The newspaper article in the Spandauer Volksblatt of 19 February 1972 shows that he attended an art school between 1912 and 1916. Now there is the first indication that he was enrolled for one semester at the Akademische Hochschule für die Bildenden Künste in the winter semester of 1912/13:

The excerpt comes from the Alphabetical index of names WS 1909/10 to SS 1924 of the Academy of Fine Arts, page 92, shelfmark UdK Archive 6-204

Thanks to Dr Anastasia Dittmann from the Archive of the Berlin University of the Arts for pointing this out.

Thanks to Torsten Steinberg, we now have two civil register entries for Fritz Neumann. These are partly the source for the dates in the main entry .

Marriage certificate

This is the marriage certificate of Franz Robert Fritz Neumann and Anna Hedwig Klinge, married on 2 May 1925. The occupation of both is given as “draughtsman” and “draughtswoman”.

Fritz Neumann’s birthday is given as 6 December 1897 and his address as Lettestraße 1.

Anna Hedwig Neumann was born on 21 September 1895 and lived at Alte Schönhauser Straße 61.

Source: Standesamt Berlin 9 (IX), Heiratsregister, Nr. 131/1925

Witnesses

Torsten Steinberg also adds the witnesses:

• The craftswoman Erna Dombrowski, 30 years old, living in Berlin-Friedenau, Fregestraße 78.

  Erna Luise Adele was born on 9.4.1895. On 16.3.1934 she married the senior teacher Otto Wilhelm Alfred Büchner (died 1952). Her profession at the time of marriage was draughtswoman. At the time of her husband’s death, they both lived in Bergmannstraße in Berlin.

• Walter Klotz, 29 years old, a craftsman, lived at Viktoriastrasse 8, Berlin-Lankwitz.

Death certificate

This is the death certificate for Franz Robert Fritz Neumann, painter. The address Gartenfelder Str. 132 h is the one known from the old address books .

He died on 8 June 1984 in Spandau Hospital.

In addition, the date of birth is given as 6 December 1897 and that he was the widower of Anna Hedwig Neumann, née Klinge, to whom he had been married since 2 May 1925 (see above).

Source: Standesamt Spandau von Berlin, Sterberegister, Nr. 1476/1984

After it turned out that Fritz Neumann (1928-2014) is not Ric , Mark Strong has updated the biographies at Meibohm Fine Arts and AskArt.com .

Many thanks to Mark for this!

Hopefully the false attributions on eBay and other auction sites will now be less…

Short description: A etching of a the war harbour Kiel by Fritz Neumann.

Notes: Found on eBay . this has been brought to my attention by Torsten Steinberg. As he has noted this has almost certainly a wrong attribution: The stem points to a ship after the First World War, probably the Königsberg or a ship from the class , built after 1927, so the authorship of Hermann Fritz Neumann (1858 - 1920) can be ruled out.

Short description: Sailing boats, known as Ric 05. This one has a unusual location of the signature - within the print.

Notes: Taken from auctionet.com .

Other entries for this work

Another hint from Wolfgang Barina , an invoice for a Fritz Neumann watercolour painting called “Regatta” dated 20.10.1938.

Short description: A colourised etching of a hereditary farm by Fritz Neumann.

Notes: There is also a print (certainly from a magazine) of this etching on eBay . Keep in mind, that those aren’t woodcuts!

Short description: Sailing boats (Ric 25) and A latern next to a stair (Ric 14)

Notes: Taken from auctionet.com . This post provides better images then the ones in the work list.

Other entries for Ric 25

Other entries for Ric 14

The United States Copyright Office (USCO) is a keeper of differend kind of copyright entries. It used to issue a printed catalogue of those registered copyright claims. Since the USA has been a global market already before world war two, there were copyright registrations by J.C. Blumenberg in the thirties. Some of those, especially in Part 4: Works of Art, these also cover works by our Fritz Neumann. This gives us dates for certain works of our Fritz and is an indicator when they started to work with each other.

The printed copyright catalogs have been digitised and are available at the Internet Archive .

1936

1938

1939

Summary

Short description: A postcard by Fritz Neumann - “Naysayers”

Notes: Found on AKPool