Gustav Rau (art collector)

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Press conference of the German UNICEF as the universal heir of Dr. Rau (2008); from left: Klaus Gallwitz u. Jürgen Heraeus

Gustav Rau (born January 21, 1922 in Stuttgart ; † January 3, 2002 near Stuttgart) was a German doctor, philanthropist and art collector.

Life

Gustav Rau was the only son of the entrepreneur Gustav Rau . In 1936, his father had taken over the automotive supplier Spezialwerkzeugfabrik GmbH (SWF), which was founded in Feuerbach in 1923. The son was drafted into the German armed forces in 1941 and deserted from the army a little later. After the end of the Second World War , he began studying economics , which he completed with a doctorate. He joined his father's company, which he managed until the 1960s. During this time, Rau began studying medicine, which he also completed with a doctorate in 1969. He specialized in tropical medicine and pediatrics . In 1970, after the death of his father, he sold the family company, which today belongs to the French group Valeo , for 400 million Deutschmarks. On October 22, 1971, Rau established two foundations : The Dr. Rau'sche Medizinalstiftung based in Zurich and the Dr. Rau'sche Kunststiftung based in St. Gallen.

From 1974 to 1993 he worked as a tropical and pediatric doctor in Nigeria and the Congo . He built a hospital in Ciriri near Bukavu in eastern Congo , where he worked until 1993. Thousands of children and adults were treated and provided with food here. Rau also financed school attendance for 30,000 children a year, and he set up a library. 12 years after the establishment of the hospital and school, no child dies of malnutrition within a 12 km radius. Today the hospital is run by the Archdiocese of Bukavu and supported by the German section of UNICEF .

Because of his poor health, Rau had to return to Europe in the 1990s. In 1997 he suffered in Monaco a stroke, as a result, the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Monaco an official asset manager ordered .

While Raus was still alive, a judicial dispute arose over his ability to act or insane. In 1999 he was denied legal capacity by the Swiss Federal Court in Lausanne because of his illness; the incapacitation proceedings were later discontinued. On September 20, 2001, the Baden-Baden District Court confirmed Rau's legal capacity. In January 2002 the Stuttgart Regional Court wanted to get its own picture of Rau's condition and check his litigation capabilities. But Rau died on January 3rd in the Schillerhöhe Clinic in Gerlingen. Forensic doctors find a high dose of Parkinson's medication in Rau's corpse. The autopsy shows that the conspicuously high dose of the drug is a possible cause of death. In particular, the dosage in the blood corresponds to an infusion of 15 half-liter bottles of the preparation. "The toxicologists believe: the millionaire, who could hardly drink himself at the time, could have been given the drug by someone else in high concentration." The Stuttgart public prosecutor's office investigated suspicion of manslaughter, and the proceedings were discontinued due to lack of evidence another procedure in which a breach of trust was investigated.

As a testator , Rau left behind a fortune with unclear inheritance relationships after his death. In the last years of his life, the childless and single Gustav Rau wrote various wills in which he had different heirs, most recently in 1999 the German Unicef. The wills were revoked several times by him, they were contested from various sides and courts in Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Monaco were busy. The ability to act and insanity were cited as grounds for contestation. In 2008 Unicef ​​was judged to be the sole heir, but the District Court of Constance did not rule on the art collection.

The foundations

After selling his parents' company, Rau set up a number of foundations to manage and support his social and humanitarian projects as well as to maintain his constantly growing art collection. Apparently, Rau had no luck in choosing the persons of trust to administer the foundations, as both images and financial assets evaporated in ways that had not yet been clarified.

The Dr. Rau'sche Kunststiftung

On October 22, 1971 he founded the Dr. Rau'sche Kunststiftung based in St. Gallen, Switzerland. The purpose of the foundation was the "promotion of the fine arts, namely through the establishment of a collection of works of the fine arts and the applied arts and through the creation and maintenance of one or more art centers at home and abroad". On April 23, 2004, the foundation was dissolved by a resolution of the foundation council.

