Wend of Kalnein

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Wend Graf von Kalnein (born May 24, 1914 in Ludwigslust , Mecklenburg ; † November 22, 2007 in Seekirchen am Wallersee ) was a German art historian and writer .

Live and act

Karl Wend Graf von Kalnein was born in Ludwigslust in 1914 as the son of Karl Erhard von Kalnein (1873–1914), who died in Belgium during the First World War in the same year . The mother was Erna Countess von der Recke in Wald im Pinzgau , Austria. He grew up in Austria and attended Maximiliansgymnasium in Munich from 1929 to 1932 (Abitur) . After several legal semesters, von Kalnein studied art history , classical archeology and Romance studies in Bonn from 1935 to 1939 . Since 1934 he was a member of the Corps Borussia Bonn .

During the Second World War , von Kalnein was an officer in the Wehrmacht in the areas of deployment in France ( art protection ), southern Russia / Ukraine and the Danube region. Von Kalnein was a liaison officer with the Romanian army there. After the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht , he was handed over to the Red Army by the Czechs in Bohemia . He spent the following captivity in Soviet Georgia in the Caucasus , where - thanks to his knowledge of Russian - he was mainly employed in the administration. The prisoners built the steel mill in Rustavi under unspeakable conditions together with Soviet forced laborers . In 1949, von Kalnein also had to interpret during the investigation into German prisoners for "war crimes" which were accompanied by abuse and extortion. He experienced anti-fascist re-education and was imprisoned on suspicion of espionage for learning Georgian. Von Kalnein wrote down his camp experiences in the Caucasus immediately after his release to Austria in 1950 and presented them for the first time in 1951 in Paris. They formed the basis for his “Georgian Diary”, which was published in 2002 by the author himself.

In 1953 Kalnein was promoted to Dr. phil. PhD . He was then appointed head of the Margravial Baden Collections in Salem . From 1957 he was director of the Zähringer Museum in Baden-Baden , then curator at the State Art Collections in Kassel . From 1964 until his retirement in 1979, von Kalnein held the position of director of the Düsseldorf Art Museum . In 1979 he received an honorary professorship for art history at the University of Salzburg .

Von Kalnein lived in Seekirchen in Austria during the last decades of his life . He married Livia Freiin von Thielmann in 1959. The three children Heinrich von Kalnein (1960), Albrecht von Kalnein (1962) and Alexandra von Kalnein (1964) resulted from the marriage. Wend von Kalnein died in Seekirchen in 2007, where his final resting place is.

Publications

Book publications

  • Salem . Munster - Castle - School . Recordings by Toni Schneiders and Siegfried Lauterwasser. Text by Wend Graf Kalnein. Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Lindau / Konstanz 1958.
  • The electoral castle of Clemensruhe in Poppelsdorf - a contribution to Franco-German relations in the 18th century . Schwann, Düsseldorf 1956.
  • The Art and Architecture of the Eighteenth Century in France . Penguin Books, 1973.
  • Salem Palace and Minster . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 1976.
  • Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf (ed.): Five publications (painting, 20th century art, drawings and graphics, plastic and applied arts, glass) . Düsseldorf, 1976/1977.
  • Anif Palace : a monument to Bavarian romanticism in Salzburg . Pustet, Salzburg 1988.
  • Architecture in France in the Eighteenth Century . (With David Britt.) The Yale University Press, Pelican History of Art. Penguin Books, 1995.
  • Georgian diary. Five years in prison in the Caucasus . fiber, Osnabrück 2003.

Catalogs for art exhibitions (selection)

  • The wine vessel through the millennia . Exhibition catalog, Württemburgischer Kunstverein and Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf 1966.
  • Zero space . Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf 1973.
  • The Hudson and the Rhine. The American painters' colony in Düsseldorf in the 19th century . Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf 1976.
  • Leerdam unica: 50 years of modern Dutch glass . Exhibitions in art museums in Düsseldorf and Rotterdam 1977. Düsseldorf / Rotterdam 1977.
  • Die Düsseldorfer Malerschule (Hrsg.): Exhibitions Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf and Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt, 1979. Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf 1979.

Further exhibition catalogs on: Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901). Children's painting house, work with children in the Düsseldorf Art Museum. Düsseldorf and the north.

swell

  • Wend Graf von Kalnein: Georgian diary. Five years in prison in the Caucasus . fiber-Verlag, Osnabrück 2003, ISBN 3-929759-78-0 .
  • Personal information from Livia von Kalnein (born von Thielmann), Wend von Kalnein's wife

literature

  • Jürgen M. Lehmann: Biographies of the scientific staff at the Hessisches Landesmuseum Kassel 1913–1988 . In: Art in Hessen and am Mittelrhein 28, 1988, p. 161 (with a different date of birth May 25, 1915).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1996, 16 , 1080.
  2. ^ Chronicle 1964 on the website of the city of Düsseldorf
personal data
SURNAME Kalnein, Wend von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kalnein, Wend Graf von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art historian and writer
DATE OF BIRTH May 24, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Ludwigslust
DATE OF DEATH November 22, 2007
Place of death Seekirchen am Wallersee