Siegfried Gerhard Reinhardt was a child prodigy at drawing. Encouraged by his mother and nurtured by the St. Louis public-school system, Reinhardt moved through childhood and adolescence accumulating a steady host of Scholastic Arts Awards. When he was sixteen years old, he attracted a patron who purchased $350 worth of his art. At the age of seventeen, he had a one-man show at the St. Louis Artists Guild. Reinhardt attracted early national recognition when Life Magazine included him in a feature story in its March 20, 1950, issue, “Nineteen Young American Artists” (pp. 84, 93). Only twenty-four at the time of publication, Reinhardt was the youngest of the group. His thumbnail profile accurately described him: “self-taught, he studied art by copying old masters.” Two years later, Life returned with a follow-up article in its issue of March 24, 1952, headlined “Young Painter’s Progress: At 26 Siegfried Reinhardt Has Gained Recognition Across U.S.” The second article (pp. 88–90), illustrated with two pages of full color reproductions of his paintings, recounts the popular success of a one man show at the gallery of The University of Southern Illinois at Carbondale.
Reinhardt was three years old in 1928 when his parents, Otto Fredrick Reinhardt (1897–1968) and Minna Louisa Kukat (1899–1969), immigrated to America from Eydtkuhnen in East Prusssia. Eydtkuhnen (now Chernyshevskoye) was, at the time, notable as the transfer point for passengers from St. Petersburg traveling by rail to Berlin and Paris. Located in an area of constantly shifting political borders, it was near Poland, Lithuania, and Russia. (It has been controlled by Russia since the end of World War II as the easternmost municipality in the Kaliningrad Oblast.) As such, it proved a natural location for the flourishing import-export business established by an enterprising Otto Reinhardt. Reinhardt’s commercial ventures, however, fell victim to the runaway currency inflation of 1920s Weimar Germany, taking his young family’s prosperity along with it. With four children in tow, the Reinhardts decided to look for opportunity in America. They chose St. Louis as their destination because of the presence there of two uncles who had immigrated some ten years earlier. It was not just the presence of family that made St. Louis a good choice. Since the 1830s, the Missouri city had been a magnet for German immigrants. By 1850, half of the city’s population claimed German origins. (“German” is used generally here, as there was no “Germany” per se until the political unification of 1871.) As it happened, 1928 was not a propitious year for new beginnings in America, either. Though the Reinhardts were poverty stricken when they arrived and soon added three American-born children to the eldest four, the existence of a large and well-established German American community offered cultural support, and as important, a network of employment opportunities. By 1930, Otto had found work as a die maker in a shoe factory. Otto and Minna went to night school to learn English and eventually Otto Reinhardt reestablished himself in business as a manufacturer of neon lights. (The best biographical source for Siegfried Reinhardt is an extended interview conducted in 1976 by Rick Gaugert for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, with a transcript available online.
Siegfried, the second oldest of seven siblings, showed a talent for art as a very young child. His mother’s brothers were architects. He claims a recollection of a still-life picture in his home in Germany that fascinated him. He thought it magical to be able to reproduce an image that fooled him into thinking it was real. After his mother explained how it was done, he determined to become such a magician himself. His mother supplied him with pencils, and he began to draw. Even in America, with resources very scarce, he drew complicated images of trees on the paper that came home from the butcher shop. His mother suggested that he look at woodcuts by Albrecht Dürer and attempt to replicate them. In this way, analyzing mark by mark, line by line, Reinhardt taught himself to draw.
Kindergarten was a torture. The boy began school speaking only German, struggling to learn English from friends and schoolmates. Soon thereafter, however, his precocious talent at drawing attracted the attention of the art instructors in his public-school system. By his own account, he became a kind of schoolboy wunderkind, recognized as “gifted” for his art ability and provided with opportunities to exercise and expand his talent. This pursuit of art continued through Reinhardt’s childhood and high school career. Reinhardt’s skill grew through steady accretion. At thirteen he was given oil paints for the first time. At fourteen he was asked to design and paint a mural illustrating the history of the William Greenleaf Eliot Elementary School (named for the founder of Washington University in St. Louis). Through his school years he entered Scholastic Arts competitions and amassed a trove of prizes. Something of Reinhardt’s personal determination and method can be seen in his description of how he honed his command of English vocabulary during four years of high school. Every day, beginning with the letter A in Webster’s Abridged Collegiate Dictionary and proceeding through Z, he memorized definitions of ten or fifteen words and then used them in sentences (transcript of interview, p. 22). He maintained this pace while he excelled in school, worked part-time at a local Kroger’s supermarket, and played sports.
Through the Scholastic Arts program, Reinhardt won a merit-based two-year scholarship to the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis, Indiana (since 1967 part of Indiana University). Still a high school student, he was unable to accept the offer which couldn’t be deferred. By the time he graduated, he had moved on. Encouraged by his mother who hoped for a “proper” profession for him, he accepted a scholarship to seminary to train as a minister in the Evangelical Reformed Church (Lutheran). That plan was definitively interrupted by a draft notice. As a recruit to the U.S. Army, Reinhardt reaped the reward of his dictionary memorization with a dazzling score on the vocabulary section of an army aptitude test. He was assigned to a writing unit where he spent his entire thirty-three months of service. He trained in Missouri, Texas, West Virginia, and New York City, before going to China and then Shanghai before his discharge. In Shanghai, Reinhardt was art director and a reporter for a local version of Stars and Stripes, the servicepersons’ newspaper. Returning home with G.I. bill in hand, Reinhardt prepared to enroll in Washington University in St. Louis. He expected to study in the art program, but his local reputation preceded him, and when he submitted his portfolio as part of the application, he was gently advised that he had already mastered all the pedagogy the art instructors had to offer. He was always welcome in the art studios, but not as a student. Reinhardt took the opportunity to major in English instead. At Washington University, a shared interest in art brought him together with Harriet Fleming Youngman (1921–1977), a war widow studying sculpture. They met in 1947, married in 1948, and were a devoted couple supporting each other’s art until Harriet’s death in 1977.
