Hans Krakhofer

Hans Krakhofer
Born	1918 Austria
Died	1997-10-18 Thunder Bay, Ontario
Occupation	Artist, draughtsman, mapmaker, illustrator
Employer	Great Lakes Paper Company

Hans Krakhofer (1918 – 18 October 1997) was an Austrian-born artist, draughtsman, mapmaker and illustrator who lived in Thunder Bay, Ontario, after the Second World War. He came to Canada as a German prisoner of war, worked in the bush as a logger, and later spent nearly three decades with the Great Lakes Paper Company. The Thunder Bay Museum calls him one of the city's unique artists.

Life

Krakhofer was born in Austria in 1918 and joined the German Navy in 1938. In 1941 he was aboard a converted merchant ship that fought the British heavy cruiser HMS Cornwall and sank within about three minutes; he was one of only a handful of survivors, treading water for three hours before the Cornwall picked him up. The artworks he carried were lost with the ship. After roughly nine months in a prisoner-of-war camp in England he was sent to a camp at Monteith, Ontario, near Timmins. Over about 18 months there he took several university courses in navigation and mathematics and kept developing his art.

In 1943 he volunteered for a distant logging camp at Red Cliff Bay on the Lake of the Woods, where about a hundred prisoners worked like ordinary loggers for 50 cents a day or per cord. A single guard was there, in Krakhofer's words, more for their protection than to stop escapes. A thief once stole his drawings, which he kept in a handmade suitcase; he threw the suitcase away in anger and started again. Prisoners wore denim jackets marked with a red circle on the back, which they joked made them "bullseyes". The museum reproduces a selection of his drawings and paintings from the Monteith and Red Cliff Bay camps, and other writers have noted his work among German prisoner-of-war art in Canada.

Krakhofer went back to Austria in 1946 but found the economy in ruins and applied to return to Canada for woods work. He returned to the region in 1953 and worked as a cutter and skidder for the Abitibi Power and Paper Company at Auden. His drafting skills led to a posting as a draughtsman at one of the large Thunder Bay mills, and in 1957 he joined the Great Lakes Paper Company as a draughtsman, illustrator and map maker, staying until he retired in 1984.

Art

Besides his illustrations and maps, Krakhofer made wood and soapstone carvings, sculpture and oil paintings, and much of his work shows logging, a trade he worked in for most of his life. In 1960 he painted a portrait for a retiring company vice-president, and co-workers then asked for portraits of their own; over the next 25 years he painted hundreds, and sold very little, giving most away as gifts. "My art is a reflection of my whole being," he said in 1975. The museum notes that his logging scenes record hand labour with axe and saw, horses, and the first caterpillar tractors of half a century ago.

Death

Krakhofer died in Thunder Bay on 18 October 1997.

Notes

• The museum's account draws mainly on "War survivor became gifted artist", The Great Laker, December 1984, and suggests further reading on prisoner-of-war camps in Northwestern Ontario in the Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society's Papers & Records (vol. 20, 1992, and vol. 35, 2007).
• The surname is rare in Thunder Bay. Rauha Elisabet Krakhofer, who died there in 2000, was probably a relative, possibly his widow, but no record linking them has been found.
• Images of his paintings are not reproduced here because his work is still in copyright.