@agracier Thank you for your post below. Fascinating. I was familiar with many of the pictures but not the story behind the story. Nice to have history like this recorded so it won't be lost.
There are so many things that ought to be told about these erotic artists. And there are so many besides Gert Gagelmann who were trained before the war, probably as professional illustrators at a trade school or art academy. Gagelmann also produced many other clandestine erotic illustrations alongside his fashion drawings and even propaganda postcards during the war that were just that tad extra alluring, about women employed in the war effort. They pop up on the internet here and there or at auctions. But of course his main work was in a normal job. In his case as fashion illustrator/manager for a large Berlin magazine.
There were many other erotic illustrators worth mentioning and also researching their lives.
Like the two 'Jim's , one German and the other Swiss. They both made illustrations of dominant females, often BBW Teutonic types administering punishments to submissive males. One made use of collage at times in his works, adding heads cut out of magazines presumably and glued onto voluptuous naked bodies. Both were true amateurs, working only for their own pleasure apparently.
There was also Paul Proett, a German illustrator who was fascinated by corsets and restraining devices, having himself been subjected to them in his youth. He also produced a commercial series entitled 'Bizarre Straf Praxis'(Bizarre Punishment Appointment) with a strong medical theme. I know I have copies of his works in my albums.
Then there was Frederic, a German despite the French name. His specialty was again of dominant ladies subjecting young men/teenagers to punishments of ingenious sorts. Some of his series were for published books like 'Rolfi' but most were for private sale to clients.
There was a lady called Helga Bode, who supposedly illustrated her teenage life growing up being spanked, enemaed, clystered and anally fixated in well executed color drawings. Not surprising since she was supposed to be a professional illustrator designing wallpaper, cloth and rugs. She loaned her work to her therapist and these somehow ended up being published in many of Interbellum 'sexual research' books published before the Nazi takeover in 1933. They are not that hard to find on the Internet.
The same happened to a person named R/Richard Hegemann. Once again someone fascinated by strong domineering ladies and weak, punished young men/adolescents, all drawings with an apparent autobiographical content.
Many of these illustrations were published in weekly installment magazines or in large 'serious' but still lavishly illustrated sexual research books from Germany and Austria prior to 1933.
Chances are most of the original illustrations were housed in Doctor Magnus Hirschfeld's Berlin based Institute for Sexual Research, until it was shut down and pillaged in May 1933, not long after the Nazi takeover, the contents publicly burned. We now have these illustration only as copies made from published books.
There was also the enterprising German Ernst Schertl who published numerous books and installment magazines on Nudism and sexual fetishism of all kinds. Many of his publication were republished after the war in the 1950s-60s and can still be found at specialist bookshops. They have names like the 4 volume, prodigiously illustrated 'Flangelantismuss als Literarisches Motiv' (Flagelantism/punishment as Literary Motive). Such works were actually just excuses to published numerous erotic illustrations.
It is a shame there are no serious historical studies on such artists, not even short biographical articles. Most were trained or learned their craft in the Interbellum, probably in the 1920s at a trade school or art academy. Perhaps their lives were not really fascinating or extraordinary, but it would be interesting to know how and why they drew what they drew, who they knew, who their friends or possible clients were. It is certainly known that they passed their work around to like minded people with the same erotic tastes or else worked for commissions. Many also made illustrations as a form of therapy, showing/giving them to their therapists.
And the above are only the German ones I know of. The French erotic illustrators are more numerous, like Carlo, Courbouleix, Topfer, Jim Black, Gaston Goor (Dutch I think), Sadie-Maso (of which I have an original), Gaston Smit, René Giffey, Fontana, J. Malteste, Chimot and many others who were more attuned to the artistic styles of the times and went beyond 'mere' illustrating.
But I doubt there will ever be any or much serious interest in writing about their lives or work.
btw: you can find some of the artists mentioned above (and many other erotic artists), at this lovingly maintained site of erotic illustrations, all free to access and download:
https://www.honesterotica.com/illustrators
and here as well concerning vinatge erotic art in general:
http://vintage-erotica-forum.com/t53609-p362-eroticpornographic-artprints-and-illustrations-merged.html