Hans Friedrich Secker

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Hans Friedrich Secker (born April 8, 1888 in Elberfeld , † August 7, 1960 in Pfronten ) was a German art historian and museum director.

Life

Secker's father, Franz Ludwig Secker, was the director of the scientific teaching institute in Elberfeld .

Secker attended high schools in Elberfeld and Bad Münstereifel. There he passed the Abitur examination on March 6, 1906. He studied art history , Egyptology and archeology at the Friedrichs-Universität Halle , the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin and at the Kaiser-Wilhelms-Universität Strasbourg . On 17 December 1910 he was in Strasbourg at Georg Dehio to Dr. phil. PhD. In 1911 he was in the Corps Palaio-Alsatia recipiert . He then worked at the Hohenlohe Museum in Strasbourg; In 1911 he became an assistant at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Magdeburg .

Museum director in Danzig (1912–1922)

Secker was appointed to Danzig in September 1912 as director of the municipal gallery and the West Prussian provincial museum . He had impressed the founding director and head of the Magdeburg Museum, Prof. Theodor Volbehr , who recommended him with special praise to the superiors of the city of Danzig. (In 1922 he recommended Secker to the then mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, as a “lovable, nimble and fresh person”). In the year he took office and a few weeks before his trip to Danzig, Secker visited the International Exhibition of the Sonderbund of West German Art Friends and Artists (May 25 to September 30, 1912 in Cologne). 634 works in 29 halls offered a first synopsis of modern art in Europe. Secker said afterwards that the exhibition had put him in a tumultuous excitement: "There were building blocks for new domes - what color and abundance, what festival!" In Gdansk he had to learn that the "rebellious forces" of the avant-garde would not carry away the thoughtful citizens , especially since the ambitions of the magistrate were aimed at a conservator who was supposed to reorganize the disordered holdings of paintings and handicrafts administered by a city council on a voluntary basis. These were stored in an abandoned Franciscan monastery from the 15th century. Secker, at the age of 24, the youngest museum director in the German Reich, succeeded in processing the collections to produce initial results within a few months. The grand opening of the picture gallery in the skylight rooms of the house took place in May 1913. At the same time, Secker's "Guide to Public Art Collections" appeared. A year later, the handicraft inventory of the Provincial Museum was shown on the ground and middle floors and the in-house collection of casts from antiquity in the cloisters of the monastery. Donations and foundations from the citizens of Gdańsk enabled a rapid increase in the holdings. Within a year, the number of visitors increased threefold, and the number of museum tours was around 350 by autumn 1916. Visits to the imperial family soon confirmed the monastery’s reputation as the most important gallery in East Germany. Secker's eagerness to fulfill a mission ("to become a guide to artistic seeing and differentiating") led him to a lively lecture practice in the provinces. With Karl Jellinek, the well-known natural scientist of the TH Danzig, he founded the municipal adult education center (one of the first in the Reich), as its lecturer in art history he made himself available for years. In November 1918 he founded the Kunstforschende Gesellschaft , whose publications focused on the Weichselland and the neighboring coastal countries. When he left Danzig in 1922, the Society unanimously made him an honorary member.

Museum director in Cologne (1922–1928)

Secker's appointment to the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum took place on April 3, 1922. Concerned allusions were mixed in with the congratulations and recommendations of older colleagues. They referred to the difficult terrain of local art politics on the Rhine, to unpleasant conditions in the museum system, the rectification of which required a high degree of diplomacy and strong willpower. In fact, in the years that followed, Secker's administration proved to be an exhausting (and ultimately futile) struggle against narrow citizenship and an administration that was hostile to art. When he took office, the starting position was similar to ten years earlier in the West Prussian Hanseatic city. Like the collections in the Danzig monastery, the inventory of the Cologne gallery that has survived had not known an expert manager for a long time. Since the early death of Alfred Hagelstange (1874–1914), his post, which he held for seven years, remained orphaned. His last purchases of modern art were interned in the inaccessible, dusty director's room during the war, which Secker soon integrated into the official inventory of the museum. In the first year in office he was able to build on experience in Danzig. Both the structural changes to the gallery and the reorganization of its holdings and the principle of chronological arrangement of the halls, even the color design of the exhibition walls, corresponded to his Gdansk plans. A first conflict with Mayor Dr Konrad Adenauer concerned the redesign of the house. In the month-long dispute about the better concept (Plan A versus Plan B), the city council finally had to decide - in the summer of 1923 - with all parliamentary groups pleading against the OB's organizational plan (Justizrat Fuchs, city councilor: "He will never forgive you"). The capital that was initially available, some of which was laboriously obtained from the auctioning of dispensable pictures in the museum, had melted down as a result of the prevailing progressive inflation. The delay in the reorganization caused not least the late opening of the redesigned gallery in the museum, which took place on December 1, 1923.

