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Wolfgang Lettl

German artist (1919-2008)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 21, 2026
Entity authorityQ877705 ↗
Source-derived summary

Wolfgang Lettl (18 December 1919 – 10 February 2008) was a surrealist painter who was born and who died in Augsburg, Germany. His retrospective was exhibited at the Schaezlerpalais in 2019.

In 1939, at the age of 20, Wolfgang joined the German Army and served as a communications officer in occupied Paris from 1940 to 1943, during which time he worked on his watercolours and first became exposed to surrealism. Later in the war, he became a reconnaissance airman in Norway, where he was captured at the end of the war and held for four months.

He returned to Augsburg in 1945, and worked there as a freelance painter from 1945 to 1948. In 1949, however, the currency reform forced him to turn to construction work to make ends meet. He continued working on his landscapes, portraits and surrealist art while working construction jobs and odd jobs. From 1954 onwards, he was able to concentrate on his art.

He married Franziska Link in 1949.

Success with his freelance art led him to develop his surrealism, and in 1963 he participated in the Grosse Kunstausstellung München (the "Grand Art Exhibition Munich"), becoming a member of the Neue Münchener Künstlergenossenschaft ("New Munich Artists' Cooperative Society").

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Wolfgang Lettl” is german artist (1919-2008). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Wolfgang, Lettl and German, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1919, 2008, 2019, 1939—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1919-12-18. For this dossier, Wolfgang, Lettl and German is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “german artist (1919-2008)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q877705. VIAF identifies the subject as 40181537. The Library of Congress control number is n79146858. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1919, 2008, 2019 and 1939.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Wolfgang Lettl”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Wolfgang Lettl primary sources, Wolfgang Lettl archive and Wolfgang research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Wolfgang Lettl”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Wolfgang Lettl” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.