Friedrich Sarre

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Friedrich Sarre (born June 22, 1865 in Berlin ; † May 31, 1945 in the villa colony of Neubabelsberg , Babelsberg ) was a German art historian , oriental archaeologist and museum director as well as an important collector of Islamic art . He is considered the founder of Islamic archeology and art history in Germany.

family

Friedrich Sarre came from a Berlin Huguenot family . His father Theodor Sarre (1816–1893) was a successful entrepreneur who worked for Carl Justus Heckmann (1786–1878) from 1848 . In 1853 he married Heckmann's eldest daughter Mathilde (1830–1879), the mother of Friedrich Sarre. After the early death of his mother, he grew up with his aunt Maria Elisabeth Wentzel-Heckmann (1833–1914). In 1900 Sarre married Maria Humann (1875–1970), the daughter of the excavator of Pergamon, Carl Humann (1839–1896). His brother-in-law was the officer and publishing director Hans Humann . The marriage had four children: the lawyer Friedrich-Carl Sarre (1901–1968), the sculptor Marie-Louise Sarre (1903–1999), the physician Hans Sarre (1906–1994) and Irene Sarre (1910–2004), who was married to the lawyer Eduard Wätjen (1907–1994).

Friedrich Sarre was financially independent due to the wealth of his family.

Live and act

Early years

Friedrich Sarre attended the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster and the Leibniz-Gymnasium in Berlin, where he passed the Abitur in 1895. He then studied art history in Heidelberg , Berlin and Leipzig . Anton Springer became his teacher in Leipzig , where he received his doctorate in 1890 with a thesis on the history of art in Mecklenburg during the Renaissance . From 1890 to 1893 Sarre worked as a scientific assistant at the Berlin museums, first with Julius Lessing at the Kunstgewerbemuseum , then with Wilhelm von Bode on the painting collection .

Gök Jami (Blue Mosque) in Yerevan , a photograph by Sarre from 1897

Archaeological studies piqued his interest and he started traveling early. In Smyrna he met Carl Humann , who advised him to visit the great monuments of medieval Anatolia, to which little attention had been paid until then. In 1895 Sarre organized a first trip to Asia Minor ( Phrygia , Lycia and Pisidia ), followed in 1896 by a second longer trip to Central Asia Minor. He found that the structures there needed an accurate and meticulous inventory and he prepared to be the photographer himself, to a degree that was rare at the time. It may be forgotten that until 1880 you had to prepare the emulsions for the glass negatives yourself during the trip. And he always took a trained and competent architect with him on his travels. The result of these trips to Asia Minor, Persia and Turkestan are the great works of a beauty that is hard to surpass. The trips to Persia were made in 1897/98 and Turkestan in 1899/1900. He made various photographs of today's high scientific value.

Worked at the Berlin museums

From 1904 Friedrich Sarre, at the request of Wilhelm von Bode, volunteered to head the newly founded Islamic department of the Berlin museums in the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum . In 1922 he became director of the department and retired in 1931, his successor being Ernst Kühnel .

When it was founded, Sarre made large parts of his own private collection, over 600 pieces, available on permanent loan to the Islamic Department; in 1922 he donated these pieces to the museum.

Sarre managed to acquire numerous important works of art for the Berlin Museum. In 1912 he bought the Aleppo room . In 1927, the Kashan mihrab was acquired in England , a prayer niche from the Iranian city of Kashan from 1226.

Sarre as a scientist

When Fredrik Robert Martin discovered the Seljuk carpets in the Alaaddin Mosque in Konya in 1905 , the German Vice Consul Julius Löytved was present there, who supervised the photographs and watercolors that were to be made for Prince Wilhelm of Sweden on the orders of the Grand Vizier Ferid Pasha . Fredrik Robert Martin writes in his book that Löytved made copies of these and sent them to Berlin. Sarre reproduced these and published the article "Medieval Knüpfteppiche" in October 1907 in the Austrian magazine "Kunst und Kunsthandwerk" without having seen them. This article, of course, caused quite a stir. It wasn't until a year later that Fredrik Robert Martin's book about his discovery was published.

Sarre worked with numerous other scholars. Since Sarre himself did not speak any oriental languages, he worked with orientalists such as Max van Berchem (1863–1921), Martin Hartmann (1851–1916), Eugen Wednesday (1876–1942), Bernhard Moritz (1859–1939) and Moritz Sobernheim (1872–1933) of great importance.

