Monika Mayer

Grimschitz, Bruno

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:40:43 +0000

Grimschitz, Bruno

Susanne Hehenberger Wed, 11/18/2020 - 12:46

Bruno Grimschitz

24 February 1892 Moosburg, Carinthia – 13 June 1964 Vienna

After attending the k. k. Staatsobergymnasium in Klagenfurt, Bruno Grimschitz studied art history from 1910 at the University of Vienna under Max Dvořák and completed his studies at the Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung (Institute of Austrian Historical Research). He had German nationalist sympathies and in 1912 joined the Akademische Landsmannschaft Kärnten in Vienna and was an officer on the Italian and Russian fronts in the First World War. In 1918 he was awarded a doctorate with a thesis on the artistic development of Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt. The following year he started his career as a research assistant at the Österreichische Galerie in Vienna, being promoted in 1928 to second-class curator and six years later to first-class curator. From 1932 he lectured in modern art history and museology at the Technical University in Vienna. In 1937 the University of Vienna authorized him to teach art history and made him an extraordinary professor in 1941.

After the annexation of Austria to the National Socialist German Reich in March 1938, Franz Martin Haberditzl, director of the Österreichische Galerie was removed from office by the Ministry of Internal and Cultural Affairs and replaced by his long-standing deputy Grimschitz. On 6 April 1938 Grimschitz submitted an application to become provisional director of the museum, which was approved on an interim basis by the Ministry in a decree of 24 May 1938. On 20 August 1938 he was appointed provisional director and on 28 December 1939 permanent director of the museum. Grimschitz, NSDAP party member since May 1938, established himself during the Nazi era as a multiple functionary and advanced to become one of the most influential personalities in the art and culture scene in the Ostmark. Apart from his undisputed expertise, the Gaupersonalamt (personnel office of the Reichsgau Vienna) emphasized his political reliability and nationalist sympathies during the period of illegality. He worked from 1929 as an expert in recent painting in the art department of the Dorotheum in Vienna and from 1938 as an assessor in the newly established Vermögensverkehrsstelle (Property Transaction Office). On 22 August 1941 the Reichskammer der bildenden Künste (Reich Chamber of Fine Arts) appointed him as an expert in the evaluation of Jewish-owned art for their culture purchasing department. He had no scruples about using the knowledge he acquired in this capacity, for example in the case of Valerie Honig. He evaluated her collection in 1938 at 49,000 Reichsmarks and, having informed the Institut für Denkmalpflege (Institute for Monument Conservation) of her deportation in 1942, asked about the whereabouts of her artworks with a view to possible acquisition. Alongside his directorship of the Österreichische Galerie, in January 1940 he became provisional director of the Picture Gallery in the Kunsthistorisches Museum until Gert Adriani took over in 1941. In October of that year he was entrusted with the directorship of the new Prinz Eugene Museum to be housed in Prince Eugene's former winter place in Himmelpfortgasse, Vienna. His German nationalist preference for rural, vital and powerful painting was in contrast to the "decadent urban view of art" of the likes of Gustav Klimt. This attitude did not prevent him from organizing a comprehensive Klimt retrospective by order of Reichsstatthalter Baldur von Schirach in the Wiener Secession in 1943. In that year, Josef Dobrowsky's contemporary portrait of Grimschitz was not admitted to the Künstlerhaus exhibition Viennese Portraits from Art and Science Circles 1900–1943, as it contained "elements of degenerate art". On 1 June 1944 the Salzburg Gauleiter Gustav Adolf Scheel entrusted him with heading the Zweckverband "Salzburger Museum", in which he cooperated closely with Friedrich Welz, art dealer and Aryanizer of Galerie Würthle in Vienna.

