Hans Sachs (collector)

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Hans Josef Sachs ( pseudonyms including B. Kiesewetter , Karl Karrenbach and Fritz Hasemann ; born August 11, 1881 in Breslau , † March 21, 1974 in New York City ) was a German-American dentist and a committed collector of commercial art - especially from posters from the late 19th and early 20th centuries - and co-founder of the German "Verein der Posterfreunde". Around a third of his unprecedentedly extensive, culturally and historically valuable private collection was preserved in spite of the political turmoil of the 20th century and was in the care of the German Historical Museum until it was returned to the son and heir Peter Sachs .

The beginnings

Otto Fischer: Old Town (1896)

Little is known about Hans Josef Sachs' childhood and youth. He attended the König-Wilhelm Gymnasium in Breslau . The family moved to Berlin in 1899. His father Wilhelm Sachs (1849–1929) and grandfather Josef Wilhelm Sachs (1818–1879) were renowned dentists. Great services for the development of conservative dentistry in Germany are ascribed to his father . Sachs had his first encounter with the later subject of his passion for collecting in 1896/97 as a pupil at the Breslau high school in a classmate's room, which was completely decorated with posters. The visitor particularly noticed “Die Alte Stadt” by Otto Fischer , a sheet that, in retrospect, is often placed at the beginning of the development of modern German posters. Sachs was able to procure some large-format, poster-like graphics by Alfons Mucha from France, where development was already further advanced . French poster art then remained a focus of his collection.

Alongside Munich, Berlin was the place where the German poster made its greatest strides on the way to modernity between 1900 and 1914. Significant artists such as Lucian Bernhard , Edmund Edel , Hans Rudi Erdt , Julius Klinger , Ernst Deutsch , Peter Behrens and Emil Orlik worked together with highly qualified printing companies such as "Hollerbaum & Schmidt". The relatively new medium of the poster in its modern form found a strong public response at the time. Interested laymen and art writers dealt with it. Sachs expanded his collection during his professional training. He studied chemistry in Berlin, did his doctorate in Freiburg in 1904 and worked for a short time in a chemical company in Erkner near Berlin. A year later he changed his plans and, in keeping with the family tradition, began studying dentistry. After his license to practice medicine as a dentist in 1908, he first worked in his father's practice.

Dental career

Based in Berlin since 1908, Hans Sachs primarily dealt with questions of periodontal disease . He published six monographs and 23 journal articles and book chapters, including the chapters “Care of the mouth and teeth” and “Paradentitis and paradentosis” in Volume II of the Handbook of Dentistry (Munich, 1924) and “The treatment of loose teeth according to Younger-Sachs . A guide ”(Berlin, 1929). In 1924, together with Oskar Weski (1879–1952) and Robert Neumann (1882–1958), he founded the Working Group for Paradentosis Research (ARPA), from which in 1971 the German Society for Periodontology (DGParo) emerged. Among other things, she committed herself to the standardization of findings (including documentation of periodontal diseases) and specialist terminology ("periodontal status") and thus made an important contribution to the upward development of the specialist subject, which was struggling for recognition. In 1929, the ARPA was also able to publish the first issue of its specialist journal “Paradentium”. In the same year, Sachs applied for two patents, one for a “depth gauge for measuring the depth of the pockets formed between the gums and teeth in paradentosis”, the second for a “tool for scraping the gingival pockets during treatment with paradentosis”. In 1932 the "ARPA Internationale" was founded, which brought together dentists from Germany, Finland, France, Italy, Switzerland and Czechoslovakia, among others.

The Union

In December 1905, Sachs was one of the six founders of the collectors' association Verein der Posterfreunde as the driving force . Lucian Bernhard was won as an "artistic adviser" and designed the club logo . For club symbol , the "poster aunt" was: a lady in Biedermeier costume seen through her lorgnette the initials of the association. Lectures, social gatherings and bartering with posters determined the life of the association. When the development stagnated after initially lively encouragement, Sachs proposed the establishment of a magazine in 1909 to give the association a more professional character. He himself took over the preparatory work and the editing , despite the heavy workload and although, according to his own statement, he had "no blue haze" from the technical and organizational requirements . He acquired basic knowledge in a small Berlin “ Bibliophile printing works ”, the first edition of the magazine “Das Plakat” appeared in 1910 with 200 copies, proved to be a full-fledged art magazine in terms of content and design and was extremely successful both nationally and internationally; by 1914 the circulation rose to 2,400. The level of awareness of the association and its membership grew accordingly, and further local groups were created outside of Berlin.

Sachs had married in 1910 and in 1913 he moved into a house in Berlin-Nikolassee . After the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, he was drafted into army service, but was released four months later. During the war years he wrote all the texts for the club's magazine himself, using at least three pseudonyms . The management of the association was also in his hands. After the end of the war, the respected "Association of Poster Friends" was entrusted with some public tasks, such as a competition for the postage stamps of the young Weimar Republic and a publication on the genre of political posters, which was new for Germany. Sachs was clearly the determining personality of the association, Berlin its dominant headquarters. However, this structure, which was not universally accepted, gave rise to tensions which, after various internal disputes, led to the final dissolution on April 21, 1922. Regardless of these processes, it had become increasingly clear from around 1920 that the collectors 'and lovers' association could not meet the growing demands of interested professional groups - above all commercial graphic artists - on professional representation, but was also unable to make a fundamental change.

