Stephan Lackner

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Stephan Lackner (born April 21, 1910 as Ernest Gustave Morgenroth in Paris ; † December 26, 2000 in Santa Barbara (California) ) was a German-American author , art collector and friend of Max Beckmann .

Life and achievement

Stephan Lackner was born in Paris as the second eldest of three sons (Henri * 1909, Charles * 1912) of the Jewish merchant Sigmund Morgenroth and his Protestant wife Lucie nee. Guest born. At the beginning of the First World War in 1914 the family moved to Berlin , 1919 to Bad Homburg vor der Höhe and 1925 to Frankfurt am Main , where Lackner graduated from high school in 1928. He then studied philosophy and art history in Frankfurt, Berlin and Giessen . There he completed his studies in 1933 with a doctorate (under his German maiden name Ernst Morgenroth), right before the family emigrated to Paris. (The university revoked the stateless emigrant's doctorate in the same year, but Lackner publicly rehabilitated together with the other revocations only in February 2006, in this case posthumously.)

As a high school student in Frankfurt, he had already regularly visited the Städel and exhibitions of the Frankfurter Kunstverein with his friend Levi Heiden, later composer Bernhard Heiden , and at Levi's house he liked the pictures by Heckel , Hofer and especially by Max Beckmann that were hanging there . He met Max Beckmann personally for the first time at an evening party in his friend's parents and was fascinated by his personality. It was the beginning of a lifelong, intensive preoccupation with the painter and over the years the initial attachment turned into friendship. In 1928 Lackner purchased his first small Beckmann picture, a lithograph. In June 1933 Lackner went to Erfurt with his brother Henri to visit a Beckmann exhibition that had been announced in the Angermuseum there. The exhibition had been banned on the instructions of the Propaganda Ministry , but they both managed to see the pictures in the attic. Lackner's enthusiasm was so great that he decided to buy the painting Man and Woman . Beckmann thanked him: “Your purchase was the only show of sympathy that I received during these difficult days. I will never forget that. "

In the summer Lackner went on an excursion to the Atlas to write about it. He had to publish his first journalistic reports under a pseudonym in order not to endanger his family, and for the first articles in Leopold Schwarzschild's émigré magazine Das Neue Tage-Buch on his return to Paris he used the name Stephan Lackner, which he later used (1943 ) legalized in the United States . Stephan Lackner became a writer: in 1937 he published his first volume of poetry, Die far Reise und das Schauspiel Man is not a pet, and in 1938 his first novel Jan Heimatlos . For the drama he was able to win Beckmann as an illustrator, who was very impressed by the play. Lackner supported Beckmann in the following years with purchases and firm painting orders. In 1937 he bought the Triptych Temptation and (together with the gallery owner Curt Valentin ) Departure . He persuaded the painter to take part in the Twentieth Century German Art in London in the summer of 1938 , which was seen as the answer to the Munich exhibition Degenerate Art the year before, and he accompanied the Beckmanns there. On September 3, 1938, Lackner signed a contract to buy two paintings a month. Lackner writes in his memoirs: “The fixed monthly payments helped to give him a feeling of security and to stimulate his creative joy.” In the Paris years (until 1939) Lackner and his father also regularly supported Walter Benjamin .

Stephan Lackner emigrated with the family to the USA, they reached New York on April 28, 1939. There he married Gretl von Bronneck, née Pernkopf, on June 21, 1940. They moved to Santa Barbara, California. He did his military service from November 1943 to December 1945, with his tank battalion in Germany until July 1945. Contact with Beckmann was interrupted during this time, but after the war they were able to communicate in writing again. In the summer of 1946, the first part of his large-scale novel project The Technician and the Water Fairy was finished, and in April 1947 the couple traveled to Paris with their one-year-old son Peter. They met the Beckmanns and were able to receive the Beckmann pictures hidden by friends intact and completely. Lackner traveled with the family through Europe for three years, met the other great Beckmann friend and art dealer Günther Franke in Munich . His drama In Last Instance was premiered in Vienna in 1950 and part of the second volume of the novel trilogy was published as the novella Das Lied des Pechvogels . At the same time he wrote numerous short stories and essays that could appear in German-language daily and weekly newspapers. The second son Thomas was born in Locarno in June 1950.

Back in New York in October 1950, they met again regularly with the Beckmanns. The telegram with the news of her friend's death reached her in Santa Barbara. The illustration project The Great Fair , which was conceived jointly with Beckmann, could no longer be realized. Lucas Lackner was born in 1953.

In 1959 and again and again until 1996 the Lackners traveled to Europe for several months each, and became friends with Peter and Maja Beckmann , Erhard and Barbara Göpel . Günter Busch , then director of the Kunsthalle Bremen , initiated exhibitions of the Stephan Lackner Beckmann collection in 1966 and 1967 in Bremen, Berlin, Karlsruhe, Vienna, Linz and Lucerne. Lackner published numerous writings: in 1956 the American bestseller Discover your self , in addition to other art-historical works, in 1978 his large Beckmann monograph (German 1979), a few other novels and stories, and in 1982 the peaceful nature as a result of his critical examination of Konrad Lorenz 's work Das so-called Böse , which later appeared in an American edition.

