Klaus Graf von Baudissin

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Klaus Wulf Sigesmund Graf von Baudissin (born November 4, 1891 in Metz , † April 20, 1961 in Itzehoe ) was a German art historian and SS leader. Baudissin was director of the Folkwang Museum in Essen from 1933 to 1938 and co-designer of the Nazi exhibition “ Degenerate Art ” in 1937 .

Life

He belonged to the noble family Baudissin , who originally came from Upper Lusatia and came to Schleswig-Holstein during the Thirty Years' War .

After finishing his school career, Baudissin studied art history at the University of Munich from 1912 . He interrupted his studies in 1914 and took as a volunteer to the German army at the First World War, in part, what he was after the war as a lieutenant colonel a. D. was discharged. From 1919 he continued his studies at the Art History Institute of the University of Heidelberg and in 1922 was awarded a doctorate by Carl Neumann with a thesis on the romantic painter Georg August Wallis. phil. PhD . From 1924 he was employed at the Art History Institute of Kiel University and also at the art gallery there. In March 1925 he moved to the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart , where he worked first as an assistant and then as a curator, senior curator and from 1930 as acting museum director. During this time he acquired works by Conrad Felixmüller , Erich Heckel , Emil Nolde , Adolf Hölzel , Franz Marc and Oskar Schlemmer for the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart . At this time, Baudissin was open to modern art and later claimed to have campaigned for painters ostracized by the National Socialists in 1933.

Baudissin became a member of the DVP in 1929 . In Stuttgart he joined the NSDAP at the beginning of April 1932 ( membership number 1.055.622) and was also a member of the SS from 1935 (SS number 271.961). In the SS he rose to SS-Obersturmführer in 1936 .

Baudissin's initially liberal attitude towards modern art changed permanently after the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists. He organized one of the first so-called "shame exhibitions" : November Spirit - Art in the Service of Decomposition , which was shown from June 10 to 24, 1933 in the former Kronprinzenpalais . Among other things, this exhibition featured reproductions of works by artists from the Novembergruppe , which were exhibited together with magazines such as Der Sturm and Die Aktion . The artists of the exhibited works were defamed by the title of the exhibition alone. Works by George Grosz and Otto Dix in particular were shown as chilling examples. In contrast to this exhibition, Baudissin organized a war-glorifying exhibition entitled From War to War , which was also shown in September 1933 in the former Crown Prince's Palace .

Wassily Kandinsky: Improvisation 28 (1912)

On January 24, 1934, Baudissin took up his new position as director of the Folkwang Museum in Essen, succeeding Ernst Gosebruch . The staunch National Socialist Baudissin took office without the consent of the Folkwang Museum Association . Soon afterwards, Baudissin had works of modern and abstract art hung up in the exhibition rooms and placed in the magazine. In addition, he was instrumental in the confiscation of around 1,400 modern works in the course of the “ Degenerate Art ” campaign. With this action, carried out in July and August 1937, the Folkwang Museum almost lost its entire collection of modern art. In the summer of 1936, under Baudissin, a picture ostracized as “degenerate art”, Wassily Kandinsky's Improvisation 28 from 1912, was sold to the Berlin art dealer Ferdinand Möller .

"The Folkwang Museum has a plentiful inventory of works that were finally relegated to the magazine in 1933, in whose semi-darkness they continue their ghostly existence and accuse the shattered world with their shrill dissonances."

- Baudissin in the article published in the Essen national newspaper on August 18, 1936: The Folkwang Museum in Essen repels a foreign body.

Baudissin was a member of Adolf Ziegler's commission that initiated and carried out the traveling exhibition “ Degenerate Art ”. In this context he took part in an action in the Hamburger Kunsthalle on July 5, 1937 , during which works by Emil Nolde, Oskar Kokoschka and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , among others , were confiscated. In addition to his position as director of the Folkwang Museum, Baudissin took over the management of the Office for Public Education in the Reich Ministry of Education in 1937 , from which he was released on April 21, 1938 at his own request. In November 1938 he was given leave of absence from the office of director of the Folkwang Museum. The background to this measure were consultations between the Lord Mayor of Essen, Just Dillgardt , the museum's board of trustees and the Folkwang Museum Association. His successor as museum director was his former assistant Heinz Köhn . Baudissin did not want to give up his position as director of the museum and led serious disputes with the city of Essen over his reinstatement, which however remained unsuccessful.

