Eduard Sturzenegger

Eduard Sturzenegger (born November 28, 1854 in Teufen AR ; † February 20, 1932 in St. Gallen ) was a Swiss manufacturer and art collector.

Life

Eduard Sturzenegger was a son of the tailor Bartholome Sturzenegger and Elsbeth Sturzenegger, nee. Meier. He completed an apprenticeship as an embroidery draftsman. From 1872 he worked as a designer in his own studio in St. Gallen. After receiving further training in Paris and Saint-Quentin in Picardy , he founded an embroidery factory in St. Gallen in 1883. In 1886 a shop was added. The products - especially fine robes and Appenzell hand embroidery - sold well; Sturzenegger was able to sell more B. in Lucerne , Basel , Geneva , St. Moritz and San Remo . The company was transformed into Ed. Sturzenegger AG, which existed until 2007.

The successful businessman Eduard Sturzenegger supported afflicted stickers in Eastern Switzerland.

Art collection

Eduard Sturzenegger was not married. In 1926 he donated 175 paintings from his art collection to the city of St. Gallen. Some of these are now in the St. Gallen Art Museum . The focus of the Sturzenegger collection was on works from the Munich School and paintings from the 19th century. Sturzenegger had "expanded his collection with the expert advice of the painter Carl Liner ". It seemed quite homogeneous, since it was "not a collection with art-historical goals or with any other scientific point of view", "but the bourgeois collection of an art lover who surrounds himself in his home with elegant pictures." As a result, as a contemporary judged, “[n] ot all the pictures [...] were“ gallery pieces ”, but that“ was ”not necessary in this collection, the advantage of which was its“ private ”character.

In 1937 the Sturzenegger collection was shown in the St. Gallen Villa am Berg and Villa Schiess on Rosenbergstrasse and in 1940 there was a joint exhibition of works from the holdings of the Art Museum and the Sturzenegger painting collection. However, the latter remained in municipal ownership for the time being. Actually, it was only supposed to stay in the art museum for the duration of the Second World War . In 1979 the two collections were nominally merged after the “ St. Gallen Museum Foundation ” had been established. In 2018 there were still 143 paintings from the former Sturzenegger collection in the St. Gallen Art Museum.

In 2017, as part of a provenance project , the paintings in the St. Gallen Art Museum began to be examined for their origin. The reason for this was the Gurlitt case and the finding that at least two of the 15,000 or so paintings in the museum were considered looted art .

Due to a lack of money, the provenance project was initially limited to the pictures from the Sturzenegger collection, even though these had been created and given to the city long before the beginning of the “ Third Reich ”. However, because the collection in St. Gallen was redesigned in the 1930s and because Sturzenegger also kept such a neat book, the investigation of the origin of the pictures is still necessary and promising, according to the Handelszeitung in May 2017 .

The island of the dead

The Jewish art dealer Fritz Nathan played a decisive role in the redesign of the Sturzenegger collection in St. Gallen during the National Socialist era , along with the mayor Konrad Naegeli and the art historian Walter Hugelshofer . He had run the Ludwigsgalerie in Munich and emigrated to Eastern Switzerland in 1936, from where he continued to trade in art. Nathan, who was in close contact with Oskar Reinhart , Emil Georg Bührle and Theodor Fischer , was still able to enter the German Reich and buy and sell works of art thanks to his good relationships even after his gallery was confiscated by the NSDAP . From the collection of pictures from Sturzenegger's possession, which was then located in St. Gallen, he sold several dozen paintings in Germany that were thought to be "artistically unpleasant" and in return acquired "more valuable" ones. As early as 1935 Hugelshofer had stated with regard to the pictures that were to be sold: «The majority [...] can only be used in Munich. Fortunately, there is currently a momentary boom for paintings of this kind. [...] Since this wave of bad taste is likely to subside again in the foreseeable future, it is very advisable to take advantage of this unexpected opportunity - happiness in disaster. "

By 1936, Nathan sold a total of 61 pictures in the collection, including Arnold Böcklin's Island of the Dead , which Sturzenegger had once hung in his office and which now came into the possession of Adolf Hitler and was housed in the Reich Chancellery .

When Nathan was no longer able to travel to Germany, he kept in contact with Karl Haberstock , Hitler's preferred art dealer, and was able to sell pictures that ended up in the so-called Führer Museum . He bought 26 paintings for the Sturzenegger collection in Switzerland. Despite his dealings with Nazi Germany and although he made a statement to the NZZ in 1944 that clearly showed that he knew about the existence of looted art , Nathan had a good reputation in Switzerland. He “supported” refugees who owned art collections by helping finance the onward journey of those who had become homeless by reselling their pictures, and he brought art collections to Switzerland on loan to prevent the National Socialists from accessing them.

In August 2018, as a result of the provenance research on the Sturzenegger Collection in St. Gallen, it was reported that, in addition to the paintings personally donated by Eduard Sturzenegger in 1926, a further 120 pictures from the Sturzenegger collection had been added from 1933, but the provenance research was carried out on the period from 1933 up to 1945 so far no concrete suspicion. With 77 images, however, there are still gaps in the proof of ownership for the period in question.

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Peter Müller: Eduard Sturzenegger. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
2. ↑ Provenance research project 2017/2018. List of works for the Sturzenegger painting collection (KMSG holdings), p. 71 (online at www.kunstmuseumsg.ch )
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} M. I., St. Gallen, painting from private ownership. In: The work. Architecture and Art 11, 1933, p. XXXIV.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Matthias Wohlgemutn, Samuel Reller: Sturzeneggersche painting collection in the art museum St.Gallen. Provenance research project 2017/18 supported by the Federal Office of Culture. Final report. July 2018, p. 3. ( digitized version )
5. ↑ sda / ise / mbü: Difficult search for looted art in St. Gallen. May 23, 2017 on www.handelszeitung.ch
6. ↑ ^{a b c d} Jörg Krummenacher: St. Gallen as the hub of the art trade. May 11, 2016 in Neue Zürcher Zeitung , www.nzz.ch.
7. ↑ Quoted from: Matthias Wohlgemut, Samuel Reller: Sturzeneggersche Gemäldesammlung in the Art Museum St.Gallen. Provenance research project 2017/18 supported by the Federal Office of Culture. Final report. July 2018, p. 7.
8. ↑ Jörg Krummenacher claims that the island of the dead hung in Sturzenegger's office in his article St. Gallen as a hub of the art trade , May 11, 2016 in Neue Zürcher Zeitung (online at www.nzz.ch ). The presentation of the provenance history of the third version of the painting, which came to the Reich Chancellery, on www.bildindex.de makes this seem rather improbable, since according to this presentation the picture did not enter the Sturzenegger collection until 1931.
9. ^ Agency sda: No evidence of Nazi looted art in the art museum. August 22, 2018 on www.suedostschweiz.ch