Rolf Hetsch

Rolf Hetsch , complete Rolf Reinhold Bernhard Hetsch (born June 30, 1903 in Berlin-Charlottenburg ; † December 26, 1946 in special camp No. 3 , Berlin-Hohenschönhausen ) was a German lawyer, art historian and National Socialist cultural functionary in the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda .

Life

Rolf Hetsch was a son of the military medic and bacteriologist Heinrich Hetsch and his wife Ella, née. Weyland. The painter and later President of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts , Adolf Ziegler , was his cousin. His frequent change of school is noticeable, probably due to his father's career as a medical officer: he attended the Bismarck-Gymnasium in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, the Friedrichs-Gymnasium in Freiburg im Breisgau, the Rats-Gymnasium and the Kaiser Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Hanover, the Werner Siemens-Gymnasium in Berlin-Schöneberg and the Gymnasium in Bad Homburg; He made his Abitur in 1924 in Heidelberg. After military service in the 6th Artillery Regiment , he studied law, economics, art history and history at the Universities of Marburg and Frankfurt am Main . In 1925 he became a member of the Corps Teutonia Marburg . On January 12, 1929, he passed the first legal exam. In Marburg he received his doctorate degree in 1930 with a dissertation supervised by Franz Leonhard . jur. PhD . After a brief traineeship in the district of the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court , he took a leave of absence in 1932 and began studying art history . At the same time he published works on Paula Modersohn-Becker and Ruth Schaumann . In 1935 he was at the University of Munich with one of Wilhelm Pinder supervised dissertation on Heinrich Douvermann Dr. phil. PhD. During his studies he was a volunteer at the State Museum of Applied Arts in Dresden; In 1935 he got a job as a research assistant at the State Art Collections in Kassel . From April 1937 he was assistant to the director of the State Porcelain Collections and head of the Münzkabinett of the State Art Collections in Dresden .

Action degenerate art

Memorial plaque in Köpenicker Str. 24a in Berlin-Kreuzberg ; on the upper photo that the depot visit Degenerate Art by Adolf Hitler shows on January 13, 1938 Rolf Hetsch next is Heinrich Hoffmann and Franz Hofmann as a third to see from right

At the same time he worked for the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts from August 1937 to April 1938 as a clerk at Aktion Degenerate Art , probably benefiting from his relationship with Adolf Ziegler . Initially, he only had the task of registering the works and preparing a catalog. After a short return to Dresden and participation in the Reichsbeamtenlager in Bad Tölz in the summer of 1938, he came back to Berlin at the request of the Propaganda Ministry to deal with the processing and exploitation , i.e. H. to coordinate the sale of the confiscated works of art for foreign exchange or their destruction. Only four art dealers were selected for sale with the help of the art service of the Protestant church , which was responsible for the temporary storage and presentation in the Castle Niederschönhausen : Bernhard A. Böhmer , Karl Buchholz , Hildebrand Gurlitt and Ferdinand Möller . The sales and barter deals took place between 1938 and 1941. The prices and modalities were set by Hetsch in negotiations with the dealers. In return, Böhmer ensured that Hetsch became a member of Ernst Barlach's estate committee and was involved in the development of the Barlach catalog raisonné. The cooperation between Hetsch and Böhmer was intensive, its details and the motives for possible agreements are unclear; However, according to Frédérique Régincos, they were not only based on Böhmer's financial interests, but also on a personal motivation to keep selected works from being destroyed or sold abroad . This can be proven at least for works by Barlach such as the Magdeburg Memorial .

On January 1, 1940, the Ministry took it over as a speaker in the department BK (Fine Art), first as an employee, then from October 28, 1941 as a Councilor and deputy head. On July 1, 1941, he became a member of the NSDAP after applying for membership in the summer of 1937 . At times he was also a member of the SA . In November 1943 he was promoted to the Upper Government Council. In his post he was responsible for exhibitions and honors, gave lectures and wrote articles on art issues for daily and weekly newspapers.

