Ernst Buchner (art historian)

Ernst Buchner (born March 20, 1892 in Munich ; † June 3, 1962 there ) was a German art historian and museum director.

Life

Buchner's father was an academic painter, his mother a sister of the sculptor Josef Flossmann . Brother Georg later taught as a successful architect and professor at the arts and crafts school. After graduating from the Theresiengymnasium , Buchner studied art history at the University of Munich from 1912 . He was particularly interested in German painting and graphics from the late Gothic period and the Dürer period. During the First World War he served in the artillery and was awarded the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class. It was in 1921 Heinrich Wolfflin with a thesis The works of the Munich City painter Jan Polack doctorate . First he worked as a trainee without income , then as an assessor at the Bavarian State Painting Collections and the Graphic Collection in Munich and was active at the Munich Residence Museum in 1922/23 .

In 1926 he was appointed curator . From 1928 the thirty-six-year-old was director of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne and organized a retrospective on Wilhelm Leibl . In 1932 Buchner was appointed general director of the Bavarian State Painting Collections. In 1935 he showed "Beginnings of Munich Panel Painting" in special exhibitions, and in 1938 " Albrecht Altdorfer and his circle".

Buchner, who belonged to the Kampfbund für Deutsche Kultur , joined the NSDAP in May 1933 . According to Petropoulos, he is said to have "supported the Gestapo in the confiscation of Jewish works of art". Buchner had been professor of art history at the University of Munich since 1940. In 1941 the Bavarian Academy of Sciences accepted him as a full member.

In June 1942, he traveled on behalf of the Berlin Chancellery in the unoccupied France to the after Pau on the Atlantic Pyrenees outsourced Ghent Altarpiece into the German Reich to create. After the Second World War , Buchner asserted in an interrogation with the art theft specialists of the American “ Office of Strategic Services ” that this was not a seizure, but an air raid protection measure. However, he admitted that the altar was intended for the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin .

During the denazification process , Buchner was classified as a fellow traveler . In 1945 Buchner was replaced as General Director by Eberhard Hanfstaengl and, after his retirement on April 1, 1953, reinstated as General Director of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen. On December 8, 1953, he gave the keynote address at the public meeting of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences on the " Alte Pinakothek Munich", which was destroyed ten years ago . On June 7, 1957, he opened the rebuilt collection of paintings in the presence of Federal President Theodor Heuss .

Fonts (selection)

• Upper German art of the late Gothic and Reformation period , Augsburg 1924
• The elder Breu as a painter , Augsburg 1928
• The Augsburg panel painting of the late Gothic period , Augsburg 1928
• Masterpieces of older art from the German art trade , Cologne 1930
• The Battle of Alexander , Der Kunstbrief No. 21, Berlin 1943
• The Emmaus miracle by Adam Elsheimer , Munich 1950
• The German portrait of the late Gothic and early Dürer period , Berlin 1953
• The Alte Pinakothek Munich. Masterpieces of European Painting , Munich 1957
• German painting of the Dürer period , Munich 1959

literature

• Lincoln Kirstein: The Quest of the Lamb, Our Army unearths a tremendous German hoard and prepares the greatest exhibition of stolen art in modern history , Town and Country, New York September 1945, p. 182
• Theodor Müller : Obituary Ernst Buchner , Bavarian Academy of Sciences, yearbook 1962, Munich 1962, p. 185 ff.
• Ernst Buchner , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 29/1962 of July 9, 1962, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely available)
• Jonathan Petropoulos: The Faustian Bargain, The Art World in Nazi Germany . New York 2000, ISBN 0-19-988094-8 , p. 34
• Hans-Michael Körner (Ed.): Large Bavarian Encyclopedia. Vol. 1, Munich 2005, p. 252.
• Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Ernst Buchner in the catalog of the German National Library
• Federal archive inventory B 323/191, reports from the Office of Strategic Services, Art Looting Interrogation Unit on the “Special Order Linz” . Ernst Buchner's report on the Ghent Altarpiece

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ernst Klee: The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 77.
2. ↑ Art Looting Investigation Unit Detailed Interrogation Report of Ernst Buchner July 31, 1945 US Army ( Memento of the original from February 16, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ^ Donald M. McKale: Nazis after Hitler: how perpetrators of the Holocaust cheated justice and truth . Lanham, Md., Rowman & Littlefield 2012, ISBN 978-1-4422-1316-6 , p. 235.