Hans Wendland

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Hans Wendland (1950)

Hans Adolf Wendland (born December 28, 1880 in Neuruppin ; † around 1965) was a German art historian and art dealer . During the Second World War he played an important role in the illegal art market in Switzerland .

Life

Hans Wendland, son of the government builder Adolf Wendland († 1904) grew up with seven siblings. He attended the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Berlin and from 1901 studied art history at the University of Berlin and after only seven semesters received his doctorate in 1905 with a thesis on the engraver Martin Schongauer under Heinrich Wölfflin . After completing his doctorate, he was employed as a volunteer at the Islamic department of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum , but was dismissed in 1906 after a dispute with his superior Wilhelm von Bode . This accused him of stealing Persian objects that came from excavations under Wendland's direction, which he allegedly sold to Budapest. Then he began to work as an art dealer. In 1907/08 he stayed in Spain, at times together with Walter Gropius , where he purchased Spanish ceramics for Karl Ernst Osthaus . In July 1908 he examined tiles with Friedrich Sarre and Wilhelm von Bode in the Islamic Department in Berlin . In Cologne in 1910 he bought an early Rubens for 80 marks, which he was able to sell at a profit. In 1912 he moved to Paris , but came back to Germany with the outbreak of World War I. His collection in Paris was confiscated and auctioned off in 1922. He was wounded and spent the rest of the war as a lieutenant in Berlin. In 1918 he went to the German embassy in Moscow as an attaché or art expert and bought art cheaply from people fleeing and on their way into exile.

Jan Mostaert : Portrait of an African man (sold by Hans Wendland around 1924)

From the proceeds of his trade he moved to Basel, Switzerland, in 1920, and in 1926 he bought a property near Lugano , but never gave up his German citizenship. He traveled frequently to Paris and Berlin to buy and sell. In 1931, as a result of the economic crisis, his art collection had to be auctioned. It included graphics, furniture, sculptures, bronze statuettes, devices made of bronze, silver, ceramics, East Asian works of art, textiles and carpets. His then twelve-year-old nephew, the later painter Gunther Gerzso Wendland , later remembered the art collection.

Wendland settled in Paris in 1933, married for the second time in 1937 and returned to Switzerland in 1939, shortly before the start of the war . He played a major role in stolen artwork deals in France, Germany and Switzerland during World War II. As the main buying agent , he acted as the intermediary between Walter Andreas Hofer , the director of Hermann Göring's art collection , and his friend, the Swiss dealer Theodor Fischer , who did not want to appear too openly in the trade in looted art , but made purchases by the Zurich industrialist Emil Georg Bührle den Paved the way.

During the German occupation he stayed in Paris regularly and traded in works of art that had been confiscated by Reichsleiter Rosenberg . As an art expert, he maintained contact with colleagues such as Karl Haberstock , Wolfgang Gurlitt , Bruno Lohse , Gustav Rochlitz, Allen and Manon Loebl, Paul Pétridès, Victor Mandl and Adolf Wüster and never sold to private customers himself. The sometimes speculative barter and participation transactions dragged on for years and reached such a level that the FBI investigated in the early 1940s for violation of neutrality and espionage.

In November 1942, Wendland received a railway wagon from Paris that had been neatly cleared at the border with looted art, the cargo of which he sold to procure foreign currency for the Reich. Wendland lived in Lucerne and his activities were monitored by the Swiss government. He worked closely with the German embassy in Bern and with Hofer in Berlin. In 1943 he moved to the Villa Bois d'Avault in Versoix (Canton of Geneva).

After the end of the war he moved to Rome, where he was arrested on July 25, 1946 and brought to Germany for interrogation by the American art protection authorities , then transferred to the French judiciary and acquitted by a court in Paris in February 1950. He then continued to live in Paris, an attempt to settle in Basel, but received no entry permit. His fortune was unblocked in Switzerland in 1955. His exact date and place of death are unknown.

