Hermann Klumpp

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Hermann Klumpp (born April 9, 1902 in Quedlinburg ; † June 29, 1987 there ) was a German architect and art collector.

Life

education

Klumpp grew up as the eldest of three brothers in Quedlinburg. After graduation, he studied law at several universities and was in Leipzig Dr. jur. PhD . Attracted by the ideas of the Bauhaus , he studied architecture with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in Dessau from 1929 to 1932 and graduated with the Bauhaus diploma. During this time he wrote a publication on abstraction in painting using the examples of Paul Klee , Wassily Kandinsky , and Lyonel Feininger . A very close friendship developed with the Feininger couple, which is described in the numerous letters as kinship .

After the Bauhaus in Dessau was closed by the National Socialists, Klumpp had to take up a professional activity, he and his mother took over a steam laundry that had gone bankrupt on his parents' property.

Klumpp and Feininger's work

Feiningers moved to Berlin- Siemensstadt , the three sons left Germany or were already living abroad. Klumpp stayed in close contact with the increasingly distressed couple. Even before 1933 Feininger gave the "son" some works. When the master's house in Dessau , which Feiningers lived in , was cleared (they had also given a room to Klumpp there), the painter gave "Dear Rochus" a large number of older state prints of woodcuts and lithographs , the current printing blocks initially went to Berlin with the belongings , then to the USA .

When Feininger had to leave Germany under hostility from the National Socialists (Feininger's pictures were considered "degenerate", his wife was Jewish), Klumpp took over the necessary arrangements according to Feininger's wishes with a Berlin forwarding company.

All of Feininger's removal goods, including the works of art named by the couple, could be sent to New York City using so-called lifts .

About 60 oil paintings remained in Klumpp's care, about which Julia Feininger wrote after the Second World War that she might want eight named "later" back.

Difficulties in the GDR

Klumpp, who was a CDU member in Quedlinburg after the war , resigned from the CDU in 1949 because of political developments. His efforts to revive the Bauhaus ideas met with complete disinterest and even hostility in the GDR . The Feininger pictures were considered "bourgeois, decadent". But anyone interested who disregarded this official opinion could see Feininger works in their private apartment in Quedlinburg. The Klumpp family's guest books show thousands of visitor names from home and abroad.

After Julia Feininger's death in 1970, the estate administrator gave the GDR Ministry of Culture very large amounts of dollars as the value of the oil paintings to which a claim was made. This spontaneously aroused great interest from the GDR authorities, the collection was taken into "preventive detention" and placed under the GDR's Office for the Legal Protection of Property .

In the following trial at the district court in Halle in 1974, Klumpp invoked the Feininger couple's letters to defend his property claims. After another eight years of conflict between the US estate administrator and the GDR, the oil paintings came to New York.

In 1986 Klumpp's long-cherished wish for public access was realized. The Lyonel Feininger Gallery in Quedlinburg was opened with the remaining works . Hermann Klumpp died the following year.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ exact life data from: o. V .: Lyonel Feininger - A symbol of higher reality. at www.harzinfo.de , accessed on November 22, 2012 .
personal data
SURNAME Klumpp, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect and art collector
DATE OF BIRTH April 9, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Quedlinburg
DATE OF DEATH June 29, 1987
Place of death Quedlinburg