Hans Carl Scheibler

Hans Carl Scheibler (born September 22, 1887 in Cologne ; † October 17, 1963 there ) was a German entrepreneur , Dutch consul general and art patron .

Live and act

The son of the fertilizer manufacturer Carl Johann Heinrich Scheibler (1852–1920) and Bertha Maria Emilia (Lilla) von Mallinckrodt (1856–1915), daughter of the Kommerzienrat Gustav von Mallinckrodt (1829–1904) and sister of his son and industrialist Gustav von Mallinckrodt , completed a commercial apprenticeship after attending secondary school. In 1906 he joined Chemische Fabrik Kalk (CFK), where his father was a member of the board as a shareholder with inheritance rights. Hans Carl Scheibler took over the fertilizer division as department director and after the death of his father also the position of managing partner of CFK. In 1930 Scheibler gave its name to the mineral fertilizer with the brand name Scheibler's Kampdünger , developed after extensive research and included in the CFK portfolio , where Kamp stood for lime-ammonium-phosphate . This product, created from a full ammonation of superphosphates , was characterized by high quality, grain size, throwing power and shelf life . Scheibler also became a member of the executive committee of the Association of German Fertilizer Manufacturers, in which his father was chairman for many years.

During the Second World War , Scheibler served as a lieutenant colonel in the Wehrmacht and was appointed city commander of Nice as part of the occupation of France from 1942 to 1944 . After his return, the CFK was completely destroyed and the subsequent construction was mainly the responsibility of the new managing partner Fritz Vorster, junior.

In addition to his professional obligations, Hans Carl Scheibler was socially committed in a variety of ways. Among other things, he was a member of the board of the Rheinisch-Westfälische Börse in Düsseldorf and various supervisory boards. He was also appointed Honorary Consul of the Netherlands as the successor to his father and was a member of the German-Dutch Society in Cologne founded by Franz Schönberg and Robert Paul Oszwald in the mid-1920s, the aim of which was to build friendly relations between the two countries , especially in the economic, but also in the cultural field. By the end of 1937, the company already consisted of almost 350 cooperative and individual members, including the chemical factory Kalk, the labor lawyer Hans Carl Nipperdey , the Cologne mayor Karl Georg Schmidt and the historian Franz Petri . Furthermore, Scheibler, together with the Mayor of Cologne Konrad Adenauer and the Germanist Friedrich von der Leyen, played a decisive role in the establishment of a German-Dutch institute at the University of Cologne in 1929 , which was opened a year later after numerous concerns had been resolved.,

Scheibler's main commitment, shaped by his family environment, was to promote the Cologne art scene. A relative of one of his family's cousins, Ludwig Scheibler , worked in the management of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum (WRM) until 1904 , Hans Carl's wife Lotte was a student of Ferdinand Nigg at the Cologne factory school and from 1935 chairwoman of the Cologne branch GEDOK and her aunt was the art collector Helene Kröller-Müller . Scheibler took over the post of secretary in the Wallraf-Richartz-Gesellschaft founded in 1922, which merged in 1929 with the Cologne Museum Association, a subsidiary of the Cologne Art Association (KKV), founded in 1857 . At the same time, both associations merged with the KKV and Scheibler was initially hired in the same position and also took over the management of the KKV from 1931 to 1944. In addition, he also joined the newly founded Association of Friends of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in 1929 , which he ran until 1941 as a deputy and then as chairman until 1945. During his war deployment, he was here as well as at the KKV both by the mine director Gustav Brecht (1880-1965) and by Edith von Schröder, née. von Schnitzler, daughter of the industrialist Richard von Schnitzler and wife of the banker Kurt Freiherr von Schröder .

Scheibler's time on the board of the KKV coincided with a time of increasing political influence by National Socialism on the art scene. Nevertheless, it was thanks to him that from 1933 the KKV neither allowed itself to be brought into line nor went into opposition to the National Socialist regime. For his own reputation, membership in the Marienburger Reitverein, which was incorporated into an SA cavalry storm, was helpful, as this fulfilled the condition of membership in a National Socialist association for him. Although the KKV, like the other art associations in Germany, had been subordinated to the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts from 1935, the KKV under Scheibler's leadership repeatedly pushed through artists in its exhibition program, such as Emil Nolde (1935), August Macke (1933) and Friedrich Vordemberge (1939) were actually not acceptable. The KKV also took action in the large exhibitions “New German Art” (1935) and “The German West” (1939, 1942), in which the KKV, the German-Dutch Society and the WRM were also involved. In addition, the KKV was constantly tormented by considerable financial concerns, which Scheibler often addressed to the responsible ministry, but which were mostly answered negatively and could therefore only be contained by selling pictures as part of auction proceeds. In 1957, Scheibler was made an honorary member for his long service to the KKV.

