Justus beer

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Justus beer

Justus Bier (born May 31, 1899 in Nuremberg , † January 23, 1990 in Raleigh , North Carolina ) was a German-American art historian . He is best known for his research on Tilman Riemenschneider .

Memorial plaque on the house where he was born, Fürtherstrasse 10 in Nuremberg (Photo: 2010)

Life

Youth, training, first works

Justus Bier came from a wealthy Jewish Nuremberg family. His father Jacob Bier (1854–1937) was a shoe manufacturer and a member of the supervisory board of the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg. His mother Minna, b. Honig (1874–1951), survived the Theresienstadt concentration camp and was able to emigrate to her son in the USA in 1946. In 1917, Bier passed his A-levels at the Humanist High School in his hometown and was drafted into the First World War. From 1919 to 1924 he studied art history , classical archeology as well as medieval and modern history at the universities of Munich, Erlangen, Jena, Bonn and most recently Zurich . Among his most influential teachers in art history were Paul Clemen in Bonn and Heinrich Wölfflin in Zurich ; Wölfflin became his doctoral supervisor. Bier wrote his dissertation, The Young Works of Tilman Riemenschneider, on the early work of the famous carver, which was accepted in 1924 and published the following year.

From 1924 to 1930 Justus Bier continued to work on his work on Riemenschneider, from 1928 to 1930 as a scholarship holder of the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft and published volumes 1 and 2 in 1925 and 1930; volumes 3 and 4 did not appear until around 50 years later. In addition, he was a lecturer in art history at the Nuremberg Adult Education Center from 1924 to 1930 and gave lectures on a large scale. In addition, he delivered magazine articles on modern architecture. In 1931 he married the art historian Senta Dietzel (1900–1978), who later supported him in his scientific work.

Kestner Society in Hanover

A memorial plaque installed in 2016 at the current headquarters of the Kestner Society, the building of the former Goseriedebad in Hanover

From September 1930 to May 1936, Bier worked as curator and artistic director of the Kestner Society in Hanover, an art association that had existed since 1916 and organized exhibitions of contemporary art, architecture and design. Among the presented artists were Alfred Kubin , the Hannoversche Sezession , Ernst Barlach , Paul Klee , Hugo Erfurth . The last exhibitions were dedicated to August Macke and Franz Marc .

Together with Alexander Dorner, from 1930 he built the installations for the new understanding of space in the modern era and from 1931 the “Museum for the exemplary series product ”. Under his leadership, the number of members of the Kestner Society doubled to over 500; an astonishing result in view of the political conditions that have become very difficult for modern art since 1933.

Bier privately collected works by Bauhaus artists Paul Klee , Oskar Schlemmer and Lyonel Feininger .

In 1936 the National Socialist government demanded the dismissal of the Jewish curator. However, the board of the Kestner Society declined to collaborate and instead decided to close the facility. Demonstrating the power to act, Reich Education Minister Bernhard Rust dismissed Justus Bier on May 10, 1936 with effect from June 31, 1936 and at the same time closed the Kestner Society. Justus Bier retired to Widdersberg in Upper Bavaria and in 1937 found an opportunity to emigrate to the USA via Switzerland.

University of Louisville, Kentucky

His schoolmate from his Nuremberg days Richard Krautheimer (1897–1994) had emigrated to the USA in 1933, where he had established a professorship for art history at the University of Louisville in Kentucky . Before moving to Vassar College in Poughkeepsie , he recommended Justus Bier as his successor. Bier taught art history there from 1937 to 1960, initially as an assistant professor, from 1941 as an associated professor and from 1946 as a professor. In 1946 he founded the "Allen R. Hite Institute" as part of the Art Department, which he headed until 1960. Between 1944 and 1955 he wrote over 200 art reviews for the Courier Journal in Louisville.

In 1953/54 and 1956/57 he was a Guggenheim Fellow , and in 1953/54 he was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He returned to Germany twice as a visiting professor, in 1956 at the Free University of Berlin and in 1960/61 at the University of Würzburg as part of the Fulbright program . In the 1950s and 1960s he gave lectures at 50 America Houses in Germany.

North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh

In 1960 Bier was appointed director of the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, North Carolina . He was the second director after Wilhelm Valentiner (1880-1958), who founded the museum in 1955 and died in 1958. Bier headed the museum until his retirement in 1970. He continued to work scientifically afterwards and was able to complete his main work on Tilman Riemenschneider with volumes 3 (1973) and 4 (1978).

Complementary

Since studying in Jena, Bier had been friends with Charles Crodel , who also created a portrait woodcut for Biers in 1919. In 1958, Bier organized an exhibition of his works in Louisville as part of Crodel's first visiting professorship.

