Curt Glaser

This article is about the art historian and collector Curt Glaser. For other people see Kurt Glaser .

Curt Glaser (born May 29, 1879 in Leipzig , † November 23, 1943 in Lake Placid , New York , USA ) was a German art historian , art critic and collector . In 1941 his German citizenship was revoked.

Life

Memorial plaque , Matthäikirchplatz 8, in Berlin-Tiergarten

Glaser's parents, the businessman Simon Glaser (1841–1904) and his wife Emma Glaser, b. Haase (1854–1927), moved to Berlin soon after the birth of their son. Glaser, born of the Jewish faith, converted to the Protestant faith around 1911. He had two brothers, the physician Felix Glaser (1874–1931) and the art dealer Paul Glaser (1885–1946).

Curt Glaser received his doctorate in medicine in Munich in 1902 and then began studying art history in Freiburg, Munich, and Berlin, where he worked with Heinrich Wölfflin in 1907 with a thesis on Hans Holbein the Elder. Ä. received his doctorate one more time . As a doctor he only practiced in the military field during the First World War.

From 1909 to 1920 he worked as a research assistant and assistant and from 1920 to 1924 as custodian at the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett . From 1924 to 1933 he was director of the Berlin Art Library until he was dismissed by the National Socialists.

In 1903 he married Elsa Kolker from Breslau († 1932), daughter of the industrialist and art collector Hugo Kolker , with whom he built up an important art collection including works by Max Beckmann , Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , Ernst Oppler , Henri Matisse and Edvard Munch . In 1933 he married Maria Milch (daughter: Eva Renate 1935–1943) and in June 1933 emigrated to Switzerland. Before emigrating, he was forced to sell large parts of his collection below value through the Max Perl auction house.

At times the Glasers also lived in Italy, where Glaser was working on a story of the Italian Renaissance. The couple emigrated to the USA via Cuba in 1941 and settled in New York. Glaser died after a long illness without having found another professional foothold in exile.

As an art historian, he campaigned for the re-evaluation of old German art and, together with Karl Scheffler, edited the series Deutsche Meister , published by Insel Verlag . At the same time, he dealt with contemporary art and is one of the early supporters of expressionist art in Germany, as well as one of the first art scholars to deal with East Asian art.

In addition to his academic work, Glaser wrote regular art reviews for the daily newspaper Hamburgischer Correspondent from 1902 to 1910 . From 1909 he contributed to the journal Kunst und Künstler published by Karl Scheffler and was also the Berlin editor of the Kunstchronik . From 1918 to 1933 he was the art reporter for the daily newspaper Berliner Börsen-Courier .

In 2012, Glazer's heirs and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation reached an agreement on the division of the works of art held by the State Museums in Berlin from Glazer's property, which had been auctioned off at a lower price.

A memorial plaque was unveiled on May 9, 2016 in the Berlin Art Library , Berlin-Tiergarten , Matthäikirchplatz 8 .

In Switzerland , the 1933 acquisitions by the Kunstmuseum Basel at the Perl auctions in Berlin are controversial . In 2018, the Basler Zeitung is of the opinion that the purchases were by no means made in good faith and at market prices, as Swiss political art officials such as Michael Koechlin and Christoph Eymann had claimed in 2008. The newspaper cites several documents according to which the Swiss buyers knew very well in 1933 that Glaser was in dire straits and that the conditions of the Washington Declaration on Looted Art, according to which the heirs had to negotiate restitution of looted art or compensation, were met. It is clear that the documents, which are quite accessible, would have been available to the political experts from 2008 by 2010 at the latest. The newspaper considers the complete defense against inheritance claims with clear words to be inappropriate.

