Karl Wilhelm Zitzmann

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Karl Wilhelm Zitzmann (born October 23, 1871 in Nuremberg ; † December 7, 1956 in Starnberg ) was a German art collector . He was a secret councilor of commerce and an honorary citizen of Erlangen and Starnberg.

Portrait photo of Carl Zitzmann, around 1935

Live and act

Karl (also: Carl) Zitzmann was the third son of a master shoemaker and had to attend primary school in Nuremberg as a poor school student. After breaking off an apprenticeship as a handyman, he started as an office servant at Schuckert & Co. in 1887 and was promoted to commercial clerk by 1892.

In 1898 he moved to Reiniger, Gebbert & Schall (RGS) in Erlangen , where he later worked in the high voltage department. In 1907, RGS was converted into a stock corporation based in Berlin (from 1919/20 in Erlangen), whose commercial management was given to Zitzmann. The company mainly produced medical technology and X-ray equipment. After the founding of INAG (Industrie-Unternehmerungen Aktiengesellschaft) as the holding company of the RGS Group on March 30, 1921, Zitzmann took over the post of General Director.

He became prosperous, bought together with his wife Karoline in 1919 from the previous owner Ellen Ammann a villa in Niederpöcking on the shores of Lake Starnberg, which was demolished in 1922 and replaced by a new building in 1923 (by architect Otto Gruber , today a monument, Ferdinand- von-Miller-Strasse 7). After being invited there, the Erlangen-based radiologist and gynecology professor Hermann Wintz (who was also an art collector) was married to Zitzmann's daughter Pauline Heinrikce in 1922, although the marriage only lasted until 1925. Zitzmann put on an art collection and supported charitable causes for many years, which is why he was awarded several honors until 1923. On April 30, 1923, for his 25th business anniversary, he was granted honorary citizenship of the city of Erlangen, and he was also awarded a Dr. med. hc, a secret councilor of commerce and on December 21, 1923 an honorary citizen of the city of Starnberg .

Zitzmann used profits, partly still from war production, to expand the company with numerous companies. This expansion course, with partly unrelated and often unprofitable subsidiaries, brought the entire group into considerable difficulties after the conversion to the Rentenmark in November 1923. Zitzmann, who was not particularly prone to innovation, was made personally responsible for the group's debt of around six million gold marks and had to leave RGS in 1924, which could only be saved through a merger with Siemens & Halske AG, which began in early 1925 the establishment of the Siemens cleaner Veifa GmbH was completed.

From 1924 to 1925 Zitzmann had numerous pieces from his extensive art collection without naming (simply titled "Collection of a Southern German Art Friend") auctioned at the Paul Cassirer auction house, including works by Daniel Chodowiecki , Carl Blechen , Anton Graff , Theodor Hosemann , Adolph Menzel , and Johann Gottfried Schadow , Oskar Kokoschka , Max Liebermann , Lovis Corinth and Albert Weisgerber . A lengthy embezzlement lawsuit has been opened against him. This process was continued up to the Reichsgericht and ended in the last instance on December 14, 1929 with a judgment that Zitzmann brought in six weeks' imprisonment and a fine of 80,000 marks in 1930.

After his professional decline, Zitzmann spent his old age in Niederpöcking on Lake Starnberg, in an outbuilding of his former villa, which was used by the BJR from 1949 and taken over by the DGB in 1955 . Until his death he was friends with his neighbor Lilo Fürst-Ramdohr .

literature

  • Auction of 685 drawings hand drawing collection of a South German art lover, including contributions from other property. German artists of the XVIII. Century, including an unusually rich selection by Daniel Chodowiecki. Extensive collection of valuable German hand drawings of the XIX. and XX. Century: Classicists, Nazarenes, Romantics, Biedermeier, Idealists, Realists, Impressionists. Excellent work by important foreign artists of the XIX century. and XX. Century: England, France, Holland, Switzerland. With an introduction by W. Kurth. Berlin, Amsler & Ruthardt, 1924.
  • Gerhard Schober: Early villas and country houses on Lake Starnberg: in memory of a cultural landscape of Oreos 1998, p. 145 ff, p. 485. ISBN 9783923657537
  • Frobenius, Wolfgang: X-rays instead of scalpels: the University Women's Clinic Erlangen and the history of gynecological radiology from 1914-1945 , Volume 26 of Erlanger Researches: Natural Sciences and Medicine . Universitätsbund Erlangen-Nürnberg, 2003, pp. 121–129 ff., P. 151. ISBN 9783930357543

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. private Zitzmann genealogy website
  2. ↑ cf. Schober 1998, p. 485
  3. ↑ Frobenius, Wolfgang: X-rays instead of scalpels: the University Women's Clinic Erlangen and the history of gynecological radiology from 1914-1945 , Universitätsbund Erlangen-Nürnberg, 2003, pp. 121–129 ff., P. 151
  4. ↑ 175 Years of the Erlangen Women's Clinic, exhibition text ( memento of the original from March 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.175jahrefrauenklinik.de
  5. ↑ cf. '' Kokoschka, the drawings and watercolors 1897-1916 '', entry Der Sähmann
  6. ↑ cf. Auction catalog: The collection of a South German art lover. Berlin, Cassirer & Helbing, 3./4. March 1925
personal data
SURNAME Zitzmann, Karl Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Zitzmann, Carl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art collector
DATE OF BIRTH October 23, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg
DATE OF DEATH 7th December 1956
Place of death Starnberg