Herbert M. Gutmann

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Herbert Gutmann (right) at the reception of the Italian Ambassador Orsini-Baroni in the Hotel " Esplanade " (1930)

Herbert Max Magnus Gutmann (born October 15, 1879 in Dresden , † December 22, 1942 in Paignton , United Kingdom ) was a German banker and collector of Islamic art .

Curriculum Vitae

Memorial plaque on the house, Golfweg 22, in Berlin-Wannsee

Herbert Gutmann was the son of the Dresdner Bank board member Eugen Gutmann and studied economics in order to then also join the Dresdner Bank . As co-founder, director and later also president of the Deutsche Orientbank he was involved in the economic activities of the German Empire in the Orient in the period before the First World War . As part of this business activity, he traveled extensively between 1905 and 1910, including Morocco , Egypt , Syria , Asia Minor and Persia . In 1910 he was elected to the board of the Dresdner Bank. In the same year he joined the Society of Friends .

Gutmann was, among other things, active in German golf as president of the Berlin-Wannsee Golf and Country Club . In 1913 Herbert Gutmann leased a villa in Bertinistraße in Potsdam from Dr. Ernst Heller, which he bought in 1919 and then expanded. The country house style villa with 80 rooms was initially his summer residence and later he settled there with his family.

When short-term foreign bonds were called off from Germany during the global economic crisis, the banking industry, which had been weakened since the inflation of 1923, ran into payment difficulties, so that representatives of the major banks asked the Reichsbank for help. Gutmann had initially hinted at a crisis at Dresdner Bank, but denied these rumors on July 12, 1931 and moved Reich Chancellor Heinrich Brüning to exclude Dresdner Bank from the general Reich guarantee for the banks. Just two days later, on July 14, 1931 - when bank customers stormed the counters and the public damage had occurred - Gutmann admitted that Dresdner Bank was insolvent. As the new owner of DANAT-Bank , the German government managed to merge it with Dresdner Bank in order to cope with the banking crisis , during which the management team was downsized and filled. Gutmann was just as politically unsustainable for Brüning as the former DANAT board member Jakob Goldschmidt . There are indications that Gutmann was forced out of his position as a concession to the emerging National Socialists. At the same time, however, Siegmund Bodenheimer and Samuel Ritscher were taken over to the new board, although unlike Gutmann, whose father was baptized in 1889, they were of Jewish faith.

Like the other former board members, Gutmann initially continued to work as a consultant for Dresdner Bank after 1931 and still held 16 supervisory board mandates in 1933, but was gradually ousted because of his Jewish origins. He emigrated after 1936 and finally came to England, where he became impoverished in 1942 and died after a serious illness.

Art expert and art collector

In the business world, Gutmann was overshadowed by his father, whom he was referred to as the "weak copy" in 1920. Beyond banking, however, Herbert M. Gutmann , who was already inspired by his father Eugen Gutmann , who was interested in art, became a knowledgeable collector of oriental and East Asian art objects. His function as President of the German-Persian Society and, in particular, his work as an external expert for the Islamic Department of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum zu Berlin (today: Museum for Islamic Art in the Pergamon Museum ) convincingly prove that he was an intimate connoisseur of Islamic art .

The most important object in Gutmann's collection was wooden paneling in Damascus in the Turkish Rococo style , which has still been preserved and which the family referred to as Arabic . Even in the Middle East , interiors of this type have become very rare. Economic and social changes began as early as the 19th century, which had an impact on living habits and the design of residential buildings. Some interior furnishings found their way into public and private collections, but losses were also recorded here as a result of the Second World War . Only a few museums outside of the Arab world now have Syrian rooms. In addition to Berlin with the " Aleppo Room ", collections in Cincinnati ( Cincinnati Art Museum , Accession-No. 1966.443), Dresden ( Museum für Völkerkunde Dresden , Inv.-Nr. 46071), Honolulu ( Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art), Kuala Lumpur (Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia) and New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art , Nur al-Din Room , Inv.No. 1970.170) call such treasures their own.

Gutmann was the owner of a Bismarck portrait by Franz von Lenbach until 1934 ; it was restituted in 2010. The painting "Pappenheims Tod" by Hans Makart was restituted to Gutmann's heirs in 2009.

literature

  • Vivian J. Rheinheimer (Ed.): Herbert M. Gutmann 1879-1942. Banker in Berlin. Builder in Potsdam. Art collector . 1st edition. Koehler & Amelang, Leipzig 2007, ISBN 3-7338-0351-5 . ( Review )
  • Thomas Tunsch: The Syrian interior decoration in the former Villa Gutmann in Potsdam. Investigations into the origin and dating . In: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Ed.): Research and reports 29/30 . Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin 1990, pp. 129–147.
  • Roland Mascherek: The Villa Bertinistraße 16, 16a. A documentation of the history of the building and the biography of the inhabitants. With special consideration of Herbert Gutmann and his family . Thesis. University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, Potsdam 1999.
  • Thomas Tunsch: The collector Herbert M. Gutmann (1879-1942) . In: Jens Kröger, Désirée Heiden (ed.): Islamic art in Berlin collections. 100 years of the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin . Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin 2004, pp. 27–30. ISBN 3-86601-435-X . ( online )

