Erika Hanfstaengl

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Erika Hanfstaengl (born January 29, 1912 - † November 14, 2003 ) was a German art historian .

Live and act

Erika Hanfstaengl was the daughter of the art historian Eberhard Hanfstaengl (1886–1973) and niece of the art dealer and Hitler friend Ernst Hanfstaengl (1887–1975). After finishing school, she volunteered at the Bavarian National Museum . She studied art history in Munich, Vienna and Berlin and completed a year of study in the United States. She worked as a translator for the 1936 Olympic Games . In 1941 she married Otto Grokenberger. From May 1941 to November 1942 she worked in Bolzano for the culture commission at the Official German Immigration and Return Office (ADERSt), reporting directly to the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and his SS-Ahnenerbe . She documented “German” cultural heritage in South Tyrol ; she worked with Walter Frodl , the Carinthian Gau Conservator and director of the Klagenfurt Reichsgaumuseum. At Frodl's instigation, she got a job at the Museo Civico in Udine in November 1943 , where she was responsible for the preservation of monuments , but also for the "utilization" of the cultural property of the arrested or fled Jewish population in the region. Her ID card, dated November 1943, stated that she was engaged in “carrying out inventory work in the field of movable and immovable art possession”. From January 1944, she took on tasks in the office of the Supreme Commissioner of the Adriatic Coastal Operation Zone .

Wassily Kandinsky: The Colorful Life (1907)

Hanfstaengl stayed in Italy until the end of the war in 1945; in May 1945 she was given the opportunity to work in Munich at the Central Art Collecting Point for the American Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Section under Craig Hugh Smyth . In this function she initiated extensive restitutions to the Soviet Union. When Smyth left Munich, she found a position at the newly established Central Institute for Art History . Around 1955, she experienced a brief career break when her new supervisor at the institute (who knew her Nazi past) prevented her from becoming a civil servant for flimsy reasons. Shortly afterwards she was given the opportunity to work under Hans Konrad Röthel , the new director of the Lenbachhaus ; As a curator, she took care of the art avant-garde of the early 20th century like Wassily Kandinsky in the following years . In her role as acting museum director, she was also instrumental in the acquisition of his key work " Das Bunte Leben " (1907) by the Bayerische Landesbank in 1972 , which the widow of the art collector Sal Slijper offered for sale, a work that turned out to be in early 2017 that it came from Nazi looted art . Until the occupation of the Netherlands by the German Wehrmacht in 1940, it was owned by the widow of the art collector Emanuel Lewenstein (1870–1930), who had it kept in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. According to Nazi researchers Christian Fuhrmeister and Stephan Klingen from the Central Institute for Art History, Hanfstaengl tried to "to a certain extent undo their Nazi injustice by dealing with the formerly ostracized modernity ."

She was buried in the north cemetery in Munich .

Publications

  • Cosmas Damian Asam (= Munich Contributions to Art History Volume 4). Neuer Filser-Verlag, Munich 1939.
  • with Walter Hege (photos): The brothers Cosmas Damian and Egid Quirin Asam . Munich, Berlin, Deutscher Kunstverlag 1955.
  • Wassily Kandinsky drawings and watercolors . Catalog of the collection in the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus Munich. Prestel Verlag, Munich 1981.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Sabine Loitfellner, Pia Schölnberger (ed.): Salvage of cultural property under National Socialism: Myths - Background . Böhlau, Cologne 2016, p. 96.
  2. ^ Entry in the article on art protection by the German Center for the Loss of Cultural Property
  3. ↑ Kia Vahland : From the colorful, brown life . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of March 4, 2017; Christoph Scheuermann: The Kandinsky Conflict (2017) in Spiegel Online .
  4. ↑ Kia Vahland: Kandinsky in Need - No quick clarification in the Munich looted art case . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of March 6, 2017, p. 9.
personal data
SURNAME Hanfstaengl, Erika
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hanfstaengl-Grokenberger, Erika
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art historian
DATE OF BIRTH January 29, 1912
DATE OF DEATH November 14, 2003