Ursel Grohn

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Ursel Lotte Carla Elisabeth Grohn , née Schönrock , (born February 21, 1927 in Stralsund ; † March 2, 2020 in Hanover ) was a German art historian and founder of the foundation.

Career

The parental home at Heilgeiststrasse 94

Her father, Carl Schönrock, had taken over the plumbing and heating installation company "Carl Grönhagen GmbH" in Heilgeiststrasse 94 in Stralsund in 1919 . After his death in 1948, his wife Gertrud ran the business, as his son Rolf was reported missing during World War II and later declared dead. Ursel Schönrock studied art history at the University of Greifswald , where she also met her future husband Hans Werner Grohn (1929–2009). She moved to the Humboldt University in Berlin and received her doctorate in 1952 from Richard Hamann with the dissertation Die Plastik in Mecklenburg von 1250-1350 .

First she became a student assistant at the State Museums in East Berlin , and later a curator at the Berlin Sculpture Collection . In the course of the de-Stalinization , Ursel Schönrock and Hans Werner Grohn were commissioned to catalog and package the works of art that had been transported to Leningrad after the war so that these cultural assets could be returned to Berlin. A large exhibition “Treasures of World Culture Saved by the Soviet Union” in Berlin then showed their return.

Ursel Schönrock and Hans Werner Grohn married in December 1957. After the escape of the director of the sculpture collection Heino Maedebach (1913–1973) in December 1958, Ursel Grohn took over the post of director. Increasing political problems led the Grohns to flee to West Berlin in February 1960 . Ursel Grohn previously wrote to her colleagues:

“If you have the letter in your hands, I will have left East Berlin with my husband and thus resigned from my position in the museums. ... Incidentally, I firmly hope for reunification and a reunion in a united Germany. "

Ursel and Hans Werner Grohn were flown to Bavaria in the same year and came to Würzburg. Via Florence they came to Rome , where he worked as an art historian, book author and journalist. From 1963 to 1969 she worked as a research assistant at the Bibliotheca Hertziana . Since he had become chief curator at the Hamburger Kunsthalle in 1968 , she also moved to Hamburg in 1969. Until 1994 she worked on a project basis for the Hertziana photo library and therefore spent several weeks a year in Rome.

When Hans Werner Grohn was appointed director of the Lower Saxony State Museum in Hanover in 1975, the couple moved there. Ursel Grohn met the widow of the sculptor Gustav Seitz (1906–1969), Luise Seitz, in Hamburg . With her she arranged the artist's estate and in 1980 published Gustav Seitz's catalog raisonné. In accordance with Luise Seitz's testamentary decree, she set up the Gustav Seitz Foundation in Hamburg in 1989, which she was responsible for as chairwoman.

With the turnaround and peaceful revolution in the GDR , Ursel Grohn was able to get back his parents' business and the real estate in Stralsund and Greifswald in 1992 . It reprivatised the company in Stralsund and gave the employees professional prospects. In October 2010 she established the Ursel Grohn-Schönrock Foundation based in Hanover to support monument protection in Germany with construction and renovation measures and to promote the protection of architectural and cultural monuments, especially buildings, churches and parks, in Stralsund.

Publications

  • Ursel Schönrock: The sculpture in Mecklenburg from 1250-1350 (= dissertation Humboldt University Berlin 1952).
  • Ursel Grohn: Gustav Seitz. The plastic work. Catalog raisonné. With an introduction by Alfred Hentzen , Hauswedell, Hamburg 1980, ISBN 3-7762-0198-3 . (Reprint Stuttgart 2002.)
  • Gustav Seitz, sculptures hand drawings , Bremen 1976, exhibition Kunsthalle Bremen, Badischer Kunstverein Karlsruhe, catalog edited by Gerhard Gerkens , Ursel Grohn, Anne Röver (with detailed references).
  • Gustav Seitz: four poets, Francois Villon, Heinrich Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Thomas Mann. Exhibition catalog edited by Gerhard Gerkens, Ursel Grohn, Brigitte Heise, Lübeck 1994.

literature

  • Christiane Buddenberg-Hertel u. a .: In memory of Dr. Ursel Grohn born Schönrock, Hanover 2020 (with the memorial speeches supplemented by pictures by Christiane Buddenberg-Hertel, Hanover, pp. 7-24 and by Holger Reinholdt, Grönhagen, Stralsund, pp. 25-27, at the memorial service for Dr. Ursel Grohn on 16 March 2020 in Hanover).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christiane Buddenberg-Hertel u. a .: In memory of Dr. Ursel Grohn born Schönrock. Hanover 2020, p. 10.
  2. ^ Art historian refugee , Der Tagesspiegel , 1960.
  3. ↑ Christiane Buddenberg-Hertel u. a .: In memory of Dr. Ursel Grohn born Schönrock. Hanover 2020, p. 13 f.
personal data
SURNAME Grohn, Ursel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schönrock, Ursel (maiden name); Schönrock, Ursel Lotte Carla Elisabeth (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art historian
DATE OF BIRTH February 21, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Stralsund
DATE OF DEATH March 2nd 2020
Place of death Hanover