After the outbreak of World War II , Baudissin was employed in the Waffen SS from 1939 and rose there in 1943 to the position of SS Obersturmbannführer. He was involved in removing employees in Austrian museums who were considered "non-Aryan" according to Hans Globke's definition.

After the end of the war he was imprisoned in the Neuengamme internment camp , from which he was released in 1948. Baudissin was denazified and from 1949 to 1950 led a process with the city of Essen for his dismissal as museum director. A court ruling awarded him a pension, which the city of Essen paid him for the rest of his life.

Baudissin, who struggled with his fate after the end of the war, wrote to Emil Nolde at the beginning of February 1949, whose pictures were still considered "degenerate art" during the Nazi era :

"For the rest, I remained suspended and ostracized, a condition that is not unknown to you."

- Klaus Graf von Baudussin on February 1, 1949 in a letter to Emil Nolde

Origin and family

Klaus von Baudissin came from the Meissnian - Sorbian nobility of Upper Lusatia Baudissin . His father was Rudolf Adolf Julius Graf von Baudissin (1855-1893) and his mother Elisabeth von Kraewel (1867-1933). Baudissin's first marriage was to Elisabeth Wolff (1897–1948). Baudissin was brother-in-law of the SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS Karl Wolff . The first marriage had six children: Nora Elisabeth Magdalena Countess von Baudissin (* 1917), Renate Else Dora Margarethe Countess von Baudissin (* 1919), Brigitte Else Tila Erika Barbara Countess von Baudissin (* 1921), Heilwig Friederike Eva Irmgard Countess von Baudissin (1923–1957), Klaus-Heinrich Karl Wolff Albert Friedrich Peter Graf von Baudissin (1928–1945), Erdmuthe Countess von Baudissin (* 1936).

literature

  • Laura Lauzemis: The National Socialist Ideology and the “New Man” - Oskar Schlemmer's Folkwang Cycle and his correspondence with Klaus Graf von Baudissin from 1934 . In: Uwe Fleckner (Ed.): Attack on the avant-garde. Art and Art Politics in National Socialism. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-05-004062-2 , ( publications of the research center “Degenerate Art” 1).
  • Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 .
  • Andrea Schmidt: Klaus Graf von Baudissin - art historian between the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich . Master's thesis at the Art History Institute of the Ruprecht-Karls-University, Heidelberg 1991
  • Joseph Wulf : The fine arts in the Third Reich. A documentation. Sigbert Mohn Verlag, Gütersloh 1963, p. 344 ff.
  • Christoph surcharge: degenerate art. Exhibition strategies in Nazi Germany. Werner, Worms 1995, ISBN 3-88462-096-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Laura Lauzemis: The National Socialist ideology and the "new man" . In: Uwe Fleckner (Ed.): Attack on the avant-garde. Art and Art Politics in National Socialism. Berlin 2007, p. 34 f.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Ernst Klee: The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 31 f.
  3. ↑ Joseph Wulf: The fine arts in the Third Reich. A documentation. Gütersloh 1963, p. 305.
  4. ↑ a b c Laura Lauzemis: The National Socialist Ideology and the "New Man" . In: Uwe Fleckner (Ed.): Attack on the avant-garde. Art and Art Politics in National Socialism. Berlin 2007, p. 67.
  5. ↑ a b Museum Folkwang at www.museum-folkwang.de
  6. ↑ Dossier on Nazi art policy and its effects on private collections of modern art ( Memento of the original from August 31, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de
  7. ↑ a b Laura Lauzemis: The National Socialist Ideology and the "New Man" . In: Uwe Fleckner (Ed.): Attack on the avant-garde. Art and Art Politics in National Socialism. Berlin 2007, p. 66.
  8. ↑ Responsible for aryanization of Austrian museum staffs , Post-War Reports: Art Looting Intelligence Unit (ALIU) Reports 1945-1946 and ALIU Red Flag Names List and Index
  9. ↑ Quoted from Mario-Andreas von Lüttichau (Museum Folkwang): "But the real thing is the whole ..." (GWFHegel) - Klaus Graf von Baudissin. Director at the Museum Folkwang from 1934 to 1937 , announcement about the lecture on April 8, 2010 at the Historical Society Essen
  10. ↑ a b Klaus Wulf Sigesmund Graf von Baudissin on www.geneall.net
personal data
SURNAME Baudissin, Klaus Graf von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Baudissin, Klaus Wulf Sigesmund Graf von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art historian and SS leader
DATE OF BIRTH November 4, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Metz
DATE OF DEATH April 20, 1961
Place of death Itzehoe