Margarete Kühn (art historian)

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Margarete Kühn (born February 4, 1902 in Lütgendortmund ; † September 12, 1995 in Berlin ) was an art historian and first director of the Berlin palace administration .

life and work

Margarete Kühn studied art history in Munich , Vienna and Leipzig and received her doctorate in Munich in 1928. Even before the Second World War , she worked with the then director of the Prussian Palace Administration, Ernst Gall (1888–1958), and was responsible for Charlottenburg Palace . Immediately after the end of the war, she took over the management of the former Prussian palace administration in Berlin.

During the split in Berlin, Kühn protested unsuccessfully against the evacuation of the Berlin City Palace by the German People's Police in October 1948. The hopeless fight against the demolition of the palace, which the East Berlin magistrate was promoting, prompted her and the state curator of Berlin, Hinnerk Scheper , to move to the west -Berlin to relocate. As director of the West Berlin palace administration, she now worked with great energy to rebuild Charlottenburg Palace, which had suffered much more damage than the city palace that was blown up in 1950.

Only in 1956 did she get a research assistant in Martin Sperlich and thus support in her work. This followed her in 1969 and continued the reconstruction in her spirit.

Equestrian statue of the Great Elector in the courtyard of Charlottenburg Palace

Through their efforts, the equestrian statue of the Great Elector, created by Andreas Schlüter in 1700/1708 and recovered from Lake Tegel in 1949, was erected in the courtyard of Charlottenburg Palace . Until the beginning of the war it had stood on the Long Bridge (today Rathausbrücke ) by the City Palace.

She worked energetically to ensure that the Charlottenburg Palace Gardens, which were badly devastated during the war, did not become a people 's park like the New Garden and the Babelsberg Park in Potsdam. So she wrote in 1951: “The artistic planning must assume that the park is a historical complex belonging to the castle.” Therefore, she advocated the restoration of the ground floor in a baroque style.

On the tenth anniversary of her death and her birthday, Margarete-Kühn-Strasse was named after her in a new building in Charlottenburg.

Publications

  • Prussian palaces from the Great Elector to Friedrich Wilhelm IV. 2nd edition. Administration of State Palaces and Gardens. Berlin 1936.
  • Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff . Memorial show in Charlottenburg Palace on the 200th anniversary of death. Berlin 1953.
  • The Charlottenburg Palace (monuments of German art). Berlin 1955.
  • Antoine Pesne and the Frederician room painting. Mythology and landscape. In: Ekhart Berckenhagen et al .: Antoine Pesne. Berlin 1958, pp. 51-78.
  • The victory column . Administration of the State Palaces and Gardens, Berlin 1963.
  • The Charlottenburg Palace. For the opening of restored rooms in the Nehring-Eosander building. In: Mitteilungen des Verein für Geschichte Berlins, NF 7 (1967), pp. 85–90.
  • Charlottenburg Palace (The buildings and art monuments of Berlin). 2 vols. Berlin 1970.

literature

  • Martin Sperlich, Helmut Börsch-Supan (eds.): Charlottenburg Palace, Berlin, Prussia. Festschrift for Margarete Kühn. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich a. a. 1975.
  • Foundation Prussian Palaces and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg (Ed.): Schloss Charlottenburg. Official leader, 9th amend. Potsdam 2002 edition.
  • Clemens Alexander Wimmer: The gardens of the Charlottenburg Palace (garden monument preservation, 2). 3rd edition Berlin 1987.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Although an official commission had declared it not to collapse the day before. One of Kühn's offices in the castle was also affected. For this and the following see Renate Petras: Das Schloß in Berlin. From the revolution in 1918 to the destruction in 1950 , Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin / Munich 1992, p. 108f.
  2. ↑ Margarete-Kühn-Strasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
personal data
SURNAME Bold, Margarete
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art historian
DATE OF BIRTH February 4, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Lütgendortmund
DATE OF DEATH September 12, 1995
Place of death Berlin