Otto Wacker (art dealer)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Otto Wacker (born August 11, 1898 in Düsseldorf , † October 13, 1970 in Berlin ) was a German art dealer and dancer. In the 1920s, he was embroiled in a high-profile lawsuit involving forged pictures of Vincent van Gogh .

Otto Wacker was a son of the painter Hans Wacker (1868–1958). After having worked in various other professions and u. a. Otto Wacker became an art dealer in 1925 when a dancer under the pseudonym Olinto Lovaël (also: Olindo Lovaël ) gained a certain fame. He mainly sold paintings by Van Gogh and was considered reliable in art circles.

In January 1928, a van Gogh exhibition took place in the Cassirer art salon , supplied by Otto Wacker. Wacker claimed the pictures came from a Russian private collection and had expert reports from Jacob-Baart de la Faille and Julius Meier-Graefe . However, Grete Ring and Walter Feilchenfeldt , the organizers of the exhibition, realized that some of the pictures were forgeries. Further investigation revealed 33 suspicious images, all of which were supplied by Wacker. Many Berlin art dealers took pictures that came from Wacker back from their customers.

The trial against Wacker began on April 6, 1932. Vincent Wilhelm van Gogh, a nephew of the painter, was interviewed first and stated that family tradition does not know of any Russian who would have bought a painting. De La Faille, however, said five of the pictures were real. Eventually Wacker was sentenced to 19 months in prison and a fine of 30,000 Reichsmarks . Since he could not pay the fine, the prison term was increased by 300 days. Wacker was not released until 1935.

The expert dispute about the authenticity of the pictures, which took place before and during the Wacker Trial, was parodied by Kurt Tucholsky in April 1932 on the Weltbühne .

After the Second World War , Wacker lived in East Berlin from 1951 - after working as a dancer and dance dramaturge in Erfurt and Weimar from 1945 to 1950 - where he a. a. worked as a dance instructor and author and ran a dance school. He was no longer active in the art market. Some of the paintings he offered have since disappeared, but the experts agree that none of them are real.

The forged van Goghs were probably the work of his father or his brother Leonhard Wacker (* 1895), who was also a painter (and restorer).

literature

  • Grete Ring: The Wacker case . In: Kunst und Künstler , May 1932, pp. 153–165.
  • Stefan Koldehoff: The Wacker forgeries: a catalog . In: Van Gogh Museum Journal , 2002, pp. 139 ff. ( Online )
  • Nora Koldehoff: The Wacker Trials. A reconstruction . In: Stefan Koldehoff: Van Gogh. Myth and Reality. Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-8321-7267-X .
  • Susanna Partsch: Tatort art . Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-406-60621-2 .
  • Modris Eksteins: Solar Dance. Genius, Forgery, and the Crisis of Truth in the Modern Age . Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 2012.
  • Nora and Stefan Koldehoff: The van Gogh coup. Otto Wacker's rise and fall. Nimbus, Wädenswil am Zürichsee 2019, ISBN 978-3-03850-064-3 .
  • Eberhard Schröter: The dead Vincent paints and paints: novel of the great Berlin forgery scandal. Books on Demand, 2019, ISBN 978-3750418592 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See: Nora and Stefan Koldehoff: The van Gogh coup. Otto Wacker's rise and fall. Nimbus, Wädenswil am Zürichsee 2019, pp. 31–40, 169ff.
  2. ↑ Cf. u. a. Elegant World , 13th year, No. 3 from February 1924, p. 23f.
  3. ^ Nora and Stefan Koldehoff: The van Gogh coup. (...) p. 169ff.
personal data
SURNAME Wacker, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wacker, Heinrich Otto Theodor (full name); Lovaël, Olinto (stage name); Lovaël, Olindo (stage name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German dancer, art dealer, dance teacher, dance dramaturge
DATE OF BIRTH August 11, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf
DATE OF DEATH October 13, 1970
Place of death Berlin