Gustav Oberlaender

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Gustav Oberlaender (born June 2, 1867 in Düren , † November 30, 1936 in Reading (Berks County, Pennsylvania) ) was a German-American entrepreneur and patron.

Life

Gustav Oberlaender was already nine years old orphan . He grew up with an uncle in Hagen, where he first attended high school, then after moving to Düsseldorf . He then trained with a chemicals dealer and emigrated to the USA in 1888.

Oberlaender found work in the textile industry and made a career. In 1906 he became a partner of the Berkshire Knitting Mills founded by Ferdinand Thun and Henry Janssen in Wyomissing near Reading. At the time, these were one of the world's largest stocking factories. In 1926 he retired from professional life and devoted himself entirely to his philanthropic interests.

Reading Public Museum

Gustav Oberlaender founded the Gustav Oberlaender Foundation for Education and Charity and the Oberlaender Trust as an endowment to the Carl Schurz Memorial Foundation . In doing so, he supported the exchange of scientists, economists and students between the USA and Germany. In Reading in 1929 he and Thun, Janssen and others donated the building for the Reading Public Museum and numerous works of art for its collection

Roman tower on the Gaulskopf

Oberlaender traveled regularly to Germany and the Mediterranean region. Wilhelm Dörpfeld (1853-1940) managed to win him over to support the German excavation projects in Greece. From 1926 he supported Gerhart Rodenwaldt (1886–1945) and resumed the excavations in Kerameikos , the most important ancient cemetery in Athens , which began in 1863 but were interrupted again and again (most recently since 1916) . He not only financed the excavations, but also the construction of the Kerameikos Museum (1936-38), and since 1929 the German excavations in Pergamon and Olympia and American excavations in Minturnae . In the vicinity of Bad Nauheim , which he often went to for cures, he made it possible to reconstruct a Limesturm ( Roman tower ) on the Gaulskopf (Taunus) in 1926 . The Oberlaender Trust financed the Kerameikos excavations after his death. Oberlaender supported purchases from Berlin's museums and, in the last year of his life, the traveling exhibition German art from the fifteenth to the twentieth century , which was shown in six cities in the USA.

Oberlaender had been married to Alice, née Penny , the daughter of a Methodist pastor , since 1895 . The couple had a daughter, Alice (died around 1990).

Painting collection

Gustav Oberlaender also owned paintings, including

estate

The records of the Oberlaender Trust , which existed until 1953, are now in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Films made by Oberlaender on his trip to Germany in 1936 were included in the collection of the National Air and Space Museum . The American School of Classical Studies at Athens primarily keeps photographs of the excavations from his estate.

Honors

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Catalog German art from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. An exhibition of paintings, water colors, and drawings held under the auspices of the Oberlaender Trust, the Carl Schurz Memorial Foundation, Inc., 1936-1937 . Philadelphia 1936.
  2. ↑ Auctioned Sotheby's New York, May 4, 2012, No. 98.
  3. ↑ Donated to Reading Public Museum by Oberlaender in 1926, sold by the latter in 2005.
  4. ^ Finding aid , accessed on October 17, 2016.
  5. ↑ Oberlaender movies showing at Reading Public Museum , Reading Eagle, April 13, 2013, accessed October 17, 2016.
  6. ^ Gustav Oberlaender Papers , accessed October 17, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Oberlaender, Gustav
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Oberländer, Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American entrepreneur and patron
DATE OF BIRTH June 2, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Düren
DATE OF DEATH November 30, 1936
Place of death Reading (Berks County, Pennsylvania)