Paul Ferdinand Schmidt

Paul Ferdinand Schmidt (* 1878 in Goldap , East Prussia ; † 1955 in Siegsdorf , Upper Bavaria ) was a German art historian , gallery owner and art critic who made a name for himself in establishing modern art in Germany.

Life

Schmidt began to study law, but then switched to art history , which he studied in Munich and Paris. With Georg Dehio in Strasbourg he did his doctorate on the monastery church of Maulbronn and was a volunteer at the Berlin museums, the art library and the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum . He then became head of the municipal art collections in Magdeburg , where he was unable to implement his idea of ​​art collecting and soon quit the job. In Magdeburg, the architect Heinrich Tessenow built the Haus zum Wolf as his home .

In 1908 Schmidt had first contacts with the Brücke artists and became a passive, i.e. supporting member of the artists' association. In October 1912 he opened an art shop in Munich, in which - for the first time in Munich - he showed works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Emil Nolde , among others . On the mediation of Fritz Wichert in Mannheim , he was hired for art education at the Offenbach Technical Schools . With the beginning of the First World War , teaching ceased and Schmidt had to stay afloat with guided tours until he was called up himself.

In 1919 he became director of modern art at the Dresden City Museum . His progressive acquisition policy led to his provisional retirement in 1924 at the instigation of the right-wing radical faction in the city council and his retirement in 1933. He was the first victim of the National Socialist cultural policy . Schmidt moved to Berlin in 1924 and joined the Erich Reiss Verlag, to which he incorporated an art trade. John Schikowski then hired him for the current art coverage of Vorwärts , because Schikowski wanted to limit himself to literature, theater and dance.

Despite his politically more left-wing attitude , probably close to the SPD , Schmidt was one of the art scholars and publicists who tried to continue to offer a forum for modern art and especially expressionism after the Nazis' seizure of power . He published - among other things under the pseudonym "F. Paul ”- a series of articles in the journal Kunst der Nation , including on August Macke and Emil Nolde . However, this ended as early as 1935, certainly also because the Nazi cultural policy was now clearly geared towards the prohibition of this art.

Before the chaos of war, Schmidt fled to southern Germany in the 1940s. Although Schmidt can be regarded as one of the pioneers of modernity before and after the First World War , he has largely been forgotten today. Since the 1910s he was one of the rediscoverers of German art in the first half of the 19th century. He saw the painting of the Nazarenes and the art of the Biedermeier era gain new importance in the contemporary New Objectivity .

The written estate is in the German Art Archive in the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg.

portrait

• Painting by Otto Dix, 1924, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart

Work as a publicist

Schmidt published exhibition and literature reviews in the feature pages of numerous daily newspapers, for example: Frankfurter Zeitung , Hamburgischer Correspondent , Hannoverscher Kurier , Königsberger Allgemeine Zeitung , Magdeburgische Zeitung , Der Tag , Vorwärts .

As an art historian he preferred the painting of the German Romanticism and the Biedermeier period , which he defended against the "Romanesque foreign rule" in art. The late Romanticism , the beginning of which he began in the years 1825-1830, he viewed as a decay.

In addition to his books, he published regularly in the specialist and consumer magazines of his time: Cicerone , Die Horen , Kunst für alle , German art and decoration , Die neue Kunst in Deutschland , Kunstgewerbeblatt , monthly journals for art history , art of the nation , art of the time , art and artists , the Art Journal , Art History , the art walkers , that of Georg Biermann , Leipzig, published yearbook of the young Art , monthly magazines for Art Research , the cross-section , Socialist monthly magazines , the Day book , Velhagen and Klasings Monatshefte , world stage , magazine for visual arts NF .

After 1945: sowing. Journal for Art and Science , Der Kunsthandel

For the General Encyclopedia of Artists of Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker he wrote numerous articles, primarily about artists of the 19th century, including Karl Philipp Fohr and Adam Friedrich Oeser .

Publications

• Maulbronn. The historical development of the monastery in the 12th and 13th centuries and is said to have influenced Swabian and Franconian architecture . Strasbourg: Heitz 1903.
• Frankfurt am Main . Book decorations by L. Pollitzer. Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann: 1906.
• Magdeburg Cathedral. A brief guide to its architecture, plastic, and decorative arts . Magdeburg: Peters 1911.
• The life of the painter Karl Fohr . Berlin: Furche-Verlag 1918.
• Joseph von Führich's religious art . Ed. And with an introduction by Paul Ferdinand Schmidt, Furche art gifts. Berlin: Furche-Verlag 1920.
• Editor: Otto Dix. Etching works I and II . Dresden 1921.
• Editor: Contemporary Artists , book series with four articles. Dresden: R. Kaemmerer Verlag 1921/22.
• Biedermeier painting. On the history and spirituality of German painting in the first half of the 19th century . Munich: Dolphin 1921.
• Gessner . The master of the idyll . Small Dolphin Art Books, Volume 4.19. Munich: Dolphin 1921.
• German painting around 1800 . Volume 1: Landscape painting from 1750-1830. Munich: Piper 1922.
• Johann Caspar Schneider. A painter from Mainz . By Elsa Neugarten, edited after her death. by Paul Ferdinand Schmidt. Mainz 1922.
• The art of the present. The six books of art. Volume 6. Berlin-Babelsberg: Academic Publishing Company Athenaion without a year [1922, new edition 1926]
• Otto Dix . Cologne: New Art without a Year [1923]
• Philipp Otto Runge . Series: German Masters. Leipzig: Insel 1923.
• The brothers in Luke. The Overbeck circle and its renewal of religious painting . Berlin: Furche Kunstverlag 1924.
• Alfred Kubin . With a self-biography of the artist. Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann 1924.
• German painting around 1800 . Volume 2: Portrait and Composition from Rococo to Cornelius. Munich: Piper 1928.
• Alfred Kubin . Exhibition catalog Moderne Galerie Wertheim, April – May. Berlin: Globushaus 1929.
• Emil Nolde . Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann 1929.
• Otto Mueller . The graphic work. Exhibition catalog Berlin 1931.
• Unsentimental journeys. Twenty One Travel Essays . Wiesentheid, Lower Franconia: Droemer 1949.
• Resume . Without place (Siegsdorf), without year (1953)
• History of Modern Painting . Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1952 (several, extended editions)
• Hikes in Germany and a look beyond its borders . Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1953.

literature

• Birgit Dalbajewa: Bearer of a more dynamic attitude towards life. Acquisitions from Oskar Kokoschka by Ludwig Justi, Hans Posse and Paul Ferdinand Schmidt after the November Revolution 1918. In: Yearbook of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, 30 (2002/03, published 2006), pp. 131–145.
• Vilnius - Dresden - São Paulo. Lasar Segall. A rediscovered painting in the midst of forty graphics. Exhibition catalog Galerie Remmert and Barth, Düsseldorf. With texts by Paul Ferdinand Schmidt. Düsseldorf 2003.
• Gisbert Porstmann: Paul Ferdinand Schmidt and his commitment to modernism in the municipal collections. In: The exhibition " Degenerate Art " and the beginning of the Nazi cultural barbarism in Dresden. Dresdner Hefte, 22.1 (2004), pp. 10-16.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gisbert Porstmann: Paul Ferdinand Schmidt and his commitment to modernism in the municipal collections . In: The exhibition Degenerate Art and the beginning of the Nazi cultural barbarism in Dresden. Dresdner Hefte 22.1 (2004), pp. 10-16.