Honors

The Justus Beer Prize for curators , endowed with € 5,000 in prize money, is awarded annually in honor of Justus Bier , supported by the Helga Pape Foundation Jens and Helga Howaldt in Hanover.

estate

His written estate relating to his Riemenschneider studies is in the Mainfränkisches Museum in Würzburg, part of the estate, mainly relating to his time in Louisville, in the University of Louisville, where a chair bears his name.

Fonts (selection)

See Inge Witt: A bibliography of the writings of Justus Bier . In: North Carolina Museum of Art Bulletin 12, 1974, No. 4, pp. 29-41 ( digitized version ).

  • Nuremberg-Franconian art of art. Friedrich Cohen, Bonn 1922.
  • Delsenbach's views of Nuremberg . Delphin-Verlag, Munich 1924.
  • The old Nuremberg in layout and structure . E. Frommann & Sohn, Nuremberg 1925.
  • Tilmann Riemenschneider , 4 volumes
    • Volume 1: The early works . Würzburg publishing house, Würzburg 1925.
    • Volume 2: The mature works . Würzburg publishing house, Würzburg 1930.
    • Volume 3: The late works in stone . Schroll, Vienna 1974, ISBN 3-7031-0227-6 .
    • Volume 4: The late works in wood . Schroll, Vienna 1978, ISBN 3-7031-0472-4 .
  • Justus Bier: Tilman Riemenschneider . His Life and Work. University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1982, ISBN 978-0-8131-5126-7 (English, google.de ).

literature

  • Inge Witt: Justus beer. Man of Vision . In: North Carolina Museum of Art Bulletin 12, 1975, No. 4, pp. 9-27 ( digitized version ).
  • Hanswernfried Muth : Justus Bier's obituary . In: Mainfränkisches Jahrbuch für Geschichte und Kunst 44, 1992, pp. VII – XIII.
  • Margret Kentgens-Craig: The Arts: Justus Bier, Second Director, NC Museum of Art. In: They Fled Hitler's Germany and Found Refuge in North Carolina (= Southern Research Report 8). Academic Affairs Library, Center for the Study of the American South, Chapel Hill, NC 1996, pp. 91-104 ( digitized ).
  • Ulrike Wendland: Biographical handbook of German-speaking art historians in exile. Life and work of the scientists persecuted and expelled under National Socialism. Part 1: A – K. Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11339-0 , pp. 50-55.
  • Hugo Thielen : Beer, Justus . In: Dirk Böttcher, Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein, Hugo Thielen (eds.): Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon . From the beginning to the present . Schlütersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Hannover 2002, ISBN 3-87706-706-9 , p. 56 ( Google Books ).
  • Hugo Thielen: Beer, Justus . In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (Hrsg.): Stadtlexikon Hannover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Hanover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 66f.
  • Bier, Justus , in: Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 . Volume 2.1. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 106

Web links

Commons : Justus Bier  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Ulrike Wendland: Biographical Handbook of German-Speaking Art Historians in Exile . KG Saur, Munich 1999, pp. 55-56. Her brother Max Dietzel (1883–1916), gallery owner in Munich, had emerged as a sponsor of exhibitions by the artist group Brücke and other modern art.
  2. ↑ Wieland Schmied : Trailblazer for Modern Art - 50 Years of the Kestner Society . Hannover 1966, p. 56, 254; Ines Katenhusen : Art and Politics. Hanover's examination of modernity in the Weimar Republic (= Hanoverian Studies Volume 5). Hanover 1998, p. 260ff. u.ö .; Veit Görner : kestnerchronik Volume 1. Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover 2006, pp. 116–157.
  3. ^ Justus Bier: Abstract Art in Hanover . In: Museum der Gegenwart 1, issue 3, 1930, pp. 71–73.
  4. ^ Justus Bier at the Guggenheim Foundation .
  5. ^ Justus Bier at the Institute for Advanced Study .
  6. ^ Inge Witt: Justus beer. Man of Vision . In: North Carolina Museum of Art Bulletin 12, 1975, No. 4, p. 13.
  7. ^ "Two heads", 1919, woodcut (Cornelius Steckner: Charles Crodel. Das graphische Werk . Ketterer, Munich 1985, no. 21; illustration ).
  8. ^ Paintings and graphic work by Charles Crodel . Louisville 1958 ( digitized ).
  9. ^ Page of the foundation on the price .
  10. ↑ Finding aid .
personal data
SURNAME Beer, Jupiter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American art historian
DATE OF BIRTH May 31, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg
DATE OF DEATH January 23, 1990
Place of death Raleigh , North Carolina