In an article in the daily newspaper Neues Österreich on 4 May 1945, Grimschitz pointed to his "acquisitions extensively running counter to National Socialist guidelines" during the war, including purchases of pictures by artists such as Lovis Corinth, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele. In a decree of 6 October 1945, however, the Staatsamt für Volksaufklärung, Unterricht und Erziehung und für Kultusangelegenheiten (State Office for Popular Enlightenment, Schools, Education and Cultural Affairs) nevertheless removed him from his function as director of the Österreichische Galerie on account of his former NSDAP membership and retired him permanently on 31 October 1947 as a "lesser offender". In 1956 he was reinstated at the University of Vienna as a lecturer in art history, a position he held until 1963. Twenty-six of the artworks acquired under Grimschitz's direction were reported by the interim head of the Österreichische Galerie Fritz Novotny under the Vermögensentziehungs-Anmeldungsverordnung (Regulation on the Notification of Seized Property), which entered into force on 17 September 1946, as Aryanized assets. In the post-war period the museum restituted twelve objects to their former owners or legal successors, including ten of the works declared to have been expropriated, among others, from the collections of Victor Ephrussi and Alma Mahler-Werfel.

Keywords

17 November 2019

Publications about the person / institution

Beschluss des Kunstrückgabebeirats, Vally Honig-Roeren, 28.6.2006, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Honig-Roeren_Vally_2006-06-28.pdf (3.12.2020).

Alexandra Caruso, Raub in geordneten Bahnen, in: Gabriele Anderl/Alexandra Caruso (Hg.), NS-Kunstraub in Österreich und die Folgen, Innsbruck-Wien-Bozen 2005, 90–109.

Hubertus Czernin, Die Fälschung. Der Fall Bloch Bauer (= Bibliothek des Raubes 3a), Wien 1999.
Hubertus Czernin, Die Fälschung. Der Fall Bloch Bauer und das Werk Gustav Klimts (= Bibliothek des Raubes 3b), Wien 1999..

Rainer Fuchs, Apologie und Diffamierung des "Österreichischen Expressionismus". Begriffs- und Rezeptionsgeschichte der österreichischen Malerei 1908 bis 1938, Wien-Köln 1991.

Karl Ginhart/Gotbert Moro (Hg.), Gedenkbuch Bruno Grimschitz (= Kärntner Museumsschriften 44), Klagenfurt 1967.

Gert Kerschbaumer, Meister des Verwirrens. Die Geschäfte des Kunsthändlers Friedrich Welz (= Bibliothek des Raubes 5), Wien 2000.

Michael Krapf, Wissenschaft für das Museum – Museum für die Wissenschaft, in: Hadwig Kräutler/Gerbert Frodl (Hg.), Das Museum. Spiegel und Motor kulturpolitischer Visionen. 100 Jahre Österreichische Galerie Belvedere. 1903–2003, Wien 2004, 133–146.

Monika Mayer, Bruno Grimschitz und die Österreichische Galerie 1938–1945. Eine biographische Annäherung im Kontext der aktuellen Provenienzforschung, in: Gabriele Anderl/Alexandra Caruso (Hg.), NS-Kunstraub in Österreich und die Folgen, Innsbruck-Wien-Bozen 2005, 59–79.

Publications by the person / institution

Bruno Grimschitz, Johann Lucas von Hildebrandts künstlerische Entwicklung bis zum Jahre 1725, Wien 1922.
Bruno Grimschitz, Die österreichische Zeichnung im 19. Jahrhundert, Wien 1928.
Bruno Grimschitz, Die Wiener Ringstraße, Wien-Bremen 1938.
Bruno Grimschitz, Maler der Ostmark im 19. Jahrhundert, Wien 1940.
Bruno Grimschitz, Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller. Leben und Werk, Wien 1943.
Bruno Grimschitz, Wiener Barockpaläste, Wien 1944.
Bruno Grimschitz, Das Belvedere in Wien, Wien 1946.
Bruno Grimschitz, Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Werkverzeichnis, Salzburg 1957.
Bruno Grimschitz, Johann Michael Prunner, Wien 1958.
Bruno Grimschitz, Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt, Wien-München 1959.
Bruno Grimschitz, Österreichische Maler vom Biedermeier zur Moderne, Wien 1963.

Bruno Grimschitz/Karl Ginhart, Der Dom zu Gurk, Wien 1930.

Bruno Grimschitz/Franz Martin Haberditzl, Handzeichnungen und Aquarelle der Österreichischen Galerie, Wien 1922.

