Gottfried Keller Foundation
The Gottfried Keller Foundation , abbreviated to GKS , is a foundation founded in 1890 with headquarters in Winterthur, which is dedicated to the preservation of fine arts in Switzerland.
founding
The foundation goes back to Lydia Welti-Escher , who in 1890 bequeathed all of her assets to the Swiss Confederation after the divorce in order to finance an art foundation. Establishing this foundation was the final goal in life of the rich daughter of the Zurich railroad king, Alfred Escher, who - marked by the events surrounding her love affair with the painter Karl Stauffer-Bern - ended her life a year later at the age of 33. After the founder had first considered the name “Welti-Escher-Stiftung”, the foundation was finally given the name of the Swiss writer and politician Gottfried Keller (1819–1890).
With the donation, the donor connected the order to acquire significant works of fine art from home and abroad from the proceeds of the property and, in particular, to protect works of art from being sold abroad. The works purchased by the Foundation will be entrusted to Swiss museums on permanent loan, kept at their original location or returned there. A five-person commission appointed by the Federal Council determines the use of the income from the foundation's assets and the type of purchases.
With her art foundation, Lydia Welti-Escher wanted to accomplish a patriotic work like the Gotthard tunnel initiated by her father . She was convinced that she also acted in the spirit of her "eternal father" when she used his fortune for a public purpose and contributed her "little bit to the enhancement of the federal feeling of belonging".
Loss of foundation assets
The foundation's assets, which for the most part consisted of securities and real estate, amounted to almost 5 million francs in 1890/1891, which corresponds to a current value of around 60 million francs. However, this considerable fortune soon fell victim to government mismanagement. The finance department responsible for asset management made serious mistakes that reduced the assets substantially and soon reduced the originally high earnings potential to a poor level, so that the Gottfried Keller Foundation can only fulfill its purpose today with additional federal funds: "Since the considerable, The foundation capital brought in by Lydia Welti-Escher in 1890 has now scandalously degenerated into an insignificant fund because of mismanagement ... the Gottfried Keller Foundation is no longer even able to properly fulfill its regulatory tasks on its own. "
On the one hand, the foundation lost millions of francs due to the investment strategy of the federal government: risky, but tended to be more profitable investments were continuously shifted to conservative paper with low yields and mainly invested in bonds from cantonal and mortgage banks. The Gottfried Keller Foundation thus became a “Güsel bucket of all possible Swiss government papers”. In addition, the finance department sold numerous securities (e.g. all Maggi papers) with significant price losses. In addition to the mistakes in the investment management, the federal government acted negligently by foregoing the continuous accumulation of the foundation's assets. Even more serious is the fact that he attacked the capital in gross violation of the foundation charter, for example in 1894 when he debited the amount of around 40,000 Swiss francs to arbitrate Friedrich Emil Welti's post-tax proceedings from the foundation's assets.
The sale of the property in Zurich, owned by the foundation, also deserves a damning verdict: Both the Belvoir and the area on Bleicherweg were rushed and sold without an evaluation of the market value and generated proceeds that were 250,000 francs below the official estimate. An alternative to an immediate and full sale had not even been seriously considered. Especially with a view to the foundation's long-term orientation, the question should have been clarified whether it would not have been wise and necessary to keep real estate or parts of it as a tangible asset for the foundation. Not least because both properties were in prime locations and promised to continue to gain in value due to the looming construction boom.
Due to these wrong decisions in asset management, the foundation now has an annual income of just a few tens of thousands of francs for art purchases. With a long-term distribution and investment policy, however, the Gottfried Keller Foundation could have had assets of more than 1 billion francs today, which would allow acquisitions of works of art worth several million francs annually. The historian Joseph Jung is therefore of the opinion that the federal government would have to "inject at least 50 million francs" in order to save the foundation.
The Gottfried Keller Foundation today
The foundation's collection today comprises more than 6,500 works in around 100 museums in Switzerland, with a focus on painting from the 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1926 the foundation acquired the St. Georgen monastery in Stein am Rhein . Since 1960, she has also owned the city panorama of Thun , created by Marquard Wocher . With the acquisition of valuable interiors (e.g. Wülflingen Castle in Winterthur), the foundation has succeeded in keeping them in their former surroundings.
literature
- Joseph Jung : The imaginary museum: private commitment to art and state cultural policy in Switzerland: the Gottfried Keller Foundation 1890–1922. Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-85823-681-0 .
- Joseph Jung (Ed.): Lydia Welti-Escher. A sociopolitical drama. Testimonials, letters and new knowledge. NZZ Libro, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-038234593 .
- Hanspeter Landolt: Gottfried Keller Foundation. Collecting for the Swiss museums. 1890-1990. 100 years of the Gottfried Keller Foundation. Benteli, Bern 1990.
See also
Web links
- Federal Office for Culture Art Collections of the Federation Gottfried Keller Foundation
- Federal government supports the Gottfried Keller Foundation , report from Nachrichten.ch dated November 23, 2011