The Dr. Rau'sche Medical Foundation

Also on October 22, 1971, he founded the Dr. Rau'sche Medical Foundation based in Zurich. The purpose of the foundation was to "alleviate hardship and misery in the third world". On June 25, 2007, the foundation merged with the Fondation Rau pour le Tiers Monde and was given the new name Dr. Rau Foundation , based in Zurich. The purpose of the foundation is now "to support the basic needs of the underprivileged sections of the population in the Third World, primarily through the provision of funds for the sick, to prevent diseases, to promote family planning and the emancipation of women".

Fondation Rau pour le Tiers Monde

On September 24, 1986, Rau founded the Fondation Rau pour le Tiers Monde (= Foundation Rau for the Third World) based in Zollikon in Switzerland. The declared aim and purpose of the foundation was to support impoverished and disadvantaged sections of the population in the Third World, especially in the areas of health care, family planning, the emancipation of women and primary education. The foundation appeared as a lender at several art exhibitions and sold paintings at auctions. She was originally intended to be the main heir.

The Crelona Foundation

On January 16, 1987, the "Crelona Foundation" was founded with its headquarters in Vaduz . The sole purpose of the foundation was to secure Gustav Rau's livelihood during his lifetime. According to its statutes, the Crelona Foundation Raus is to secure a livelihood until his death and then transfer its assets to another foundation, the “Third World Foundation” in Switzerland. Rau wanted to make sure that after his death his art collection would be used to fund his life's work: the hospital in the Congo. Rau carefully chose a structure in which his foundation owned the collection - and no longer himself. Whether the donation was actually carried out was the subject of further trials.

The art collection

Gerard Dou : The cook

In 1958 Rau bought his first old master, the painting The Cook by the Dutchman Gerard Dou . That was the beginning of his unique art collection. From then on he regularly attended auctions in London, Paris and New York to expand his collection. By 1997, more than 700 paintings, sculptures, and handicrafts came together. The collection contains excellent examples of Western painting from the 14th century to Classical Modernism, including outstanding paintings such as El Greco's expressive Saint Dominic in Prayer , Auguste Renoir's Wife with the Rose , Camille Pissarro's portrait of Jeanne and Paul Cézanne's La mer à l ' estaque , one of the flower paintings by Odilon Redon , St. Mark's Square by Canaletto and works by Cranach , the beheading of Goliath by David (1606/07), an early Guido Reni , paintings by Giandomenico Tiepolo , François Boucher , Thomas Gainsborough , Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot , Gustave Courbet , Edvard Munch , pictures by the impressionists Édouard Manet , Claude Monet , Edgar Degas , Alfred Sisley , Camille Pissarro, Max Liebermann , alongside early Italian panels and works of the Renaissance , Mannerism and Baroque .

In an underground vault in the bonded warehouse Embraport the Zurich-Kloten grew quietly and unnoticed by the press and art scene, but under the watchful eyes of the Swiss authorities, one of the largest and most valuable private art collections of our time approach. Loans from Rau's collection were occasionally shown at international exhibitions, mostly marked as “from a Swiss private collection”, which disappeared back into the safe after the exhibition. However, the size and quality of the collection remained a mystery soon to be shrouded in myths until the first major Paris show in 2001, especially since the collector was taciturn and extremely shy of the press.

In 1999, the approved EDI against the opposition of the Liechtenstein Crenola Foundation , the export of 106 images for an exhibition in Japan, with the stipulation that the images would be after the exhibition in a direct way to Switzerland and not returned to Germany to permit access to prevent due to any claims by Germany. In the legal dispute to whom the pictures were due, only courts should actually have ordered. Instead, administration and politics decided. The Swiss Confederation, which was supposed to protect the collection, buckled under pressure from Germany. Claudia Kaufmann, the Secretary General of the FDHA, had the doors to the safe in Embrach opened in September 1999, when the works of art belonged to Rau's foundations, without there being sufficient guarantees that the pictures would be returned and although the assistants were dutifully against the loan resisted. Out of Entourage, the Swiss Embassy in Japan threatened to lose prestige for the Confederation if the pictures were captured in Embrach. That worked: the masterpieces flew to Japan - and apart from 11 paintings they never came back. The remaining paintings went to France. The large exhibition in the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris in 2001 with more than 100 masterpieces, curated by Marc Restellini in consultation with Rau, was seen by over 300,000 visitors and then in Rotterdam, in the Josef -Haubrich Kunsthalle in Cologne, in the Munich House of Art and Bergamo. The exhibition could only be realized thanks to the cunning skill of Restellini, who managed to bring the pictures from the collection to Paris for the exhibition, which led to displeasure on the part of Swiss diplomacy, which considered the exhibition to be illegal .

