Karl Scheffler (art critic)

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Karl Scheffler, painted by Max Liebermann , 1918

Karl Scheffler (born February 27, 1869 in Hamburg , † October 25, 1951 in Überlingen ) was a German art critic and publicist .

Life

The son of the master painter John Scheffler first learned the painting trade in Hamburg-Eppendorf in the company of his uncle Claus August Meyer. Together with his future wife Dora, geb. Bielefeld, he moved to Berlin at the beginning of the 1890s and attended the arts and crafts school there . From 1895 to 1906 he worked initially as a decorative painter and later as an ornament draftsman in a wallpaper factory. At the same time he was self-taught in the field of art history and soon turned to art journalism alongside his job. The first articles appeared in Hans Rosenhagen's magazine Das Atelier at the end of the 1890s and in Maximilian Harden's Future . Scheffler has also reported on the Berlin art scene since 1897 in the renowned monthly magazine Decorative Art , which Julius Meier-Graefe published. While he showed great interest in representatives of the arts and crafts movement such as Henry van de Velde , Peter Behrens and August Endell , he was initially skeptical of the Berlin Secession . But from 1902/03 onwards Scheffler became one of the most passionate defenders of German Impressionism and its protagonist Max Liebermann , on whom he also presented a successful monograph in 1906. In addition, Scheffler turned again and again critically against the Wilhelminian art policy hostile to modernity and polemicized against the historicist academic art, which at that time set the tone above all in public building projects and in the monument system.

In 1906, Scheffler published the book Der Deutsche und seine Kunst (The German and His Art), his most combative plea for Impressionism as a decisive direction in modern art, with which he tied in with Meier-Graefe's recently published pamphlet Der Fall Böcklin . A little later he became editor-in-chief of the monthly magazine Kunst und Künstler , which was published by Bruno Cassirer in Berlin . He used the journalistic influence that Scheffler now gained to repeatedly and publicly support his views on artistic and cultural issues of the time. In the years before the First World War, his committed demeanor played a key role in asserting impressionism among the public, which was still controversial in Germany at the time. Scheffler knew about the polarizing power of art criticism, which he also knew how to use for many years in the position of senior editor at the widely read Vossische Zeitung .

In the following period Scheffler showed little understanding for the art of the avant-garde and was increasingly critical of it in the years after the First World War. He categorically rejected abstract art in any form. The years of journalistic discussion with Ludwig Justi , the director of the Nationalgalerie Berlin and founder of the New Department in the Kronprinzenpalais , is of exemplary importance in this respect ; this dispute became known as the Berlin Museum War. Scheffler also published a separate work under this title in 1921, in which he attacked Justi in an extremely polemical manner. Justi paid Scheffler with the same coin in his reply Habemus papam! and both subsequently used their respective magazines (Justi published Museum der Gegenwart ) to propagate their points of view.

After the seizure of power of the Nazis in 1933 Scheffler's magazine was art and artists set. With the beginning of the Second World War, Scheffler withdrew to Überlingen on Lake Constance . From there he gave numerous lectures in Switzerland , and in 1944 the University of Zurich honored him with the award of the honorary doctorate . In 1948 the Technical University of Stuttgart also awarded him an honorary doctorate.

There is a street in Hamburg called Schefflerweg in honor of Karl Scheffler.

reception

While Scheffler, as a publicist at the time of the German Empire, had a significant influence on the art scene and can be regarded as one of the most important proponents of artistic modernism in Germany, many subsequent art-critical writings - also because of their decidedly non-scientific character - had no long-term effect. This was also due to the fact that Scheffler was sometimes extremely hostile towards the current art of the avant-garde in the 1920s. However, it should not be overlooked that his work marked out a considerably broader field: His essay volumes, travel reports and autobiographical writings, most of which were published by Leipziger Insel Verlag and S. Fischer Verlag , always had a broad readership. In the period after the Second World War, he again fell short of popularity before he died in 1951.

