Georg Swarzenski

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Georg Swarzenski, drawing by Lino Salini

Georg Swarzenski (born January 11, 1876 in Dresden , † June 14, 1957 in Brookline , Massachusetts ) was a German art historian . He was a personality who shaped the cultural and cultural-political life as well as the museums in Frankfurt am Main for more than three decades. He was also the author of the Frankfurter Zeitung . After 1939 he was a curator for Medieval Art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston .

Career

Swarzenski was the son of the wealthy Dresden citizen Adolf Hans Swarzenski, and his wife Auguste Beck (Swarzenski). From 1896 he studied law in Heidelberg and married Ella Perec-Wilcynska in 1899. He then turned to art history and studied until 1901 with the Medievalist Adolph Goldschmidt in Berlin at the Humboldt University and Henry Thode at the University of Heidelberg . Swarzenski received his doctorate with a thesis on Ottonian book illumination , namely " Illuminated manuscripts of the 10th and 11th centuries in the St. Emmeram monastery , Regensburg ". He then worked as a research assistant at the Berlin museums . In 1903 he completed his habilitation and was an assistant at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence for a year before he returned to the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin .

Frankfurt am Main

van Gogh, portrait of Dr. Gachet
Altdorfer, king adoration
Willi Baumeister, studio picture III, 1929

Swarzenski was appointed as the successor to Heinrich Weizsäcker (until 1904) and Ludwig Justi in January 1906 as director of the Städelsche Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt am Main , founded in 1816 . The appointment was based on an unsolicited application by Swarzenski, in which Swarzenski confidently referred to his career and achievements. Impressed by this, the Städel's administration decided in favor of the applicant. In 1907, Lord Mayor Franz Adickes appointed him the first joint director of the Städelsches Kunstinstitut and the newly founded Städtische Galerie im Städel. With financial support from the city, Swarzenski was able to purchase large amounts of modern art . He added most of the French impressionists to the collection until World War I , who are still part of the collection today. There were also contemporary works by artists such as Franz Marc and Max Beckmann , who was also a teacher at the Städelschule . Swarzenski was also instrumental in founding the municipal sculpture collection in the Liebieghaus , which opened in 1909 and became its first director.

He had a long-standing, close friendship with Max Beckmann, which was also reflected in numerous acquisitions for the museum, including 13 oil paintings alone, but also in Beckmann's numerous portraits of the Swarzenski family. Beckmann's portrait of Marie Swarzenski (around 1927) was acquired by the Städel in 2004 as a gift from his son Wolfgang Beckmann. It shows his second wife Marie Swarzenski (1899–1967), whom he married in 1916 and who was the daughter of the Frankfurt city council and art patron Viktor Mössinger . Through Mössinger, Swarzenski was able to obtain Vincent van Gogh's portrait of Dr. Gachet purchase.

At Swarzenski's instigation, the “Städtische Galerie im Städel” received important loans from the Historisches Museum Frankfurt in 1922 , including the famous Paradiesgärtlein from the Prehn collection and the inactive wing of the Heller Altar by Grünewald as permanent loans . In 1928 he was appointed general director of the Frankfurt museums. In the same year he exhibited the Hohenzollern collection from Sigmaringen in the Städel and secured important works of old German painting from this collection, including The Resurrection of the House Bookkeeper , the portrait for almost six million Reichsmarks, which were raised by a consortium of patrons Holbeins d. Ä. and Albrecht Altdorfer's Adoration of the Magi . There were also contemporary works by artists such as Franz Marc , Max Beckmann and Willi Baumeister . The latter artists were also teachers at the Städelschule in Frankfurt. In 1929 Swarzenski acquired the work "Atelierbild III" (1929) from Willi Baumeister from the funds of the "Künstlerhilfe" of the city. This painting was confiscated by the National Socialists (Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda) in 1937. Its whereabouts are unknown. In the exhibition, Swarzenski presented old and new art side by side in order to show visitors the unity of art from all eras.

After the National Socialists came to power and on the basis of the law to restore the civil service , Georg Swarzenski was removed from all municipal offices in 1933, but remained director of the private Städel art institute until his retirement in 1938. Alfred Wolters , who had previously been a loyal employee of Swarzenski, took over the management of the Städtische Galerie . In 1933 an order was issued according to which works of art that had been ostracized as “degenerate” had to be taken to the depot. During the “ Degenerate Art ” campaign in 1937, 77 paintings , 399 graphics and three sculptures were confiscated, almost exclusively works that could be acquired during his tenure. On January 22, 1938, armed Gestapo men arrested Swarzenski in his apartment and took him to Gestapo headquarters for interrogation. He was given the opportunity to write an article in the Frankfurter Zeitung on December 9, 1937, in which the portrait of Dr. Gachet had been referred to. In fact, Benno Reifenberg wrote the article. Swarzenski was released that night. In addition to the charge that he was responsible for the article, he was also able to refute the suspicion that it had served Van Gogh as a model for the painting.

