Fembio Special: Famous Lesbians
Renée Sintenis
(Renate Alice Sintenis [real name], Renate Weiß [married name])
born on March 20, 1888 in Glatz, Silesia, Germany (today Klodzko, Poland)
died on April 22, 1965 in West Berlin, West Germany
German sculptor and graphic artist
60th anniversary of her death on March 20, 2025
Biography
When she had her breakthrough at the age of 27, her sculptures were considered something sensationally new: she chose to depict young animals. Sintenis had a deep aversion to the monumentality characteristic of the massive works of previous sculptors; her own sculptures were rarely more than 20 centimeters high. The public loved them – suitable for display in any home, they were the ideal gift item and an immediate bestseller.
She did not have to compete with male colleagues, because she remained within the narrow confines of what was acceptable for women who chose to pursue the ’unfeminine’ profession of sculptor. Her sculptures were described as “toys from a box of playthings” by the art historian Julius Meier-Graefe. While he conceded that her work was indeed innovative, he concluded that “she is an artist because she remains feminine, childlike.”
Despite all the belittling, Renée Sintenis was one of the most famous and successful sculptors of the 1920s and 1930s. Although she is best known for her animal sculptures and self-portraits, her work encompasses much more: portrait busts, female nudes, figures of boys, statuettes of athletes, and a large number of drawings and etchings.
Her works are with us to this day. Her Berlin bears can be seen at three different points on the Berlin Autobahn, as well as on the Munich Autobahn and at Ernst-Reuter-Platz in Düsseldorf. Her small young standing bear from 1932 is awarded annually in gold or silver to the winners of the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale).
Renate Alice Sintenis was born in 1888 in Glatz in Silesia and grew up in Neuruppin and Stuttgart. She was a shy child who was regularly teased because of her height, and she often felt closer to animals, especially horses, than to people.
She received her first private drawing lessons as a schoolgirl in Stuttgart. In 1905 she moved with her family to Berlin. Women were not allowed to attend art academies until 1915, and they could thus only enroll at private institutions or in arts and crafts schools. At the age of 17, Sintenis began her studies at the teaching institute of the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Berlin, where Professor Wilhelm Haverkamp and Leo von König were among her teachers.
Under pressure from her father, who was no longer willing or able to pay her tuition and who needed a secretary, she dropped out of school before completing her studies, learned stenography and typing, and then worked for him as a secretary. This ultimately led to a break with her father; she left her parents' house and moved in with acquaintances. She posed for the sculptor Georg Kolbe and she also began to work on her own projects, creating her first self-portrait in terracotta, as well as etchings. In these, she preferred to avoid interpretation and to convey meaning by drawing with bold lines. In 1913, she showed three statuettes for the first time at the Berlin Autumn Exhibition, and in 1915 she exhibited both animal figures and self-portraits at the Berlin Secession.
One of her former teachers, Emil Rudolf Weiß, had become a fatherly friend and she married him in 1917. They shared his studio at the teaching institute of the Museum of Arts and Crafts. Unlike in other artist-couples, he was the one who always supported her, encouraging her to exhibit and introducing her to artists and collectors. However, the two rarely collaborated, since Weiß worked primarily as a typeface and ornamental artist in addition to his other work as a poet and painter. One exception was an edition of Sappho's poems, 22 Songs, to which Sintenis contributed the etchings and Weiß the typeface designs.
At around the same time, Sintenis also began working on a series of female nudes, which she made alongside the animal sculptures. Her Daphne figure from 1918 is considered the highlight of this series.
Starting in 1921, Sintenis was represented by the gallery owner Alfred Flechtheim, which brought her greater fame and more success. Her sculptures were compact and small in size, making them affordable for a large clientele and the two did good business together.
At that time, sports were becoming very popular among the general public. Since Sintenis had always been passionate about horses and sports, it was only natural that she should now turn to this theme in her art. She started making statuettes of athletes, intuitively and skillfully capturing the movements of boxers, dancers, footballers and polo players in each of their sports.
