Ferdinand Möller (art dealer)

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Ferdinand Gerhard Möller (born October 15, 1882 in Münster , † January 12, 1956 in Cologne ) was a German art dealer.

Life

Ferdinand Möller was the eldest son of the builder of the same name Ferdinand Möller and his wife Wilhelmine geb. Bürndick in Münster. He initially trained as a bookseller . In 1912 he married the painter Maria Susanna Elisabeth Garny in Cologne. After visiting the Sonderbund exhibition in the same year, he made the decision to become an art dealer. He became an employee of the Ernst Arnold gallery in Dresden and took over its branch in Breslau in 1913. From 1917 he ran his own gallery in Breslau.

In 1918 he became managing director of the Free Secession in Berlin and opened a gallery at Potsdamer Straße 134 c. In 1919 the publishing house of the Galerie Ferdinand Möller was added. The Wroclaw Gallery was closed in 1920.

In 1923 Möller organized an exhibition of German contemporary art together with Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner in the Anderson Galleries in New York City . In 1924 he moved with his family, gallery and publishing house to Potsdam at Wollner Str. 14 (today: Otto Nagel Str. 14). From 1927 there was again a gallery in the center of Berlin, Schöneberger Ufer 38 (today: Schöneberger Ufer 78). In 1929 there was the exhibition Die Blaue Vier with works by Paul Klee , Lyonel Feininger , Wassily Kandinsky and Alexej Jawlensky . Möller had become one of the most important art dealers for German modernism in the 1920s . In 1932 the gallery moved to Lützowufer 3 and in 1935 to Groß-Admiral-von-Köster-Ufer 39 (today: Schöneberger Ufer 79).

In 1937 Möller ended his exhibition activities, but remained active as a dealer of modern and older art. In 1937/1938 he had a country house built in Zermützel , today a district of Neuruppin , for which he was able to win Hans Scharoun as an architect.

As part of the Nazi campaign Degenerate Art , Ferdinand Möller was commissioned from 1938 together with Karl Buchholz , Hildebrand Gurlitt and Bernhard A. Böhmer to recycle the confiscated works of art. For Ferdinand Möller, there is evidence that, contrary to the requirements of the National Socialists, he did not bring a number of degenerate works of art out of the Reich and either sold them to third parties or acquired them himself. The art-legal literature has for a long time assumed that the other participating art dealers acted accordingly.

In the course of the Second World War, Möller brought the works of art entrusted to him as well as his family to Zermützel from the air raids .

In 1946 he organized the exhibition Free German Art in Neuruppin with the Neuruppin Public Education Office , but moved to Cologne in 1949. Here he reopened his gallery in 1951, which was closed after his death in 1956. Möller died at the age of 73 in a Cologne hospital.

Similar to Bernhard A. Böhmer , a historical assessment of Möller is very ambivalent.

Ferdinand Möller Foundation

From 1994 onwards, four paintings in the Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg Halle were restored to their daughter Angelika Fessler-Möller (1919–2002). In 1995 she founded the Ferdinand Möller Foundation together with the art dealer Wolfgang Wittrock (* 1947) .

“The capital stock for the work of the Ferdinand Möller Foundation is, among other things, the proceeds from the sale of restored paintings from the property of the art dealer Möller:“ Mädchen im Strandwald ”and“ Atelierecke ”by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and the“ Dom zu Halle ”by Lyonel Feininger. With the capital gains generated, the foundation promotes research in the field of Expressionism as well as on National Socialist art and cultural policy and supports the documentation of the art objects removed from German museums in 1937 as "degenerate". "

- Foundation and tasks

A main task of the Ferdinand Möller Foundation is the third-party funds -Financing since 2003 at the Free University of Berlin settled "Degenerate Art" .

literature

  • Eberhard Roters : Galerie Ferdinand Möller. The history of a gallery for modern art in Germany 1917–1956. Gebr. Mann Verlag , Berlin 1984 ISBN 3-7861-1181-2
  • Wolfgang Schöddert: On the spirit of art and the demon of the times. Traces of the Ferdinand Möller gallery from the years 1937 to 1945. In: Maike Steinkamp, ​​Ute Haug (ed.): Works and values. About trading and collecting art under National Socialism. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-05-004497-2 , pp. 61–82.
  • From Otto Mueller to Max Kaus. Graphic individual prints and portfolios from Ferdinand-Möller-Verlag. An exhibition of the Potsdam Museum Culturcon Medien, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-941092-52-5
  • Chapter Free German Art. For the exhibition in Paris in November 1938. In: Keith Holz, Wolfgang Schopf eds., In the Eye of Exile: Josef Breitenbach and Free German Culture in Paris 1933-1941. Aufbau-Verlag , 2001 ISBN 335102522X

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b Death certificate no. 173 from January 13, 1956, registry office Cologne I. In: LAV NRW R civil status register. Retrieved June 18, 2018 .
  2. Heidi Jäger: Torn from oblivion. Potsdam Museum commemorates the art dealer Ferdinand Möller: “From Otto Mueller to Max Kaus”. , Potsdam Latest News of October 16, 201, accessed on November 3, 2013
  3. Hans Henning Kunze: Restitution "Degenerate Art": Property Law and International Private Law , Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2000, p. 46.
  4. See, for example, The long arm of Ferdinand Möller , Berliner Zeitung of November 27, 1997, accessed on November 3, 2013
  5. Festschrift 2010 (PDF; 63 kB)