Klaus Hinrichsen

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Kurt Schwitters : Portrait of Klaus Hinrichsen, Hutchinson Internment Camp , spring 1941

Klaus Ernst Hinrichsen (born April 19, 1912 in Lübeck ; † September 7, 2004 in London ) was a German-British art historian and entrepreneur.

Life

Klaus Hinrichsen was a son of the Lübeck lawyer and notary Felix Hinrichsen (1878–1956) and his wife Ida, geb. Young (1879-1959). His paternal ancestors were descended from Ruben Henriques, a Sephardic who came to Glückstadt in 1646 and whose descendants were court agents in Mecklenburg-Schwerin for several generations . He was largely related to Siegmund Hinrichsen and Henri Hinrichsen .

Like his father, he was baptized Protestant and grew up in generous circumstances at 61 Hohelandstrasse. From 1918 he attended the Katharineum in Lübeck until he graduated from high school at Easter 1931. The Emil Nolde exhibition in the Katharinenkirche during the Nordic Week 1921 was one of his first formative art experiences. From 1931 to 1936 he studied art history , classical archeology and German at the universities of Munich ( two semesters), Rostock (summer semester 1932), Berlin (one semester) and Hamburg . In 1937 he was promoted to Dr. Carl Georg Heise and supervised by Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreich in Hamburg on Tönnies Evers the Younger. phil. PhD. Many of the works by Evers examined in it fell victim to the air raid on Lübeck on March 29, 1942 , which gives the dissertation special documentary value.

Due to his non-Aryan descent according to the Nuremberg Laws , there were no prospects of employment. He first wrote articles for Thieme-Becker and the Reallexikon on German art history . In May 1939 he managed to emigrate to Great Britain . His two younger brothers Jürgen Joachim (1915–2011) and Joachim Otto (1920–1948) emigrated to Argentina .

Hinrichsen found a job as a London agent for a Swiss specialist publisher specializing in medical publications. Initially classified in category C and thus exempt from internment at the beginning of the Second World War , he was interned like all enemy aliens in Great Britain after the start of the German western campaign in 1940 . He was sent to the Hutchinson Internment Camp , an internment camp in Douglas on the Isle of Man , also known as the "camp of artists" thanks to the flourishing artistic and intellectual life of its internees. Within four days of his arrival, Hinrichsen was appointed secretary of the cultural department. In this position he arranged exhibitions, readings and concerts. Its special significance lies in the fact that he kept documents such as the camp newspaper The Camp and became a chronicler of the camp and its inmates. He had special friendships with Erich Kahn and Kurt Schwitters . Schwitters created a portrait of Hinrichsen in the winter of 1940/41, which later adorned a postage stamp for the Isle of Man post. Hinrichsen was released from internment in June 1941. He volunteered for service in the British Home Guard and made his connections to Switzerland available to British intelligence.

After the end of the Second World War, he built up a successful trading company for chemical and pharmaceutical raw materials in London. On June 7, 1948, he received British citizenship . 1962 awarded him the City of London as a Freeman of the City of.

Since 1942 he was married to Margarete, geb. Levy (born October 21, 1919 in Bad Polzin ), who came to Great Britain in 1937. Her father Leo Levy (1881–1938) was shot by the SA during the November 1938 pogroms in his home in Bad Polzin . The couple lived in Highgate in the London Borough of Camden .

estate

Hinrichsen's family donated their collection of internment documents to the Tate Gallery archive in 2005 , where they are available for research and are largely digitized.

Publications

  • Tönnies Evers (1558-1613). A contribution to the history of the style change in German sculpture around 1600. Dissertation Hamburg 1937.
  • Visual Arts Behind The Wire in: David Cesarani, Tony Kushner (Eds.): The Internment of Aliens in 20th-Century Britain. London 1993, pp. 188-209.

literature

  • 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. KG Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11339-0 , p. 306.
  • Shulamith Behr: Klaus E. Hinrichsen: The Art Historian behind 'Visual Art behind the Wire'. In: Shulamith Behr, Marian Malet (ed.): Arts in Exile in Britain 1933–1945: Politics and Cultural Identity. (= The Yearbook of the Research Center for German and Austrian Exile Studies 6) Rodopi, Amsterdam, New York 2005, ISBN 90-420-1786-4 , pp. 17-41.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Obituary: Klaus Hinrichsen , The Guardian, September 28, 2004, accessed October 27, 2019
  2. ↑ Biographical stations according to Biographisches Handbuch (lit.)
  3. ↑ Shulamith Behr: Klaus E. Hinrichsen: The Art Historian behind 'Visual Art behind the Wire'. In: Shulamith Behr, Marian Malet (ed.): Arts in exile in Britain 1933-1945: politics and cultural identity. Rodopi, Amsterdam, New York 2005 ISBN 90-420-1786-4 , pp. 17–41, here p. 27
  4. ↑ Entry in the Rostock matriculation portal
  5. ↑ See curriculum vitae in the dissertation.
  6. ^ Obituary , accessed October 26, 2019
  7. ↑ Shulamith Behr: Klaus E. Hinrichsen: The Art Historian behind 'Visual Art behind the Wire'. In: Shulamith Behr, Marian Malet (ed.): Arts in exile in Britain 1933-1945: politics and cultural identity. Rodopi, Amsterdam, New York 2005, ISBN 90-420-1786-4 , pp. 17–41, here p. 31.
  8. ↑ postage stamp ; for Schwitters 20-30 portraits in the camp see Shulamith Behr: Klaus E. Hinrichsen: The Art Historian behind 'Visual Art behind the Wire'. In: Shulamith Behr, Marian Malet (ed.): Arts in exile in Britain 1933-1945: politics and cultural identity. Rodopi, Amsterdam, New York Rodopi 2005, ISBN 90-420-1786-4 , pp. 17–41, here pp. 20–22.
  9. ↑ Naturalization Certificate: Klaus Ernst Hinrichsen , The National Archives , accessed on October 26, 2019; the detailed naturalization documents are also preserved , but are blocked until 2066.
  10. ↑ Interview with Margarete Hinrichsen, in Marian Malet, Anthony Grenville (ed.): Changing Countries: The Experience and Achievement of German-speaking Exiles from Hitler in Britain, from 1933 to Today. London 2002 ISBN 9781870352611 ; see. Leo Levy (Polish).
  11. ↑ 224 digitized objects , Tate Gallery, accessed October 27, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Hinrichsen, Klaus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hinrichsen, Klaus Ernst (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-British art historian and entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH April 19, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Lübeck
DATE OF DEATH September 7, 2004
Place of death London