Publications

  • Martin Schongauer as a copper engraver. Edmund Meyer, Berlin 1907. (Dissertation, digitized version ).
  • About new works of art. With a treatise on the concept of the beautiful as an art judgment . Bard, Berlin 1907.
  • Konrad Witz. Painting studies . Schwabe, Basel 1924.
  • The German art dealer. In: Art and Artists . Illustrated monthly for fine arts and applied arts vol. 28, issue 5, 1930, pp. 179–188 ( (digitized ).
  • Marzell von Nemes †. In: Art and Artists. Illustrated monthly for fine arts and applied arts vol. 29, issue 3, 1931, pp. 118–120 ( digitized version ).

literature

  • Otto Wittman , Bernard Taper: Hans Wendland - Detailed Interrogation Report, Berlin September 18, 1946 ( digitized version ).
  • Thomas Buomberger: Looted art - art theft. Switzerland and the trade in stolen cultural goods during the Second World War. Orell-Füssli-Verlag, Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-280-02807-8 , esp. Pp. 69–72 and 173–223.
  • Günther Haase: Art theft and art protection. A documentation. 2nd, expanded edition. Volume 1, Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2008, ISBN 978-3-8334-8976-1 , pp. 270-275 ( Google Books ).
  • Katharina Groth, Birgit Müller: Art history around 1900 - a comparison of professional careers: Marie Schuette, Walter Stengel, Hans Wendland and August Grisebach. In: Horst Bredekamp, ​​Adam S. Labuda (Ed.): In the middle of Berlin. 200 years of art history at the Humboldt University Gebr. Mann, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-7861-2630-0 , pp. 177–188, here pp. 182–184.
  • Emmanuelle Polack: Le marché de l'art sous l'Occupation 1940–1944 . Tallandier, Paris 2019, ISBN 979-10-210-2089-4 , pp. 52–54.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Thomas Buomberger: Looted art - art theft. Switzerland and the trade in stolen cultural goods during the Second World War. Orell-Füssli-Verlag, Zurich 1998, p. 69.
  2. ^ Annette Hagedorn: Walter Gropius, Karl Ernst Osthaus and Hans Wendland - The purchases of Moorish ceramics for the German Folkwang Museum Hagen in 1908. In: Martina Müller-Wiener u. a. (Ed.): Al-Andalus and Europe: between Orient and Occident. Imhof, Petersberg 2004, ISBN 3-935590-77-6 , pp. 389-398.
  3. ↑ Auction news. In: Art and Artists. Illustrated monthly for fine arts and applied arts. 20, 1922, p. 177 (digitized version)
  4. ^ Although not included in all résumés in the Biographical Manual of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945 . Volume 5: T-Z . Schöning, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-71844-0 .
  5. ↑ Dr. Hans Wendland and his home near Lugano. Photographs in: The Cross Section , October 1928.
  6. ^ Hermann Ball, Paul Graupe (ed.): Collection of Dr. Hans Wendland, Lugano, manual catalog of the auction. Catalog Berlin, auction from April 20 to 25, 1931 (digitized version)
  7. ↑ No receipt.
  8. ↑ Michael Soukup: Hitler relied on an art dealer in Lucerne. In: Tages-Anzeiger . November 5, 2013; Georg Kreis : “Degenerate Art” in Basel: a chronicle of extraordinary acquisitions in 1939. In: Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde. 78, 1978, pp. 179-180, note 35, doi: 10.5169 / seals-117978 .
  9. ↑ George J. Nagel, Report Federal Bureau of Investigation, August 19, 1944. online ( Memento of December 29, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ↑ Review Max J. Friedländer , Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 30, 1907, pp. 466–468 ( digitized version ).
  11. ^ Reviews Heinrich Feurstein , Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 1926, pp. 119–121 and Hans Jantzen , Oberrheinische Kunst 1, 1925, pp. 99–100.
  12. ↑ This Thomas Buombergers analysis for stolen art in Switzerland: return Nothing - many new suspects. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . February 12, 2008, accessed December 29, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Wendland, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wendland, Hans Adolf (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art dealer
DATE OF BIRTH December 28, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Neuruppin
DATE OF DEATH around 1965