Erhard Göpel

Erhard Göpel (born June 3, 1906 in Leipzig , † October 29, 1966 in Munich ) was a German art historian and involved in art theft in the German-occupied territories during the Nazi era . At the same time he was a helper in need for the painter Max Beckmann , who was defamed as part of the “ Degenerate Art ” campaign . After the Second World War and until the end of his life, he and his wife Barbara Göpel endeavored to work on Beckmann's work, such as creating a catalog raisonné and other publications.

Life and work until 1939

Erhard Göpel studied art history , especially with Wilhelm Pinder and Theodor Hetzer , who received his doctorate in 1937 with a thesis on »Anthonis van Dyck, Philipp Le Roy and the copper engravers«. Göpel was also a fan of modern art and, as an art critic, wrote for liberal daily newspapers such as the Vossische Zeitung , Berliner Tageblatt and the Frankfurter Zeitung , articles for the journal Kunst und Künstler, published by Karl Scheffler .

Time of the Second World War

When the war broke out, Göpel served as an interpreter for various Wehrmacht staffs . Despite his liberal inclinations and love for modern art, Göpel was involved in the art politics of National Socialism. From February 1942 he was the representative of the Linz special commission to the Reich Commissioner in the occupied Dutch territories and charged with safeguarding the interests of the Linz special commission in France and Belgium. The special order Linz was an organization set up personally by Hitler and directly subordinate to him, which had the task of assembling the art collection for the so-called Führer Museum Linz. The first manager was the Dresden gallery director Hans Posse , who died in 1942. His successor as director of the Dresden gallery and as head of the special order Linz was the art historian and previous director of the picture gallery of the Nassau Museum Wiesbaden Hermann Voss . Göpel was subordinate to him and under his supervision procured works for Hitler's museum from the occupied western countries, whereby in many cases it was also stolen art . These were mainly works of art confiscated from Jewish property or acquired under duress.
Göpel was therefore also active in France. The deputy head of the special staff fine arts in Paris Bruno Lohse had set up an office for him in the rooms of the task force. In 1943 Göpel played a leading role in the acquisition of large parts of the " Alphonse Castle " Jewish art collection , which was confiscated in France and which was stolen from the owners in southern France in cooperation with the police of the Vichy regime and the Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) staff . The then co-director of the ERR's special staff for fine arts in Paris, Bruno Lohse, spent years tracing out the collection, as Göpel wrote in a telegram to Martin Bormann , in which he saw the acquisition of the Schloss collection as an opportunity to upgrade the collection of the Führermuseum. An ERR task force, which at the time was under the command of Lohse and his colleague Borchers, stole the collection from Chambon Castle in southern France and finally handed it over to the Vichy government. The Louvre acquired 49 of the 330 paintings. From the remaining stock, Göpel and Bruno Lohse selected 262 pictures for the special order Linz. Göpel and Lohse received these pictures on November 3, 1943 in the Jeu de Paume Museum , the ERR depot, from the French, from where they were then transported to Germany.

On the other hand, Göpel used the painting transports of the special order to secretly transport paintings by the painter Max Beckmann, who was vilified by the National Socialists and living in exile in Amsterdam, to Beckmann's art dealer Günther Franke in Munich , who was able to secure Beckmann's existence at least financially through sales. Incidentally, Franke was one of the art dealers who worked closely with Hitler and his painting agents. Göpel had met Beckmann in Paris in 1932 and, on the occasion of the painter's 50th birthday on February 12, 1934, published an appraisal in the Neue Leipziger Zeitung under the title “The Way of a German Artist” a few days later . The fact that it was able to appear is due to the happy meeting that Beckmann, like Göpel, were born in Leipzig; the newspaper's commitment was therefore based locally. Beckmann had to thank the art historian for decisive intermediary services in connection with his illustrations for the Apocalypse and Faust II . But what the personal relationship between the painter and Göpel was like is still unclear today. It is noticeable that Göpel's post-war journalistic activities only began after the painter's death in 1950. The fact that Beckmann completed a portrait of Göpel in 1944 can certainly be understood as recognition and thanks for his mediating services.

After the Second World War

After 1948 Göpel worked in Munich as a lecturer at Prestel-Verlag and as an art critic. a. Article for the Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit . A museum career at the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen failed, however, because of the opacity of its activities during the “Third Reich”. Nearly all of its advocates had collaborated in one way or another with the Linz Special Mission. Ernst Buchner , General Director of the Bavarian State Painting Collections, who wanted to find him this museum position, was one of Hitler's most important art advisors at the time.

