Dorothea Wüsten-Koeppen was born in Ketzin/Havel, Germany in 1893, studying painting in Munich, Düsseldorf and Berlin. Threatened with arrest due to her involvement in the KPD (German Communist Party), she fled to Prague in 1935 and to England in 1939. While in exile, she exhibited with the Free German League of Culture (FGLC) and produced works which reflected both her memories of Prague and her new surroundings in Hampstead, north London., before returning to East Germany in 1946.
Painter Dorothea Wüsten-Koeppen (née Koeppen) was born into a middle-class family on 8 November 1893 in Ketzin/Havel, Germany. She worked as a hospital nurse during the First World War from 1914–16 and became a stenographer for a year before studying painting in Munich, Düsseldorf and Berlin. In 1923 Wüsten-Koeppen moved to Görlitz, working as a ceramics painter in the pottery workshop of Walter Rhaue before co-founding the Seidenberger Fayence-Manufaktur (1923–25), a ceramics workshop, alongside Theodor and Johannes Wüsten. Johannes and Dorothea married in 1926. In response to the rise of National Socialism, Wüsten-Koeppen became a member of the KPD (German Communist Party) in early 1933. Her left-wing political persuasion led her to create her satirical work A Woman of 1934 (1934), depicting a woman pushing a pram with a swastika flag and looking proudly towards the viewer. Wüsten-Koeppen was threatened with arrest due to her membership of the KPD, causing her to flee to Prague, Czechoslovakia in April 1935, after spending five months in custody. During their time in Prague, Wüsten-Koeppen and her husband became involved with the Oskar Kokoschka Bund (OKB), where they met other émigré artists who also later fled to England, including Theo Balden and his wife, Annemarie Balden-Wolff.
Following the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, Wüsten-Koeppen arrived in England in 1939, separately from her husband, working in London as a domestic servant and cook for the émigré artist, lawyer and writer Fred Uhlman, at his home in Downshire Hill, Hampstead, the premises where the Free German League of Culture was founded (1939). Wüsten-Koeppen became a member of its Fine Arts Section, exhibiting in the first group exhibition held at the Wertheim Gallery in the same year. Art critic Edward Scroggie singled out her work in The Tribune, praising her 'naïve water-colour, Silesian Landscape [...] for its quiet humour’ (Scroggie 1939, p. 15). Wüsten-Koeppen also exhibited Painting of a Refugee Family (1944) in the FGLC’s 1944 Exhibition of Drawings, Paintings and Sculptures by Free German Artists at the Charlotte Street Centre. While in England she continued to paint, producing works which reflected both her memories of Prague and her Hampstead neighbourhood. After working for Uhlman for a year, she began to earn a living by designing wallpaper, fabric and packaging, painting ceramics and creating leather goods. Wüsten-Koeppen remained in London throughout the Blitz, continuing to sketch her surroundings. Depictions of air raid alarms contrasted with her lighter-hearted illustration work, including images for children's fairy tales. In c.1945 Wüsten-Koeppen finally received news of her husband’s death two years previously, following his incarceration in Brandenburg Prison, through discovering his obituary.
Wüsten-Koeppe returned to East Berlin in 1946, where she continued to paint. From c.1947/8 she worked as a freelance editor for the publishers Dietz Verlag who subsequently published her children’s story Igel Kaspar in 1947. She continued to make oil paintings and portraits until her health deteriorated in the 1950s. She was awarded honorary citizenship by the city of Görlitz in 1971. Dorothea Wüsten-Koeppen died on 11 November 1974 in East Berlin, German Democratic Republic. Her works are not currently represented in UK public collections.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Dorothea Wüsten]
Publications related to [Dorothea Wüsten] in the Ben Uri Library