Paul Rauert

Hans Paul Ludwig Rauert (born August 14, 1863 in Hamburg ; † February 26, 1938 there ) was a German lawyer, art collector and patron . Together with his wife Martha, he particularly supported the Dresden artist group Brücke . The Martha and Paul Rauert Collection is one of the first Expressionist collections .

Live and act

Paul Rauert was the son of the Hamburg merchant Georg Gustav Rauert. His sister Marianne married Albert Ballin in 1883 . Rauert received his doctorate in law in Jena in 1887 and two years later opened a law firm with Richard Robinow on Neuer Wall in Hamburg. Alfred Lichtwark's 1889 exhibition of Max Klinger's graphic work in the Hamburger Kunsthalle led to Rauert's enthusiasm for the visual arts. Klinger's graphic fantasy and artist child from 1881 laid the foundation for his collection. In 1895 he married Martha Rodatz (1869-1958), who shared his enthusiasm for art. In 1905, in addition to his legal work, he was able to acquire shares in the Hanseatische Acetylen Werke.

Together with his wife Martha Rauert, the Hamburg district court director Gustav Schiefler and the art historian Rosa Schapire , he bought the bridge's expressionist works, and from 1907 his wife, like Schiefler and Schapire, was a passive member of the artist group in order to support them financially. The Rauerts had met Emil Nolde that year . Over the years they have collected more than 200 works by the Brücke artists. In 1911 a portrait of the patron was painted by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff .

In addition to the favorites Nolde and Schmidt-Rottluff, the Rauert collection was expanded to include works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , Erich Heckel and Paula Modersohn-Becker . Around 1920 two artists of the new generation joined them: Franz Radziwill and Walter Gramatté . Some of Ernst Barlach's sculptures from the early 1930s were the couple's last acquisitions.

Martha Rauert succeeded in preserving the joint collection after the death of her husband over the period of National Socialism and the Second World War , but she could no longer expand it and was dependent on sales for a living. In the 1950s she had to part with Radziwill's paintings and Schmidt-Rottluff's prints. However, a large collection of pictures is still owned by the family.

reception

The exhibition Picasso, Beckmann, Nolde and Modernism. Masterpieces from early private collections in Hamburg from March 23 to June 17, 2001 in the Hamburger Kunsthalle pointed to the importance of private collectors for the development of modern art in Germany. In Hamburg at the beginning of the 20th century, alongside Ernst Rump and Oscar Troplowitz, personalities such as the judge Gustav Schiefler, the married couple Martha and Paul Rauert and the businessman Max Leon Flemming were involved . Largely independent of Alfred Lichtwark, the first director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle, who acquired Impressionist paintings for the museum, the art collectors gave their collections an independent character.

literature

• Nolde, Schmidt-Rottluff and their friends: the Martha and Paul Rauert Collection, Hamburg, 1905–1958 , edited by Eva Caspers, Wolfgang Henze, Hans-Jürgen Lwowski. Catalog for the exhibition in the Ernst-Barlach-Haus, Hamburg, May 2 to August 1, 1999, Ernst-Barlach-Haus, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-00-004239-3 . Further stations of the exhibition were the Museum of New Art Freiburg i. Br., Sinclair-Haus Kulturforum, Bad Homburg, Kirchner-Museum, Davos, Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, Bremen, and the Brücke-Museum, Berlin.
• Erik Stephan (ed.): Collection Martha and Paul Rauert: the artists of the bridge in Jena . Catalog for the exhibition from June 5 to August 21, 2005 in the art collection in the Jena City Museum. Municipal museums Jena, Jena 2005, ISBN 978-3-9301-2868-6 .

Web links

• Doris Blum: The man who had a clever wife in Die Welt , May 30, 2001
• Martha Rauert on the website of the State Center for Political Education Hamburg

Individual evidence

1. ^ Nolde, Schmidt-Rottluff and their friends , kunstmarkt.com, accessed on June 20, 2013
2. ↑ Quoted after the web link of the world
3. ↑ Picasso, Beckmann, Nolde and the modern age. Masterpieces from early private collections in Hamburg ( Memento from June 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), Hamburger Kunsthalle, accessed on June 19, 2013