Alois Schardt (art historian)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alois Jakob Schardt (born December 28, 1889 in Frickhofen , † December 24, 1955 in Los Alamos , New Mexico ) was a German art historian and museum director who dealt with modern art at an early age.

Life

After graduating from high school, Alois Schardt did a year of voluntary military service and then studied philosophy, German, art history and archeology in Marburg , Münster , Berlin and Würzburg from 1911 to 1914 . After suffering a nervous breakdown in World War I after the Battle of the Marne , he was a reserve officer from 1914 to 1916 and was finally dismissed as unfit for duty. On July 7, 1916, he married the actress Mary Dietrich in Berlin. In 1917 he was promoted to Dr. phil. PhD. After the war he worked as a research assistant at the Egyptian department of the Staatliche Museen Berlin until 1920 , then for a short time at the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum-Berlin and from 1920 to 1923 in the same position at the Nationalgalerie Berlin .

In 1923 he moved to Hellerau with his wife at the time to take over the management of the reform pedagogical New School in Hellerau . During his time in Hellerau, Schardt worked on an exhibition of expressionist art, which he presented in the summer of 1925, accompanied by lectures on art history that he held himself, in the Hellerau Festival Hall . The New School Hellerau had to close in 1925 due to the poor general economic situation.

In 1926 he succeeded Max Sauerlandt as director of the Moritzburg Municipal Museum in Halle (Saale) , where he built up one of the most important collections of modern art. In 1930 the University of Halle appointed him honorary professor for museum studies and art history.

After the seizure of power of the Nazis was Ludwig Justi released in July 1933 as director of the Berlin National Gallery and Schardt as the successor to the director of the new department in the Kronprinzenpalais appointed. At first, he seemed to be suitable for this post in the Prussian Ministry of Culture, as he was on the one hand a proven connoisseur of Expressionism and on the other hand a leading member of the National Socialist League for German Culture in Halle and a member of the NSDAP since May 1933 . He was supposed to act as a mediator between the efforts to establish expressionism, especially that of the Brücke , as statecraft and the violent attacks of national propaganda against modern art. Schardt had dealt early on with racial idiosyncrasies in art and tried to defend 'Nordic' expressionism in the folkish sense as a continuation of Gothic and Romantic German art. He was close to the ideologues of the National Socialists, but appeared essentially apolitical and naively convinced.

Schardt tried the attack surface of the Kronprinzenpalais to reduce by compromise in the hanging, but ultimately had no success: After a first reclassification of Ministers of Education Rust had been rejected, the basement was now the Romantics like Caspar David Friedrich , sheets and Runge , the intermediate level Marées , Feuerbach u. a. The Expressionists were exhibited as the highlight of the 'German desire for art' (after Schardt): Emil Nolde , Ernst Barlach , Franz Marc , Oskar Kokoschka , Wilhelm Lehmbruck , die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter . All exhibited artists had to provide proof of Aryan . The works of New Objectivity were moved to the Prinzessinnenpalais , and many Expressionists were removed from the exhibition. Despite the redesign, Schardt was dismissed on November 20, 1933, after he had previously been banned from speaking or writing in public.

In 1934 he went back to Halle and worked on a monograph on Franz Marc, which contained Marc's first catalog raisonné, which he wrote together with his wife and Marc's widow, Maria Marc , and which he published in Berlin in 1936. It contains 224 oil paintings, 374 pictures in tempera, watercolor and mixed media, 129 drawings, 45 drawings and watercolors on postcards, 32 sketchbooks, 17 lithographs, 21 woodcuts, 10 sculptures, 41 handicrafts and 3 copies. After an opening speech at a Marc Memorial exhibition in the Berlin gallery Nierendorf , he was arrested in 1936 and then asked to be transferred to retirement. In 1937 his teaching license was withdrawn, and until 1939 he was only active as a writer. When he traveled to Los Angeles with his family in the same year to prepare a propaganda exhibition (which never opened), he never returned to Germany and initially worked as a language teacher, set builder and speaker. In 1946 he became director of the Art Department of Olive Hill Foundation and taught at Marymount College of the University of Southern California .

Fonts (selection)

  • Franz Marc . Rembrandt-Verlag, Berlin 1936, pp. 161–175 catalog raisonné
  • The initial. Imagination and letter painting of the early Middle Ages . Rembrandt-Verlag, Berlin 1938 (Art Books of the People; Vol. 25)
  • The art of the Middle Ages in Germany . Rembrandt-Verlag, Berlin 1943

literature

  • Ruth Heftrig, Olaf Peters , Ulrich Rehm (Eds.): Alois J. Schardt. An art historian between the Weimar Republic, the “Third Reich” and exile in America (Writings on modern art historiography, Volume 4). Academy, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-05-005559-6
  • Andreas Hüneke:  Schardt, Alois. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-428-11203-2 , p. 565 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Ulrike Wendland: Biographical handbook of German-speaking art historians in exile. Life and work of the scientists persecuted and expelled under National Socialism. Part 2: L – Z. Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11339-0 , pp. 599-601.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Klaus-Peter Arnold: From sofa cushions to urban planning. The history of the Deutsche Werkstätten and the garden city of Hellerau. Verlag der Kunst, Dresden, Basel 1993, page 360 ​​ff
  2. ^ Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 515.
  3. ↑ Alois J. Schardt, Franz Marc, Berlin 1936, pp. 161–175.
personal data
SURNAME Schardt, Alois
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schardt, Alois Jakob (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art historian
DATE OF BIRTH December 28, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Frickhofen
DATE OF DEATH December 24, 1955
Place of death Los Alamos , New Mexico