Eduard von der Heydt
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Eduard Freiherr von der Heydt (born September 26, 1882 in Elberfeld (today in Wuppertal ), † April 3, 1964 in Ascona , Ticino ) was a German-Swiss banker, art collector and patron .
Life
Eduard von der Heydt was born as the second son of August and Selma (née Haarhaus) von der Heydt in the family home at Kerstenplatz 6 . Together with his one year older brother August , he was initially taught by private tutors. From the lower secondary school , the brothers attended today's Wilhelm-Dörpfeld-Gymnasium , where they passed their Abitur in 1900. They then began studying at the Faculty of Law and Politics in Geneva , which they continued a year later in Freiburg im Breisgau . While August joined his parents' banking house Von der Heydt Kersten , Eduard von der Heydt completed a short banking apprenticeship in Dresden and then served as a one-year volunteer with the 3rd Guard Uhlan Regiment in Potsdam from September 1902 . In 1905 he was awarded a Dr. rer. pole. PhD . The subject of his dissertation was the supervisory board in the German stock corporation.
He went to New York and worked there for a year for the August Belmont banking house , which represented the Frankfurt Rothschild bank in the USA.
In 1909 he founded the bank E. von der Heydt & Co in London with the participation of the Elberfeld parent company . It was expropriated without compensation as enemy property during the First World War in 1917. Von der Heydt, who was doing a military exercise in Germany when the war broke out, took part in the fighting in France as Rittmeister of his Uhlan regiment and was seriously wounded in 1915 by a shot in the stomach, the consequences of which he suffered throughout his life. He then switched to the diplomatic service and was Legation Counselor at the German embassy in The Hague . In 1918 he took part in the secret German-English negotiations in The Hague, but then resigned from the diplomatic service in the event of a German victory due to his strict rejection of territorial demands.
1919-1939
In 1919 von der Heydt and Vera von Schwabach (1899–1996), daughter of the Berlin banker Paul von Schwabach, married . The marriage was divorced in 1927 without children. He opened “Von der Heydt-Kersten's Bank” in Amsterdam in 1920 . This was particularly successful as a representative of the S. Bleichröder bank and other well-known banks. In addition, von der Heydt was involved in the Berlin “ Nordstern Bank”, which later traded as “Von der Heydt's Bank”, ran into economic difficulties in 1927, was taken over by the Thyssen family and renamed “August-Thyssen-Bank” in 1930. Von der Heydt remained a member of the supervisory board.
Due to personal contacts, he was introduced to ex-Kaiser Wilhelm II , who was living in exile in Doorn and who was in financial difficulties. Von der Heydt won his trust and became his private banker and asset manager. He was also able to help the Stinnes Group when it had problems with Berlin's banks.
On the recommendation of the Russian painter Baroness Marianne von Werefkin , von der Heydt bought Monte Verità near Ascona in the Swiss canton of Ticino in 1926 . Von der Heydt had Emil Fahrenkamp build a hotel on Monte Verità. He lived in Casa Anatta from 1926 , a villa in Ascona from 1929 and made the mountain a meeting place for well-known visitors from politics, art and society .
In the twenties von der Heydt began to collect East Asian and African art, based on the idea of the ars una : Art is not nationally or regionally restricted, but rather forms a fundamentally uniform human work. He built up one of the world's largest private collections of Chinese and Indian art, lending numerous works to museums.
Politically, von der Heydt represented national-conservative and monarchist positions , also because of his close personal relationships with the House of Hohenzollern . In 1926 he joined the Stahlhelm . Although his wife was of Jewish origin and he had numerous Jewish friends and acquaintances, letters from the 1920s also contained anti-Semitic remarks. Von der Heydt had been a member of the NSDAP since April 1, 1933 , from which he resigned in 1939, having acquired Swiss citizenship on April 28, 1937 . He then became a member of the Swiss " Confederation of Loyal Confederates National Socialist Weltanschauung ". He also received Chinese citizenship in the 1930s.
Second World War
During the time of National Socialism and the Second World War , the August-Thyssen-Bank processed all payment transactions for the German defense under Admiral Canaris . From 1939 to 1943, more than one million Swiss francs flowed to German agents all over the world, particularly in the USA and Mexico, via von der Heydt as the Swiss representative of August-Thyssen-Bank and from 1940 also via his personal accounts at the Swiss Bank Corporation. Other, less well-documented allegations against von der Heydt concern the procurement of foreign currency and the forwarding of Jewish ransom payments. To what extent von der Heydt was personally involved in these transactions is still controversial today. On the other hand, he was demonstrably supporting Jewish refugees in Switzerland and was in contact with diplomatic representatives of the Western powers, to whom he provided information and to whom he presented himself as an opponent of the Nazis.
