Emanuel Hoffmann (entrepreneur)

Emanuel Hoffmann (born May 4, 1896 in Basel ; † October 3, 1932 there ) was the son of Fritz Hoffmann-La Roche , the founder of the Basel pharmaceutical company of the same name, Hoffmann-La Roche .

Live and act

Family grave in the Hörnli cemetery , Riehen, Basel-Stadt

Grave in the Hörnli cemetery , Riehen, Basel-Stadt

Hoffmann attended schools in Basel and completed a law degree, which he completed with a doctorate. In 1921 he married Maja Stehlin (later Maja Sacher ). From 1921 he worked in his father's company in Basel, and in 1925 he was given the management of the branch in Brussels . There he and his wife began collecting art, which initially consisted of replacing inherited images with works by contemporary artists. The first work in the Hoffmann Collection was the Acrobat (1914) by Marc Chagall . This was followed by the Belgians Léon de Smet , Willem Jan van den Berghe and Edgard Tytgat , then Georges Rouault , Max Ernst , Hans Arp , Georges Braque , Pablo Picasso and Paul Klee .

In 1930 Hoffmann returned to Basel, was elected to the commission of the Basler Kunstverein in April of that year and the following year, on June 30, 1931, he was elected President of the Kunstverein to replace Albert Oeri, who had resigned . In 1932, at the age of 36, he died of injuries sustained when his vehicle collided with a train at an unsecured level crossing between Aarberg and Lyss . He left three children behind: the son Andreas Hoffmann, who died of leukemia in 1933, the daughter Vera Béatrice (later Vera Oeri-Hoffmann ) and the son Lukas "Luc" Hoffmann . In 1933 his widow set up the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation in his memory .

literature

• Franz Meyer (Vorw.): The collection of the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation . Kunstmuseum Basel November 7, 1970 to January 24, 1971, Basel 1970

Web links

• Literature by and about Emanuel Hoffmann in the catalog of the German National Library
• Theodora Vischer: Hoffmann, Emanuel. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .