Wilhelm Behncke (art historian)

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Wilhelm Behncke (born November 5, 1871 in Süsel , Holstein ; † May 12, 1938 ) was a German art historian and museum director .

Life

Wilhelm Behncke was born near Lübeck on the estate of his father Friedrich Johann Behncke, who came from a Lübeck merchant family . His mother Mathilde was born by Cossel . His brothers were the later admirals Paul (1866-1937) and Fritz Behncke (1869-1957).

Behncke received his school education in Lübeck , where he received his school- leaving certificate at Easter 1891 at the secondary school there. In the same year he went to Munich to study natural sciences, but then did his military service in Freiburg im Breisgau from 1891 to 1892 . He then went back to Munich, in 1894 to Berlin and finally passed the secondary school examination in Breslau at the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Gymnasium . As a result, Behncke studied art history and classical archeology first in Berlin , then in Heidelberg . There he was in 1900 with the thesis about Albert von Soest and the meeting room in the town hall to Lüneburg at Henry Thode doctorate .

In 1899 Behncke began a traineeship at the Royal National Gallery in Berlin under Hugo von Tschudi . After several months in Italy, he became a research assistant at the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin in 1901 and there from 1904 to 1906 assistant director under the director Julius Lessing . In 1908, on the recommendation of Wilhelm von Bode and Julius Lessing, he became director of the city's Kestner Museum in Hanover . He was the first to draw up an inventory of the museum and installed an alarm system. In 1909 he was able to hire Albert Brinckmann , his future successor, as a research assistant. In 1909 he became a member of the International Association of Museum Officials for the Defense against Counterfeiting and Unfair Business Conduct . Because he no longer wanted to accept the tutelage of the city administration and in particular the city director Heinrich Tramm , he changed to the provincial museum in Hanover as director on May 1, 1912 . Here he reorganized the collections and developed plans for a coordinated collection policy with the city museums in Hanover. On June 30, 1924, he took early retirement for health reasons, and was succeeded by Karl Hermann Jacob-Friesen , whom he had brought in in 1913 as an assistant to the museum's prehistory.

Wilhelm Behnckes is buried in the family grave in Lübeck , according to various sources in the local cemetery of honor or the Burgtorfriedhof .

Archival material

Archives by and about Wilhelm Behncke can be found, for example

Fonts (selection)

  • Albert von Soest and the meeting room in the town hall in Lüneburg . Inaugural dissertation to obtain the philosophical doctorate from a high philosophical faculty at the University of Heidelberg. Heitz, Stuttgart 1900 ( digitized version , with curriculum vitae ).
  • Albert von Soest. A craftsman of the XVI. Century in Lüneburg (= studies on German art history , vol. 28). Heitz, Straßbur 1901 ( digitized version ).
  • Adolf Brüning in connection with Wilhelm Behncke, Max Creutz , Georg Swarzenski : European porcelain of the XVIII. Century. Catalog of the 15 February to 30 April 1904 in the atrium of the Kgl. Kunstgewerbe-Museum zu Berlin exhibited porcelains ( digitized ).
  • Julius Lessing: Gold and Silver (= manuals of the Royal Museums in Berlin ). 2nd increased edition, Reimer, Berlin 1907 ("The ... second edition has been revised with the support of Dr. Wilhelm Behncke").
  • Georg Lehnert (eds.) In connection with Wilhelm Behncke, Edmund Wilhelm Braun, Moriz Dreger, Otto von Falke, Josef Folnesics, Otto Kümmel, Erich Pernice, Georg Swarzenski: Illustrierte Geschichte des Kunstgewerbes . 2 volumes, M. Oldenbourg, Berlin 1907–1909 ( digitized volume 1 ; volume 2 ); therein Volume 1, pp. 543–656 The applied arts in the Renaissance in Germany and the other countries north of the Alps ( digitized version ).
  • Report on the Kestner Museum Hannover for the administrative period from May 15, 1908 to April 1, 1911 . Culemann, Hanover 1911.

literature

  • Michael Reinbold: The scientific director of the museum . In: Ulrich Gehrig (Ed.): 100 Years of the Kestner Museum Hannover. 1889-1989 . Kestner-Museum, Hannover 1989, ISBN 3-924029-14-8 , pp. 34–66, esp. Pp. 39–41 (photo).
  • Ines Katenhusen : 150 years of the Lower Saxony State Museum in Hanover . In: Heide Grape-Albers (ed.): The Lower Saxony State Museum Hanover 2002. 150 years of the museum in Hanover, 100 years of the building at the Maschpark. Festschrift for the year of the double anniversary , Lower Saxony State Museum, Hanover 2002, ISBN 978-3-929444-29-2 and ISBN 3-929444-29-1 , pp. 18–94 especially pp. 70–71 Fig. 65 (Photo) .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Directory of the members of the International Association of Museum Officials . Berlin 1936, p. 16 ( digitized version ).
  2. ↑ See [Behnck] e: Our museums and the delimitation of their collections . In: Hannoversches Tageblatt from August 15, 1912.
  3. ↑ Compare the Behncke family's gravestone at the Ehrenfriedhof in Lübeck; pictured on the billiongraves.com page , last accessed on October 12, 2017, or the Behncke family's tombstone in the Burgtorfriedhof, on the findagrave.com page , last accessed on October 12, 2017.
  4. ↑ Information in the Arcinsys Lower Saxony archive information system .
personal data
SURNAME Behncke, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art historian and museum director
DATE OF BIRTH November 5, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH Süsel , Holstein
DATE OF DEATH May 12, 1938