ALFRED BERNERT (1893 – 1991)
Verwoerd With Wife Holding Candle
year unknown
oil painting
size unknown
BIOGRAPHY
Alfred Bernert, the son of a German farmer, was born is Dönis, today the city of Hrádek nad Nisou in the Czech Republic. Bernert served in World War I where he was severely wounded and lost his right leg. In 1918, after getting married, he moved to Bad Oppelsdorf (now Poland).
He received a study grant from the state, which enabled him to study at the Technischen Hochschule in Prague and at the Karls University in Prague. Bernert painted portraits and landscapes, but became later also known for his Blud und Boden (Blood and Soil) depictions. Some of these – including ‘Mother and Child’ and ‘Harmony’, both created in 1933 – remained popular on the Internet in the first decades of the 21st century.
At the end of the Second World War, in June 1945, Bernert and his family fled across the border to the city of Herrnhut in Germany. His first commissioned work was a portrait of the Sovjet Stadtkommandant of the city of Herrnhut. For the next 46 years, until his death, Bernert continued painting portraits and landscapes. In 1966, he created the large-scale ‘Krieg und Frieden’ (‘War and Peace’), which hung for many years in the hospital of Herrnhut.
In 1974, Bernert was commissioned by the Czech economist Dr Karl Janovsky to create a portrait of Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid and the former Prime Minister of South Africa, who was assassinated in 1966. Janovsky was an admirer of Verwoerd and gave this portrait to Verwoerd’s widow. The work features on the cover of the book Stokkiesdraai by Marië van Heerden, Pretoria, 1984.