In addition to these lavish activities, Scheibler was also a member of the Union Club from 1867 , which had also owned the Hoppegarten racecourse near Berlin since 1874 and which had its headquarters in Cologne from 1934. Some of its members, including Scheibler, were subjected to political scrutiny following the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler on suspicion of active or passive complicity.

Scheibler also belonged to the Rotary International Club from 1930 and in 1932, together with Joseph Klersch , Thomas Liessem and Otto Brügelmann, co-founded the “Friends and Patrons of Cologne Customs Association”, which organized the first Veedelzög on Carnival Sunday a year later . His son Christoph also belonged to this association, which he led for many years as deputy chairman.

After his father had already started to document the genealogical data of the Scheibler family in a third gender register, based on the first two from the years 1791 and 1874, and to publish it in 1895, Hans Carl Scheibler wrote together with the historian and folk researcher Karl Wülfrath in the 1930s a new updated and supplemented edition. He published this in the form of the first volume of the West German pedigree , which aroused the interest of National Socialist race research. The conspicuousness of the accumulation of important and successful entrepreneurs and scientists in the widely ramified family within a few generations made the Scheiblers appear as a suitable showpiece of racially argued leadership and elite research. Scheibler and Wülfrath came to the conclusion that behind the marriage of the clans was not a coincidence, but “organic growth”.

Scheibler's commitment to the family tradition also meant that he continued to run the family archive, which his father had set up in the Red House in Monschau and where the family's worldwide entrepreneurial activity began in the 18th century. Finally, by will, he arranged that after his death both the Red House as a whole and the family archive should be rededicated in the Scheibler-Museum Rotes Haus Monschau foundation and transferred to the Rhineland Regional Association in Pulheim-Brauweiler as a deposit .

Honors

Hans Carl Scheibler was awarded the Iron Cross and the War Merit Cross as well as the Officer's Cross of the Royal Dutch Order of Orange-Nassau , the Officer's Cross of the Order of the Crown of Italy and the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class for his diverse services .

family

Hans Carl Scheibler was married to Lotte Müller (1894–1969), daughter of Gustav Henry Müller (1865–1913), a shipowner in Düsseldorf and Rotterdam and brother of the art collector Helene Kröller-Müller. The Scheibler couple had two sons and a daughter, the eldest son, Christoph Scheibler (1920–2010), was the orderly officer of Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg when he visited the headquarters during World War II . After the war he held a position in industry, but also became known as an artist of abstract painting . His son from his second marriage with Irmelin born. von der Goltz, daughter of the lawyer Rüdiger Graf von der Goltz , Aurel Scheibler (* 1960), became an art historian and gallery owner and opened the "Galerie Aurel Scheibler" for contemporary art in Cologne from 1991 , which he moved to Berlin in 2006 and with which he is still a regular guest at international art fairs. After the early death (1977) of Christophs Scheibler's second wife, he married Elisabeth, born in 1980. Kerschbaumer (* 1927), the widow of the painter and graphic artist Ernst Wilhelm Nay, who wrote the story of the Scheibler family .

The second son of Hans Carl, Jürgen Scheibler (1922–1942), had died in the Russian campaign and the daughter Christiane (1927–1992) later married the Cologne banker and president of the German stock exchange Karl Oskar Koenigs (1924–1997), who had also been involved in several art historical, social and ecological organizations.

Works (selection)

• Hans Carl Scheibler and Karl Wülfrath : West German pedigrees. Vol. 1, Böhlau, Weimar 1939.

Literature and Sources

• Ute Haug: The Cologne Art Association in National Socialism. Structure and development of an art institution in the cultural and political landscape of the Third Reich . Dissertation, Aachen 1998 pdf
• Friends of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum: Hans Carl Scheibler in Memoriam . Greven & Bechtold, Cologne 1963.
• Elisabeth Nay-Scheibler: The story of the Scheibler family. In: Scheibler-Museum Rotes Haus Monschau Foundation. (Hg), Cologne 1994.

Web links

• Portrait painting by Anton Räderscheidt on picture index
• Biography Lotte Scheibler

Individual evidence

1. ↑ chap. VI: Excerpt from the history of the chemical factory lime (PDF; 2.3 MB)
2. ↑ Herbert van Uffelen: Modern Dutch literature in the German-speaking area 1830–1990 , Center for Dutch Studies , Münster, 1993 chap. 3.2 .: The German-Dutch Institute in Cologne
3. ↑ Marta Baerlecken and Ulrich Tiedau: The German-Dutch Research Institute at the University of Cologne 1931–1945 , p. 853. (PDF; 404 kB)
4. ↑ As once with the emperor . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 1990, pp. 202 ( Online - Feb. 26, 1990 ).
5. ↑ Note members of the "Union Club" and their political review
6. ↑ Friends and supporters of the Cologne customs  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.