The value of the collection should amount to an estimated 500 to 750 million euros. At an auction of eight works from the collection at Sotheby's in 2008, a triptych by Taddeo di Bartolo valued at 300,000 British pounds brought in 1.9 million alone, and one of Jacopo Tintoretto's rare portraits brought in a record price of 1.6 for this old master Million pounds sterling. The total proceeds were £ 6.2 million. In 2013, Unicef ​​raised 43 million euros through collection sales. At the beginning of 2014, two works, the Self-Confident Algerian by Jean-Baptiste Corot and the View of the Hermitage by Camille Pissarro, were sold by UNICEF for around 16 million euros. The sale sparked criticism because these two works were added to the core collection , which was supposed to be kept together until 2026.

Exhibition of the collection in the Arp Museum Rolandseck

In October 2008, UNICEF and the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate agreed to exhibit the core of the collection, which Rau himself had selected, in the form of 95 works, which must remain together until 2026, in the Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck . A further 135 works are gradually to be auctioned for the benefit of the UNICEF foundation's assets and will also be available to the Arp Museum by then.

From 2009 to 2014, works from the “Kunstkammer Rau” were shown in eight partial exhibitions under changing aspects in the Arp Museum.

Collection catalogs

  • Masterpieces from Fra Angelico to Bonnard . Five centuries of painting. The collection of Dr. Rough. Geneva, Milan 2000. ISBN 88-8118-916-X
  • Kunstkammer Rau. Ed. Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck, Remagen. 8 volumes. 2009–2012.
    • Tiepolo and the Face of Italy. Edited by Klaus Gallwitz . 2009.
    • The collector's eye. Edited by Klaus Gallwitz. 2010.
    • Super French. Edited by Klaus Gallwitz. 2011.
    • Horizons. Landscapes from Fra Angelico to Monet. Edited by Oliver Kornhoff . 2012.
    • Delicious. Still lifes from Frans Snyders to Giorgio Morandi. Edited by Oliver Kornhoff. 2012.
    • Flurry of light. Winter in impressionism . Edited by Oliver Kornhoff. 2012
    • I staged that . Edited by Oliver Kornhoff. 2013
    • Bodily. The human body between pleasure and pain . Edited by Oliver Kornhoff, curated by Susanne Blöcker. 2014

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Baden-Württemberg Economic Archives of the University of Hohenheim.
  2. ↑ a b The secret collection of Doctor Rau. In: Art. Archive of the magazine, edition 1/2001. ( Memento from October 18, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ a b Manfred Schwarz: The Louvre of the Africa doctor . In: Berliner Zeitung. July 17, 2001
  4. ↑ a b c The well-meaning . Matthias Thieme In: Capital , No. 10, September 19, 2013, pp. 112–122
  5. ↑ Moneyhouse, credit check of companies
  6. ↑ Money House, Register
  7. ↑ Money House, Foundation Rau pour le Tiers Monde
  8. ^ Pierre Heumann and Markus Schär: Booty: Art . In: Die Weltwoche . No. 38.13, 2013, pp. 36-39.
  9. ↑ ZEITMagazin No. 11, March 5, 2009
  10. ↑ Old Masters Auction Records 2008 ( Memento of the original from October 9, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.art-magazin.de
  11. ↑ Ludger Fittkau : The loss of the self-confident Algerian: Political dispute over the sale of works from the "Rau core collection" by UNICEF , contribution from January 17, 2014 in the series Conclusion by Deutschlandradio Kultur , seen on deutschlandradiokultur.de, April 9, 2014
  12. ↑ dpa: Rau art collection comes to the Arp Museum . October 28, 2008 2:12 pm

Web links

Commons : Gustav Rau (art collector)  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Rau, Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German doctor and art collector
DATE OF BIRTH January 21, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH January 3, 2002
Place of death Stuttgart