Because of the payments to German agents, von der Heydt was temporarily taken into custody for a foreign power in 1946 for violating Swiss neutrality through intelligence work. A Swiss military court acquitted him on May 19, 1948 for lack of evidence. The court followed Heydts' admission that he had not been informed about the purpose of the payments. The US government came to a different conclusion and in 1948 confiscated all of the Heydts' American bank balances and his works of art on loan to the Buffalo Museum of Science , which are now stored in the Smithsonian Institution , as "hostile property".
post war period
In 1946 von der Heydt gave his East Asian art collection to the city of Zurich as the basis for the Rietberg Museum . In 1952 he donated his valuable collection of paintings to the Wuppertal Municipal Museum, which has been called the Von der Heydt Museum since 1961 . In 1956, the canton of Ticino became the owner of the parts of the collection that remained on Monte Verità. There are around 500 works of art from the 16th to 20th centuries as well as from China and Japan.
The "Culture Prize of the City of Wuppertal", which has been awarded since 1950, was renamed in 1957 to "Eduard von der Heydt Culture Prize". Eduard von der Heydt became an honorary citizen of the city of Wuppertal in 1952. He was also an honorary citizen of Ascona and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Zurich. In 1958 he was awarded the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany by the Federal President . In his will, he bequeathed Monte Verità to the Canton of Ticino.
Since 2008, the Rietberg Museum has checked the provenance of the 1,600 objects in the von der Heydt collection in order to track down Nazi-looted art . As a result of this review, compensation was paid to the heirs in 2010 for four works of art that von der Heydt had acquired in a foreclosure auction of the property of emigrated Jews in 1933 .
Criticism and controversy
From Heydt's NSDAP membership and the accusation that he actively supported the National Socialist regime during the Second World War, since the beginning of the 21st century demands to rename the von der Heydt Museum and the Eduard von der Heydt Culture Prize. In October 2002, members of the “Working Group on Attackable Traditions Care” disrupted a symposium on the museum's centenary with the demand that the museum be named after the Jewish painter Jankel Adler (1895–1949) who emigrated in 1933 .
On January 31, 2006, the chairman of the Else-Lasker-Schüler-Gesellschaft , Hajo Jahn , advocated renaming the Eduard von der Heydt Culture Prize to the Else Lasker-Schüler Prize on the occasion of the presentation of the Rhineland Taler in the Wuppertal Town Hall. On April 3, 2006, the Wuppertal City Council voted against the renaming requested by the WASG . One reason was that there was already an Else Lasker Schüler Dramatist Prize . In November 2006 efforts to rename the company continued. Supporters included former Eduard von der Heydt culture award winners such as Helmut Hirsch , Peter Brötzmann and Wolf Erlbruch , Else Lasker Schüler Dramatist Award winner Elfriede Jelinek and Ralph Giordano , Ingrid Bachér and Reiner Kunze .
On February 28, 2007, the Wuppertal Head of Culture, Marlis Drevermann, announced that the award of the prize would be suspended until the allegations were finally resolved. Michael Knieriem , Head of the Historical Center and the Engels House in Wuppertal, prepared an expert opinion on contemporary history on behalf of the City of Wuppertal, which was presented to the public on May 3, 2007 in the Mendelssohn Hall of the Wuppertal City Hall and discussed controversially. Knieriem was unable to find any evidence that Eduard von der Heydt was involved in National Socialist crimes as a perpetrator, but he considers his claim that he was not informed about the nature of the payments to be untrustworthy. Von der Heydt, however, was not a staunch National Socialist, but a representative of the conservative upper class; his behavior was dictated by the desire to secure his assets and his art collection through contacts on all sides. In the opinion of the critics, however, such opportunistic behavior also lacks the moral quality that should be demanded for the bearer of a respected cultural prize.
In August 2008, the city of Wuppertal decided to rename the Eduard von der Heydt Prize to the “ von der Heydt Culture Prize ” in order to honor the patronage of the entire family. The prize has been awarded again under this new name since autumn 2008.