Göpel rendered outstanding services to Max Beckmann's work; he published the monographs “Max Beckmann der Konstruktor” (1954) and “Max Beckmann in his late years” (1955), in the same year published Beckmann's diaries from 1940 to 1950 and wrote a number of essays which were published in 1984 under the title “Max Beckmann. Eyewitness Reports ”appeared. In 1953 he was a co-founder of the Max Beckmann Society . His lifelong work for Beckmann culminated in the large two-volume catalog of paintings, which his wife Barbara Göpel completed after his death in 1966 with the help of the Max Beckmann Society and which was published in 1976. “The question of what Göpel's entanglement and the effort to make it forgotten through the notorious 'occidental' mental gestures in such cases (Heidegger, Sedlmayr) meant for the construction of the Beckmann image in post-war Germany, however, becomes how before not reflected. ”A final evaluation of the work of Erhard Göpel must be left to future research.

Fonts (selection)

• The bookbinder Ignatz Wiemeler. Rohrer Publishing House. Leipzig, Brno et al. 1938.
• A portrait commission for van Dyck - Anthony van Dyck, Philipp Le Roy and the engravers . Prestel, Frankfurt a. M. 1940; zugl. Phil. Diss. Leipzig 1940.
• Brittany: folk, history, art. Drawings A. Conrad. An army high command, Paris around 1940.
• Normandy . From an army high command. Ed. Erhard Göpel. Staackmann, Leipzig 1942. Further editions Pariser Zeitung, Paris 1942.
• Congratulations on the New Year for 1944 Dedicated to friends by Erhard Goepel . Printed by Haumont, Paris 1944.
• Max Beckmann. The draftsman . Piper, Munich 1954.
• Max Beckmann in his later years . Munich 1955
• German woodcuts of the XX. Century . Wiesbaden 1955 ( Insel-Library No. 606)
• Munich. Life circles of a city . Lindau 1955 (photos by Peter Keetman )
• Max Beckmann. The painter . Munich 1957.
• Max Beckmann - The Argonauts, a triptych . Introduction by Erhard Göpel. Reclam, Stuttgart 1957.
• German portrait sculpture of the twentieth century . Leipzig and Wiesbaden 1958 ( Insel-Bücherei No. 650)
• View of Beckmann - documents and lectures . For the Max Beckmann Society ed. by Hans Martin Frhr. by Erffa and Erhard Göpel. Piper, Munich 1962.
• With Barbara Göpel. Max Beckmann. Catalog of the paintings . 2 vols. Ed. Hans Martin Freiherr von Erffa (= writings of the Max Beckmann Society 3). Kornfeld, Bern 1976.
• Max Beckmann - Reports by an eyewitness. Edited and with an introduction by Barbara Göpel. Afterword by Günter Busch . Frankfurt a. M. 1984. ISBN 3-596-23605-3 .

Literature about Erhard Göpel

• Jonathan Petropoulos: The faustian bargain. The art world in Nazi Germany. Oxford 2000.
• Stephan Reimertz : Max Beckmann. Biography . Munich 2003.
• Birgit Schwarz: Hitler's Museum. The photo albums Gemäldegalerie Linz: documents on the "Führermuseum". Vienna 2004.
• Andreas Hansert: Hermann Hesse, Max Beckmann and the Linz “Führermuseum” - bibliophile book projects by the Bauersche Foundry in Frankfurt during the Second World War. In: Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 20 , 2007.
• Andreas Hansert: Georg Hartmann (1870–1954). Biography of a Frankfurt type caster, bibliophile and patron of the arts , Vienna 2009
• Christian Fuhrmeister, Susanne Kienlechner: Erhard Göpel in National Socialism - a sketch. Central Institute for Art History Munich 2018, online resource. [1]

Web links

• Literature by and about Erhard Göpel in the catalog of the German National Library

Remarks

1. ↑ Jonathan Petropoulos: The Faustian Bargain. The Art World in Nazi Germany. London 2000, pp. 155 f., ISBN 0-7139-9438-X .
2. ↑ Göpels telegram to Bormann via the Legation Councilor Schleier of April 26, 1943, in: Hildegard Brenner: Die Kunstpolitik des NS. Reinbek 1963, p. 231 f.
3. ↑ Michael Vikator Schwarz: The Departure of the Argonauts to the Museum of Modern Art . In: Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 57. 2008, p. 272, note 21.