WILHELMINE ASSMANN 
b. 1862, Lieskau, Germany
d. after 1931, Berlin, Germany

WORKS  |  BIOGRAPHY  |  EXHIBITIONS  |  BIBLIOGRAPHY

SELECTED WORKS

BIOGRAPHY

Wilhelmine Assmann during a public drawing séanceWilhelmine Assmann was a simple woman from a small village in Saxony. She worked as a laundress in her husband's dye and chemical laundry in Halle (Saale). After the death of her only son Albert, who lived only a few months, she fell into a depression. Doctors could not help her. Finally, her encounter with Spiritualism brought her relief. She turned out to be a medium herself. At first she received messages through automatic writing. In the summer of 1904, under the influence of her spirit guide, Helize, who claimed to be a Russian Jew who had died in Siberia at a young age, she began to draw. Wilhelmine Assmann drew outlines with a pencil along the edges of the sheet of paper, eventually creating a diagonal. Then she continued drawing with colored pencils, creating strange networks of lines, dots, small circles and ovals that formed flowers or plant-like shapes that roughly followed this diagonal division of the drawing sheet. It took her 50 to 100 hours to complete a drawing.

From 1907, Wilhelmine Assmann's works were exhibited in many large German cities, and in 1909 in Belgium and the Netherlands. It is interesting to note that Wilhelmine Assmann is one of the very few women artists whose works were exhibited during her lifetime not only in makeshift exhibition spaces, but also in prestigious and even progressive galleries. For example, she exhibited at the Galerie Banger in Wiesbaden. In June 1909, her works were shown at the Galerie Emil Richter in Dresden, along with those of Die Brücke, one of the most important groups of German Expressionist artists that has had a major influence on the development of modern art.

At many of her exhibitions, Wilhelmine Assmann offered public drawing séances during which the public could observe her at work in a kind of autohypnotic trance. She quickly became very famous, and numerous articles appeared in the daily press and in spiritualist magazines. Even the New York Times devoted a lengthy article to her. As early as 1907, twelve of her drawings were printed on postcards, and in 1911, Germany's largest pencil factory, A. W. Faber, used a poster of a drawing by Wilhelmine Assmann to advertise its colored pencils on the occasion of its 150th anniversary. The outbreak of the First World War more or less put an end to her career. After that, the artist from Halle was hardly heard from again.

EXHBITIONS

2024
Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky: Dreams of the Future, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, March 16 – August 11, 2024
Through Other Eyes, Franz Marc Museum, Kochel am See in the exhibition (March 24 - June 9, 2024

SELECTED EXHBITIONS IN GALLERIES AND MUSEUMS DURING WILHELMINE ASSMAN'S LIFETIME

1911
Club of German Women Artists, Prague
Gallery Otto Schmidt-Bertsch, Munich
Gallery F. W. Mittentzwey-Windsch, Leipzig
Gallery Teichert, Königsberg

1910
Civic Museum, Stuttgart
Small Hall of the Museum Building, Munich

1909
Gallery Richter, Dresden
Pulchri Studio, The Hague
Gallery Buyle, Antwerp
Galerie Royale, Liège
Artists' Association, Leipzig

1908
Small Hall of the Museum Building, Munich
Gallery Banger, Wiesbaden
Civic Museum, Stuttgart

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anonymous. "Les pastels médiumniques de Mme. Assmann." Annales des sciences psychiques, 18, 1908, 274.
Anonymous. "Madame Assman’s Mediumistic Pastels." The Annals of Psychic Science, 7, 1908, 533-536.
Anonymous. "Un médium dessinateur. Mme Wilhelmine Assmann." L’écho du merveilleux. 13, 1909, 170-171.
Anonymous. "Het teeken-medium Wilhelmine Assmann." Het toekomstig leven. 13, 2, 1909, 38-39.
Anonymous. "Een schilder-medium." Het toekomstig leven. 13, 3, 1909, 51-54. 
Anonymous. "Het Spiritisme in België. Het Schildermedium Frau Wilhelmine Assmann." Het toekomstig leven. 13, 7, 1909, 123-124.
Anonymous. "Het Schildermedium." Het toekomstig leven. 13, 12, 1909, 213-214.
Anonymous. "Neues von der Traummalerin." Wahres Leben, 13, 1912, 146-147.
Aßmann, W[ilhelm]. „Die Malmediumschaft meiner Gemahlin." Beilage zur Zeitschrift für Spiritismus, 9, 1905, 41-42.
Corwegh, Robert. „Pastellmalereien eines Mediums." Zeitschrift für Spiritismus, 16, 1912, 105-106.
Gruber, Elmar R. "Wilhelmine Assmann: Returning to the Stage." Raw Vision, 118, 2024, 28-33.
Henning, R(ichard). "Das Malmedium Wilhelmine Assmann." Zeitschrift für angewandte Psychologie und psychologische Sammelforschung, 3, 1910, 88-93.
Kämpfer, Friedrich. "Die mediumistischen Zeichnungen der Frau Wilhelmine Aßmann im Passage-Panoptikum zu Berlin." Zeitschrift für Spiritismus, 14, 1910, 22-23.
Kämpfer, Friedrich. "Die mediumistischen Malereien der Frau Wilhelmine Aßmann." Die übersinnliche Welt, 16, 1909, 472-473.
Knorr-Schmidt, Marie. "Beim Malmedium in Halle." Die übersinnliche Welt. 16, 1908, 161-165.
Levi, Simon. "Blumen aus dem Jenseits." Zeitschrift für Spiritismus, 10, 1906, 430-431.
Peter, Josef. "Das Malemdium Frau Aßmann." Psychische Studien, 37, 1910, 545-557.