Erich Goeritz

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Lovis Corinth: Portrait of Erich Goeritz and his wife , 1922

Erich Joseph Goeritz (born February 21, 1889 in Chemnitz ; died 1955 in London ) was a German-British textile entrepreneur, art collector and patron.

Life

Erich Goeritz was born in Chemnitz in 1889 as the son of Sigmund and Telma Goeritz. In 1900 the brother Karl was born. The family belonged to the city's Jewish community. Erich Goeritz was a co-founder of a Zionist youth group there. The father managed the textile company Gebrüder Goeritz (from 1925 Sigmund Goeritz AG ), which initially produced hosiery and cloth gloves in Chemnitz. In 1899 the production of jerseys was added.

Erich Goeritz began his professional career with a commercial apprenticeship in a company in Breslau before his father brought him into the family business in 1914. Sigmund Goeritz retired in 1916 and his son Erich took over management of the company. In 1918 Erich Goeritz married Senta Steinberger from Munich. In the same year the son Thomas was born, in 1920 the son Andreas was born. After Sigmund Goeritz's death, Erich Goeritz and his family moved to Berlin in 1921. When the company's headquarters were relocated to Berlin, the Chemnitz factory was run as a branch. In 1925, Goeritz also acquired the North German tricot weaving mill in Lübben as a further production location.

Goeritz and his wife were privately interested in music and painting. Parts of her art collection can be seen in a series of photographs by Waldemar Titzenthaler , which appeared in the magazine Die Dame in 1923 . The photos were taken in the Goertiz family's apartment in Berlin's Klopstockstrasse and show, for example, various works by Lovis Corinth . Goeritz was one of the most important supporters of the older Corinth and there was a friendly relationship between the two. Goeritz owned several paintings by the artist, including a balcony scene in Bordigha (today Folkwang Museum , Essen), a flower basket with amaryllis, lilacs, roses and tulips (private collection), self-portrait at Lake Walchensee (private collection), and a portrait of the violinist Andreas Weißgerber ( Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie , Regensburg ) and Nana, female nude ( Saint Louis Art Museum ). In addition, Goeritz commissioned Corinth for two portraits: In 1921 he created the double portrait Die Kunstfreunde (Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie, Regensburg), in which the collector David Leder can be seen alongside Goeritz; In 1922 Corinth painted the portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Goeritz (private collection). In addition, Goeritz owned a large inventory of Corinth prints.

Goeritz also cultivated friendly relationships with Max Liebermann , who created a painting portrait Senta Goeritz ( Tel Aviv Museum of Art ). The sculptor Edwin Scharff made a bronze bust of von Goeritz, which was shown in an exhibition in the Kronprinzenpalais in Berlin in 1928 . The author Michael Brenner counts Goeritz among the most important art collectors of the Weimar Republic . In the Goeritz Collection, there were works by artists such as Oskar Kokoschka , Ernst Barlach , Erich Heckel , Karl Schmidt-Rottluff , Conrad Felixmüller , Alexander Archipenko and Jakob Steinhardt . In addition, he owned a number of works of French Impressionism and Late Impressionism . These include paintings by Édouard Manet , such as the portrait Jules de Jouy (private collection) and Bar in the Folies Bergère ( Courtauld Institute of Art , London). In addition, Goeritz owned two paintings by Claude Monet , which show the Doge's Palace from different angles (both private collection). The painting Vue sur L'Estaque et le Château d'If (private collection) by Paul Cézanne also belonged to the Goeritz collection.

Goeritz appeared repeatedly as a generous patron. In 1922 he donated the portrait of his son Thomas von Lovis Corinth to the Chemnitz Art Collections . The picture was removed from the museum in 1937 as so-called “ degenerate art ” and is now in the collection of the Berlin National Gallery . The Chemnitz Art Collections also received around 1,000 lithographs by Honoré Daumier from Goeritz in 1925 . After the National Socialists came to power in 1933 , Goeritz recognized the resulting danger for his family and his property early on. In September 1933, he left parts of his art collection to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, which had been founded the year before , including sculptures by Renée Sintenis , Ernst Barlach, Wilhelm Lehmbruck , paintings by Max Liebermann and Jakob Steinhardt, a bronze by Edgar Degas and graphic works by Lovis Corinth . There were also 30 works by Alexander Archipenko.