The house was the responsibility of two directors. While HFSecker was responsible for the management of the 17th to 20th century gallery along with the graphic collections, Prof. Dr. Karl Schäfer, also director of the Cologne Museum of Applied Arts, the medieval department. The two directors were on an equal footing and represented each other, which, in the absence of a clearly defined division of labor, could lead to disputes in the house, especially since different temperaments played a role. In the Schäfer / Secker case, an older, spirited man faced a younger, very ambitious and very sensitive one. Indeed, the relationship between the two directors during their tenure was marked by rivalry and strife. Probably only after their departure could they find out that their conflicts had been further fueled by the intrigues of their employees. The reason for the quarrel, however, was ultimately to be found in the unclear measures that the city of Cologne had taken in the administration of its museums and held for years.

Secker started with enthusiasm. In November 1922 he founded the Wallraf-Richartz-Gesellschaft, which set itself the task of promoting art history research and interest in contemporary art in the countries on the Rhine. Since 1924 the Society has offered its members the annual Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch (in the tradition of which today's organ of the Friends of the Museum of the same name lives on). Secker's ambition to build a modern metropolitan gallery and to take into account the work of contemporary artists when purchasing pictures did not meet with the echo of the administration and the public. While the first additions to the collection with works by Hofer, Pechstein, Purrmann, Grosz or Rodin attracted little attention, his purchase of the monumental painting "The Trench" caused an unprecedented scandal that aroused the art world far beyond Cologne. The almost wall-filling picture by the artist Otto Dix, a projection of his traumatic experience at the front during the World War, was the main attraction of the newly opened gallery and soon led to disputes in the Cologne daily press. When the work was loaned to Berlin in the spring of 1924 and exhibited in the Akademie der Künste, the rigorous criticism of the well-known art historian and publicist Julius Meier-Graefe with his attack on Secker as "the immature gallery director from the provinces" caught fire on the "aged" Academy President Max Liebermann, who sanctioned "dirt", a discussion across the empire. The weight of the content of the picture ("the horror in perfection") provoked diametrical interpretations, which sometimes conjured up "public nuisance", sometimes the "deepest art". In the cathedral city, Meier-Graefes' recommendation to the Cologne city fathers to remove the "monster" from the museum was not without effect. Secker had to return the painting to the Berlin art dealer Karl Nierendorf at the beginning of 1925 after it had been on view for a year in a separate room separated by a curtain. This was preceded by the inglorious tactics of the conservative magistrate (determined by the mayor) and the influence of the opposing press on an uncomprehending bourgeoisie.

Decisions and delayed decisions of the cultural office, not least the experience that intrigue and denunciation in his own house opposed the intentions of the museum management, prompted him to enter into appointment negotiations with the Berlin National Gallery when director Ludwig Justi wanted to win him over to the new department of the Kronprinzenpalais . Secker decided to stay in Cologne and handed over - "defiantly in the storm against any backward sentiment" - a memorandum to the mayor in which he protested that the administration was blocking his goals. Since then, he has hardly been promised any support, either for museum purchases or for planned exhibitions. In 1927 his purchase budget was 8,000 marks (half for paintings and half for graphics), while his Düsseldorf colleague Karl Koetschau had an annual budget of 250,000 marks. It is nevertheless noteworthy that Secker succeeded in bringing many important works to the museum with the help of Rhenish art lovers. His report on the growth of the Modern Gallery during its first five years shows that the number of donors who donated gifts to the gallery and the Kupferstichkabinett was more than 250. With the acquisition of new contemporary art, however, the opposition of the public was to be feared. Loans from the Garvens collection, Kokoschka's “Self-Portrait with a Woman” from 1914 or James Ensor's large-format “Temptation of Saint Anthony” (hung in place of the “trenches”) were not allowed to remain in Cologne.