Österreichische Galerie

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:39:56 +0000

Österreichische Galerie Susanne Hehenberger Wed, 11/18/2020 - 12:51

Österreichische Galerie

Austrian Gallery

other names: Moderne Galerie (1903–1911), k. k. Österreichische Staatsgalerie (1911–1918), Österreichische Staatsgalerie (1918–1921), Österreichische Galerie (1921–1999), Österreichische Galerie Belvedere (since 2000)

In response to the emphatic demand by the Secessionists led by Carl Moll and Otto Wagner for a public gallery of contemporary art as a counterbalance to the imperial collections, in 1901 Emperor Franz Joseph I agreed to the establishment of the Moderne Galerie. The opening of the state museum in May 1903 in the Lower Belvedere laid the foundations for the current Österreichische Galerie Belvedere collections. The gallery holdings, which were meant to be housed only temporarily in the Lower Belvedere, were supplemented by the works acquired since 1851 by the Imperial Royal Ministry of Culture and Education and the Vereinigung bildender Künstler Österreichs – Secession founded in 1897, including Vincent van Gogh's Plain of Auvers and Giovanni Segantini's The Bad Mothers. Private patrons such as Prince Johann von und zu Liechtenstein and the architect Alexander Hummel supported the gallery with generous donations. The gallery committee appointed initially to manage the gallery and directly answerable to the Ministry of Culture sought constantly to enlarge the collection. In 1908, for example, it acquired Gustav Klimt's The Kiss directly from the artist. In 1911 the Moderne Galerie, directed since 1909 by Friedrich Dörnhöffer, was renamed k. k. Österreichische Staatsgalerie. The collection was systematically enlarged, with acquisitions from the Middle Ages to the present, with a view to creating a representative cross-section of art in the multinational Habsburg empire. Founder members of the Staatsgalerieverein established the same year included Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, Nikolaus Dumba, Count Karl Lanckoroński and Victor Zuckerkandl. Through its fine arts purchases, the association sought to "cultivate a feeling for indigenous art". The museum complex, renamed Österreichische Galerie in 1921, was directed from 1915 until his removal from office in April 1938 by the art historian and Schiele patron Franz Martin Haberditzl. In spite of extremely limited financial resources, thanks to his personal network of art patrons, collectors and artists, including Adele and Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, Haberditzl managed to acquire works by major Austrian and international modernists through gifts and loans. After the First World War, when the imperial art collections were nationalized, the Österreichische Galerie acquired the premises in the Upper Belvedere as well and was restructured in accordance with the museum reform concept devised by the art historian Hans Tietze. Artworks from the Austrian Baroque and nineteenth century were transferred from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in exchange for medieval items and the transfer of prints to the Albertina. The Baroque museum was opened in 1923 in the Lower Belvedere as the first phase of this restructuring. The Galerie des 19. Jahrhunderts (gallery of nineteenth century art) was opened in the Upper Belvedere with works by Austrian and international artists and an area for special exhibitions on the ground floor. Thanks to the financial support of the Verein der Museumsfreunde, Prince Eugene's former Orangery in the Lower Belvedere was adapted for the reopening of the Moderne Galerie as a collection of twentieth-century art. The adjoining garden contained an exhibition of modern sculptures.