Web links

Commons : Herbert M. Gutmann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Beate Schreiber: Herbert M. Gutmann's assets
  2. ^ Morten Reitmayer: Bankers in the Empire. Social profile and habitus of German high finance . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1999, pp. 140, 219.
  3. ↑ on Herbert Gutmann and the Deutsche Orientbank: Wolfgang G. Schwanitz : "We dine in the Adlon": Herbert M. Gutmann and the Deutsche Orientbank. (PDF; 2.0 MB) In: Ulrich van der Heyden et al. (Ed.): "... power and share in the world economy". Berlin and German colonialism. Unrast Verlag, Münster 2005, pp. 81–86; ders .: Always in a good mood: Gutmann and the Deutsche Orientbank. In: Vivian J. Rheinheimer (ed.): Herbert M. Gutmann. Banker in Berlin, client in Potsdam, art collector. Koehler & Amelang, Leipzig 2007, pp. 61-77; on the Orient Bank and the Armenian Genocide : Web version 01-2008 (PDF; 167 kB)
  4. ^ Directory of members of the Society of Friends; Berlin 1912, p. 23. Herbert Gutmann joined on February 25, 1910 and received membership number 260 B.
  5. ↑ cf. Sebastian Panwitz: Review of VJ Rheinheimer (Ed.): Herbert M. Gutmann
  6. ↑ Wolfgang Brönner: Anything you like was allowed: Gutmann's country estate on Jungfernsee . In: Herbert M. Gutmann 1879-1942. Banker in Berlin. Builder in Potsdam. Art collector . 1st edition. Koehler & Amelang, Leipzig 2007, ISBN 3-7338-0351-5 , pp. 68-106, p. 90
  7. ↑ MANAGER: The fight for Arabic . In: Der Spiegel . No. 32 , 1998 ( online ).
  8. ^ Karl Erich Born: The German banking crisis 1931. Finances and politics . Piper 1967, pp. 104-107. Klaus-Dietmar Henke / Johannes Bähr / Dieter Ziegler / Harald Wixforth: The Dresdner Bank in the Third Reich . Oldenbourg 2006, p. 47 f.
  9. ↑ a b Klaus-Dietmar Henke / Johannes Bähr / Dieter Ziegler / Harald Wixforth: The Dresdner Bank in the Third Reich . Oldenbourg 2006, p. 80 ff.
  10. ↑ Christopher Kopper : Bankers under the swastika . Hanser 2005 p. 26. Gerald D. Feldman: Jakob Goldschmidt, the history of banking crisis of 1931 and the problem of freedom of maneuver in the Weimar economy . In: Torn Interwar Period. Economic history contributions. Festschrift for Knut Borchardt, Baden-Baden 1994, p. 307 ff.
  11. ^ The Nazis sent him written demands for atonement of being Jewish ( Memento of October 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). In: The Guardian. February 10, 2007 (English)
  12. ↑ http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/rezensions/2007-4-235
  13. ^ Klaus-Dietmar Henke / Johannes Bähr / Dieter Ziegler / Harald Wixforth: The Dresdner Bank in the Third Reich . Oldenbourg 2006, p. 81
  14. ↑ cf. Martin Münzel: The Jewish members of the German business elite 1927-1955. Displacement, emigration, return . Schoeningh 2006, p. 215 f.
  15. ↑ Patrizia Jirka-Schmitz: The collector Herbert M. Gutmann and the Herbertshof . In: German Society for East Asian Art. Bulletin 30, 10/2000, pp. 9-23
  16. ↑ see Cincinnati Art Museum (Engl.)
  17. ↑ The Dresden Damascus Room. A gem of Ottoman interior design in Germany . Dresden 2003; The Damascus Room: A treasure of Ottoman interior design in the Museum für Völkerkunde Dresden ; Angela Pfotenhauer: Packed, forgotten, rediscovered: How Turkish Rococo came to Dresden
  18. ↑ Standard Chartered Ottoman Room ( Memento from September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (dated 1235 H. = 1820/21)
  19. ↑ Thomas Tunsch: Everything passes, whether sadness or joy: The Arabicum . In: Vivian J. Rheinheimer (Ed.): Herbert M. Gutmann 1879-1942. Banker in Berlin. Builder in Potsdam. Art collector . 1st edition. Koehler & Amelang, Leipzig 2007, pp. 107–118. ISBN 3-7338-0351-5
  20. ^ Looted art in the Bundestag. In: Spiegel Online . November 12, 2009, accessed February 12, 2020 .
  21. ^ Provenance research on Herbert M. Gutmann's art collection
personal data
SURNAME Gutmann, Herbert M.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gutmann, Herbert Maximilian (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German banker and collector of Islamic art
DATE OF BIRTH October 15, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH December 22, 1942
Place of death Paignton , United Kingdom