Georg Poensgen

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Georg Poensgen (born December 7, 1898 in Düsseldorf , † January 11, 1974 in Heidelberg ) was a German art historian and director of the Palatinate Museum in Heidelberg .

family

Georg Poensgen comes from the widespread Eifel entrepreneurial family , the Poensgen , who had operated iron works in the Schleiden area as Reidemeister since the mid-15th century . Some lines had moved to Düsseldorf and were instrumental in building up the Rhenish iron, steel and pipe industry. Georg Poensgen was the son of the Düsseldorf industrialist Ernst Poensgen and his wife Elisabeth Cohnitz (1876–1917), he was married to Emma Elisabeth Agnes Hübner (1898–1980). The marriage remained childless.

Live and act

In contrast to the family members who were characterized by activities in industry, such as his grandfather Carl and his father Ernst Poensgen and his relatives Carl Rudolf Poensgen and Helmuth Poensgen who lived in Düsseldorf, Georg Poensgen decided to study art history after high school . He studied in Heidelberg from 1919 to 1920, then in Freiburg until 1922, then in Munich until 1924 and then returned to Freiburg, where he received his Dr. phil. PhD. After completing his doctorate, Poensgen worked as a trainee at the Dresden State Kupferstichkabinett from 1924 to 1925 and at the State Museums in Berlin from 1925 to 1927 . From 1928 to 1945 he was an assistant in the administration of the State Palaces and Gardens in Berlin. During this time he set up a gallery with 182 paintings in the Grunewald hunting lodge and gave the palace a "homely character" with furniture from the 17th to 19th centuries.

The Amber Room in 1931 (brought to Königsberg in 1941)

During the Second World War, Poensgen was a captain and art protection officer together with the art historian Ernstotto zu Solms-Laubach in the early phase of the war against the Soviet Union in 1941 to secure and protect against destruction and looting of various high-quality art objects such as furniture, porcelain, paintings and chandeliers, in particular for the wall cladding of the legendary Amber Room of the Berlin City Palace , which has been in the Catherine Palace in Saint Petersburg since 1716 as a gift from the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm I to the Russian Tsar Peter the Great . Poensgen dismantled this under the supervision of Solms-Laubach within 36 hours, packed it in 27 boxes and had it transported to Königsberg, where it was handed over to the Prussia collection on display in Königsberg Castle . (The confiscation is also interpreted as an art theft.)

From 1948 Poensgen lived and worked in Heidelberg, most recently as director of the Kurpfälzisches Museum. The University of Heidelberg named Georg Poensgen an honorary senator and citizen because of his services and his ties to the university . After his retirement in 1964, he acquired a stately villa, which he bequeathed to the university and which is now an exclusive guest and conference house of the university. In 1972 he and his wife established the “Georg and Emma Poensgen Foundation” by will. The purpose of this foundation is to accommodate elderly needy people, especially from intellectual and artistic professions; For this purpose, the foundation currently operates a senior citizens' home in Hamburg-Lohbrügge.

During his professional years Poensgen wrote more than 50 publications, mainly about the art history of various castles and their art treasures, but also about many artists and art exhibitions.

Publications (selection)

  • 1929: Babelsberg Castle . Berlin, 72 pages with 46 ills.
  • 1930: The buildings of Friedrich Wilhelm IV. In Potsdam . Berlin, 32 pages and 19 ills.
  • 1931: Schinkel and we , in: Bauwelt 22nd year (1931), pp. 357–360 with 10 illustrations.
  • 1931: The Schinkel Museum in the Prinzessinen-Palias , in: Kunst und Künstler Jg. (1931), pp. 318–321 with 6 illus.
  • 1947 (together with Georg and Siegfried Lauterwasser): Madonnen am Bodensee . First edition Werner Wulff, Ueberlingen
  • 1951: Lake Constance, a mirror of occidental art ( Deutsche Lande - Deutsche Kunst ). Berlin (2nd edition 1964, 3rd edition 1975)
  • 1953: The exhibition “Heidelberg University” in the Kurpfälzisches Museum , Ruperto Carola 5th year, no. 11/12 (Dec. 1953), pp. 27–39
  • 1955: Heidelberg (Deutsche Lande - German Art). Berlin
  • 1956 (as editor): Ottheinrich. Commemorative publication commemorating the four hundredth anniversary of his electoral period in the Palatinate (1556–1559) . (Ruperto-Carola special volume). Heidelberg
  • 1967: Art treasures in Heidelberg, from the castle, the churches and the city collections. Explanations of the pictures by Anneliese Seeliger-Zeiss . Munich 1967

Literature and Sources

  • Edmund Strutz (Ed.): German Gender Book , Volume 123, Verlag CA Starke, Glücksburg, Ostsee, 1958, p. 367.
  • Heinrich Kellerter, Ernst Poensgen (ed.): The history of the Poensgen family A. Bagel-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1908
  • Christian Philipp Köster: Koesteriana: For Georg Poensgen on his 70th birthday on December 7, 1968 . Heidelberg 1968
  • Hartwig Niemann: Amber Room or Amber Cabinet: In Search of Truth , Google Books, p. 283: The role of Georg Poensgen

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Amber Room . In: Planet Wissen , accessed August 26, 2014.
  2. ^ Karl-Heinz Janßen: Large-scale search for the Amber Room. ZEIT ONLINE GmbH, November 16, 1984, accessed on October 18, 2017 (German): “ 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. "
  3. ↑ Birgitta Lamparth: Bernsteinzimmer: The Wiesbaden provenance researcher Ulrike Schmeuert-Rietig researched Count zu Solms-Laubach. VRM GmbH & Co. KG, January 13, 2017, accessed on October 18, 2017 (German): “ Before the Second World War, he was director of today's Frankfurt Historical Museum. He then became head of the Museum of Arts and Crafts there, now the Museum of Applied Arts. What Ernstotto Graf zu Solms-Laubach did in the meantime, during the war, is inextricably linked to what is probably the most spectacular art theft of the Nazi era: Solms-Laubach was responsible for the removal of the legendary and now lost Amber Room from the Catherine Palace active in Tsarskoye Selo. "
  4. ^ Website of the Georg and Emma Poensgen Foundation. Retrieved January 22, 2016 .
  5. ↑ Articles of Association in the 2014 version (PDF; 250 kB) Georg and Emma Poensgen Foundation, May 14, 2014, accessed on January 22, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Poensgen, Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art historian
DATE OF BIRTH December 7, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf
DATE OF DEATH January 11, 1974
Place of death Heidelberg