Care of the collection

Sachs was able to make intensive use of the diverse contacts from the club and magazine to expand his collection. The most important examples of international poster development since the end of historicism were represented in it until around 1910 , and international papers were also included in his collection after 1918. After that, almost exclusively German posters were added. Eduard Fuchs was able to access Sachs' collection of political and decidedly anti-Semitic posters from the hermetically sealed Horthy Hungary in 1921 .

The dissolution of the “Association of Poster Friends” was a painful experience for Sachs. He kept his collection in the attic of his house and did not look at it for three years. He was now increasingly pursuing his profession as a dentist; In 1925/26 he worked as an assessor at the state film testing agency. The magazine "Nutzgraphik", which appeared for the first time in 1924, paid tribute to his services in the introduction to the first issue. In this text it was said: “Dr. Sachs [...] has the merit of preparing the ground for our work and of awakening and promoting understanding for artistic advertising media in Germany. He deserves the lasting thanks of all the specialists. "

A fire in the attic of his house, which hardly caused any damage to the collection, prompted Sachs to deal more intensively with his posters again. The focus was no longer on collecting, but on presenting the holdings. The well-known architect Oskar Kaufmann designed an extension in which Sachs wanted to set up his "Museum of Applied Graphics". The work was completed in 1926, the collection is now housed in an exemplary manner and made accessible through a detailed card index . At that time, Sachs named the number of 12,300 posters (in addition to 18,000 smaller commercial graphic works). In the following 12 years only 200 sheets were added, so the collection covered the development of the poster industry up to about the mid-1920s; the Bauhaus posters were no longer represented.

Expulsion and exile

After obtaining his license to practice medicine, Sachs had practiced in a private practice on Kurfürstendamm and held lectures on periodontal diseases. In 1933 Sachs received the German Society for Dentistry, Oral and Maxillofacial Medicine . He had amassed an extensive toothpick collection that later came into the possession of the Research Institute for the History of Dentistry in Cologne .

During the time of the National Socialist tyranny, Sachs also got into increasing difficulties as a Jew , although he had no close ties to the Jewish community. In a private letter in 1965, on the question of his Jewish origin, he wrote that he had to: “With a feeling of certain embarrassment, say that such relationships have not existed in my and my wife's family for 5 generations,” and that “there was no relationship except large ones Respect for any expression of religious belief by others ” .

He still practiced in Berlin until 1935, experienced a questioning by the Gestapo and a house search in 1937 and was arrested during the " Reichspogromnacht " on November 9, 1938 and held in Sachsenhausen concentration camp for around 20 days . Immediately afterwards he emigrated with his second wife Felicia and their one-year-old son Peter via London to New York . As a dentist, he was not allowed to practice there without a degree from a US university. Even an intervention by Albert Einstein was unable to change that. (Sachs was the Einstein family's dentist in Berlin). Between 1939 and 1941 - now already sixty years old - he completed postgraduate studies and passed the necessary exams at Harvard Dental School in Boston and in New York, received his license to practice dentistry in 1941 and then practiced in New York. In 1962 he ended his professional activity.

Shortly before his flight from Germany, Sachs had transferred his collection to the non-Jewish banker Richard Lenz, in the hope of being able to protect it from the authorities. However, the Nazi Propaganda Ministry confiscated the collection before it got into Lenz's hands. Since Sachs was convinced that the collection had been lost in the turmoil of World War II and the post-war period in Germany, he applied for redress under the then applicable restitution law . In March 1961 he received compensation of 225,000 DM from the Federal Republic of Germany, which had been recommended by several experts and which Sachs accepted as "extremely respectable" . In 1966 he learned that important parts of the collection had been preserved, were in the Berlin armory on Unter den Linden , the former Museum of German History in the GDR, and that they were being looked after there. Sachs wrote to offer to help with his expertise and stressed that he had no further material interests, but that he wanted to know that the collection was publicly available. He also suggested meeting the responsible clerk at the museum in Bad Nauheim . In an official reply from the German Democratic Republic from July 7, 1966 this was refused, "because the West German government makes impossible our scientists in West Germany by their aggressive, citizens especially our republic discriminatory legislation almost any normal or revealing work." To make contacts with the Museum did not come. Sachs died in 1974 without seeing his posters again.

Dispute and return

Around 30 years later, Peter Sachs, the collector's son, who lives in Florida / USA, asked for the collection to be returned. He offered to repay the compensation from 1961 at its present value of around € 600,000. Of the 8,000 posters that reappeared after the end of the war, around 4,200 are still in the German Historical Museum, the rest have disappeared in an unexplained manner. The value of the holdings received is estimated at € 4.5 million. Since no agreement could be reached, the “ Advisory Commission for the Return of Cultural Property Stolen by National Socialism ” under the direction of the former constitutional judge Jutta Limbach was called. In January 2007, she recommended leaving the collection in the German Historical Museum. As a justification, she referred to the earlier compensation and the clear statements by Hans Sachs on the matter. The museum should be obliged to present the collection appropriately and to make Sachs' achievements clear.

