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Hartlaub, Gustav

    Full Name: Hartlaub, Gustav

    Other Names:

    • Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub

    Gender: male

    Date Born: 1884

    Date Died: 1963

    Place Born: Bremen, Germany

    Place Died: Heidelberg, Saxony, Germany

    Home Country/ies: Germany

    Subject Area(s): Modern (style or period)


    Overview

    Modernist art historian, coined the term “Neue Sachlichkeit” for the period of German art between the wars. Hartmann’s paternal family were long merchant-entrepeurs in Bremen. After graduating from the gymnasium in Bremen, he attended classes beginning in 1904 at the universities of Freiburg, Vienna, Munich (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Institut für Kunstgeschichte under Berthold Riehl) and eventually Göttingen. He wrote his disssertation at Göttingen under Robert Vischer on the topic of Sienese painting in the fifteenth century. After a travel year, he entered the Kunsthalle in Bremen as an assistant working in the prints collection, 1910-1913. His early scholarship focused on the Italian Renaissance. In 1913 Hartlaub was appointed a curator at the Mannheim Kunsthalle under Fritz Wichert. His research now moved to Romantic period Germany and the 20th century. Hartlaub was deputy director of the museum during the war years 1914 through 1919. In 1923 he succeeded Wichert as director. In 1923 Hartlaub began using the term “Neue Sachlichkeit” (New Objectivity) to distinguish non-Expressionist art in Germany. He set out to show the most modern artists. His 1924 exhibition, “Kubin und Klee” was followed by one on the German Expressionist Karl Schmidt Rottluff, 1925. In 1926 by a show of the title “Die neue Sachlichkeit” at the Kunsthalle, a show traveling to Chemnitz and Dresden through 1927. The art was avant-garde enough for some museum directors to ask for works to be omitted, as in the case of Schreiber Wiegand, in Chemnitz. During his tenure as director, Hartlaub hired Kurt Martin as part of the museum staff. Hartlaub actively purchased modern art by the Fauves, Expressionists and other modernist groups. The assumption of power by the Nazis in 1933 made Hartlaub an object of scorn for his support of modern art. The Mannheim museum became the first museum to have a Schandausstellung (Shame Exhibition) of modern art, preceeding the famous 1937 “Entartete Kunst” (degenerate art) show in Munich. At the Mannheim show, large photos of Hartlaub were paraded in the streets together with Chagall’s “Rabbi.” Hartlaub was dismissed the same year.


    Selected Bibliography

    [dissertation:] Siena im Quattrocento.Göttingen, 1909; Kunst und Religion: ein Versuch über die Möglichkeit neuer religiöser Kunst. Leipzig: Kurt Wolff, 1919; Die neue deutsche Graphik. Berlin: E. Reiss, 1920; Giorgiones Geheimnis: ein kunstgeschichtlicher Beitrag zur Mystik der Renaissance. Munich: Allgemeine Verlagsanstalt, 1925; edited, German edition. Amadou, Robert. Das Zwischenreich: vom Okkultismus zur Parapsychologie: Würdigung und Kritik der internationalen Forschung. Baden-Baden: Holle Verlag, 1957; Der Stein der Weisen: Wesen und Bildwelt der Alchemie. Munich: Prestel 1959.


    Sources

    Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 230; Hille, Karoline. “Mit heißen Herz und kuhlem Verstand: Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub und die Mannheimer Kunsthalle, 1913-1933.” in, Junge, Henricke, ed. Avantgarde und Publikum: zur Rezeption avantagardistischer Kunst in Deutschland, 1905-1933. Vienna: Böhler, 1992, pp. 129-130; Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon: zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999, pp. 149-52; Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 261-66; Crockett, Dennis. German Post-Expressionism: The Art of the Great Disorder: 1918-1924. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Press, 1999, pp. 1-3, 22.




    Citation

    "Hartlaub, Gustav." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/hartlaubg/.


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