ancestors
| Pedigree of Eduard Freiherr von der Heydt | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Great-great-grandparents |
Daniel Heinrich von der Heydt |
Johann Wilhelm Blank |
Johann Peter Boeddinghaus |
Johann Abraham Siebel |
Johann Kaspar Haarhaus |
Johann Peter Bargmann |
Johann Jakob Aders |
Johann Peter Boeddinghaus |
| Great grandparents |
August Freiherr von der Heydt |
Karl Heinrich Boeddinghaus (1797–1872) |
Jacob Haarhaus (1798–1881) |
Alfred Aders (1809–1880) |
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| Grandparents |
August Freiherr von der Heydt (1825–1867) |
Gustav Haarhaus (1831–1911) |
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| parents |
August Freiherr von der Heydt (1851–1929) |
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|
Eduard Freiherr von der Heydt (1882–1964) |
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Works
- Eduard von der Heydt / Werner von Rheinbaben : On Monte Verità. Memories and thoughts about people, art and politics , Atlantis, Zurich 1958.
literature
- Karl With : Paintings from East and South Asia from the Yi Yuan Collection [d. i. Eduard von der Heydt]. With accompanying text by K. With. Cover u. Endpaper based on a design by Georg Baus. Schwabe, Basel 1924
- Robert Landmann (d. I. Werner Ackermann): Monte Verità. The story of a mountain , Berlin: Adalbert Schultz Verlag 1930.
- Stefan Balazs: The inscriptions of the Baron Eduard von der Heydt collection, special print from the East Asian magazine. 20th year. De Gruyter & Co Verlag, Berlin 1934.
- Wolfgang Köllmann : Heydt, Eduard Freiherr von der. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7 , p. 77 ( digitized version ).
- Curt Riess : Ascona. History of the strangest village in the world. Zurich: Europa Verlag 1964 (1st edition), 1977 (3rd edition) - In this work, Eduard von der Heydt is referred to as "Mr. X" from p. 194 onwards
- Sabine Fehlemann and Stamm, Rainer (Ed.): The Von der Heydts. Bankers, Christians and Patrons. Müller + Busmann, Wuppertal 2001, 184 pages, ISBN 3-928766-49-X
- Francesco Welti: “The Baron, the Art and the Nazi Gold”, Verlag Huber Frauenfeld, 2008, ISBN 978-3-7193-1475-0
- Eberhard Mros: Monte Verità phenomenon. Nine volumes, self-published by the author, Ascona 2008/2011
- Eberhard Illner (ed.): Eduard von der Heydt. Art collector - banker - patron. Prestel, Munich / London / New York 2013, ISBN 978-3-7913-4204-7 . (Accompanying the exhibition From Buddha to Picasso. The collector Eduard von der Heydt in the Museum Rietberg Zurich , April 20 - August 18, 2013 and another exhibition in the Von der Heydt Museum , Wuppertal, from October 13, 2015 to August 28 , 2013 . February 2016.)
Movies
- Report on art-tv.ch by Janine Rudolf about the exhibition From Buddha to Picasso , 2013.
- Trailer for the exhibition From Buddha to Picasso , 2013. Production: Museum Rietberg (Albert Lutz, Esther Tisa Francini), Jean Claude Plattner.
Web links
- Literature by and about Eduard von der Heydt in the catalog of the German National Library
- Exhibition “From Buddha to Picasso. The collector Eduard von der Heydt ”in the Museum Rietberg, Zurich
- Winner of the Eduard von der Heydt Culture Prize ( Memento from March 25, 2004 in the Internet Archive )
- Page with numerous photos of the Heydts and his houses
Individual evidence
- ↑ Robert Landmann, Ascona - Monte Verità, In Search of Paradise, Frankfurt / M., Berlin, Vienna 1979, pp. 190 f
- ↑ Dieter Nelles / Stephan Stracke: US archives burden Eduard von der Heydt ( memento from February 19, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF, with document facsimiles; 3.5 MB)
- ↑ Lidia Zaza Sciolli, Mara Folini: The Collection Baron von der Heydt at Monte Verita. In the exhibition catalog: Dal Seicento olandese alle avanguardie del primo Novecento. Museo Cantonale d'Arte, Lugano 1996, p. 72.
- ^ Philipp Meier: Provenance researcher Esther Tisa Francini. “It's about dealing with history” , NZZ , July 27, 2013, p. 36
- ↑ “Price needs a name. The Wuppertaler von der Heydt Prize will be suspended until the eponym's Nazi past has been researched, ” the daily newspaper -NRW, March 1, 2007
- ↑ Andreas Lukesch: Eduard von der Heydt: For lack of evidence, Westdeutsche Zeitung of May 4, 2007
- ↑ The long dispute over von der Heydt ends. WAZ dated August 24, 2008
- ^ "Die von der Heydts from Elberfeld", Born-Verlag 1964, p. 69
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Heydt, Eduard von der |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Heydt, Eduard Freiherr von der (full name); now |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German-Swiss banker, art collector and patron |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 26, 1882 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Elberfeld |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 3, 1964 |
| Place of death | Ascona , Ticino , Switzerland |