That did not resolve the dispute. Peter Sachs initiated a civil law test case before the Berlin Regional Court . In February 2009 the court ruled differently from the opinion of the advisory commission. It awarded Peter Sachs not only the disputed poster The Dogge , which was the subject of the litigation for cost reasons, but also the right of ownership to his father's entire collection. In the opinion of lawyers, this judgment - if it becomes final - could have far-reaching consequences for many comparable cases of restitution requests. The previous practice in dealing with Nazi looted art would be called into question, as would the Advisory Commission, which was set up by the Federal Government to settle disputes. On 6 March 2009 because even let Culture Minister Bernd Neumann explained that Germany would the appeal of because of the fundamental importance of the judgment appeal insert. In the next instance, the Berlin Court of Appeal decided that Peter Sachs' claims had been forfeited and the remaining posters could remain in the DHM. In July 2011, the Federal Court of Justice approved an appeal on this point.

On March 16, 2012, the Federal Court of Justice ruled that the Sachs family was still the legal owner of the entire collection, despite compensation that had been paid in the meantime. The German Historical Museum announced in March 2012 that it would negotiate with Peter Sachs about the modalities of returning the part of the collection there. It was returned in October 2012. Peter Sachs intends to auction the approximately 4,300 remaining pieces in three parts. In January 2013, a first part of the collection - 1200 posters - was auctioned in New York and raised around 2.5 million dollars. The DHM acquired 31 pieces for 50,000 euros in the auction. Another 100 posters were auctioned at Christie's in London in 2016 .

Honors

Fonts (selection)

  • Hans Sachs, "The toothpick and its history" (Berlin, 1913; reprint 1966)
  • Does the upswing in Berlin in poster art mean the simultaneous decline in Munich in this area? , In: Archiv für Buchgewerbe , Vol. 44, 1907, No. 3, pp. 7–98
  • Modern occasional printed matter , In: Archiv für Buchgewerbe , Vol. 44, 1907, No. 6, pp. 218–223
  • Fritz Hasemann: Amar , in: Das Plakat , Volume 6, Issue 3, May 1915, pp. 109–118; Digitized
  • Writings on advertising art (= handbooks of advertising art , vol. 3), Berlin-Charlottenburg: Verlag Das Plakat, 1920
  • From the history of dentistry. Three generations of Sachs , o. O. 1966 (= dental communications , special edition, issue 2/3/4 1966)

literature

Web links

Commons : Hans Sachs collection  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. René Grohnert: New Findings on the Sachs Collection in 1938 / Addendum: June 2009 (.pdf) / Hans Sachs - The Poster Friend / An Extraordinary Life 1881–1974 , on the website of the German Historical Museum from June 2009, last accessed on 4th January 2019
  2. Christian Koch: Advertising for the Great War: Image propaganda for German war bonds in the First World War , 1st edition, Hamburg: Bachelor + Master Publishing, 2015, ISBN 978-3-95684-887-2 , p. 18; limited preview in Google Book search
  3. ^ Andreas Mettenleiter : Personal reports, memories, diaries and letters from German-speaking doctors. Supplements and supplements III (I – Z). In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 22, 2003, pp. 269-305, here: p. 289.
  4. The development of the special disciplines , Zahnärztliche Mitteilungen, June 1, 2016, Issue 11/2016 Accessed on February 1, 2020.
  5. ^ Biographical text of the German Historical Museum
  6. ^ Eduard Fuchs: The Jews in the caricature: a contribution to cultural history . Reprint d. Edition Munich, Langen, 1921, 1985, p. 275
  7. ^ Biographical text of the German Historical Museum. Note No. 55
  8. ^ Andreas Mettenleiter : Personal reports, memories, diaries and letters from German-speaking doctors. Supplements and supplements III (I – Z). In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 22, 2003, pp. 269-305, here: p. 289.
  9. ^ Biographical text of the German Historical Museum. Note No. 61
  10. ^ Press and Information Office of the Federal Government. Press release No. 36, Thursday 25th January 2007
  11. ^ Biographical text of the German Historical Museum. Note No. 74
  12. Press release of the BGH on the oral hearing on February 10, 2012
  13. File number: BGH V ZR 279/10; Wording of the BGH judgment of March 16, 2012 (PDF; 160 kB)
  14. Press release of the DHM from March 16, 2012 (PDF; 177 kB)
  15. Hans Sachs's poster collection auctioned off , art - Das Kunstmagazin . January 25, 2013. Archived from the original on September 23, 2015 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 
  16. Berlin is buying back lost poster treasure , BZ . 19th June 2013. 
  17. EARLY 20TH CENTURY POSTERS FROM THE DR HANS SACHS COLLECTION TO BE OFFERED AT CHRISTIE'S THIS JUNE , Christie's . May 16, 2016.