Lackner was a member of the PEN Center for German-Speaking Authors Abroad .

After his death, Stephan Lackner's literary estate was handed over to the Max Beckmann Archive in Munich , which in the spring of 2000 hosted an exhibition in honor of Lackner in the Pinakothek der Moderne . A spectacular event in New York in 2001 was the auction of Beckmann's self-portrait with horn from the Lackner Collection for $ 22.6 million to Ronald Lauder , who has since shown it regularly in his New York Gallery .

Works (selection)

  • Language signs and objects - language as an instrument of logic . Bottrop 1934 (Diss. University of Gießen 1933)
  • The long journey . Poems, Oprecht Verlag, Zurich 1937.
  • Man is not a pet . Drama, with seven original lithographs by Max Beckmann, Èdition Cosmopolites, Paris 1937.
  • Max Beckmann's Mystical Pageant of the World . Brochure on the occasion of the exhibition Twentieth Century German Art in the New Burlington Galleries, London 1938 (German: Das Welttheater des Painter Beckmann , reprinted in 1967 in Lackner's I remember Max Beckmann well and in 2000 in Christian Lenz's Stephan Lackner - the friend of Max Beckmann )
  • Jan homeless . Novel, Die Liga publishing house, Zurich 1939.
  • 'Temptation' by Max Beckmann . New York 1943
  • In the last resort . Drama, Munich 1947
  • The unlucky song . Novella, Constance 1950
  • The big fair . Drama, 1951
  • Discover your self. A practical guide to autoanalysis . New York 1956
  • Max Beckmann 1884-1950 . Berlin 1962
  • The wise Professor Virrus . Stories, Recklinghausen 1963
  • Max Beckmann - The Nine Triptychs . Berlin 1965
  • I remember Max Beckmann well . Mainz 1967
  • Max Beckmann . HN Abrams, New York 1977. German edition, Dumont publishing house, Cologne 1979
  • The split coat . Roman, Tübingen 1979
  • Requiem for a love . Roman, Tübingen 1980
  • The peaceful nature. Symbiosis instead of struggle . Munich 1982
  • Max Beckmann . Munich 1983
  • Self-portrait with a pen. A diary and reader. Memories . Limes, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-8090-2268-3 . (Main source for biography above!)
  • Thomas B. Schumann (ed.): A man with blue hair . Stories, edition memoria, Hürth 1996, ISBN 978-3-930353-07-1 .

Stephan Lackner also wrote many texts for Leopold Schwarzschild's émigré magazine Das Neue Tage-Buch , for the New York Construction , the Argentinisches Tageblatt , the Basler National-Zeitung , for numerous Beckmann exhibition catalogs and other newspapers and magazines. They are documented by Marco Pesarese in Christian Lenz ' Stephan Lackner - the friend of Max Beckmann (see below).

Documentaries / film

  • Max Beckmann and his patron Stephan Lackner . USA / D 1992-94. Spr .: D. 88 min. FSK information program according to §14 JuschG. Mono DD. Two thousand and one edition. 2013. DVD. Zweiausendeins.de

literature

  • Günter Busch: The Beckmann Collection Stephan Lackner . In: Max Beckmann - paintings and watercolors from the Stephan Lackner Collection, USA . Exhibition at the Kunsthalle Bremen from September 4 to October 30, 1966
  • Richard Exner : Stephan Lackner. In: John M. Spalek , Joseph Strelka (ed.): German exile literature since 1933. Volume 1: California. Francke Verlag, Bern / Munich 1976.
  • Gert Ueding : 'The wild and the sensible' - reference to a forgotten drama . In: Hans Dietrich Irmscher, Werner Keller (ed.): Drama and theater in the 20th century. Festschrift for Walter Hinck . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1983
  • Detlev Schöttker: Stephan Lackner . In: Walther Killy (Ed.): Literaturlexikon. Authors and works in German . Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh / Munich 1990
  • Rolf Tauscher: Literary satire of exile against National Socialism and Hitler Germany. From FG Alexan to Paul Westheim . Publishing house Dr. Kovač, Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-86064-062-3 (also habilitation paper, University of Halle 1991), pp. 183-187 (on Jan Heimatlos )
  • Christian Lenz (ed.): Stephan Lackner - the friend of Max Beckmann . Catalog for the exhibition of the Max Beckmann Archive in the State Gallery of Modern Art in Munich, February 3 to April 9, 2000
  • Obituary. In: Die Welt , January 5, 2001

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Lackner, Stephan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Morgenroth, Ernst; Guest, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American author and art collector
DATE OF BIRTH April 21, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH December 26, 2000
Place of death Santa Barbara (California)