Dieter Högermann

Dieter Högermann in 2011

Dieter Högermann (* 1934 in Wellentrup , Lippe district , North Rhine-Westphalia ; † October 1, 2012 in Berlin ) was a German design historian, museum curator and collector .

Life

Dieter Högermann was born in 1934 in the village of Wellentrup in Lippe-Detmold. In 1935 his mother moved with him to Halberstadt to live with his grandparents, where he later attended the council and cathedral school and there in 1952 passed the Abitur.

In 1953, before the Wall was built , he moved to Braunschweig in western Germany . There he studied for a semester in the subject Biology , and was passing the educational publisher Westermann as a lecturer operates.

In 1967 he moved to Berlin and worked at the Wasmuth art bookstore , where he worked as an antiquarian selling and buying art historical literature until June 1970.

The acquaintance with the collector Karl-Heinz Bröhan , who founded a private museum in Berlin-Dahlem in 1973 , led to employment as a research assistant and administrative manager. In 1983 the Bröhan Museum moved to Charlottenburg and in 1996 was given the addition of the State Museum for Art Nouveau , Art Deco and Functionalism . Högermann worked there as a curator until his retirement in 2001 and was responsible for the purchase of art objects and the writing of scientific catalogs.

He was also an expert at the Munich auction house Quittenbaum.

Until his death in 2012, he curated various exhibitions, for example the exhibition “Rundum Form” about the designer Wolf Karnagel in the Leipzig Grassi Museum and Stilwerk Berlin in 2000 and the 2011 exhibition “The timeless form - porcelain and ceramic designs by Hermann Gretsch (1895-1950) ”in the Ceramic Museum Berlin .

Högermann is the author of numerous publications on topics of applied arts , the arts and crafts and product design, he u. a. published in the collector's journal. From 1973 to 2001 the inventory catalogs for glass art, art of the 20s and 30s as well as metal and porcelain art in the Bröhan Museum's collection were published. In 2007 he published the work “Gute Formen bei Tisch” on the porcelain design of Hans-Wilhelm Seitz.

collection

From the 1970s onwards he built up his own collection of tens of thousands of pieces over a period of four decades. The focus is on industrial design of the post-war period, everyday objects of " good shape " made of porcelain , glass , metal and plastic . The pieces are characterized by timeless functionality and aesthetics . They are linked to the style of the Werkbund and Bauhaus .

Pieces by well-known product designers of the 20th century are part of Dieter Högermann's collection, such as Marguerite Friedlaender , Gerhard Marcks , Wilhelm Wagenfeld , Trude Petri , Hermann Gretsch , Heinrich Löffelhardt , Tapio Wirkkala or Walter Gropius . Their designs and series have shaped and continue to shape the success of leading porcelain manufacturers in Germany and Scandinavia , including Arzberg , Fürstenberg , KPM Berlin , Rosenthal , Thomas Porcelain , KAHLA and Royal Copenhagen .

In addition to porcelain, other areas of product design also shape his collection, such as cutlery , radio and television sets ( Braun ), clocks ( Junghans ), coffee grinders , espresso machines , chairs and thermos flasks . The focus here was the design of the Ulm School of Design , for example by Max Bill or Reinhold Weiss .

In the last decade of his life, the focus was on setting up his own design museum based on his own collection items for Högermann. Talks and negotiations on this, however, were unsuccessful.

Friends of the Högermann Collection

In 2011, Dieter Högermann contacted the non-profit foundation Leuchtenburg , which at that time was working on the redesign of the porcelain collection at the Leuchtenburg in Thuringia into the new permanent exhibition “ Porcelain Worlds Leuchtenburg ”. With Högermann's participation, the non-profit sponsoring association Freundeskreis der Sammlung Högermann eV was established and the collection was transferred to the Leuchtenburg for integration into the Porcelain Worlds Show. In the Board of Directors act Sven-Erik superheater and Dr. Ulrike Kaiser with.

The transfer of the collection items in 1,100 banana boxes from Berlin to the Leuchtenburg attracted media interest.

After extensive processing and inventory, for the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus in 2019, pieces from his collection will be made public for the first time at the Leuchtenburg in the special exhibition “The new world of shapes. 20th Century Design from the Högermann Collection ”, curated by Gunnar Jakobson, on display.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The Högermann porcelain collection is to be shown at the Leuchtenburg. Retrieved January 22, 2019 . 
2. ^ Museum curator has died. Retrieved January 22, 2019 . 
3. ↑ Mayako Forchert: The collector Dieter Högermann, in: The new world of forms. Design of the 20th Century from the Högermann Collection, exhibition catalog for the special exhibition at the Leuchtenburg, published by the Leuchtenburg Foundation, Seitenroda 2019 .
4. ^ Karl H. Bröhan, Dieter Högermann, Reto Niggl: Porcelain - Art and Design 1889 to 1939 - From Art Nouveau to Functionalism, inventory catalog Volume V, Berlin 1993 .
5. ↑ Mayako Forchert: The collector Dieter Högermann, in: The new world of forms. Design of the 20th Century from the Högermann Collection, exhibition catalog for the special exhibition at the Leuchtenburg, published by the Leuchtenburg Foundation, Seitenroda 2019 .
6. ↑ obituary Dieter Högermann by the development association Ceramics Museum Berlin eV, 2012. Retrieved on January 2, 2019 . 
7. ↑ Dieter Högermann, Porcelain - good, honest, material-appropriate is always a trend, in: Slow Food, 04_2007, p. 28f. Retrieved January 2, 2019 . 
8. ^ Karl H. Bröhan, Dieter Högermann, Reto Niggl: Porcelain - Art and Design 1889 to 1939 - From Art Nouveau to Functionalism, inventory catalog Volume V, Berlin 1993 .
9. ↑ Dieter Högermann: Good forms at the table, porcelain design by Hans-Wilhelm Seitz, Jena 2007 .
10. ^ Gunnar Jakobson and Ulrike Kaiser: German porcelain design on the way to modernity, in: Museumsverband Thüringen (ed.): Thüringer Museumshefte. No. 1, 2018, pp. 65-68 .
11. ↑ Entry in the Stadtroda register of associations. Retrieved January 2, 2019 . 
12. ↑ dpa press release from September 7, 2017. Süddeutsche Zeitung , September 7, 2017, accessed on August 25, 2020 . 
13. ^ Official website of the Leuchtenburg Foundation for the special exhibition. Retrieved January 2, 2019 . 
14. ↑ Ulrike Merkel, Högermann porcelain collection to be shown at the Leuchtenburg, in: Thüringer Allgemeine Zeitung, June 8, 2018. Accessed January 2, 2019 .