Wilhelm Müller-Hofmann

Wilhelm Müller-Hofmann ( April 5, 1885 in Brno - September 2, 1948 in Vienna ) was a painter , graphic artist and teacher at the Vienna School of Applied Arts .

life and work

Wilhelm Müller-Hofmann grew up in Bavaria. He completed the vocational training school and then studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich . In 1905/06 he did his one and a half year military service in Bavaria. He then worked as a freelance portrait painter, theater painter and illustrator. He married Eva Huch. During the First World War he was continuously drafted into the German army. In 1916 he was decorated with the Iron Cross, 2nd class . In 1919 he took over the management of the painting class at the Vienna School of Applied Arts . Wilhelm Müller-Hofmann was awarded the professional title of Professor. In November 1921 he divorced his wife, but continued to pay child support.

On April 12, 1922 he married Hermine Zuckerkandl, daughter of the primary physician at the Vienna Rothschild Hospital, Otto Zuckerkandl , and his wife Amalie. The father-in-law was Jewish, and the mother-in-law had converted to Judaism before they married in 1895. His second wife owned a third of the Purkersdorf sanatorium , but after the fall of the Habsburg monarchy, it no longer made high profits. The couple had two sons, Viktor Carl (born on May 24, 1923) and Rudolf Immanuel (born on February 12, 1926).

The Nazi regime's coercive measures that began in Austria in March 1938 affected the family in several ways. Wilhelm Müller-Hofmann was viewed as politically unpopular. He was accused of longstanding membership in a Masonic lodge . He had also written a mocking poem about Adolf Hitler. He lost his job at the Kunstgewerbeschule in March 1938 and was put into "temporary retirement" on November 30, 1938. Although his wife had joined the Roman Catholic Church , she was considered a Jew and the sons were half-Jews . Plans to emigrate the entire family failed. But the couple managed to send their two sons to Sweden at the beginning of 1939 and thus to bring them to safety. Wilhelm Müller-Hofmann and his wife urgently needed financial resources, both for their own survival and to support the woman's family, especially the mother-in-law, and the sons. As the only non-Jew in the family, he was still able to sell works of art. In January 1940 he sold seven Japanese ukiyo-e prints belonging to Amalie Zuckerkandl for 150 RM to the State Museum of Applied Arts . In 1942, Klimt's portrait Amalie Zuckerkandl was sold to the art historian and gallery owner Vita Künstler for 1,600 RM.

The Müller-Hofmann couple survived the Nazi regime in Upper Bavaria , according to ORF under a false identity. The mother-in-law, sister-in-law Eleonore, her husband and son were all murdered by the Nazi regime. Wilhelm Müller-Hofmann and his wife returned to Vienna after the end of the war. Her home had been ransacked and confiscated by Soviet troops. But the painter was able to return to his previous position. The school was now called the University of Applied Arts . Wilhelm Müller-Hofmann taught until his untimely death, presumably due to angina pectoris , brought in during the privations under the Nazi regime in September 1948.

The Japanese prints were restituted in 2009 , but the Klimt painting was not. It hangs in the Belvedere in Vienna .

Web links

• Wilhelm Müller-Hofmann , entry in the Lexicon of Austrian Provenance Research, written by Leonhard Weidinger (2019)

Individual evidence

1. ^ ORF (Vienna): The portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl , March 5, 2018 (with a photo of the Müller-Hofmann couple)