Scheffler's writings are often quoted in connection with the history of the Berlin Secession to this day. In addition, he is considered an astute and critical observer of modern urban development (e.g. Die Architektur der Großstadt , 1913). The most important work in this context, which has been received unabated to this day, is his Polemik Berlin - a city fate from 1910. In the book, Scheffler not only accounts for Wilhelminism , but also interprets Berlin as a city structure devoid of tradition and style, whose characteristics are fundamental Lack of organically grown structure is determined. The book culminates in the now famous closing sentence: “But Berlin doesn't want love from its residents either. If the spirit of the city is not deeply national, it is not sentimental either. As if with a joke of self-irony, this hard-determined urban individual helps himself over the hidden tragedy of his existence (...) over the tragedy of a fate that (...) Berlin condemns: to always be and never to be. " (P. 266f. ) In 1931, under the title Berlin - Changes in a City , Scheffler again presented a fundamentally revised version of the book, with which he also took into account the latest developments in the “New Berlin”.

Referring to the famous quote, Harry Nutt regretted in the Frankfurter Rundschau in 2005 that Karl Scheffler's immense oeuvre was often reduced to a single sentence. After the Second World War, hardly anyone followed his critical and combative ethos as a writer. In 2015, Suhrkamp-Verlag published a new edition of Scheffler's Berlin book with a foreword by Florian Illies.

Book publications (selection)

  • The German and his art. An inevitable polemic (1906)
  • Max Liebermann (1906)
  • Modern architecture (1907)
  • Woman and Art (1908)
  • Paris (1908, 2nd edition 1925)
  • Idealists (1909, online )
  • Berlin. A City Fate (1910). New edition by Suhrkamp, ​​2015
  • Critical guide to the German National Gallery (1911)
  • Henry van de Velde (1913)
  • Italy. Diary of a trip (1913)
  • The architecture of the big city (1913)
  • The Spirit of the Gothic (1917)
  • The Future of German Art (1918)
  • Berlin Museum War (1921)
  • German painter and draftsman in the nineteenth century. Insel-Verlag, Leipzig (1923)
  • Der Junge Tobias (1927, memoirs of an autobiographical nature told in third person)
  • Berlin. Changes of a City (1931)
  • The Impressionist Book Illustration in Germany (1931)
  • Adolph Menzel. Paul List Verlag, Leipzig (1938)
  • German builder (1935)
  • Life picture of the talent (1942)
  • The Fat and the Lean Years (1946), autobiography. New edition by Nimbus, Wädenswil (CH) 2011, ISBN 9783907142585
  • Transformations of the Baroque in Nineteenth Century Art (1947)

Collections of articles

  • Karl Scheffler: Stilmeierei or new architecture. A panorama of Berlin architecture , ed. by Andreas Zeising, Berlin: Transit-Verlag, 2010
  • Karl Scheffler: Essays - Thoughts on the Purposeless , audio book CD, Schondorf: Verlag Verena Franke, 2009

Letters

  • Letters of a Friendship, Karl Scheffler-Gerhard Gollwitzer (1933–1951) , ed. by Ernst Braun, private print Munich 2002
  • Correspondence: Gerhard Marcks and Karl Scheffler . In: Sinn und Form, issue 4/2007 , pp. 534–556.

literature

  • Karl Scheffler: The experience of color. In: Architecture and Art. Volume 32, 1945, pp. 55-61.
  • Michael Krejsa, Anke Matelowski: "... the word that made every effort: art". Karl Scheffler (1869–1951). Akademie der Künste - Archive, Berlin 2006 (= archive sheets. Volume 15), ISBN 3-88331-095-6 .
  • Sigrun Paas : “Art and Artists”, 1902–1933. A magazine dealing with Impressionism in Germany. Dissertation Heidelberg 1976.
  • Andreas Zeising: Studies on Karl Scheffler's art criticism and concept of art. With an annotated bibliography of his publications. Der Andere Verlag, Tönning et al. 2006, ISBN 3-89959-515-7 (at the same time: Dissertation Bochum 2001).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Scheffler, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Scheffler, Carl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art critic and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH February 27, 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH October 25, 1951
Place of death Überlingen