In the winter of 1907/08, Friedrich Sarre and the archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld , whom he had known since 1905, set out on a trip to the Euphrates and Tigris regions in order to find a suitable place for the first large-scale excavations at a settlement from the Islamic period, and so on to establish this epoch as an independent field of science alongside the sensational ongoing ancient oriental field research in Babylon and Assur . The two scientists chose Samarra , the capital of the Abbasids, to implement these ambitious plans . From 1911 to 1913, excavations took place in Samarra under the direction of Herzfeld.

Last years and death

Even after his retirement in 1931, he continued to work scientifically. He died in 1945 and was buried in the cemetery in Klein-Glienicke .

Friedrich Sarre as a collector

Hamza-Nâma handwriting , Mihrdukht shoots her arrow through a ring. 1564–1579, from the Maria Sarre-Humann collection, Ascona

Friedrich Sarre first began to acquire objects of Islamic art on his travels to Asia Minor and Persia, later he mainly bought in the art trade. The collection covered all areas of Islamic art, it was particularly rich in carpets and manuscripts.

In 1899 he exhibited his collected art objects for the first time in the Museum of Decorative Arts in Berlin, which was housed in today's Martin-Gropius-Bau . Pieces from Sarre's collection were also on view at the two major exhibitions on Islamic art at the beginning of the 20th century, initially in 1903 in the “Exposition des arts musulmans” of the Union centrale des arts décoratifs in the Marsan pavilion in Paris . He was also represented with numerous pieces from his collection at the exhibition “ Exhibition of Masterworks of Muslim Art ” in Munich, which was prepared by Sarre in 1910 . Another exhibition of the Sarre Collection took place in 1932 at the Städelsche Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt.

In 1906 Sarre began to publish a catalog of his collection, of which only one volume appeared.

Large parts of the Sarre collection, over 600 pieces, had been on permanent loan since the Islamic department of the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum was founded in 1904; Sarre donated these pieces to the museum in 1921.

Villa Sarre

The Villa Sarre, in the summer of 2007
Detail of the villa: the lion frieze, summer 2007

After Joseph Maria Olbrich did not realize the first drafts for the construction of a villa , Friedrich Sarre had a representative villa built by the architect Otto Sior in 1906 in the villa colony of Neubabelsberg (today Potsdam-Babelsberg) (Bergstrasse 6, today Spitzweggasse 6), where he lived until his death. The upper passage of the small tower is decorated with a frieze made of colored glass plates on all sides. It shows lions walking to the left and is based on the reconstruction drawing by Walter Andrae of a lion from the processional street of Babylon . Sarre had some antiques from his collection attached to the house.

The house became a meeting place for the Berlin upper class, to which Sarre belonged, for example he was also a member of the so-called SeSiSo-Club . From late 1918 to January 1921, the Ottoman politician Enver Pascha, who was a friend of Sarre, lived in the villa during his exile in Berlin. The nearby Enver Pascha Bridge is named after him.

Numerous friends and acquaintances of Friedrich Sarre frequented the villa, such as Robert Koldewey , Wilhelm Reinhold Valentiner and Heinrich Wölfflin . Even Adolf Hitler was invited here once for tea. From 1940 to 1944 Helmuth James Graf von Moltke , lawyer in the law firm of Sarre's son Friedrich-Karl Sarre and his son-in-law Eduard Wätjen , was a frequent guest at Villa Sarre.

Thanks to Wätjen's connections, the collection of carpets and manuscripts from the possession of Friedrich Sarre could be brought to Switzerland in 1944, where the widow Maria Sarre received them back in October 1945.

The rest of his collection, library, photographs, diaries and scientific papers were destroyed when the building was cleared in preparation for the Potsdam Conference on June 4, 1945, just a few days after his death . From 1957 the villa was used by the German Academy for Film Art , and in 1977 it was listed as a historical monument. After the fall of the Wall in 1989, the villa was returned to the heirs and sold by them. The villa was renovated in 1995, renovated again in 2011/12 and is now used as a residential building.

Honors

In 1928 he received an honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Dresden .

