Luigi Casimir

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Luigi Kasimir (1931)

Luigi Kasimir (actually: Alois Heinrich; born April 18, 1881 in Pettau , Duchy of Styria , Austria-Hungary ; † August 6, 1962 in Vienna ) was an Austrian etcher , lithographer and engraver .

Life

Education and artistic activity

His father Alois Kasimir (1854–1930) and his grandfather were painters. Kasimir attended high school in Graz , where he received drawing lessons from Heinrich Bank .

He studied from 1900 to 1905 at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna . In 1905 he exhibited his watercolor vedutas for the first time in the Vienna Künstlerhaus and completed his training in 1906/07 at the graphic teaching and research institute in Vienna. In 1911 he married the hitherto unknown artist Tanna Hoernes, daughter of the geologist Rudolf Hoernes (1850–1912), who studied at the Vienna Art School and with whom he had three sons. He created aquatint etchings with motifs from Europe and New York and developed his own technique of color etching. He created the Liechtenstein emergency money , partly together with his wife .

Activity at the time of National Socialism and trial

Kasimir joined the NSDAP in 1933 , which was banned in Austria from June 20 .

After the end of National Socialist rule , Kasimir was charged in November 1945 with high treason , illegal membership in the NSDAP since 1933 and failure to register. The trial began on June 16, 1946 before the Austrian People's Court in Vienna. On June 22nd, 1946, Kasimir was sentenced to 18 months of severe, aggravated dungeon for illegality and registration fraud.

Furthermore, Kasimir was also accused of illegal enrichment through the Aryanization of the art dealership Halm & Goldmann . Apparently, after the “Anschluss” of Austria on March 13, 1938 , Kasimir used his early party membership to bring the Vienna-based art dealer into his possession. With the previous owner Elsa Gall, who had until then had the exclusive right to distribute Kasimir's etchings, Kasimir had signed a contract with the art publisher Ernst Edhoffer for a purchase price of 73,000 Reichsmarks (RM) in October 1938 . Gall was of Jewish origin and had decided to sell it because of the events that had to come. She then had to emigrate to the USA in May 1939 . As a result, Kasimir and Edhoffer did not meet the payment claims against Gall and probably only made a deposit of 10,000 RM to them. The company was entered in the commercial register on January 20, 1939 under the new name Edhoffer & Kasimir .

As part of his work for his company Edhoffer & Kasimir , there was subsequently another case of a presumed Aryanization by Kasimir. In March 1941 he bought part of the extensive art collection of the Jewish dentist and art collector Heinrich Rieger, Chief Medical Officer for around 17,000 RM, which would have been a dubiously low estimate for the collection, which, along with the Reichel collection , was one of the most important of Austrian modern art . Kasimir continued to sell a large part of the collection he had acquired during the war years.

Kasimir and Edhoffer were acquitted of the disproportionate enrichment through Aryanization under the War Crimes Act in the June 1946 trial, however, because Kasimir had recognized all restitution claims as part of the Austrian restitution to him and the Edhoffer & Kasimir company .

In February 1947, the Housing Office of the City of Vienna carried out a house search in Luigi Kasimir's apartment at Operngasse 13. The search revealed a total of 13 pictures with an estimated value of several 100,000 schillings that was later determined . It is said that Kasimir's former secretary had hidden the works in the apartment from impending confiscation. The pictures that were confiscated when they were found were remnants of the Rieger collection, as well as pictures that had belonged to the daughter of the Jewish lawyer Benedikt and which Casimir had allegedly been handed over to "custody". The origin of other images remained unclear.

As the newspaper Neues Österreich reported on February 7, 1947, Kasimir was released prematurely from prison on a medical request due to a severe liver disease.

End of life

Luigi Kasimir died in his house in Vienna 19. , Grinzing , Himmelstrasse 40–42. He left about 2500 copper plates and is considered one of the most important creators of city ​​vedutas of the 20th century.

family

Kasimir's sister Elsa Kasimir was also active as a sculptor , painter and graphic artist and of his three sons Robert (1914–2002) also became a painter and graphic artist.

Works

  • Vienna, 1912 (etchings)
  • Belgium 1915. A sketchbook. Illustrated book with texts by Fedor von Zobeltitz .
  • Galicia 1915. An artist's diary. Illustrated book.
  • Salzburg, 1923 (stone drawings)

literature

General

On the allegations of Aryanization

  • Michael Wladika: Dossier Dr. Heinrich Rieger. Provenance research on behalf of the Leopold Museum . December 2009. Pages 17f. ( online )
  • Stefania Domanova and Georg Hupfer: "Aryanization" using the example of the companies Halm & Goldmann and Verlag Neuer Graphik (Würthle & Sohn Nachf.). Presentation. Date unknown. Pages 7 to 11. ( online )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Benedikt Zäch: Emergency money. In: Historical Lexicon of the Principality of Liechtenstein . December 31, 2011 , accessed March 22, 2019 .
  2. ^ Marcus G. Patka: Austrian Freemasons in National Socialism . Böhlau, Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-205-78546-0 , p. 79.
  3. ↑ Federal Law Gazette 1933/240. In:  Federal Law Gazette for the Republic of Austria , year 1933, p. 569. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / bgb.
    Ordinance of the federal government of June 19, 1933, with which the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Hitler movement) and the Styrian Homeland Security (leadership Kammerhofer) are prohibited from any activity in Austria.
  4. ↑ Tobias Natter: The world of Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka. Collectors and patrons. DuMont, Cologne 2003, ISBN 978-3-8321-7258-9 , pp. 216-224.
  5. ↑ Sophie Lillie: What Once Was. Handbook of the expropriated art collections of Vienna. Czernin, Vienna 2003, ISBN 978-3-7076-0049-0 , pp. 969f.
  6. ↑ New Austria. Issued February 6, 1947. Page 3.
personal data
SURNAME Casimir, Luigi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian etcher, lithographer and engraver
DATE OF BIRTH April 18, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Pettau , Lower Styria
DATE OF DEATH August 6, 1962
Place of death Vienna