Probably after the summer of 1941, Hetsch created a typewritten list of the entire catalog according to the museum of origin as a balance sheet of the Degenerate Art campaign in two volumes. There are several copies of the first volume AG, including a hand copy with supplements in the Federal Archives ; the second volume was considered lost for a long time, until in 1997 a copy of both volumes was identified in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London by Andreas Hüneke , which had come there in 1996 from the Harry Fischer estate . After the Schwabing art find , the museum made the list available online in January 2014 because of its paramount importance for provenance research .

Guide order monumental painting

From April 1943, Rolf Hetsch coordinated the so-called Führer commission for monumental painting , with color photographs of fresco cycles and wall decorations in churches, monasteries, castles and other secular buildings in Germany, Austria, Poland and Russia (East and West Prussia) and the Czech Republic (Bohemia and North Moravia) were manufactured. The approx. 40,000 slides still preserved today are kept as a historical color slide archive for wall and ceiling painting . At the same time, he developed plans for a 50-volume encyclopedia of the fine arts in Europe , which should clarify the dominance of the Greater German Empire in the European cultural area .

End of war and death

Hetsch worked in the Propaganda Ministry until April 1945, interrupted by phases of illness. In 1943, with Bernhard Boehmer's help, he had his private library and parts of his own art collection relocated to Barlach's Atelierhaus am Heidberg in Güstrow , as did a number of the works of degenerate art still stored in Berlin . Immediately after the end of the war, he was taken to Soviet special camp No. 3 . His last sign of life comes from November 1945.

rating

The assessment of the role and character of Rolf Hetsch varies widely in literature. The main focus is on his handling of the works of Aktion Degenerate Art . Older researchers in particular, such as Wilhelm F. Arntz and Ernst Piper, emphasized that his actions contributed to saving many works of art. An oft-quoted question from Paul Ortwin Raves in 1949 was: Was he going to howl with the wolves to save the lamb from being torn apart?

Christian Fuhrmeister , on the other hand, emphasizes that Hetsch undoubtedly carried out the directives of his superiors exactly and appears overall as a power-conscious and mindless technocrat . In her investigation of the relationship between Rolf Hetsch and Bernhard Böhmer, Frédérique Régincos emphasizes the ambivalence of their character, but also of their actions . Hetsch seems to have settled in this ambivalence.

family

On March 21, 1936, Hetsch married the illustrator Mariamalia (Mariam), b. Rudeloff, who was called Mariam Hetsch-Rudeloff during the marriage . After his death she married the Hungarian philosopher Alexander Varga von Kibéd . Her son Matthias Varga von Kibéd comes from this marriage .

Fonts

• The fulfillment of someone else's guilt. Bavaria, Würzburg 1930 (Marburg, University, legal and political dissertation, from February 26, 1930).
• as editor: Paula Modersohn-Becker. A book of friendship (= The People's Drawers. Vol. 4). Rembrandt-Verlag, Berlin 1932.
• Ruth-Schaumann-Buch (= The People's Drawers. Vol. 6). Rembrandt-Verlag, Berlin 1933.
• The eternal divine. On the spirit and belief of German art of the Middle Ages. Jess, Dresden 1935.
• The altar works by Heinrich Douvermann. A contribution to the history of Lower Rhine sculpture. Triltsch, Würzburg 1937 (at the same time: Munich, University, Phil. Dissertation, July 20, 1937).
• Introduction. In: Tizian (= The Masterpiece. Vol. 5). G. Weise, Berlin 1938.
• Siegfried Möller. Faience (= workshop report of the art service. 3). Riemerschmidt Berlin 1941.

