Wilhelm Rudiger

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Wilhelm Rüdiger (born February 29, 1908 in Mülsen St. Jacob ; † beginning of the 1990s) was a German art historian and pioneer of the National Socialist Action Degenerate Art .

Life

Rüdiger studied art history and archeology in Munich , Berlin and Bonn . In 1932 he did his doctorate with Wilhelm Pinder in Munich on "Leipzig sculptors of the late Gothic". Rüdiger became a member of the NSDAP in 1930 and, eleven days after the seizure of power, published two programmatic articles in the Völkischer Beobachter under the title “The balance sheet of a decade: cabinet of horrors in cultural politics”. In it, Rüdiger insulted artists from the Bauhaus , which was dissolved around six weeks later , the members of the architectural association Der Ring , which was dissolved in the same year , numerous artists such as Wassily Kandinsky , Paul Klee , Otto Dix , George Grosz , Marc Chagall , El Lissitzky , Le Corbusier , poets like Joachim Ringelnatz , Alfred Döblin and Franz Werfel , the art dealers and collectors Alfred Flechtheim and Paul Cassirer and other exponents of modernism as Jews, communists, foreigners and the mentally ill. Rüdiger's conclusions regarding the museums anticipated the later confiscation actions of 1937:

“All of which would come to light once you inspected the cellars and magazines of our galleries! One will have to deal again with irresponsibility that is sure to become noticeable in this way. "

At the end of April 1933, at the age of just 25, Rüdiger was appointed as the successor to Friedrich Schreiber-Weigand, who was on leave, as acting head of the City Art Museum and the Kunsthütte in Chemnitz . From May 14th to June 1933, just two weeks after taking office, Rüdiger organized a show entitled “Art that did not come from our soul”, which anticipated the concept of the later exhibition “Degenerate Art” . At the show in Chemnitz it was remarkable that the focus was on expressionism , especially the bridge . In 1933, in the context of the expressionism debate at the highest level, it had not yet been decided whether expressionism should be established as the new state style or ostracized. Rüdiger moved Expressionism into the center of the abuse, before the final decision on this issue, analogous to what happened later in 1937 as part of the exhibition “Degenerate Art”.

From 1934, Rüdiger and the Chemnitz city council and culture warden of the NSDAP Waldemar Ballerstedt initiated sales and exchange campaigns for the modern holdings of the Chemnitz art collections. This practice was also continued under Josef Müller, who later succeeded Wilhelm Rüdiger. Between 1934 and 1938, works of modernism were systematically sold, especially the works of the high-ranking Expressionist collection built up by Schreiber-Weigand in the municipal art museum. The sale of the works of art was sanctioned by specifications of the cultural council under Waldemar Ballerstedt and by city council resolutions. In return, works of the Romantic and Biedermeier periods were acquired . The main buyers were Alex Vömel from Galerie Vömel in Düsseldorf and the Chemnitz art dealer Gerstenberger under Wilhelm Grosshennig . Further buyers were the art historian Guido Joseph Kern from Berlin and in Dresden the “Kunstantiquariat Franz Meyer”, the art exhibition Kühl and the “Kunsthandlung Friedrich Axt”. In 1934 Rüdiger moved to Munich and worked as an art critic for the Völkischer Beobachter and the magazine Die Kunst im Deutschen Reich .

In 1943, Rüdiger organized the exhibition Young Art in the German Empire in Vienna on behalf of Baldur von Schirach . This exhibition also presented artists whose works had previously been confiscated in German museums, including Josef Hegenbarth , Josef Henselmann , Hanna Nagel , Carl Moritz Schreiner , Milly Steger and Friedrich Vordemberge . This exhibition was closed prematurely by order of the top level. Rüdiger was banned from the profession for life by the President of the Reich Chamber of Culture Adolf Ziegler .

post war period

In 1945, the Allies classified Rüdiger in the group of the most polluted and later exonerated due to the events surrounding the Young Art exhibition in the German Reich . He worked for Roman Norbert Ketterer in his Stuttgart art gallery. He designed Kindler's Lexicon of Painting and wrote numerous articles for it himself. From 1962 to 1966 he worked on the 20-volume Propylän art history. He wrote numerous artist essays for the 12-volume encyclopedia The greats of world history . He wrote several monographs and worked on the Knaur's cultural guide in color .

literature

  • Christoph award: Rüdiger, Wilhelm . In: "Degenerate Art". Exhibition strategies in Nazi Germany . Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms 1995, ISBN 3-88462-096-7 , p. 381 (biography).
  • Christoph Zusatz: Art that did not come from our souls. Chemnitz, Municipal Museum, May 14 to June 1933 . In: "Degenerate Art". Exhibition strategies in Nazi Germany . Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms 1995, ISBN 3-88462-096-7 , p. 93-100 .
  • Ernst Klee : Rüdiger, Wilhelm . In: Kulturlexikon zum Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-596-17153-8 , pp. 456 .
  • Stefan Koldehoff : “Youthful sins into which the zeitgeist drove me” Wilhelm Rüdiger, Wilhelm F. Arntz and Roman Norbert Ketterer - questionable continuities . In: The pictures are among us: The business of Nazi-looted art . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2014, ISBN 978-3-462-30812-9 , pp. 191–221 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  • Till Briegleb : The unencumbered. The role of the art trade in the Third Reich . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . October 14, 2014, ISSN  0174-4917 , p. 13 .
  • Oliver Meier, Michael Feller, Stefanie Christ: The Gurlitt Complex. Bern and looted art . Chronos, Zurich 2017, ISBN 978-3-0340-1357-4 , pp. 238-239 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ National Museums in Berlin : Stuttgart Art Cabinet, Stuttgart / Campione d'Italia. The 20th century gallery in West Berlin. A provenance research project. Retrieved May 30, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Oliver Meier, Michael Feller, Stefanie Christ: The Gurlitt complex. Bern and looted art . Chronos, Zurich 2017, ISBN 978-3-0340-1357-4 , pp. 238 .
  3. ↑ Christoph supplement: Art that did not come from our soul. Chemnitz, Municipal Museum, May 14 to June 1933 . In: "Degenerate Art". Exhibition strategies in Nazi Germany . Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms 1995, ISBN 3-88462-096-7 , p. 94 .
  4. ^ Wilhelm Rüdiger: Our general accounting continues: From the German art empire of the Jewish nation . In: Völkischer Beobachter , Munich edition . February 11, 1933. Quoted from Christoph Zusatz: Art that did not come from our souls. Chemnitz, Municipal Museum, May 14 to June 1933 . In: "Degenerate Art". Exhibition strategies in Nazi Germany . Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms 1995, ISBN 3-88462-096-7 , p. 94-95 .
  5. ↑ Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz: Provenance research in the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz. Retrieved May 31, 2017 .
  6. ↑ Christoph supplement: Art that did not come from our soul. Chemnitz, Municipal Museum, May 14 to June 1933 . In: "Degenerate Art". Exhibition strategies in Nazi Germany . Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms 1995, ISBN 3-88462-096-7 , p. 100 .
  7. ↑ Oliver Meier, Michael Feller, Stefanie Christ: The Gurlitt complex. Bern and looted art . Chronos, Zurich 2017, ISBN 978-3-0340-1357-4 , pp. 238 .
personal data
SURNAME Rüdiger, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art historian
DATE OF BIRTH February 29, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Mülsen St. Jacob
DATE OF DEATH between 1990 and 1995