Publications (selection)

  • The Berlin goldsmiths' guild from its creation up to 1800. A contribution to the art and commercial history of Berlin. Stargardt, Berlin 1895.
  • Travel in Asia Minor. Summer 1895. Research on Seljuk art and geography of the country. Reimer, Berlin 1896.
  • Transcaucasia - Persia - Mesopotamia - Transcaspia. Country and people. Reimer, Berlin 1899.
  • Monuments of Persian architecture. Historical investigation and recording of Muslim brick buildings in the Middle East and Persia. 2 volumes. Wasmuth, Berlin 1901-1910.
  • with Ernst Herzfeld : Archaeological trip in the Euphrates and Tigris regions (= research on Islamic art. Volume 1, 1–4). 4 volumes. Reimer, Berlin 1911–1920.
  • Konia. Seljuk architectural monuments (= monuments of Persian architecture. Volume 1). With the participation of Georg Krecker and Max Deri . Wasmuth, Berlin 1921 (first in Monuments of Persian Architecture 1910).
  • The art of ancient Persia (= Art of the East. Volume 5, ZDB -ID 531920-1 ). Bruno Cassirer Verlag, Berlin 1922.
    • French L'art de la Perse ancienne. Éditions G. Crès & Cie, Paris 1921.
  • The results of the excavations of Samarra in the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum. G. Grote, Berlin 1922.
  • Islamic book covers (= Book Art of the Orient. Volume 1). Scarabaeus-Verlag, Berlin 1923.
  • with Ernst Herzfeld: The ceramics from Samarra. (= Research on Islamic Art. Volume 2). Reimer, Berlin 1925.
  • Pottery and other small finds from the Islamic period from Baalbek. W. de Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 1925 (Reprint from Baalbeck. Results of the excavations and investigations in the years 1898 to 1905. Volume 3).
  • with Hermann Trenkwald : ancient oriental carpets. 2 volumes. Published by the Austrian Museum for Art and Industry. A. Schroll & Co., Vienna 1926–1928.
  • The Konia kiosk. Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, Berlin 1936.

