Siegfried Aram

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Siegfried Aram (actually Abraham , born May 28, 1891 in Heilbronn , † 1978 in New York ) was a German lawyer, cultural politician, art collector and art dealer.

Life

Siegfried Aram was a son of the merchant Sigmund Abraham and Thekla, b. Grünwald. His maternal grandfather was the merchant Adolf or Adolph Grünwald , who, after returning from America in the early 1860s, joined forces with Sigmund Abraham as a partner in 1893. Sigmund Abraham, who had already completed his apprenticeship at Grünwald, eventually became the owner of the Adolf Grünwald company, which was located at Kaiserstraße 27 at Kieselmarkt 3 and Lixstraße 12 .

His son Siegfried graduated from secondary school in his hometown and became a trainee lawyer at the regional court after completing his law degree. He then worked as a court assessor in Stuttgart . Then he settled as a lawyer at the Higher Regional Court. At that time Aram became the co-founder and editor of the magazine Das Gelb Blatt . He advocated the founding of an adult education center and a traveling theater , from which the Schwäbische Landesbühne eventually developed. Hans Hildebrandt , Oskar Schlemmer , Willi Baumeister and Rudolf Utzinger were among his friends . Aram bought the Schapbach castle near Freudenstadt , also called Villa Hohenhaus, and ran an art trade from there.

After the First World War , Aram was the target of right-wing extremist persecution after the so-called Schefflenz weapon shift had become known. He went to the USA around 1930. He later lived in Detroit and New York and ran the Siegfried Aram Gallery. He is said to have a "taste for partying and women".

Warren Chase Merritt created a portrait of Aram.

family

In a correspondence with Hans Franke , Aram reported extensively about his family: He was particularly influenced by his art-loving grandparents Grünwald, who moved from Cincinnati to Heilbronn and taught him the English language before he started school, as well as a large, multilingual library and a rich silver collection would have owned.

His mother Thekla was well versed in both the fine arts and music and organized music evenings and house concerts, at which celebrities such as Pablo de Sarasate had performed. Hans Knothe inspired his father to sing to the lute. However, Sigmund Abraham also collected works of art, for which the three floors in the “horseshoe house” at Kaiserstraße 21, where the family lived, offered plenty of space. Aram names names like Maurice Utrillo and Hans Thoma and says that it was "just a joke" for his father to hang in his library abstract pictures of the artists his son was friends with, such as Baumeister and Schlemmer. Sigmund Aram was also an enthusiastic supporter of Richard Wagner and therefore dismissed his real first name Seligmann and called the son Siegfried, despite the objection of his wife. After Sigmund Abraham's death in 1925, his widow sold the house in Heilbronn and moved to Berlin .

His uncle Heinrich Grünwald , a brother of his mother, also had a strong influence on him. Heinrich Grünwald, friends with the art professor Hans Hildebrandt, expanded his father's silver collection, for his part also mainly collected porcelain and medieval art, was at times partner in an art gallery in Paris and finally founded the Ehrhardt art gallery together with Martin Ehrhardt in Berlin and Baden-Baden was resident.

Together with Ehrhardt, Siegfried Aram bought the so-called wooden house, the Schapbach castle, in the 1920s. Aram was one of the founders of the Way of the Cross of St. Cyriak in Schapbach, painted by Bernhard G. Lucki .

literature

  • Hans Franke: History and Fate of the Jews in Heilbronn . Heilbronn City Archives, Heilbronn 1963 (Publications of the Heilbronn City Archives, 11), p. 209ff. and 230 ff.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ For the history of the house and its owners see Heinz Nienhaus: Das Schapbacher Schlössle. A manorial country house with a rich and eventful history . In: Die Ortenau, Vol. 91 (2011), pp. 433–452; Erich Bächle, From Manor to Children's Home , on www.bo.de.
  2. ^ Sandra S. Phillips, The Photography of John Gutmann , Merrell Holberton 2000, p. 24
  3. ↑ Portrait of Warren Chase Merritt
  4. ↑ after Franke 1963, p. 231. The house number indication 21 may be based on an error and 27 is meant.
  5. ↑ Franke 1963, p. 231
  6. ^ So Franke 1963; other sources name the uncle Heinrich Grünwald as the second owner.
personal data
SURNAME Aram, Siegfried
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Abraham, Siegfried (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, cultural politician, art collector and art dealer
DATE OF BIRTH May 28, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Heilbronn
DATE OF DEATH 1978
Place of death new York