Otto Kümmel

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Otto Kümmel 1940, photograph in the Federal Archives

Otto Kümmel (born August 22, 1874 in Blankenese ; † February 8, 1952 in Mainz ) was a German art historian , university professor, founder and director of the Museum for East Asian Art in Berlin and general director of the State Museums in Berlin .

Life

Otto Kümmel was a son of the civil engineer Werner Kümmel and the seventh of twelve children. After graduating from high school at the Athenaeum Stade , Otto Kümmel studied classical archeology and philosophy at the University of Freiburg from 1893 . In 1896 and 1897 he also attended lectures in Bonn and at the Institut national des langues et civilizations orientales in Paris, where he learned the Chinese and Japanese languages. In 1901 he was in Freiburg due a thesis on Egyptian plant ornamentation doctorate . He did his military service as a one-year volunteer in Lahr .

In 1902 he did a traineeship in the Hamburg Museum of Art and Industry . From April 1, 1905 to September 1906, he was employed as a curator at the Municipal Museum for Natural History and Ethnology in Freiburg. In Freiburg he met the ethnologist Ernst Grosse , who, like the painter Hermann Gehri, lived with the patron Marie Meyer.

Otto Kümmel was married to Therese Klee and had a daughter and four sons, including the German physicist Hermann Kümmel . Two of his sons died in World War II.

Career in Berlin

After Wilhelm von Bode had appointed him as assistant director to Berlin, Otto Kümmel ran the discharge from Freiburg services in September 1906. From 1906 to 1909 he was in Japan , where he obtained a basis of Japanese art for the Berlin museums. In 1912, together with the art historian William Cohn (1880–1961), he founded the East Asian magazine , which he published until the end of publication in 1943 due to the war. He served as an officer in the First World War . On October 9, 1923, the Museum of East Asian Art he designed and directed was opened in what is now the Martin-Gropius-Bau ; the collection is now a department of the Museum of Asian Art . Throughout his life he organized numerous exhibitions on East Asian art in Germany and other countries.

Since the seizure of power he was a member of the NSDAP . The SPD -member Edward Erkes lost at the instigation of the first authorization to teach at the University of Leipzig and then the position as curator at the Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig , as he received speech and publication ban. Erke's denunciation was certainly not an isolated incident. Kümmel became General Director of the Prussian Museums in Berlin in 1934. Although he had already reached the age limit in 1939 , he had to continue to hold office due to the war. In 1945 much of his work in Berlin was destroyed by the war, and he himself was dismissed from service as a member of the NSDAP.

Looted art

In 1940, on behalf of Joseph Goebbels , Kümmel wrote a secret, 319-page list of foreign-owned works of art that had to be plundered in three volumes . Such works of art, which had ever been in German ownership, going back to the 15th century, Kümmel declared to be Aryan art, which would therefore have to be stolen and brought "home to the Reich". Works of art in Jewish possession could also be confiscated without German provenance. For example, Jan Vermeer's oil painting Der Astronom was transferred from the Rothschild collection to Adolf Hitler's private collection . Jonathan Petropoulos calls him one of the leaders of the museum looting in the Third Reich .

Appreciation

Kümmel was the first European art historian to master the written and spoken Japanese and Chinese languages ​​and was an expert in his field. His deep involvement in Nazi looted art does not make it easy to assess his scientific work and his undoubted merits today. In the detailed biography of his grandson Wolfgang Close, the time of National Socialism is hidden. Gert Naundorf, Professor of Sinology at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg , who wrote the article about Kümmel in the Neue Deutsche Biographie , is also missing the time from 1933.

Publications (selection)

  • Egyptian and Mycenaean plant ornamentation . Dissertation, University of Freiburg, 1901
  • The arts and crafts in Japan . 1911
  • The art of East Asia . 1921 (French 1926)
  • East Asian device (together with Ernst Grosse ). 1925
  • Exhibition of Chinese Art [catalog], Berlin
  • Chinese art , 200 major works d. Exhibition of the Society for East Asian Art. 1930
  • Masterpieces of Japanese Landscape Art , 1939
  • Guelph treasure and religious painting : exhibition. Opened for the 75th German Catholic Day, August 18, 1952, Berlin 1952

literature

  • Gert Naundorf:  Caraway, Otto. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , p. 211 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Hartmut Walravens : Otto Kümmel. Highlights on the life and work of a Berlin museum director . In: Jahrbuch Preußischer Kulturbesitz Volume 24, 1987, pp. 137–149.
  • Wolfgang Klose (Ed.): Wilhelm von Bode - Otto Kümmel: Correspondence from 20 years 1905–1925; facts and opinions; the first twenty years of East Asian arts in Berlin; based on the originals in the East Asian Art Department of the Asian Museum in Berlin and the Central Archives of the Berlin Museums Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz . Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2009, ISBN 978-3-8370-3949-8 .
  • Hartmut Walravens (Ed.): “And the Sumeru of my thanks would grow”: Contributions to East Asian art history in Germany (1896–1932). Letters from the ethnologist and art scholar Ernst Große to his friend and colleague Otto Kümmel as well as correspondence between the art historian Gustav Ecke and the architect Ernst Boerschmann . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2010, ISBN 978-3-447-06230-5 .
  • He was more than a specialist . In: Die Zeit , No. 9/1952; obituary

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Freiburger Zeitung , March 7, 1905, Freiburg Zeitung Digital , accessed on August 5, 2015.
  2. ^ Shlomit Steinberg: Outlining the Kümmel Report: Between German Nationality and Aesthetics. In: https://ehri-project.eu/ . EHRI European Holocaust Research Infrastructure, March 2015, accessed on May 19, 2017 .
  3. ^ Biography of Eduard Erkes (1891-1958). University of Leipzig, East Asian Institute, accessed on November 24, 2013 .
  4. ^ Joachim Brand: The libraries of the State Museums in Berlin. Prussian cultural property . Berlin 2000, p. 32
  5. ↑ Otto Kümmel: on the decree of the Reich Minister and Head of the Reich Chancellery RK 118 II A of August 19, 1940 and on the decree of the Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda BK 9900-02 / 8/13/40/89 - 1/6 of August 20 1940: Concerning works of art and historically significant objects which have come into foreign possession since 1500 without our will or due to dubious legal transactions; Part I - III; Completed December 31, 1940. Holdings of the Berlin State Library
  6. ^ Günther Haase: Art theft and art protection, Volume I: A documentation . Olms, Hildesheim 1991. pp. 198-202. ISBN 3-487-09539-4
  7. ↑ Jonathan Petropoulos: The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany. Oxford University Press, New York 2000, ISBN 0-7139-9438-X , pp. 56-57.
  8. ↑ Otto Kümmel. Retrieved November 23, 2013 . Private website of Wolfgang Klose, Otto Kümmel's grandson.
  9. ^ German biography: Kümmel, Otto - German biography. Retrieved July 18, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Caraway, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art historian and museum director
DATE OF BIRTH August 22, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Blankenese
DATE OF DEATH February 8, 1952
Place of death Mainz