In the 1920s, Sintenis was one of the highest-earning artists of her time. She was also part of Berlin’s inner circle, with Rainer Maria Rilke and Ringelnatz among her friends. She regularly went horseback riding and out for a drive in her own car. In an article appearing in Querschnitt, the art magazine published by Flechtheim, the recipe for a Flechtheim ball was described as follows: “Take a large number of beautiful women, five members of the haute-banque, several other bankers, five prominent actresses, five dancers and several famous lawyers, poets, members of parliament, gynecologists, boxers, some businessmen in the textile industry and some factory owners, and Sintenis and Hatvany” (Christa Winsloe).
Her circles quickly expanded beyond Germany, and by the late 1920s, Sintenis was exhibiting in Paris, as well as in Rotterdam, London, Glasgow and New York. She won the bronze medal in the field of sculpture at the 1928 Olympic Art Exhibition in Amsterdam.
In 1931, Renée Sintenis was the first woman to be appointed professor of sculpture at the Academy of the Arts in Berlin. After the National Socialists came to power, however, she was excluded from the academy in 1934 because of her Jewish background – her maternal grandparents had been Jewish before they converted. Her husband Ernst Weiß was pressured to resign as well, because he was married to a woman of “non-Aryan” origin. Flechtheim left Germany and lived in exile as did many of her acquaintances. Sintenis was allowed to join the Reich Chamber of Culture, but the Nazis removed her works from public collections and even included one of her self-portraits in their exhibition of “degenerate art.” Although she was not banned from exhibiting, the situation certainly worsened for her. She lived in constant fear of being excluded from the Reich Chamber of Culture, which would have meant she was banned from practicing her profession. She became demoralized due to the constant fear and her growing loneliness.
During the 1930s, Sintenis concentrated mainly on animal sculptures. She received no further commissions for portraits, but she was able to work on book illustrations. In 1934, for example, she created the drawings for the German edition of Flush: A Biography, the story of a famous dog written by Virginia Woolf – even though she made disparaging comments about the book.
She was represented by the Vömel gallery, but privately she remained in contact with her old Flechtheim customers. In 1935 her friend Hanna Kiel published a comprehensive monograph about her.
The ban on bronze casting imposed in 1940 due to the war severely affected her work because unlike others she could not use stone or other materials as an alternative. However, she continued to receive commissions for graphic works.
Immediately after the war, Sintenis participated in the first Exhibition of the Chamber of Culture held in July 1945 and in the fall in the exhibition Sculptures and Sculptors’ Drawings, both of which took place in Berlin.
In 1948 she received a teaching assignment for a master class in animal sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts (Hochschule für bildende Künste), and in 1955 she was appointed full professor. She received numerous honors, including the honor Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts (1952) and the Federal Cross of Merit (1953).
Renée Sintenis died in 1965 at the age of 77, after living together with her “housekeeper” Magdalena Goldmann during her final years. The two rest next to each other at the Waldfriedhof Dahlem Cemetery in Berlin-Zehlendorf.
In Berlin, an elementary school and the Renée Sintenis Platz were named after her.
(Text from 2015; translated with DeepL.com; edited by Ramona Fararo, 2025.
Please consult the German version for additional information, pictures, sources, videos, and bibliography.)
Quotes
S. represents a tradition in sculpture that has been around since the late 19th century, which deals with animals. She only rarely created portraits [...], above all, sensitive self-portraits, which are both psychologically and tectonically oriented, with classic calm and balance. When depicting the animal, she started from precise observations of nature and mental images, preferring in particular the young animal, and exaggerated the animal’s behavior or movements in a characteristic, playful, humorous or light-hearted manner. She favored the animal in motion and capturing its individual fleeting movements. S. began with fixed surface forms, but dissolved them with increasing accuracy into flowing movement (Daphne, 1930), or into a small-format pose. The series of boy statuettes is also focused exclusively on athletic movement and on the boy’s vitality, with a concentration on moments when the boy is lost in extreme physical exertion and oblivious to all else.
(Source: Lexicon entry on Sintenis in: Olbrich, Harald (ed.) (1987-1994): Lexikon der Kunst. Architektur, Bildende Kunst, Angewandte Kunst, Industrieformgestaltung, Kunsttheorie. Compiled by Gerhard Strauß, edited by Harald Olbrich. 7 volumes. Leipzig: Seemann. Vol. 6, p. 684 ff.)
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