Alexander Kolde was born on March 2, 1886 in Haldensleben as the first child of soap boiler Georg Kolde and his wife Bertha Lesser and grew up in Rastenburg . He is one of the most idiosyncratic representatives of the style of the German Secession in Königsberg and was considered one of the most progressive artists in East Prussia in the interwar period . He completed his training from 1906 at the Akademie der Künste (Berlin) and the Art Academy in Königsberg , with Angelo Jank in Munich and finally in 1913 with Lovis Corinthin Berlin, where he then settled. There was only a very short creative period there. He was drafted into the First World War in August 1914 , which he survived with a serious wound.
From 1918 he settled in Königsberg as a freelance painter. Here he is one of the leading and integrating forces of the local artistic community. He founded the artists' association “Der Ring” and headed an interest group for his professional colleagues, which among other things realized joint exhibitions. As a painter he was on the threshold of Expressionism and took a special position in Königsberg with his brightly colored paintings. From 1926 he was able to consolidate his position in Königsberg and from then on belonged to the well-known great artists in East Prussia.
After 1933 he was gradually sidelined because of his independent painting style. In 1936 an exhibition of his work was banned shortly before the opening. Kolde was not officially banned from painting, but was sidelined. In 1940 he went to Graudenz . In 1945 he fled to Flensburg , where he settled. Like most of his fellow fates, he continued his now lost work before 1945, but it was very difficult to gain a foothold again.
His marriage to Helene Weber gave birth to the three children Berta, Katharina and Dorothea.
Alexander Kolde died in Flensburg in 1963 at the age of 77.
