Jan Lauts

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Jan Lauts (born March 9, 1908 in Bremen , † January 19, 1993 in Karlsruhe ) was a German art historian and museum director.

Live and act

Jan Lauts was the fourth child of the Bremen merchant Johann Theodor Lauts and his wife Louisa Suzanna Lauts, b. Brouwer. He studied art history , classical archeology and Italian at the universities in Berlin, Munich, Hamburg and Vienna .

During his studies in Hamburg he met Willi Lassen , who was there a. a. also studied art history. Jan Lauts later helped Willi Lassen out of a life crisis, both began a friendship that lasted until Lassen's death and can be regarded as a relationship from the mid-1930s at the latest. In keeping with the conventions of the time, this obvious relationship was never discussed with close friends either.

In 1939 he began his activity at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe , where he was appointed curator in 1941. In 1942 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and threatened to serve on the Eastern Front . Willi Lassen, who ran an interpreting school for the Wehrmacht, was able to save him from this by summoning him, like others, to his office. He could not do this because he had an important role in the training for listening to English radio messages because of his excellent knowledge of English. Jan Lauts returned to the Karlsruhe Kunsthalle in 1946 from French captivity and played a key role in the reconstruction of the building, which had been partially destroyed in the war. From 1956 to 1973 he was director of the art gallery. His new acquisitions, some of which were spectacular, as well as the exhibitions he designed, helped establish the state art gallery as one of Germany's leading museums in the 1950s and 1960s.

Jan Lauts and Willi Lassen were part of a network of art historians and art dealers who are very important today. Both had contact in the 1930s with the historian Peter Cecil Wilson , who later worked for the MI6 secret service during World War II and who is said to have served Ian Fleming as a model for the character of James Bond. After 1945, Wilson led the Sotheby’s auction house to its current importance. In England there were also contacts to the art dealer Grete Ring in London and to Gertrud Bing , who had saved the Aby Warburg Archives to London. Through his work at the Kunsthalle, Jan Lauts and thus Willi Lassen were also friends with Elfriede Schulze-Battmann , the painter's sister Wols , and with Carmen Gronau , another art historian who had emigrated from Germany and who worked as Peter Wilson's deputy at Sotheby's.

Awards

Fonts (selection)

  • Isabella d'Este. Princess of the Renaissance 1474-1539 ; Marion von Schröder Verlag, Hamburg 1952.
  • The Madonna della Vittoria. Andrea Mantegna (= Reclams Universal Library ) No. 57. Reclam, Stuttgart 1960.
  • Vittore Carpaccio. Paintings and drawings, complete edition . Phaidon-Verlag, Cologne 1962.
  • Catalog old masters up to 1800. Karlsruhe State Art Gallery, Karlsruhe 1966.
  • Karoline Luise of Baden . A picture of life from the time of the Enlightenment ; Verlag CF Müller, Karlsruhe 1980, ISBN 3-7880-9644-6 .
  • Hans Thoma (= The Blue Books ), Langewiesche publishing house, Königstein im Taunus, before 1994, ISBN 3-7845-1671-8 .
  • with Irmlind Luise Herzner: Federico da Montefeltro - Duke of Urbino. Warlord, Prince of Peace and Patron of the Arts . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich and Berlin 2001, ISBN 978-3803125583 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hoffmann, Wiebke, Emigration and Return. Merchant families between Bremen and Übersee. A micro study 1860-1930, Internationale Hochschulschriften 523, Waxmann Verlag, Münster, p. 41.
  2. ↑ Nicolaus Schmidt , Willi Lassen - a biographical sketch, in "Democratic History" Vol. 26, Schleswig-Holsteinischer Geschichtsverlag, 2015, p. 198.
  3. ^ Nicolaus Schmidt, Willi Lassen - a biographical sketch, in "Democratic History" Vol. 26, Schleswig-Holsteinischer Geschichtsverlag, 2015, p. 196.
  4. ^ Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg , holdings N Lauts, accessed on September 9, 2014.
  5. ^ Nicolaus Schmidt: Willi Lassen - a biographical sketch . In: Democratic History Vol. 26, Schleswig-Holsteinischer Geschichtsverlag, 2015, pp. 226, 201.
  6. ↑ Announcement of awards of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In: Federal Gazette . Vol. 25, No. 139, July 28, 1973.
personal data
SURNAME Loud, Jan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art historian and museum director
DATE OF BIRTH March 9, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen
DATE OF DEATH January 19, 1993
Place of death Karlsruhe