Ernstotto zu Solms-Laubach

Grave in the Arnsburg monastery

Ernstotto Graf zu Solms-Laubach (born November 8, 1890 in Strasbourg , † September 2, 1977 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German art historian .

Life

Ernstotto zu Solms-Laubach came from the noble family of the Counts of Solms-Laubach . He was the son of Ernst Graf zu Solms-Laubach (1837–1908), district director of the Strasbourg district, and grandson of Otto II. Graf zu Solms-Laubach (1799–1872).

He began studying medicine in 1912, but after participating in the First World War , he studied art history in Marburg , Munich and Berlin from 1919 . He received his doctorate in 1925 under Richard Hamann in Marburg. In the same year he became a volunteer at the Städel Art Institute in Frankfurt, and in 1929 assistant and curator at the Liebieghaus municipal sculpture collection . Here he was u. a. responsible for the acquisition of the late Gothic head of Bärbel von Ottenheim . He joined the SA in 1934, and on May 1, 1937, he became a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 5,393,731). In June 1938 he became director of the Historical Museum in Frankfurt. In August he was also appointed city curator of Frankfurt and was responsible for the local preservation of monuments.

In 1940 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and until 1944 as an art protection officer in the east, at times he was a consultant for military art protection for the military administration in the east; u. a. he was responsible for the removal of the Amber Room . In June 1945 he was dismissed as museum director in Frankfurt by order of the American military government. In June 1949, however, he was again director of the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Frankfurt and remained so until his retirement in 1956. He was able to re-establish the museum, whose building had been destroyed in the war, in the west wing of the Städel. In retirement, he built the museum in Laubach Castle . He was buried in the Arnsburg monastery .

Publications (selection)

• The Worms Building School in Hesse and its foundations in Germany and Northern Italy . Dissertation Marburg 1925.
• Bärbel von Ottenheim (= annual gift of the Scientific Institute of the Alsace-Lorraine in the Reich at the University of Frankfurt 1936). Diesterweg, Frankfurt am Main 1936.
• From the castle of the Counts of Solms-Laubach . Solms-Laubachsche Bucherstube, Laubach
  • Book 1: Portraits of the 16th century in the castle of Laubach . 1955
  • Booklet 2: History of the glassworks in the Laubacher Wald 1956
  • Book 3: Solms Medals from the 16th Century . 1956
  • Booklet 4: Clemens Beutler, a Laubach painter around 1600 . 1956
  • Booklet 5: Porcelain figures in the castle in Laubach . 1957
  • Book 6. The Laubach Library 1957
  • Booklet 7: Johann Valentin and Johann Heinrich Tischbein in Laubach 1958
  • Booklet 8: Anton Wilhelm Tischbein 1958
• The most beautiful hunting pictures from European collections . Keyser, Munich 1961.
• The most beautiful equestrian pictures from European collections . Keyser, Heidelberg / Munich 1962.

literature

• Wolfgang Klötzer (Hrsg.): Frankfurter Biographie . Personal history lexicon . Second volume. M – Z (= publications of the Frankfurt Historical Commission Volume 19, 2). Waldemar Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-7829-0459-1 .
• Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 576.
• Definitely to doubtful. Acquired sculptures and their stories 1933–1945 . Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung, Frankfurt am Main 2017, ISBN 978-3-943215-09-0 , p. 14.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ernst Klee: The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 576.
2. ^ Karl-Heinz Janßen: Large-scale search for the Amber Room. Die Zeit, November 16, 1984, accessed on October 18, 2017 : “ Such was the picture presented to the German art protection officers: Rittmeister Dr. Ernst Otto Graf zu Solms-Laubach from Frankfurt and his companion, Captain Dr. Georg Poensgen from Berlin. Both were subordinate to the chief of the army museums. In the civil profession they were art historians and worked for the Prussian administration of palaces and gardens. What the Soviets had left behind on their flight was now “secured” by them from destruction and looting: boxes of furniture, china, paintings, chandeliers; Count Solms even had parquet floors removed. But the most precious thing was the wall paneling of the amber room. "  ; Birgitta Lamparth: Amber room: The Wiesbaden provenance researcher Ulrike Schmeuert-Rietig researched Count zu Solms-Laubach. In: Wiesbaden Courier. January 13, 2017. Retrieved October 18, 2017 . 
3. ^ Unprinted, excerpt from the yearbook of the philosophical faculty Marburg 1925. I.