Fonts

• Hans Holbein the Elder (= Art History Monographs 11). Hiersemann, Leipzig undated
• The art of East Asia. The periphery of their thinking and shaping. Insel Verlag, Leipzig 1913
• Two centuries of German painting. From the beginnings of German panel painting in the late 14th century to its heyday in the early 16th century. Bruckmann, Munich 1916
• Edvard Munch. Cassirer, Berlin 1917
• The woodcut. From its beginnings in the 15th century to the present day. Cassirer, Berlin 1920
• Vincent van Gogh (= Library of Art History 9). EA Seemann, Leipzig 1921
• Lukas Cranach. German champion. Insel, Leipzig 1921 Glaser, Curt Lukas Cranach
• The graphics of the modern age. From the beginning of the 19th century to the present. Cassirer, Berlin 1922
• Eduard Manet: Facsimiles after drawings and watercolors. Publications of the Marées Society. Piper, Munich 1922
• Gothic woodblock prints. Propylaea, Berlin 1923
• Paul Cézanne (= Library of Art History 50). EA Seemann, Leipzig 1923
• Hans Holbein the Elder J. Drawings. Schwabe, Basel 1924
• Old German painting. Bruckmann, Munich 1924
• East Asian Sculpture, Volume 11: The Art of the East. Ed. William Cohn . Cassirer, Berlin 1925
• Japanese theater. Würfel, Berlin 1930
• Les peintres primitifs allemands du milieu du XIV.e siècle à la fin du XVe. van Oest, Paris 1931
• America is building! Cassirer, Berlin 1932
• Visiting Edvard Munch in Ekely - 1927. Meyer, Basel 2007, ISBN 978-3-905799-01-9

literature

• Hartmut Walravens : German East Asian Studies and Exile (1933–1945). Curt Glaser * May 29, 1879 in Leipzig, † November 23, 1943 New York. A preliminary list of scriptures . In: Hartmut Walravens (Ed.): Bibliography and reports. Festschrift for Werner Schochow . Munich / London / New York et al. 1990, p. 231-266 .
• Glaser, Curt , in: Ulrike Wendland: Biographical manual of German-speaking art historians in exile. Life and work of the scientists persecuted and expelled under National Socialism . Munich: Saur, 1999, ISBN 3-598-11339-0 , pp. 197-200
• Glaser, Curt. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 9: Glass Green. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-598-22689-6 , pp. 3-6.
• Andreas Strobl : Curt Glaser. Art historian, art critic, collector. A German-Jewish biography . Böhlau, Cologne 2006, ISBN 3-412-26305-2 .
• Andreas Strobl: "You always stay outside with words". Curt Glaser - between art criticism and the desire to collect. In: Departure into the modern age. Collectors, patrons and art dealers in Berlin 1880–1933 . Edited by Anna-Dorothea Ludwig, Julius H. Schoeps , Ines Sonder, with assistance from Anna-Carolin Augustin. DuMont, Cologne 201.2 ISBN 978-3-8321-9428-4 .
• Curt Glaser. Historian of East Asian Art. With his posthumous work "Materials for an Art History of the Quattrocento in Italy". Edit with introduction, list of scriptures and register. and ed. by Hartmut Walravens. Contributions by Setsuko Kuwabara (= Berlin State Library. New acquisitions by the East Asia Department, special issue 31). Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-88053-183-3 .
• Glaser, Curt , in: Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 . Munich: Saur, 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 114
• Glaser, Curt , in: Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 . Volume 2.1. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 379

Web links

Commons : Curt Glaser  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Curt Glaser in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ First published in 2012: Curt Glaser. Historian of East Asian Art. With his posthumous work "Materials for an Art History of the Quattrocento in Italy". With introduction, list of publications and index edited and edited by Hartmut Walravens. With contributions by Setsuko Kuwabara. Berlin State Library. New acquisitions by the East Asia Department, special issue 31. Berlin 2012 ISBN 978-3-88053-183-3
2. ↑ See Setsuk Kuwabara: Curt Glaser in Japan. In: Curt Glaser. Historian of East Asian Art .
3. ^ From the collection of a bird-free, FAZ , December 3, 2012, p. 25.
4. ↑ Basler Zeitung : Looted art files unchecked. Eymann, former member of the Basel government, is responsible for a sham investigation into the Glaser collection in the art museum. January 9, 2018