Karl Ströher

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Karl Ströher (born March 15, 1890 in Rothenkirchen ; † November 26, 1977 in Darmstadt ) was a German entrepreneur , art collector and art patron .

Live and act

Ströher and his brother Georg Ströher were the heirs of the Darmstadt-based Wella group. They were the sons of the company's founder, Franz Ströher (1854–1936). In February 1937, the company bought the land and real estate of a former knitwear company in Apolda and founded a subsidiary there, which began operations in mid-1938. In 1940 450 people were employed here. During the Second World War , forced laborers from various countries occupied by Germany were used there and were housed in the "Ströher camp". In 1944, the planning provided that the company should build another 20 “makeshift homes in solid construction”, of which only six were built. However, Karl Ströher was also a Freemason ; in 1938 he campaigned for the disadvantage of his lodge brothers to be lifted, as he saw a compatibility between National Socialism and Freemasonry.

After the Nazi regime had been eliminated, Franz Ströher , who had previously fled the Soviet Zone, was indicted in absentia by a court in Zwickau and sentenced to ten months in prison as a suspect . The Ströher brothers had supported the NSDAP with donations of 102,000 Reichsmarks. In 1948, Ströher's assets were confiscated in the Soviet Zone and the company became public property.

After 1945, the owners, who had moved west, built up the production of care products first in Hünfeld , and from 1950 as Wella AG in Darmstadt. At the end of the 1960s, Karl Ströher - advised by the art dealers Franz Dahlem and Heiner Friedrich - began collecting modern art on a large scale. In 1967, with the advice of Dahlem, he bought a complete exhibition of the works of Joseph Beuys , which had taken place under the title “Parallel Process 1” in the Städtisches Museum in Mönchengladbach in the same year. In 1969, Ströher secured the right of first refusal for further works by Beuys with the assurance that the acquired works would be publicly exhibited. The Beuys bundle, one of the largest in the world, is now under the title “ Block Beuys ” in the Hessian State Museum in Darmstadt .

In 1967, through Dahlem's agency in New York, Ströher bought the extensive estate of the art collector Leon Kraushar. The purchase agreement comprised 188 plants, some of which Ströher resold in Germany to finance his million dollar coup. Darmstadt was originally supposed to receive the collection if the city built an art museum in return, which was prevented by local squabbles. In 1981 Peter Iden , founding director of the Frankfurt Museum of Modern Art (1978–1987) was able to acquire a total of 87 works from the Ströher Collection for the city of Frankfurt. The negotiations for the two main heirs of Karl Ströher, Erika Pohl-Ströher and Ursula Ströher, were conducted by Gerhard Pohl and Gustav Rogler with Iden. With the sale of the bundle to the Frankfurt Museum, the heirs presented the painting Yellow and Green Brushstrokes by Roy Lichtenstein to Frankfurt as a gift. The 87 works formed the substantial basis of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt am Main, which was under construction until 1991 . These include groups of works from Pop Art and Minimal Art, such as sculptures by Carl Andre , Walter De Maria , John Chamberlain , Robert Morris , Claes Oldenburg , George Segal and Donald Judd ; a neon installation by Dan Flavin ; Paintings by Jasper Johns , Roy Lichtenstein , James Rosenquist , Frank Stella as well as pictures and objects by Andy Warhol and assemblages by Robert Rauschenberg . It also includes works by Francis Bacon , fabric pictures by Blinky Palermo and early pictures by Gerhard Richter , Robert Ryman and Cy Twombly . As a result, the MMK Frankfurt - after the Museum Ludwig in Cologne - has the largest collection of Pop Art and Minimal Art in Germany.

In 1966 and 1970 Karl Ströher was elected to the board of the "Friends and Patrons of the Hessian State Museum in Darmstadt". The Ströher family is still active today as a collector of contemporary art. A daughter of Karl Ströher is Erika Pohl-Ströher , a granddaughter is the psychologist and patron Ulrike Crespo . Her brother is the solar entrepreneur Immo Ströher. His great-niece Sylvia and her husband Ulrich Ströher sponsored the collection and the building of the Museum Küppersmühle in Duisburg.

In 1950, Karl Ströher established a “Ströher Prize” for painting, which was initially endowed with DM 1,000. The award winners included Ernst Wilhelm Nay , Fritz Winter , Eberhard Schlotter and Heinz Trökes . Since 1986, the awards Karl-Ströher Foundation, founded by Erika Pohl Ströher and Ursula Ströher, in memory of her father, the Darmstadt collector and patron, the Karl Ströher price . This is permanently connected to the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt and, according to the donor's wishes, is to be awarded every two years to an artist of contemporary art whose oeuvre has already shown substantial, sustainable development.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Eva Gollrad, History and Description of the City of Apolda , Volume II: 1871–1990. Apolda 1997, pp. 333ff., ISBN 3-00-002012-8
  2. Ulrike Knöfel: publishers whitewash , in: Der Spiegel No. 36/2013
  3. ^ Café Germany. In conversation with FRANZ DAHLEM. Retrieved January 11, 2020 .
  4. The most comprehensive overview of the former Ströher Collection is given in the publication: Erika Pohl-Ströher, Ursula Ströher, Gerhard Pohl (eds.), Karl Ströher: Collectors and Collection, catalog raisonné: Johann-Karl Schmidt / Charlotte Boller, Stuttgart 1982. OCLC 32763506 .
  5. KUNSTMARKT / KRAUSHAR COLLECTION: Wella Pop - DER SPIEGEL 11/1968. Retrieved January 11, 2020 .
  6. ^ Katrin Sauerländer: The Kraushar Collection , in: Karl Ströher. A collector's story, ed. by Katrin Sauerländer, Frankfurt am Main 2005, pp. 62–105.
  7. Peter Iden ; Rolf Lauter : Pictures for Frankfurt. Inventory catalog of the Museum of Modern Art . Munich 1985. ISBN 978-3-7913-0702-2
  8. ^ Rolf Lauter: The Museum of Modern Art and the Ströher Collection. On the history of a private collection. In: Rolf Lauter (Ed.): Art in Frankfurt . tape 2 . Societätsverlag, Frankfurt 1994, ISBN 3-7973-0585-0 , p. 88 .
  9. Ströher Collection ::: Collection Museum for Modern Art Frankfurt am Main. Retrieved January 11, 2020 .