Leopold Reidemeister

Leopold Reidemeister (born April 7, 1900 in Braunschweig , † June 11, 1987 in Berlin ) was a German art historian and general director of the State Museums in West Berlin .

Life

Leopold Reidemeister and his brother Kurt were born in Braunschweig as the sons of Hans Reidemeister, a ducal government councilor, and his wife Sophie, née. Langerfeldt, born. Reidemeister attended Wilhelm-Gymnasium in his hometown and studied architecture for two semesters at the Technical University of Braunschweig . This was followed by a study of art history at the University of Berlin . In 1924 he completed his studies with a doctorate and from then on was a research assistant in the State Museums in Berlin until he was promoted to curator of the East Asian department there in 1932 . In this capacity he undertook extensive study trips to China and Korea from 1935 to 1936, and then to Japan in 1938. During the Second World War he did military service from 1941 and was a prisoner of war until 1945. After his release he became director of the Cologne museums in 1946 and finally director of the Wallraf-Richartz Museum from 1950 . From 1954 he was general director of all Cologne city museums. During this time, one of his main tasks was to rebuild the largely destroyed museum landscape in Cologne. Through numerous exhibitions by artists who were banned during the Nazi era and ostracized as “degenerate” , he made a contribution to the establishment of modernism that he himself saw as reparation .

In 1957, when he was appointed General Director of the former Berlin State Museums, he left Cologne and moved to Berlin. Here he organized numerous important exhibitions. In 1964 he was able to found the Brücke Museum after he had succeeded in getting them to donate their artistic estate due to his personal relationships with the Brücke painters Erich Heckel (1883–1970) and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884–1976) . The museum, supported by the Berlin Senate , was opened in 1967. Reidemeister then headed the Brücke Museum for 20 years until his death.

He was married to Ursula geb. Nordmann , daughter of the surgeon Otto Nordmann . The heart surgeon Jürgen Christoph Reidemeister emerged from the marriage.

Leopold Reidemeister died in Berlin in 1987 at the age of 87. His grave is in the Dahlem forest cemetery .

Awards

• 1965: Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 1977: Large Cross of Merit with Star of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 1980: Order Pour le Mérite .

Fonts (selection)

• In the footsteps of the painters of the Ile de France. Topographic contributions to the history of French landscape painting from Corot to the Fauves. Propylaea Verlag, Berlin 1963, OCLC 3029911 .
• The watercolor of the bridge. Senator f. Knowledge u. Art, Brücke-Museum, Berlin 1975, OCLC 3223665 .
• The wooden stick as a work of art. Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. Wooden sticks from 1950 to 1930. In: Brücke-Archiv. 13/14. Brücke-Museum, Berlin 1984, OCLC 251524332 .

literature

• Horst-Rüdiger Jarck , Günter Scheel (Ed.): Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon - 19th and 20th centuries . Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hannover 1996, ISBN 3-7752-5838-8 , p. 481 .
• Peter Springer:  Reidemeister, Leopold. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , p. 325 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Magdalena M. Moeller (Ed.): Leopold Reidemeister: a German museum man . Hirmer, Munich 2017, ISBN 3-7774-2914-7 .

Web links

• Leopold Reidemeister on orden-pourlemerite.de (short biography)
• Leopold Reidemeister in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
• Literature by and about Leopold Reidemeister in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende: Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , p. 587.
2. ↑ The Orden pour le mérite for science and the arts, The members of the Order Vol. 3, p. 182, Lambert Schneider-Verlag, Gerlingen 1994