Walter Josephi

Walter Friedrich Wilhelm Josephi (born February 22, 1874 in Rostock , † June 16, 1945 in Munich ) was a German art historian , museologist and museum director.

Live and act

Walter Josephi, the son of the Rostock businessman and factory owner Carl Josephi, graduated from high school in 1893. After initially studying political science and law at the universities of Heidelberg , Munich and Rostock, he studied art in Berlin and Munich, interrupted by military service as a one-year volunteer in 1898/99. Josephi finished his studies in 1902 with his doctorate at Munich University.

The Germanisches Nationalmuseum (GNM) in Nuremberg was Josephi's first place of work from 1902, which began with traineeships and internships and after two years became an assistant. Various publications on the museum's collections, some of which have become standard works, accompanied his art-historical work here. In August 1911 his time as an assistant at the GNM ended.

Josephi's return to Mecklenburg also fell in 1911. First he took over the representation for Ernst Steinmann as director of the Grand Ducal Museum and the art collections in Schwerin for three months . He also became an advisory member of the Grand Ducal Monuments Commission. On October 1, 1911, Josephi was appointed museum director and full member of the monuments commission, along with his appointment as Hofrat VI. Class. In addition, from October of that year he became a member of the Association for Mecklenburg History and Archeology .

Josephi's term of office was marked by the redesign of the Grand Ducal Museum according to the latest state of art history. The topics covered the entire spectrum of museum work: the administration had to be reorganized, the collections had to be inventoried and cataloged, the church antiquities and the collection of paintings had to be reorganized. Between 1916 and 1918, Josephi, since he was a state art expert at the Grand Ducal Ministry, had to check the church bells and other parts of the church inventory in Mecklenburg with regard to the metal confiscations by the War Office.

After the First World War and the abdication of Grand Duke Friedrich Franz IV. Josephi developed the court museum and the residential palace into a state museum. From 1921 the Schwerin museum landscape was divided into the castle museum and the museum at the old garden , both officially summarized under the name “Mecklenburg - Schwerin State Museum”.

“The days of the international court museum are over, for a country like Mecklenburg the days of international collecting too; We cannot become a museum of local history, because the roots of the courtly past are too strong and the flowers so rich and beautiful that this proud tree will always remain the focus of it all. We have to remember that we are Germans and that we are Mecklenburgers: I am convinced that the future of a Mecklenburg State Museum lies in the collective evaluation of this knowledge, and especially the latter. "

- Prof. Dr. Walter Josephi (1918)

After taking power in 1933, Josephi was not ready to implement the National Socialist cultural policy in the museum. In 1935 he applied for temporary retirement for the first time, which was refused by the Mecklenburg State Minister. Under the increasing psychological stress, his health suffered more and more, and he asked for retirement several times. In February 1939, Adolf Hitler signed his certificate of discharge.

Walter Josephi spent his retirement in Bavaria. With the beginning of the Second World War he became active again in his profession; As a former Bavarian civil servant (from the time at the GNM), he made himself available to the Bavarian administration as a “subordinate academic replacement for civil servants”. After 1942 his advice was no longer asked, neither in Bavaria nor in Prussia. Walter Josephi died in Munich in 1945 at the age of 71.

Works (selection)

• The Gothic stone sculpture of Augsburg . Inaugural dissertation , Munich 1902
• The works of plastic art. Catalogs of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum . Nuremberg 1910
• Guide through the Mecklenburgisches Landesmuseum in Schwerin: the collections in the Museum am Alten Garten . (Mecklenburg Antiquities, Prehistory Department, Picture Gallery), Mecklenburg. State Museum, Schwerin 1922
• The collections and the state rooms of the Castle Museum [Schwerin] . Bear jump, Schwerin 1926
• The Schwerin Castle . Hinstorff, Rostock 1930
• numerous contributions in the communications from the Germanic National Museum , for the yearbooks of the Association for Mecklenburg History and Archeology (later the Mecklenburg year books ), for the Mecklenburg monthly issues as well as articles in the Mecklenburg press.

literature

• Susanne Fiedler, Torsten Knuth: Josephi, Walter Friedrich Wilhelm. In: Biographical Lexicon for Mecklenburg; Vol. 7. Schmidt-Römhild, Rostock 2013, ISBN 978-3-7950-3752-9 , pp. 160–166
• Grete Grewolls: Who was who in Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania. The dictionary of persons . Hinstorff Verlag, Rostock 2011, ISBN 978-3-356-01301-6 , p. 4712 f .
• Heinrich Reifferscheid : How the Schwerin museums became . In: Mecklenburgische Jahrbücher , Volume 97 (1933), pp. 129–158 (digitized version )

Web links

• Literature by and about Walter Josephi in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature about Walter Josephi in the state bibliography MV
• Works by Walter Josephi in the state bibliography MV

Individual evidence

1. ^ Matriculation of Walter Josephi (1895). University of Rostock , accessed on July 27, 2015 . 
2. ↑ Quotation from Reifferscheid: How the Schwerin museums became . P. 158, see literature
3. ↑ Dr. Walter Josephi: The works of plastic art (...). Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB), accessed on July 27, 2015 . 
4. ^ ^{A b} Digital copies: see Josephi's works in the state bibliography MV