Friedrich Bienert

Friedrich Bienert (occasionally Fritz Bienert , born November 21, 1891 in Plauen near Dresden , † February 15, 1969 in West Berlin ) was a German industrialist , art collector and patron. His mother was Ida Bienert , his first wife the dancer Gret Palucca , his second wife the pianist Branka Musulin .

Life

Life in Dresden

Friedrich Bienert was born as the son of the married couple Ida and Erwin Bienert (and grandson of the highly respected Gottlieb Traugott Bienert ) in Plauen near Dresden and grew up in an extremely art-loving environment. Trained as an industrial clerk, he took up a job in the family business. In 1917 he returned seriously wounded from the First World War , from whose experiences he drew his lifelong pacifist stance. In 1918 he was a member of the Dresden Workers 'and Soldiers' Council (together with Paul Adler, among others ). As a “liberal free spirit” he was a member of the German Democratic Party in the 1920s and supported both the Red Aid Germany , which is close to the KPD , and the “Society of Friends of the New Russia”. He was chairman of the German Paneuropean Union , was a co-founder of the German League for Human Rights , a member of the Saxon Peace Cartel and the Reich Banner Black-Red-Gold .

Following his mother's example, a circle of friends of left-wing liberal artists and intellectuals formed around him. a. Otto Dix , Will Grohmann (both of whom had a lifelong friendship), Conrad Felixmüller , Fedor Stepun , Paul Adler and Theodor Lessing included. This circle also included his first wife, the dancer Gret Palucca , whom he married on January 12, 1924.

Together with her he moved into an apartment on Bürgerwiese in Dresden (destroyed in 1945), from where she built her dance school. Here he set up his own collection of paintings. Unlike his mother, he supported Dresden's young expressionists , such as the ASSO group around Otto Griebel , Wilhelm Lachnit and Hans Grundig .

In 1931 the childless marriage with Gret Palucca was divorced and he settled in Hellerau (Auf dem Sand 13). Here the circle of those with whom he was friends and who were supported by him as far as possible changed: Theodor Däubler , Harald Dohrn and the young Wolfgang Schulze (Wols) . In 1937 the still unknown Samuel Beckett visited him . Even El Lissitzky belonged to this circle.

In December 1927, he and his cousin Franz Herschel, who had already been granted power of attorney , took over the joint management of the Bienert family company: the Bienertmühle Dresden-Plauen , the Bienertschen Hafenmühle and the Bienertschen bread factory. While Friedrich Bienert stuck to his liberal and pacifist stance, Herschel became a member of the NSDAP and was dubbed "Herrenreiter" behind closed doors.

Although he and Herschel became operators of the Bienert company in 1934 , the Nazis began to harass Friedrich Bienert, which intensified from 1939. Nevertheless, some NSDAP members secretly sympathized with Bienert. In 1944, the NSDAP mayor of Hellerau, who also secretly sympathized with him, granted him permission to marry a foreigner, the Yugoslav pianist Branka Musulin .

Despite the well-known anti-Nazi stance of Friedrich Bienert - he refused z. B. consistently showing the Hitler salute  - friends recommended that he withdraw from the approaching Red Army. He finally gave in to his wife's insistence in April 1945 and fled with her via Czechoslovakia behind the American lines to Regensburg . Their only child, a daughter, was born there in 1946.

After the Second World War , in 1946, Friedrich Bienert was classified as an opponent of the Nazi regime because of "demonstrably anti-fascist attitudes ... as well as promoting membership in the 'Red Aid'" and returned to Dresden on several requests in November 1946. He lived in part of the Bienertvilla in the Bienertmühle in Dresden-Plauen, where a rehearsal and concert room was set up for his wife. The sequestration of the mills was lifted in November 1948 and the two mills and the bread factory were returned to him and the family.

Life in West Berlin

"For Friedrich Bienert it must have become clear relatively soon after the founding of the GDR that he would have no prospects in East Germany." From 1950 he traveled to West Berlin , where his wife had her main residence, and to Munich, where his mother Ida Bienert lived, too. With them he mainly kept large parts of his mother's painting collection. In 1952 Friedrich Bienert fled to West Berlin for good. However, he was unable to catch up with the economic boom of the 1950s. In 1953, the remains of the collection and the large library in Dresden were confiscated.

In West Berlin, he was able with the help of Will Grohmann, who had meanwhile also fled Dresden, build his friends again, which include the composer Herbert Trantow , the architect Peter Poelzig and the graphic artist Alexander Friedrich and Otto Dix and George Grosz and Peter Teaching corner , Eberhard Roters , Peter Schmiedel and Siegfried Kühl belonged to it.

The daughter essentially grew up with the father by mutual agreement, so that Branka Musulin, who had meanwhile become a celebrated pianist, could devote herself to her art.

Friedrich Bienert, who lived in modest circumstances until his death and financed them primarily through the sale of paintings from the Bienert Collection, died in 1969 after an operation that was necessary as a late consequence of his wounding in the First World War. His grave is in the Bienert family grave in the Inner Plauen cemetery in Dresden. His wife Branka died in 1975 after an accident.

literature

• Dresden History Association V. (Ed.): The history of the Bienert family (= Dresdner Hefte - contributions to cultural history. No. 116, 4/2013). Dresden 2013. ISBN 978-3-944019-05-5 . From this in particular:
  • Hans-Peter Lühr: Friedrich Bienert and the spirit of Weimar - A biographical study. Pp. 55-64.
  • Jürgen Riess: What became of the bread empire - the company history after 1900. pp. 65–75.
• Hans-Jürgen Sarfert: Hellerau - The garden city and artist colony. Hellerau-Verlag, Dresden 1992, ISBN 3-910184-05-7 , pp. 78-79.
• Heike Biedermann, Ulrich Bischoff , Mathias Wagner: From Monet to Mondrian: Modern masterpieces from Dresden's private collections from the first half of the 20th century. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin 2006, p. 269.
• Moritz von Bredow: Spirit made sound. Branka Musulin on her 100th birthday. A homage. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of August 14, 2017, p. 10.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Lühr: Friedrich Bienert and the spirit of Weimar - A biographical study.
2. ^ Sarfert: Hellerau - The garden city and artist colony. P. 79.
3. ^ Lühr: Friedrich Bienert and the spirit of Weimar - A biographical study. Pp. 56, 59.
4. ^ Paul Dittrich: Between Hofmühle and Heidenschanze. History of the Dresden suburbs Plauen and Coschütz. 2nd, revised edition. Dresden, Adolf Urban 1941. p. 155.
5. ^ Lühr: Friedrich Bienert and the spirit of Weimar - A biographical study. P. 60 f.
6. ↑ Sarfert, p. 79.
7. ^ Riess: What became of the bread empire - The company history after 1900. P. 71.
8. ^ Lühr: Friedrich Bienert and the spirit of Weimar - A biographical study. P. 61.
9. ^ Lühr: Friedrich Bienert and the spirit of Weimar - A biographical study. P. 62 with reference to Heike Biedermann: Ida Bienert in Munich. In: Dresdner Kunstblätter 6/1997.
10. ↑ According to an on-site inspection in January 2018, all references to Friedrich Bienert have been removed. In April 2018, the Friedrich Bienert lettering was reapplied, supplemented by an identical one to his sister Margret Weinhagen (1893 - 1944).

Web links

• Friedrich Bienert in the Stadtwiki Dresden