Theodor Wanner
Theodor Wanner (born January 28, 1875 in Stuttgart ; died July 6, 1955 there ) was a German entrepreneur, science sponsor and museum director. He founded what is now the Institute for Foreign Relations and the Süddeutsche Rundfunk AG and headed the Linden Museum for Regional and Ethnographic Studies in Stuttgart.
Youth and job
Theodor Wanner was born on January 28, 1875 as the son of the Commerce Councilor Otto Wanner. He spent his school days in Stuttgart, in the Fridericianium in Davos and in Neuchâtel in French-speaking Switzerland . After attending school and a stay abroad in Warsaw , the trained businessman traveled to London at the age of eighteen , where he stayed for five years and worked as a self-employed businessman. He traveled to the United States , Egypt and Sudan .
Career
After his return to Stuttgart, he initiated and participated in the founding of various associations: the Association for Art Friends, the School Ship Association, the Association for the Promotion of Natural History and the Association for the Promotion of Science. As early as 1899 he came into contact with Count Karl von Linden (1838–1910), who had built up an ethnological collection for several years. Wanner joined the sponsoring association of this collection, the Württemberg Association for Commercial Geography, and became treasurer there from 1902. After the death of Graf von Linden, Duke Wilhelm von Urach became the new chairman of the Association for Commercial Geography. But the duke devoted himself exclusively to representative tasks, so that in fact Theodor Wanner took over the management of the Linden Museum in Stuttgart founded by the association. He also promoted the necessary funds for the construction on Hegelplatz. Wanner personally reserved all decisions about acquisitions by the museum. In the foreground was no longer the ethnographic, but the representative value of a piece, i.e. age, rarity and art historical significance. As an entrepreneur in Stuttgart, he organized industrial exhibitions and sponsored the ethnological museum, the natural history collection, the picture gallery and other collections. Other merits of Wanna for the Linden Museum Stuttgart lay in the possibilities of financing the museum and its collections through his worldwide contacts and the possibility of relocating the collections to a salt warehouse near Heilbronn during the Second World War. In the Linden Museum Stuttgart, an event hall is named after him today, the Wannersaal.
In 1917 he founded the German International Institute to record what is published about Germans abroad and to maintain contact with Germans abroad. Thereupon he was appointed in 1918 by the Reich Chancellor to be a member for emigration at the Foreign Office. A year later he was also appointed by the Reich Minister of the Interior as a member of the “Advisory Board of the Reich Office for German Immigration, Return Migration and Emigration to the Reich Ministry of the Interior”.
Wanner was a co-founder of Süddeutscher Rundfunk in 1924, which he headed until 1933. Until 1933, exactly 10 years, he was also the deputy chairman of the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft . He stood up for the independence of programming in radio, which is one of the reasons why he was removed from all offices by the National Socialists in 1933 and forced to resign from all honorary posts. On March 13, 1933, he was attacked at his home and suffered a concussion; the perpetrators were never followed up. The German Foreign Institute was also brought into line and became the "planning center for the state's national politics."
Theodor Wanner became honorary chairman of the Institute for Foreign Relations, which was renamed after the end of the war.
Awards and honorary degrees
In 1910 Wanner was appointed Royal Swedish Honorary Consul. Only a year later he was also the Belgian honorary consul, but he gave this title back because of the war. The University of Tübingen awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1919 and an honorary senator in 1927. In 1951 he became honorary chairman of the Institute for Foreign Relations.
Private
Theodor Wanner was with Daisy Wanner, geb. Hutchins (1880-1960) married with whom he had five daughters. He found his final resting place in the Stuttgart forest cemetery .
Theodor Wanner Prize
Since 2009, the Institute for Foreign Relations has been awarding him the Theodor Wanner Prize, endowed with EUR 10,000, annually in his honor, to people who have made outstanding contributions to the dialogue between cultures with their scientific, social or entrepreneurial commitment. The 2009 prize winner was the pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim.
literature
- Ernst Ritter: The German Foreign Institute in Stuttgart 1917-1945. An example of German nationality work between the world wars . Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1976 ISBN 3-515-02361-5 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Institute for Foreign Relations: Consul General Theodor Wanner 80 years old. In: Mitteilungen des ifa , Heft 1/2, 1955, pp. 65/66.
- ^ Ernst Ritter, The German Foreign Institute in Stuttgart , p. 55
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wanner, Theodor |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German entrepreneur, science sponsor and museum director |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 28, 1875 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Stuttgart |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 6, 1955 |
| Place of death | Stuttgart |