After the annexation of Austria to the Nazi German Reich in March 1938, director Haberditzl was removed from office and replaced by his long-standing deputy Bruno Grimschitz. His research assistant Heinrich Schwarz was forced to leave Austria on account of racial persecution. Grimschitz took advantage of the changed power structure to embark on an offensive acquisition policy, which was also connected directly to the expropriation of "Jewish" art collections by the Nazi regime. Apart from various objects from secured and seized assets, non-expropriated objects were also assigned to the public collections by order of the Reichsstatthalterei. Many purchases of works by contemporary artists demonstrate the intentions of the Nazi cultural policy to promote "intrinsically German" art. In line with the regime's philosophy, Grimschitz had the Moderne Galerie closed on 20 March 1938, and the "degenerate" art in it remained untouched. From October 1939, the Zentralstelle für Denkmalschutz (Central Monument Protection Authority) was able to use the former Orangery as a depot for secured and seized art objects. Even before the start of the first salvage transports in late summer 1939, extensive air raid protection measures were taken to prevent damage to the Belvedere buildings. As a result, the Baroque museum in the Lower Belvedere was closed from July 1939 to January 1940 and from April 1941 onwards. In a series of transports from September 1939, the main works from the Galerie des 19. Jahrhunderts and Baroque museum were taken to Kartause Gaming, Lower Danube. Because of the increasing threat of Allied air raids and the need to intensify salvage operations, hundreds of art objects were transported in 1943/44 to various depots, such as the palaces of Immendorf, Kirchstetten and Weinern in Lower Danube and the Lauffen salt mine near Bad Ischl. After the permanent closure of the Österreichische Galerie because of the "total war effort" in August 1944, the west wing of the Upper Belvedere and the grounds were severely damaged by air raids in November 1944. Further bombing of the Upper and Lower Belvedere in February 1945 left the palace and grounds in ruins. Thanks to the "complete salvaging" of the gallery contents, there were no appreciable losses. Shortly before the end of the war, however, retreating SS members destroyed the Klimt paintings from the Lederer collection stored in Schloss Immendorf and Klimt's three Faculty pictures owned by the Österreichische Galerie.

The destruction made it necessary to completely rebuild and renovate the Belvedere palaces. After Grimschitz had been removed from office in October 1945 on account of his former NSDAP membership and the interim directorship by Fritz Novotny, Karl Garzarolli-Thurnlackh was appointed director of the Österreichische Galerie in 1947. On the basis of the Austrian restitution laws, twelve artworks were restituted after 1945 to Viktor Ephrussi, Irma Götzl, Alma Mahler-Werfel, Robert Pollak, Gustav Senders, Leopold Weinstein, Paul G. Wexberg and to the French military government. The museum was officially opened to the public in 1953 after the premises had been rebuilt and renovated. As a museum of purely Austrian art, the Österreichische Galerie was a symbol of Austria's regained sovereignty. As such, the collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century French and German art was transferred to the Kunsthistorisches Museum. In return it obtained the collection of medieval Austrian art for the newly established Museum mittelalterlicher Kunst (museum of medieval art) in the Orangery. The Baroque museum opened in the Lower Belvedere in 1953 and the Galerie des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (gallery of nineteenth- and twentieth-century art) in the Upper Belvedere a year later. In keeping with the original intention of the Moderne Galerie in 1903, the international nineteenth- and twentieth-century items from Kunsthistorisches Museum's Stallburg gallery were returned to the Österreichische Galerie in 1986.

Under the Austrian Art Restitution Act of December 1998, 239 artworks in 76 dossiers have been established since early 1998 along with various supplementary dossiers. The provenance of the items in the museum library has also been comprehensively documented. The Art Restitution Advisory Board has recommended the restitution in forty-five cases of sixty-nine works of art and six printed works. Fifty-nine of these objects from thirty-five collections have been returned to the legal successors, the remainder kept in the museum until all of the heirs have been identified. Prominent cases involving the works by Klimt, Schiele and Edvard Munch from the collections of Alma Mahler-Werfel and the Bloch-Bauer, Lederer, Rieger, Zuckerkandl families have attracted particular media attention. In 2006, for example an arbitration court decided that five Klimt paintings, including both portraits of Adele Bloch-Bauer, should be returned to the Bloch-Bauer heirs. The fortunate repurchase of several restituted works such as Hans Makart's Entry of Charles V into Antwerp from the former collection of Valerie Karplus-Lieben has meant that these paintings are now legally in the possession of the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere.

Keywords

Museum

Monika Mayer

31 August 2020

Publications about the person / institution

Hans und Gertrude Aurenhammer, Das Belvedere in Wien. Bauwerk, Menschen, Geschichte, Wien 1971.

