirchen, 2020, p. 94: "229 Gehfeldstraße 23 K.M. 1989".