Hans Hess (art historian)

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Hans Hess OBE (born August 23, 1908 in Erfurt ; died January 21, 1975 ) was a German shoe manufacturer, British art historian and author.

Life

Hans Hess was the son of the Erfurt shoe manufacturer and art collector Alfred Hess and his wife Thekla (1884–1968), née Pauson. He attended the Odenwald School and the Free School Community of Wickersdorf . He studied art history in Paris and Geneva, but could not finish his studies because his father died in 1931 and he therefore had to join his parents' company. Hess and his mother were also heirs to his father's art collection. After the transfer of power to the National Socialists in 1933, Hess had to emigrate to France as an anti-Semitic persecuted, where he found employment in the advertising industry. In 1935 he moved to England and worked at the Leicester Art Gallery . Hess worked on the German Jewish Refugee Aid Committee, was co-editor of the magazine Inside Nazi Germany and co-founder of the Free German Cultural Association . After the outbreak of World War II, Hess was interned by the British as an Enemy Alien on the Isle of Man and shipped to Canada . In 1942 he was able to return to England.

In 1947 he became director of the City Art Gallery in York . Hess was the founder of the York Festival and its director until 1966. He then worked until 1975 as a reader for history and art theory at Sussex University . Hess was a Marxist and wrote for Marxism Today magazine , published by the Communist Party of Great Britain .

Hess was married to Lillie Ester Williams. The journalist and communist activist Anita Halpin , born in 1944, is her daughter who, since the Washington Declaration in 1998, has filed several restitution lawsuits for her grandfather's art collection, including Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's work Berlin Street Scene .

Hess was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 1958 .

Fonts (selection)

  • with Thekla Hess: Thanks in colors. From Alfred and Thekla Hess' guest book . Munich: Piper, 1957 ISBN 3-492-10606-4
  • Lyonel Feininger . Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1959 ISBN 3-17-011569-3
  • George Grosz, 1893-1959 . London: Arts Council, 1963
  • The artist in an industrial society . Hull: University of Hull, 1964
  • How pictures mean . New York: Pantheon Books, 1975

literature

  • Hess, Hans , in: Ulrike Wendland: Biographical handbook of German-speaking art historians in exile. Life and work of the scientists persecuted and expelled under National Socialism . Munich: Saur, 1999, p. 294f.
  • John Ingamells : Hans Hess (1908-1975) . Sheldon Memorial Trust, 2014 ISBN 9780992921408
  • Gunnar Schnabel, Monika Tatzkow : Alfred (1879–1931), Tekla Hess (1884–1968) and Hans Hess (1908–1975), Erfurt. In: Melissa Müller , Monika Tatzkow: Lost Pictures, Lost Lives. Jewish collectors and what became of their works of art . Munich: Sandmann, 2009 ISBN 978-3-938045-30-5

Audio

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 1907 is also given as the year of birth
personal data
SURNAME Hess, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-British art historian
DATE OF BIRTH August 23, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Erfurt
DATE OF DEATH January 21, 1975