Leonie Reygers

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Leonie Reygers (born January 6, 1905 in Bocholt ; † 1985 ) was a German art historian and museum director.

Life

Former museum on Ostwall , since 2018 archive for architecture and civil engineering NRW

Leonie Reygers studied art history , especially in Otto Schmitt , and received his doctorate in 1931 at the University of Greifswald with a dissertation on the St. Mary's Church in Bergen auf Rügen Dr. phil. As Rolf Fritz's assistant, she became a research assistant at the Museum for Art and Cultural History in Dortmund. When Fritz was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1940, she assumed responsibility for the museum as his deputy. In 1943 she moved the works of art in the museum to castles in the country, such as the panels of the Marien Altar by Conrad von Soest in the depot of the German museumsLangenau Castle in Rhineland-Palatinate. In 1944 the museum was completely destroyed by one of the many air raids on Dortmund.

When the city council decided to found a museum for modern art in 1947, she was appointed director. From the ruins of the destroyed Museum of Art and Cultural History, she developed the Museum am Ostwall according to her ideas and with the support of citizens . She was in charge of this house, which she shaped, until she retired in 1966. With works on paper she built up an extensive collection of works of expressionism. At the same time, she was regarded as an expert on those works and artists who had been branded as degenerate art by the National Socialists , excluded and confiscated from public collections and sold or destroyed.

In the mid-1950s, on behalf of the Foreign Office's cultural department, she put together a highly acclaimed exhibition of works of German art, which was shown in 1956 as German watercolors, drawings and prints: A midcentury review in the United States in New York, Cambridge and San Francisco . A significant part of the works shown there came from the holdings of the now controversial art dealer Hildbrand Gurlitt . In 1957 Leonie Reygers acquired the Karl Gröppel collection with around 200 sheets by German artists of the 20th century for the Museum am Ostwall and the city of Dortmund . Not least because of this partial collection, the Museum am Ostwall made known far beyond the borders of Dortmund. Leonie Reygers received the Federal Cross of Merit in recognition of her educational work in the museum with children who were particularly close to her heart.

Honors

Fonts

  • The Marienkirche in Bergen auf Rügen and its relationship to Danish brick architecture , Bamberg, Greifswald 1934
  • German watercolors, drawings and prints [1905–1955]. A midcentury review, with loans from German museums and galleries and from the collection Dr. H. Gurlitt. American Federation of Arts, New York 1956
  • Gröppel Collection with works by Expressionist artists from the museum , Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund [1958]
  • “The Museum am Ostwall.” In: Museum Quarterly 15 (1962), no. 3, pp. 152–157

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sonja Hnilica: The Dortmund Museum on the Ostwall by Leonie Reygers. Conversion of a war ruin to a place for contemporary art . In: archimaera . No. 6 , September 2015, ISSN  1865-7001 , p. 139–155 , urn : nbn: de: 0009-21-42462 ( archimaera.de [PDF]).
  2. ↑ Gisela Framke: Art as Life. Leonie Reygers and the Museum am Ostwall . In: Gisela Framke (Ed.): Das Das Neue Dortmund. Planning, building, living in the fifties . Museum for Art and Cultural History, Dortmund 2002, p. 145-173 .
  3. ↑ Barbara Gerstein:  Gröppel, Karl. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 7, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1966, ISBN 3-428-00188-5 , p. 117 f. ( Digitized version ).
personal data
SURNAME Reygers, Leonie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art historian and museum director
DATE OF BIRTH January 6, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Bocholt
DATE OF DEATH 1985