literature

Web links

Commons : Friedrich Sarre  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ To the Harry Nehls family: Cauer sculpture on the Sarre grave . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 5, 1998, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 33-37 ( luise-berlin.de ). Harry Nehls: The Sarre Family Tomb. In: Museums Journal , 12, Issue 4, 1998, pp. 10-11.
  2. ^ Wife of the architect Hermann Wentzel . In 1900 she became the second woman after Catherine the Great to become a member of the Berlin Academy .
  3. ^ Friedrich Sarre: Contributions to Mecklenburg art history . Trowitzsch & Sohn, Berlin 1890 ( curriculum vitae ). Print edition: Fritz Sarre: The Fürstenhof zu Wismar and North German terracotta architecture in the Renaissance era . Trowitzsch & Son, Berlin 1890.
  4. ↑ Orient photos around 1900 by Friedrich Sarre - exhibition advertisement of the State Museum in Berlin.
  5. ↑ Friedrich Sarre, Ernst Kühnel : Two Persian prayer niches made of luscious tiles. In: Berliner Museen , Volume 49, Issue 6, 1928, pp. 126-131.
  6. ^ Fredrik Robert Martin: A History of Oriental Carpets before 1800. Self-published, Vienna 1908, note 247.
  7. ^ Friedrich Sarre: Medieval knotted carpets of Asian Minor and Spanish origin. In: Kunst und Kunsthandwerk 10, 1907, pp. 503-525.
  8. ↑ With this he published a book about the drawings by Reza Abbasi : Drawings by Riza Abbasi. Edited by Friedrich Sarre and Eugen Wednesday. Bruckmann, Munich 1914.
  9. ^ Jens Kröger: Ernst Herzfeld and Friedrich Sarre . In: Ann C. Gunter, Stefan R. Hauser (eds.): Ernst Herzfeld and the Development of Near Eastern Studies, 1900–1950. Brill, Leiden 2005, pp. 45-99.
  10. ↑ Jens Kröger: Chronicle of the excavations in Samarra 1911–1913. In: Julia Gonella, Rania Abdellatif, Simone Struth (eds.): Hundred years of excavations in Samarra (= contributions to Islamic art and archeology, Volume 4). Reichert, Wiesbaden 2014, pp. 234–346.
  11. ↑ Jens Kröger: Friedrich Sarre and the oriental carpet art. In: Julia Gonnella, Jens Kröger (ed.): How Islamic art came to Berlin. The collector and museum director Friedrich Sarre (1865–1945). Berlin 2015, pp. 137–146.
  12. ^ Julia Gonella: Friedrich Sarre as a collector of Islamic book art. In: Julia Gonnella, Jens Kröger (ed.): How Islamic art came to Berlin. The collector and museum director Friedrich Sarre (1865–1945). Berlin 2015, pp. 103–120.
  13. ↑ Exposition des arts musulmans. Catalog descriptive . Paris 1903 (with details of the items from the Sarre collection).
  14. ^ Friedrich Sarre, FR Martin: The exhibition of masterpieces of Muslim art in Munich, 1910. 3 volumes. F. Bruckmann, Munich 1912. See Andrea Lermer, Avinoam Shalem (Ed.): After one hundred years. The 1910 exhibition “Masterpieces of Mohammedan Art” reconsidered. Brill, Leiden 2010, ISBN 978-90-04-19001-6 ; Eva-Maria Troelenberg: An exhibition is viewed. The Munich "Exhibition of Masterworks of Muslim Art" 1910 from a cultural and scientific-historical perspective. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-631-60515-8 .
  15. ↑ Collection F. u. M. Sarre. Catalog of the exhibition at the Städelsche Kunstinstitut. Frankfurt 1932.
  16. ^ Friedrich Sarre: Products of Islamic Art. Volume 1: metal. Hiersemann, Berlin 1906. Volume 2: Seldschukische Kleinkunst , published in 1909 , is no longer a catalog of the Sarre Collection, but pieces from numerous other museums were included there.
  17. ↑ Plans and views in the Berlin Art Library
  18. ^ Jörg Limberg: Friedrich Sarre. Living and living in the villa colony Neubabelsberg. In: Julia Gonnella, Jens Kröger (ed.): How Islamic art came to Berlin. The collector and museum director Friedrich Sarre (1865–1945). Berlin 2015, pp. 61–77.
  19. ^ Ralf-Bernhard Wartke and Martina Wartke: Löwen in Babelsberg. Babylonian art also adorns Prussian villas. In: Antike Welt, vol. 36, issue 6, 2005, pp. 33–35.
  20. ↑ Harry Nehls: “God's is the Orient!” Forgotten works of art from the collection of the Berlin orientalist Friedrich Sarre. In: Museum journal. Volume 9, No. 4, 1995, pp. 6-9; Harry Nehls: Palmyra in the scholar's villa. A rediscovered grave relief from the F. Sarre collection. In: Ancient World . Volume 26, No. 4, 1995, pp. 271-272.
  21. ↑ Malte Fuhrmann: Friedrich Sarre, the contemporary 'Orient' and the First World War. In: Julia Gonnella, Jens Kröger (ed.): How Islamic art came to Berlin. The collector and museum director Friedrich Sarre (1865–1945). Berlin 2015, pp. 57–58.
  22. ↑ For life and the guests in the Villa Sarre see Hans Sarre: From Babelsberg to Freiburg. Memories. Volume 1, Freiburg 1985, pp. 31-94.
  23. ↑ Based on the memoirs of Otto von Dungern : Under Kaiser and Chancellors. Memories. Veste Verlag, Coburg 1953, p. 67.
  24. ↑ Jens Kröger: Friedrich Sarre. Art historian, collector and connoisseur. In: Julia Gonnella, Jens Kröger (ed.): How Islamic art came to Berlin. The collector and museum director Friedrich Sarre (1865–1945). Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Islamische Kunst and Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-496-01544-4 ; ISBN 978-3-88609-769-2 , pp. 39-40.
  25. ↑ Jens Kröger: Friedrich Sarre. Art historian, collector and connoisseur. In: Julia Gonnella, Jens Kröger (ed.): How Islamic art came to Berlin. The collector and museum director Friedrich Sarre (1865–1945). Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Islamische Kunst and Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-496-01544-4 ; ISBN 978-3-88609-769-2 , p. 40.
  26. ↑ Views of the renovated villa .
  27. ↑ Honorary doctoral students of the TH / TU Dresden. Technical University of Dresden, accessed on January 30, 2015 . The explorer of Iranian and Islamic art, the excavator of Samarra .


personal data
SURNAME Sarre, Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sarre, Friedrich Paul Theodor (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art historian, oriental archaeologist, museum director and collector of Islamic art
DATE OF BIRTH June 22, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH May 31, 1945
Place of death Neubabelsberg , Babelsberg