The painter, author, regatta and cruising sailor Otto Protzen lived in Berlin from 24 March 1868 to 22 July 1925 and was only 57 years old. Today, he is only known to a small community in Wannsee and interested sailors in the Seglerhaus am Wannsee (VSaW) association, of which he was a member. Once inside the Seglerhaus, you will inevitably pass the "Otto Protzen Room" on the wide main staircase, with his name carved in bold letters above the beautiful wooden door in the tympanum.
During his lifetime, Protzen was a prominent Berlin exception in both sailing and artistic terms. He was a six-time winner of the Kiel Week in the special class, on the occasion of which Kaiser Wilhelm II personally presented him with the Samoa Cup after each victory. He was also a successful rower, writer and author of German water tourism with many travelling trips on German rivers. He was a great landscape painter, co-author and illustrator of the two-volume manual "The Art of Sailing" and, as a boat designer and constructor, made his wealth of regatta experience available to German sailing at the time.
Otto Protzen was a master sailor from the very beginning - but also a rower, writer and painter"
Otto Protzen was a companion of Max Oertz and editor of YACHT
Protzen was born the son of a carpet manufacturer, in whose footsteps he was to follow. However, after attending the Royal French Grammar School, he only pursued the commercial training prescribed by his father with little enthusiasm and then devoted himself to studying at the Berlin Academy of Art after his father had deemed him unsuitable for carpet manufacturing due to his supposed colour blindness.
Protzen's sailing home was the VSaW. Between 1900 and 1911, he won 110 victories as helmsman of various special class yachts under the banner of his club. From 1902, Protzen was also an associate member of the Berlin Academic Sailing Club, to which his companion Max Oertz also belonged, at whose shipyard on Hamburg's Reiherstieg the rowing and sailing boats Protzen designed for himself were built.
For many years, Protzen was the editor of YACHT, first published in 1904, which at the time appeared weekly and also covered rowing, which Protzen practised just as actively as sailing. As a twelve-year-old, he had already taken part in the first Berlin rowing regatta in Grünau in 1880.
Months of travelling in a sailing rowing boat
In addition to his artistic work, Protzen became known to a wide audience primarily through his published reports on month-long voyages in a sailing rowing boat, from which he always returned with numerous drawings and paintings. In 1895, for example, he was drawn to drawings: Verein Seglerhaus am Wannsee/VSAW from Berlin via the Havel and Elbe to the opening celebrations of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal and the subsequent Kiel Week and then back to Berlin via Lübeck, Wismar, Schwerin, Waren and Oranienburg.
Today, Otto Protzen has been forgotten beyond the circle of insiders
His autobiography "40 Jahre auf dem Wasser - Aus den Logbüchern und Studienmappen von Otto Protzen" was published in 1924, a year before Protzen, impoverished due to inflation, died of cancer. In it, Protzen describes his entire life on and around the water, starting with his early youthful experiences, without revealing precise details about his parents or companions.
Today, Otto Protzen has been all but forgotten beyond the circle of insiders. In order to find out more about him, his life and his work, an internet presence for the sailor and artist was established after the research for the chronicle on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the VSaW and digitised original works were published, which were surprisingly found in locked drawers and on the floor of the clubhouse at the time.
Surprise find: a scroll with drawings by Protzen and Oertz
Since then, there has been a lot of feedback. However, the biggest surprise of all was when a lady with an affinity for sailing turned up at the club with a 1.20 metre long wooden box and said that it contained something from Otto Protzen. This attic find turned out to be a sensational surprise. It was a tightly wound, heavy roll with a diameter of 35 centimetres. The attempt to roll up the individual layers of paper, cardboard and parchment was stopped because they immediately showed tears. But it was clear that the entire contents must have come from Otto Protzen. A club member took on the task of smoothing out the contents of the rolls, scanning them and archiving them in folders according to size.
This took some time, but 123 drawings and sketches by Otto Protzen on paper, cardboard or parchment were found in the roll. A wide variety of designs for new boats and yachts - including 34 drawings for his special classes and sailing plans alone from 1900 to 1911 - as well as for boat fittings and even for a gun carriage for boat transport, but also a number of blueprints by Max Oertz. It was already known that Protzen had been involved in the construction and design of his special classes and had also developed sail plans with Max Oertz. Now, however, several drawings prove how close this co-operation was and that Otto Protzen can rightly be described as one of the early German boat and yacht designers.
- More under www.otto-protzen.de
Text: Rolf Bähr