Erich Goeritz emigrated with his wife and two sons to the United Kingdom via Luxembourg in 1934 . He settled in London and was also active in the textile industry there. He was later granted British citizenship. In 1936 he donated the painting Temptation of St. Anthony of Lovis Corinth to the Tate Gallery in London . In 1942 he gave the British Museum seven portfolios with prints by Lovis Corinth and two Bauhaus portfolios with lithographs by Oskar Kokoschka. The latter illustrate the cantata O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort BWV 60 by Johann Sebastian Bach . While Erich Goeritz and his family survived the Second World War, his brother and his children were killed in 1939 when the Dutch ship Simon Bolivar sank off the English coast. Erich Goeritz also acquired a few works of art after the war. In the early 1950s he was able to acquire Charlotte Berend-Corinth 's painting of her husband's Hymn to Michelangelo in New York City (loan from the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus , Munich). Erich Goeritz died in London in 1955.

literature

  • Charlotte Berend-Corinth: The paintings of Lovis Corinth. F. Bruckmann, Munich 1958.
  • Michael Brenner: The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany. Yale University Press, New Haven 1996, ISBN 0-300-06262-1 .
  • Abraham Gilam: Erich Goeritz and Jewish Art Patronage in Berlin during the 1920s. In: Journal of Jewish Art, No. 11, pp. 60-72, Center for Jewish Art, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem 1985.
  • Uwe Fleckner, Thomas W. Gaehtgens, Christian Huemer: Market and power, the art trade in the “Third Reich”. De Gruyter, Berlin 2017, ISBN 3-11-054719-8 .
  • David Karshan: Archipenko, the early works, 1910-1921: the Erich Goeritz Collection at the Tel Aviv Museum. Tel Aviv Museum, Tel Aviv 1981.
  • Enno Kaufhold: Berlin interiors 1910–1930: photographs by Waldemar Titzenthaler. Nicolai, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-87584-775-2 .
  • Ingrid Mössinger: Honoré Daumier: from good citizens and Parisians; Erich Goeritz Foundation. Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Chemnitz 2002, ISBN 3-930116-12-X .
  • Jürgen Nitsche (ed.): Jews in Chemnitz: the history of the community and its members. Sandstein, Dresden 2002, ISBN 3-930382-66-0 .
  • Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945. Edited by the Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem. De Gruyter, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-158087-6 (Reprint, EA 1988).
  • Lucy Wasensteiner: The Twentieth Century German Art exhibition: answering degenerate art in 1930s London. Routledge, New York / London 2019, ISBN 978-1-138-54436-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joseph Walk: Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 , p. 115.
  2. ↑ Joseph Walk: Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 , p. 115.
  3. ↑ The photos of the Goeritz apartment were later published in Enno Kaufhold: Berliner Interieurs 1910–1930: Photographs by Waldemar Titzenthaler .
  4. ^ View of the Goeritz family's living room, photo by Waldemar Titzenthaler at Getty Images
  5. ^ Michael Brenner: The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany. P. 170.
  6. ↑ Information on the painting The Doge's Palace (catalog raisonné W 1770) on the website of the Sotheby’s auction house ; For the painting The Doge's Palace (catalog raisonné W 1744), see the relevant information on the Sotheby’s auction house's website
  7. ↑ Information on the painting by Paul Cézanne on the Christie's auction house website
  8. ↑ Information on the painting Portrait of the son Thomas by Lovis Corinth on the website of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
  9. ↑ On the foundation of Daumier's lithographs, see information on the museum's website and the publication Ingrid Mössinger: Honoré Daumier: from good citizens and Parisian types. Erich Goeritz Foundation.
  10. ↑ Chana Schütz: Pioneer in a country far from art. Article in Der Tagesspiegel of March 26, 2015 and David Karshan: Archipenko, the early works, 1910–1921: the Erich Goeritz Collection at the Tel Aviv Museum.
  11. ↑ Joseph Walk: Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918-1945. P. 115.
  12. ↑ Information on the painting Temptation of St. Anthony of Lovis Corinth on the Tate Gallery website .
  13. ↑ For the donation of works to the British Museum, see the short biography of Erich Goeritz on the museum's website .
  14. ^ Uwe Fleckner, Thomas W. Gaehtgens, Christian Huemer: Market and power, the art trade in the "Third Reich". P. 367.
  15. ↑ Information on the painting Hymn to Michelangelo by Lovis Corinth on the website of the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus
personal data
SURNAME Goeritz, Erich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Goeritz, Erich Joseph (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-British entrepreneur, art collector and patron
DATE OF BIRTH February 21, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Chemnitz
DATE OF DEATH 1955
Place of death London