literature

• Christian Fuhrmeister : Dr iur. Dr. phil. Rolf Hetsch, “the only real art historian” in the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. In: Christian Fuhrmeister, Stephan Klingen, Iris Lauterbach, Ralf Peters (eds.): “Fuhrer order monumental painting”. A photo campaign 1943-1945 (= publications of the Central Institute for Art History in Munich. Vol. 18). Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2006, ISBN 3-412-02406-6 , pp. 107–126.
• Frédérique Régincos: United in contradictions: Rolf Hetsch and Bernhard A. Böhmer. In: Meike Hoffmann (Ed.): A dealer of “degenerate” art. Bernhard A. Böhmer and his estate (= writings of the research center "Degenerate Art". Vol. 3). Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-05-004498-9 , pp. 55–72.
• Meike Hoffmann : Rolf Hetsch and the management of the remnants of “degenerate art”. In: Meike Hoffmann, Matthias Wemhoff, Dieter Scholz (Eds.): The Berlin Sculpture Find. “Degenerate Art” in bomb rubble. Discovery, interpretation, perspectives, publication accompanying the exhibition with contributions from the Berlin symposium. Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg 2012 ISBN 978-3-7954-2628-6 , pp. 85-99.

Web links

• London List (complete directory of degenerate art compiled by Rolf Hetsch)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Book of the Dead , accessed on October 11, 2014
2. ↑ According to the curriculum vitae in the Diss. Iur.
3. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 102 , 1214.
4. ↑ According to Christian Fuhrmeister, Stephan Klingen, Iris Lauterbach, Ralf Peters (eds.): "Führer mission monumental painting". A photo campaign 1943-1945 (= publications of the Central Institute for Art History in Munich. Vol. 18). Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2006, ISBN 3-412-02406-6 , p. 67.
5. ^ Fuhrmeister (lit.), p. 109.
6. ↑ The statement by Hans Prolingheuer : Hitler's pious iconoclasts. Church & art under the swastika. Dittrich Verlag Cologne 2001 ISBN 3-920862-33-3 , p. 118, Hetsch was Goebbels' personal confidant in all questions of the fine arts , is certainly too far-reaching and otherwise not to be found in literature.
7. ↑ Meike Hoffmann : Trade in “degenerate art”. In: Active Museum Fascism and Resistance in Berlin : Good Business - Art Trade in Berlin 1933–1945 , Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-00-034061-1 , pp. 144–145; Ruth Heftrig, Olaf Peters , Ulrich Rehm (Eds.): Alois J. Schardt. An art historian between the Weimar Republic, “Third Reich” and exile in America (= writings on modern art historiography , volume 4). Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-05-005559-6 , p. 98.
8. ↑ Regincos (Lit.), p 56, f 59 .; for the catalog raisonné and Hetsch's share in it, see in detail Volker Probst: Ernst Barlach - The catalogs of works: a genesis from 1939 to 2011. In: Fine arts in Mecklenburg and Pomerania from 1880 to 1950: Art processes between center and periphery. Publication of the contributions to the Art History Conference, organized by the Caspar David Friedrich Institute, Art History Department, Ernst Moritz Arndt University Greifswald, 20. – 22. November 2008. Lukas-Verlag, Berlin 2011 ISBN 978-3-86732-061-0 , pp. 454-467.
9. ↑ Regincos (Lit.), S. 59th
10. ↑ Regincos (Lit.), S. 61st
11. ↑ Fuhrmeister (lit.), p. 113.
12. ^ Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 220.
13. ↑ 'Degenerate Art' , accessed on November 1, 2014; History on a page: V&A to publish German 1941-1942 list of 'Degenerate Art' online , accessed November 1, 2014.
14. ^ Fuhrmeister (lit.), p. 115.
15. ↑ Regincos (Lit.), p 65
16. ↑ Paul Ortwin Rave: Art dictatorship in the Third Reich. New edition Berlin 1987, p. 114, see Fuhrmeister (Lit.), p. 126, note 107; Régincos (lit.), p. 62; also Goebbels and the secret of the treasury , Focus from May 2, 2011, accessed on November 1, 2014.
17. ^ Fuhrmeister (lit.), p. 118.
18. ↑ Regincos (Lit.), S. 62nd
19. ↑ GND = 127050841