Family Background

Within the diverse viewpoints and sources of information about Ernst available, perhaps some of the most profound bits of information, can be found in the autobiographical texts, which Ernst Began in 1927 and continued throughout most, of the rest, of his life. These texts are, what some might call: products of a self-conscious adult constructing or reconstructing childhood memories, and sometimes responding to those conditions/memories he encountered, in the work he creates.

Max Ernst's parents came from the region of Aachen, in Germany. His father, Philipp Joseph Ernst (1862-1942), was born in Jülich, Grew up in Aachen, and returned back Aachen in order to teach in a nearby rural district in 1883 after graduating from the Teachers' college in Kornelmünster. There he met Louise kopp (1865-1949), whom he married in 1889 after having taken a position as a teaching assistant in 1887 at the Institute for the Deaf and Dumb in Brühl, a town along the Rhine six miles south of Cologne. They acquired a house on Schloßstrasse, just across the street from an 18th-century Catholic church, where the family worshiped and eventually presented eight children to be baptized.

Max was born on April 2, 1891, he was the third child and oldest surviving son of the family. The marriage of Philipp and Louise Ernst has been described as an overall happy one, with the kind and good-natured Louise always complementing Philipp, who could be a bit stubborn, insistent on his privacy, and difficult to know or understand. Philipp, was often characterized as a man strongly bonded to the Catholic church, with a love of fatherland, and the skill as a self-taught amateur artist with a love for nature.  

Each of those traits and values of his father, apparently made a mark on Max in one way or another.

One of Ernst's first comments on his childhood memories appeared in 1927. He described the atmospheres and events of his (early) personal life as very significant elements in the focus of his work.

*Camfield, William A.

Max Ernst: Dada and the Dawn of Surrealism. Verlag, Munich, Houston: Prestel, the Menil Collection, 1993 (page 31-32)