Unbekannte Malerin | Hermine Rohte an der Staffelei | um 1894 | Öl auf Leinwand

“Your wife, your friend, your colleague, your everything” – this is how Hermine Rohte (1869 – 1937) characterized herself to her fiancé, the famous Worpswede artist Fritz Overbeck (1869 – 1909), in 1897 shortly before the wedding. Here, the art student vividly describes the role structure with which she saw herself confronted as an artist and wife in the late nineteenth century. It is no coincidence that she repeatedly defines herself via her orientation toward her husband. After finishing her studies at one of the three German Women’s Academies in Munich, Hermine Rohte had come to Worpswede to become a pupil of Fritz Overbeck.

Painting was her profession – but with the marriage first, the role of housewife and mother waited for her, and she was afraid that it would be “quite over with my painting”. Hermine Overbeck-Rohte’s situation can be regarded as exemplary for female CVs around 1900. The extensive special exhibition at the Overbeck Museum from 29 May to 25 September 2011, therefore, not only aims to make the artist’s work known to a broad public but also to illuminate historical and sociological questions on the fate of the “Painting Dames”.