Princeton and Boston

In 1938 Swarzenski emigrated to the United States . From 1938 to 1949 he lectured at the Institute for Advanced Study , Princeton , NJ, before GH Edgell, the director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, offered him a curator (Fellow for Research in Sculpture and Medieval Art) in the museum's Medieval Department build up. The collection is now the third largest of its kind in the United States. His exhibition "Arts of the Middle Ages: 1000-1400" caused a sensation in 1940 and brought the Middle Ages into the focus of a large public. In 1956 he retired, and his successor in the museum was his son Hanns Swarzenski , also a respected art historian. In 1956 he received the plaque of honor from the city of Frankfurt am Main , but unlike his wife and sons, Georg Swarzenski was never to return to Frankfurt am Main.

Publications (selection)

  • as editor: hand drawings by old masters from German private ownership. Frankfurter Verlags-Anstalt, Frankfurt am Main 1924.
  • Museum issues. A contribution to the redesign of the municipal art collection in Frankfurt a. M. Frankfurter Bibliophilen-Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main 1928.
  • The master of the Barberini panels: Bramante. In: Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts. Boston. Vol. 38, No. 230, 1940, ISSN  0732-2895 , pp. 90-97 (also as a special reprint).

literature

Festschrift, published in 1951 by Oswald Goetz . On the frontispiece is his portrait of Max Beckmann, which is not yet in the public domain .
  • Konstanze Crüwell: A bitter farewell. Georg Swarzenski, director of the Städel from 1906 to 1937. In: Eva Atlan, Raphael Gross , Julia Voss (eds.): 1938. Art, artists, politics. Wallstein, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-1412-2 , pp. 259-274.
  • Konstanze Crüwell: "Words are as superfluous in a museum as in a concert hall". A homage to Georg Swarzenski, director of the Städel from 1906–1937 . König, Cologne 2015, ISBN 978-3-86335-805-1 .
  • Uwe Fleckner, Max Hollein (Ed.): Museum in contradiction. The Städel and National Socialism (= publications of the research center "Degenerate Art". Vol. 6). Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-05-004919-9 .

Web links

Wikisource: Newspaper note on the appointment of Dr. Swarzenskis as director of the Städel Art Institute (1906)  - sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Georg Swarzenski in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
  2. ↑ Konstanze Crüwell: A bitter farewell. Georg Swarzenski, Städeldirektor from 1906 to 1937. In: Eva Atlan, Raphael Gross, Julia Voss (Eds.): 1938. 2013, pp. 259–274, here pp. 270 f.
  3. ^ Masterworks of graphics in the Frankfurt Städel. In: Culture online.
  4. ^ Frank-Olaf Brauerhoch: The city and its (art) museums. In: Rolf Lauter (Ed.): Art in Frankfurt 1945 to today. Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-7973-0581-8 , p. 299 ff.
  5. ↑ Listed in: Peter Beye , Felicitas Baumeister: Willi Baumeister. Catalog of works of the paintings. 2 volumes. Hatje-Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2002, ISBN 3-7757-0936-3 , under the number 317.
  6. ↑ Konstanze Crüwell: A bitter farewell. Georg Swarzenski, Städeldirektor from 1906 to 1937. In: Eva Atlan, Raphael Gross, Julia Voss (Eds.): 1938. 2013, pp. 259–274, here p. 262.
  7. ↑ Konstanze Crüwell: A bitter farewell. Georg Swarzenski, Städeldirektor from 1906 to 1937. In: Eva Atlan, Raphael Gross, Julia Voss (Eds.): 1938. 2013, pp. 259–274, here p. 263.
  8. ↑ Konstanze Crüwell: A bitter farewell. Georg Swarzenski, Städeldirektor from 1906 to 1937. In: Eva Atlan, Raphael Gross, Julia Voss (Eds.): 1938. 2013, pp. 259–274, here 260 f.
  9. ↑ Biography in the Dictionary of Arthistorians
  10. ↑ Honor plaque. Award winner since 1952. from: frankfurt.de accessed on Feb. 27, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Swarzenski, Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art historian
DATE OF BIRTH January 11, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH June 14, 1957
Place of death Boston