Peter Ludwig

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Peter and Irene Ludwig (left) with the North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister Johannes Rau and the Lord Mayor of Cologne Norbert Burger with his wife Annemarie Burger

Peter Ludwig (born July 9, 1925 in Koblenz , † July 22, 1996 in Aachen ) was a German industrialist and art patron .

Life

Grave of Irene and Peter Ludwig in St. Aldegund

The son of a lawyer and a daughter of the industrialist family Klöckner attended the then Kaiserin-Augusta-Gymnasium in Koblenz and graduated from high school in 1943 . After military service and American captivity, he studied art history, archeology, history and philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz from 1946 . He received his doctorate there with Friedrich Gerke with a dissertation on Picasso's image of man as an expression of a generational attitude towards life .

One of the first museum people Ludwig worked with was Hermann Schnitzler , the director of the Schnütgen Museum , who also opened the student's eyes to Picasso.

In 1951 Peter Ludwig married Irene Monheim , with whom he was not least interested in art. He then joined the Leonard Monheim company ( Trumpf Schokolade , Lindt, Mauxion ) and built the company, which was later renamed Ludwig Schokolade , into a leading German company in this branch in the 1970s and 1980s.

Peter Ludwig suddenly and unexpectedly died of a heart attack on July 22, 1996 . He was buried in the crypt of the old church of Sankt Aldegund , below the Renaissance altarpiece that the Ludwigs donated to the church as a permanent loan.

Founding museums and foundations

Ludwig had been a member of the Aachener Casino Club since 1952 and finally also became chairman of the Aachen Museum Association in 1957 and began working with museums in Cologne and Aachen. This was followed by collaboration in various other museum associations, donations to and founding of museums and other institutions:

Peter Ludwig's art collections are now spread across nineteen museums in five countries. His widow Irene established the Peter and Irene Ludwig Foundation , which emerged from the Ludwig Foundation for Art and International Understanding GmbH .

Critical voices about the influence of the couple Ludwig on the politics of the foundation and the orientation of the Museum Ludwig as well as on the museum landscape in NRW in general, but also on the financial interplay between Monheim AG and the Ludwig Foundation come from the artist Hans Haacke , among others Work The Pralinenmeister (1981) have their say.

honors and awards
Honorary doctorates

Portraits by Peter Ludwig

In the Ludwig Forum there is a screen-printed portrait of Ludwig in the format 100 × 100 cm by Andy Warhol from 1980. In 1986, the sculptor Arno Breker began with a portrait of Ludwig, who visited him regularly for months in his studio in order for to sit the bust model. A life-size version and a "monumental" larger than life bust in bronze were created. Ludwig exposed himself to massive public criticism for having himself portrayed by Breker. The museum donor, however, was undeterred by the artist who, in collaboration with Albert Speer , had created sculptural jewelry in Berlin during the Nazi era . Despite all the turbulence surrounding the collaboration between Ludwig and Breker, he then also designed a bust of Ludwig's wife Irene in two versions.

literature

  • Eduard Arens, Wilhelm Leopold Janssen : Club Aachener Casino . Druck Metz, Aachen 1964, pp. 264-265.
  • Heinz Bude: Peter Ludwig. In the shine of the pictures. The biography of the collector. Bergisch Gladbach 1993.
  • Alfons Friderichs (Ed.): Ludwig, Peter , In: “Personalities of the Cochem-Zell District” , Kliomedia, Trier 2004, ISBN 3-89890-084-3 , p. 221.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bude 1993, p. 56 f.
  2. ^ The mountain church of St. Aldegund and its ruler, dedicated to Peter Ludwig on the 5th anniversary of his death, by Edwin Breiden (author), In: Heimatjahrbuch Kreis Cochem-Zell, p. 101 ff.
  3. ^ New Society for Fine Arts (NGBK) (ed.): "Hans Haacke. According to all the rules of art ", Berlin / Bern 1984 (exhibition catalog)
  4. ↑ a b Austrian Ludwig Foundation for Art and Science, accessed on January 1, 2010
  5. ↑ Peter Ludwig would have turned 90 on July 9, 2015. Ludwig Form for International Art, July 15, 2015, accessed on June 2, 2017 .
  6. ↑ Gabi Czöppan: PATRON: Legacy of an Art King . In: Focus . No. 31 , 1996 ( digitized [accessed June 2, 2017]).
personal data
SURNAME Ludwig, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German industrialist and art patron
DATE OF BIRTH July 9, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Koblenz
DATE OF DEATH July 22, 1996
Place of death Aachen