In retrospect, Secker attributed his differences with the city leaders and his premature resignation to two causes, once to the art department head Meerfeld, "who at that time, as a social democratic parliamentarian and member of the state council, was completely absorbed in his party work and never, except for the committee meetings , went to the museum ”, and secondly to the administrative vacuum that developed, which encouraged the unauthorized behavior of subordinate bodies. Lack of understanding and small harassment of the "Office II" in conspiratorial contact with ambitious and disloyal employees of the two directors had created a climate of mistrust and inhibited creativity in the house on Wallrafplatz. Mayor Adenauer, who intervened several times in Meerfeld's unhappy administration, did not solve the openly revealed museum crisis. With his management style based on a strictly conservative attitude, which - in alliance with the citizens - was directed against advanced modern art and to which prominent artists such as conductor Klemperer, Artistic Director Hartung, and philosopher Max Scheler fell victim, he damaged his reputation as a cultural politician . In the case of Secker, he was evidently advised tendentiously by subordinate officials, which could explain his hostile attitude towards the director of the Modern Gallery. In the end, he was only able to redeem his attempt to part with the unpopular officer by fulfilling Secker's demand for a lifelong pension that far exceeded his pension entitlements. This was preceded by the attempt to remove Secker from office with the help of disciplinary proceedings (based on defamation). The press spoke of an embarrassment when the Cologne District President rejected his request after examining the events, pointing out that there was no way to prove that the defendant had acted dishonorable. On January 13, 1928, Hans Friedrich Secker Adenauers received notification: "... I accept your offer to resign from your employment relationship with the city of Cologne, subject to the conditions set ..." In May, the Wallraf-Richartz Society appointed the departing 40-year-old museum director unanimously named her honorary member.

As museum director, Secker left the service of the City of Cologne on February 1, 1928 with a retirement pension. As a private scholar and art expert he was often on the road. He wrote radio plays and essays under the pseudonym Johannes Karst .

Marriages

Secker married three times: Annie Elisabeth ("Lizzie") Wollstatt from Zurich (1921), Ilse von Andreae, b. von Mallinckrodt from Cologne (1929) and the illustrator Gerda Schroeder from Berlin (1940). He had a daughter from his first marriage and two daughters and a son from his third marriage. From 1929 he lived in Cologne, from 1932 in Bad Honnef and from 1956 in Weißensee near Füssen in the Allgäu .

Publications

  • The early Gothic building forms in Swabia - especially their connection with details from the Strasbourg Minster Bauhütte . Strasbourg, JHEHeitz 1911 (dissertation)
  • The sculptures of the Strasbourg Minster since the French Revolution, with two addenda on Gothic portraits and on sculptures from the Renaissance and Baroque periods . Strasbourg, JHE Heitz 1912.
  • Guide to the public art collections in Gdansk . Vol. 1: "The municipal picture gallery in the Franciscan monastery. First illustrated edition. Danzig, Burau 1913
  • The old pottery art of Gdańsk and its neighboring cities . Leipzig, Klinkhardt & Biermann 1915
  • The art collections in the Franciscan monastery in Gdansk (signpost) . Berlin, Bard 1917
  • Painting from around 1860 to the present from a private collection in Cologne . Cologne, Kölnischer Kunstverein 1925
  • The gallery of modern times in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum . Leipzig, Klinkhardt & Biermann 1927
  • Built pictures - the basis for a future wall painting . Berlin / Zurich, Atlantis-Verlag 1934
  • Julius Bretz . Dresden, Verlag der Kunst 1957
  • Diego Rivera . Verlag der Kunst 1957
  • José Guadelupe Posada . Verlag der Kunst 1961

Numerous articles and essays in catalogs, magazines and newspapers. Until the last war, HFSecker was a permanent employee of the Vossische Zeitung Berlin, the Kölnische Zeitung and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

Honors

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Matriculation of the Corps Palaio-Alsatia from 1880–2015, o. O., o. J., p. 152 f.
  2. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1930, 31/132
  3. ↑ Marriage to Ilse von Mallinckrodt (MyHeritage)
  4. ^ Pomorska Biblioteka Cyfrowa
personal data
SURNAME Secker, Hans Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Karst, Johannes (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art historian
DATE OF BIRTH April 8, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Elberfeld
DATE OF DEATH August 7, 1960
Place of death Pfronten