Marshland with a red wind turbine
| Marshland with a red wind turbine |
|---|
| Karl Schmidt-Rottluff , 1922 |
| Watercolor on paper |
| 49 × 66 cm |
|
Sprengel Museum Hannover , Hanover
Link to the picture |
Marsh landscape with a red windmill is an expressionist watercolor created in 1922 by the artist Karl Schmidt-Rottluff , which was for decades in the collection donated by the art collector Bernhard Sprengel to the Sprengel Museum Hanover and whose previous owner is Max Rüdenberg , the Hanoverian bed spring manufacturer and local politician , Art collector and victim of the Holocaust . On March 10, 2017, the Culture Committee of the City of Hanover decided, in accordance with a recommendation by the Limbach Commission, to return the work of art to the value of around 160,000 euros to the descendants of the Rüdenberg couple.
history
After the era of National Socialism , the Finance Office Hannover in the wake of anti-Semitic coercive measures and the so-called " Aryanization " in the years 1938 and 1939, an asset management of the couple Rüdenberg to have ordered, Max Rüdenberg was forced, including Schmidt-Rottluff's paintings marsh landscape with red windmill to to sell.
Via the art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt and the Hanoverian middleman Erich Pfeiffer, the picture came into the possession of the Sprengels in 1939 for 180 Reichsmarks - cheap, as Bernhard Sprengel noted in a letter. In the inventory of the Sprengels, who had already decided in 1937 to collect precisely those " degenerate art " defamed by the National Socialists , the painting was also recorded in 1940 "[...] with the note that Max Rüdenberg was the previous owner".
Max Rüdenberg and his wife Margarethe were completely expropriated in 1942 and deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp on July 23 of the same year , where both perished. Max Rüdenberg's grandchildren, Vernon Reynolds, his brother Peter and his sister Marianne escaped the deportation of Jews from Germany to the extermination camps by emigrating to England. According to an edition of the cultural-political magazine Kunst + Kultur published by the Ver.di 2013 edition of the service union, they are now legally demanding the restitution of the painting, which Bernhard Sprengel formerly donated to the citizens of the Lower Saxony state capital and thus to the Sprengel Museum Hannover .
An inquiry from the trade union magazine about the former property of Max Rüdenberg was initially described by the mayor of Hanover and the commissioner for provenance research Annette Baumann as an "assumption" and as a "presumption": "[...] So far, the provenance of Bernhard Sprengel acquired in 1939 Leaf cannot be completely clarified. ”Further research is necessary for this.
literature
- Vanessa-Maria Voigt: Art dealer and collector of the modern age during the National Socialism. The Sprengel Collection from 1934 to 1945 . Reimer Verlag, Berlin 2007
Web links
- Marsh landscape with a red wind turbine (Das Windrad) on the website of the German Center for the Loss of Cultural Property
- Gabriele Anderl: "Degenerate" art shops: During the Nazi era, the chocolate manufacturer Sprengel saved "degenerate" art from destruction , book review in: Der Standard , August 6, 2008
Individual evidence
- ↑ Johanna Di Blasi: Sprengel Museum / experts meet on looted and looted art , article in the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung from November 11, 2010, accessed on March 14, 2013.
- ↑ a b c N.N. : Hildebrand Gurlitt: The man who hoarded the looted art. On the website of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit from November 4, 2013, last accessed on October 23, 2016.
- ↑ a b Peter Schulze : Rüdenberg, (2) Max. In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) And a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 528.
- ↑ oV : Sprengel Museum returns watercolor. In: [[Neue Presse (Hannover) |]] of March 11, 2017, p. 23
- ↑ a b c d e Karin Hurrle (Red.): The city of Hanover refuses to restore private art / grandchildren demand the return of the valuable watercolor by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. online on the News Regional page from October 1, 2013.
- ^ Waldemar R. Röhrbein : Sprengel, (3) Bernhard. In: Dirk Böttcher, Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein, Hugo Thielen: Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2002, ISBN 3-87706-706-9 , p. 343f.