August Lederer

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August Lederer ( Egon Schiele , 1918)

August Lederer (born May 3, 1857 in Böhmisch Leipa , † April 30, 1936 in Vienna ) was an Austrian industrialist, collector and patron of the arts, who particularly promoted the artists of the Vienna Secession , and especially Gustav Klimt .

Life

Lederer made his fortune by buying up the loss-making state alcohol factory in Raab and turning it into a profitable company. Lederer also acquired a similar company, the Jungbunzlauer Spiritusfabriken, (the existing company Jungbunzlauer near Laa an der Thaya still belongs to the group ). In 1892 he married Serena Pulitzer (1867–1943). The portrait of Serena Lederer (probably from 1899) is one of the most famous portraits of Gustav Klimt . The couple resided in Vienna's BartensteingasseNo. 8, where it also kept most of its art treasures, other residences were in Raab, as well as the Ledererschlössel as a "summer residence" in Vienna Weidlingau .

The Lederer couple acquired the most important Klimt collection of their time at an enormous expense. Among other things, it had the “ Faculty Pictures ” of Jurisprudence and Philosophy, as well as (since 1915) the so-called Beethoven Frieze . The contact with Klimt was extremely friendly and so familiar that the daughter Elisabeth Franziska, born in 1894, was able to assert her extramarital origin from Gustav Klimt during the Nazi era and in 1940 received a corresponding “descent notice” according to which she was only to be considered a “half-Jewish” , while her two brothers Erich and Fritz were viewed as "full Jews".

The Lederer Collection was expropriated in 1938, most of it was stored in Immendorf Castle in Lower Austria and is said to have been burned there for the most part at the beginning of 1945 under unspecified circumstances. Against this, however, is the fact that individual paintings appeared after the war and were restituted.

literature

  • Christian M. Nebehay: Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and the Lederer family , Vienna 1979
  • Tobias G. Natter and Gerbert Frodl (eds.): Klimt and the women , (catalog book) Cologne-Vienna 2000

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ butterfly (weekly) , in the feature ., Issue No. 9/2015; Subject: The Beethoven Frieze , by Gustav Klimt ; Title: "Be embraced millions!"

Web links


personal data
SURNAME Lederer, August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian industrialist, collector and art patron
DATE OF BIRTH May 3, 1857
PLACE OF BIRTH Bohemian Leipa
DATE OF DEATH April 30, 1936
Place of death Vienna