Katinka Gratzer-Baumgärtner, Das Belvedere in Wien: zum Status der Provinienzforschung in der Bibliothek des Hauses, in: Bruno Bauer/Christina Köstner-Pemsel/Markus Stumpf (Hg.), NS-Provenienzforschung an österreichischen Bibliotheken. Anspruch und Wirklichkeit (= Schriften der Vereinigung Österreichischer Bibliothekarinnen und Bibliothekare 10), Graz-Feldkirch 2011, 391–412, URL: fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/objects/o:290050/methods/bdef:Content/download (3.12.2020).

Agnes Husslein-Arco/Katharina Schoeller (Hg.), Das Belvedere. Genese eines Museums, Weitra 2011.

Hadwig Kräutler/Gerbert Frodl (Hg.), Das Museum. Spiegel und Motor kulturpolitischer Visionen. 100 Jahre Österreichische Galerie Belvedere. 1903–2003, Wien 2004.

Monika Mayer, Egon Schiele und das Belvedere. Versuch einer Sammlungs- und Rezeptionsgeschichte 1912–2003, in: Eva Blimlinger/Heinz Schödl (Hg.), Die Praxis des Sammelns. Personen und Institutionen im Fokus der Provenienzforschung (= Schriftenreihe der Kommission für Provenienzforschung 5), Wien-Köln-Weimar 2014, 299–318, URL: doi.org/10.7767/boehlau.9783205793564.299.

Monika Mayer, Geschichte einer Institution, in: Stella Rollig (Hg.), Meisterwerke des Belvedere, Wien 2018, 36–41, URL: doi.org/10.7767/boehlau.9783205793564.299.
Monika Mayer, Jenseits von Klimt. Zur Provenienzforschung in der Österreichischen Galerie Belvedere, in: Gabriele Anderl/Christoph Bazil/Eva Blimlinger/Oliver Kühschelm/Monika Mayer/Anita Stelzl-Gallian/Leonhard Weidinger (Hg.), … wesentlich mehr Fälle als angenommen. 10 Jahre Kommission für Provenienzforschung (= Schriftenreihe der Kommission für Provenienzforschung 1), Wien-Köln-Weimar 2009, 93–106, URL: doi.org/10.7767/boehlau.9783205118862.93.

Monika Mayer, Museen und Mäzene. "Jüdisches" Mäzenatentum und die Österreichische Galerie 1903 bis 1938, in: Eva Blimlinger/Monika Mayer (Hg.), Kunst sammeln, Kunst handeln. Beiträge des Internationalen Symposiums in Wien (= Schriftenreihe der Kommission für Provenienzforschung 3), Wien-Köln-Weimar 2012, 19–35, URL: doi.org/10.7767/boehlau.9783205791997.19.

Monika Mayer, "Sonst verlor die Österreichische Galerie kein Kunstwerk …". Bergung, "Entartete Kunst", Fremddepot. Versuch einer "anderen" Geschichte der Österreichischen Galerie 1938 bis 1945, in: Pia Schölnberger/Sabine Loitfellner (Hg.), Bergung von Kulturgut im Nationalsozialismus. Mythen – Hintergründe – Auswirkungen (= Schriftenreihe der Kommission für Provenienzforschung 6), Wien-Köln-Weimar 2016, 175–195, URL: doi.org/10.7767/9783205201564-010.

Monika Mayer, "Treuhänderische" Übergaben von Kunstwerken an die Österreichische Galerie im Kontext der aktuellen Provenienzforschung, in: Olivia Kaiser/Christina Köstner-Pemsel/Markus Stumpf (Hg.), Treuhänderische Übernahme und Verwahrung. International und interdisziplinär betrachtet (= Bibliothek im Kontext 3), Göttingen 2018, 187–199, URL: www.vr-elibrary.de/doi/pdf/10.14220/9783737007832.

Heinz Neumann/Verena Traeger, Von der Modernen Galerie zur Österreichischen Galerie Belvedere, in: Gerbert Frodl/Verena Traeger (Hg.), Meisterwerke der Österreichischen Galerie Belvedere Wien, Wien 2003, 19–21.

GND: 2165327-6

VIAF: 172476334

Wikidata: Q303139