Albert Birkle completed an apprenticeship as a decoration painter in his father's firm after the end of World War I and went on to study at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Berlin where he was in Arthur von Kamp's master class until 1927. During these years of studying, Albert Birkle developed a religiously-based sociocritical realism tinged with formal aesthetics and New Objectivity. Especially in his unique character heads he used a caricaturing aproach. In 1924 Birkle married the applied artist Elisabeth Starosta. The artist turned down a professorship at the Königsberg Academy in 1927 in order to be able to carry out commissions for church murals in Gaislingen, Katowice and other places. Also in 1927, he presented himself for the first time in a one-man show in Berlin where he could establish a circle of potent collectors. During the radical changes after the "Machtergreifung", Hitler's rise to power, Birkle moved to Salzburg, keeping his Berlin studio. In 1936 he showed his artwork at the National Gallery in Berlin and represented Germany at the Biennale in Venice. The same paintings that he had exhibited in the lagoon city were removed from the Haus der Deutschen Kunst in Munich in 1937, many more examples of his work were confiscated and labelled "entartet", degenerate. For a limited amount of time the artist was forbidden to paint. Birkle volunteered for the "Reichsarbeitsdienst", the "Reich Work Service", thus getting around the call-up for the army, for the time being. In 1946 Birkle was granted the Austrian citizenship. In his new land of choice he turned towards sacral art. He worked in stained glass and broke new ground pionieering the dalle de verre technique originating from France. Birkle became a titular professor in 1958. Thematically, the artist reiterated motives of the 1920's and 1940' and focussed almost exclusively on the medium of stained glass for the remainder of his career.
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