User:Eli185.2/Paul Rauert

Hans Paul Ludwig Rauert (born August 14, 1863 in Hamburg; died February 26, 1938 in Hamburg) was a German lawyer, art collector and patron of the arts. Together with his wife Martha, he supported the Dresden artists' group Brücke. The Martha and Paul Rauert Collection is one of the first collections of Expressionist art.

Life and work
Paul Rauert was the son of the Hamburg merchant Georg Gustav Rauert. His sister Marianne married Albert Ballin in 1883. Rauert obtained his doctorate in law in Jena in 1887 and two years later opened a law firm with Richard Robinow on Neuer Wall in Hamburg.

Art Collector
Alfred Lichtwark's 1889 exhibition of Max Klinger's graphic work at the Hamburger Kunsthalle led to Rauert's enthusiasm for the fine arts. Klinger's graphic Phantasie und Künstlerkind from 1881 laid the foundation for his collection. In 1895, he married Martha Rodatz (1869-1958), who shared his enthusiasm for art. In 1905, he was able to acquire shares in the Hanseatische Acetylen Werke alongside his work as a lawyer. Together with his wife Martha Rauert, the Hamburg district court director Gustav Schiefler and the art historian Rosa Schapire, he bought expressionist works of Die Brücke, and from 1907 his wife, like Schiefler and Schapire, was a passive member of the artists' group supporting them financially. In the same year the Rauerts met Emil Nolde. They collected more than 200 works by the Brücke artists. In 1911, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff painted a portrait of Rauert.

In addition to Nolde and Schmidt-Rottluff, the Rauerts also collected works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel and Paula Modersohn-Becker. Around 1920, they acquired works by Franz Radziwill and Walter Gramatté and in the early 1930s sculptures by Ernst Barlach. These were the couple's last acquisitions.

Paul Rauert died at the age of 74 in his home town and was buried in the family plot in the Nienstedten cemetery.

Nazi era
After her husband's death during the National Socialist era and the Second World War, Martha Rauert sold artworks to support herself. Researchers at Proveana include her in the category of Cultural goods confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution and several provenance research projects are examining the fate of her collections in connection with the Gurlitt art trove.

Postwar
In the 1950s, she had to part with Radziwill's paintings and Schmidt-Rottluff's prints. However, an impressive collection of paintings is still in the family's possession.

Reception
The exhibition ''Picasso, Beckmann, Nolde and Modernism. Masterpieces from Early Private Collections in Hamburg'' from March 23 to June 17, 2001 at the Hamburger Kunsthalle highlighted the importance of private collectors for the development of modern art in Germany. In addition to Ernst Rump and Oscar Troplowitz, personalities such as the judge Gustav Schiefler, the married couple Martha and Paul Rauert and the businessman Max Leon Flemming were involved in Hamburg at the beginning of the 20th century. Largely independent of Alfred Lichtwark, the first director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle, who acquired Impressionist paintings for the museum, the art collectors endowed their collections with an independent character.

Literature

 * Nolde, Schmidt-Rottluff und ihre Freunde: die Sammlung Martha und Paul Rauert, Hamburg, 1905–1958, herausgegeben von Eva Caspers, Wolfgang Henze, Hans-Jürgen Lwowski. Katalog zur Ausstellung im Ernst-Barlach-Haus, Hamburg, 2. Mai bis 1. August 1999, Ernst-Barlach-Haus, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-00-004239-3. Weitere Stationen der Ausstellung waren das Museum für Neue Kunst Freiburg i. Br., Sinclair-Haus Kulturforum, Bad Homburg, Kirchner-Museum, Davos, Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, Bremen, und das Brücke-Museum, Berlin.
 * Erik Stephan (Hrsg.): Sammlung Martha und Paul Rauert: die Künstler der Brücke in Jena. Katalog zur Ausstellung vom 5. Juni bis 21. August 2005 in der Kunstsammlung im Stadtmuseum Jena. Städtische Museen Jena, Jena 2005, ISBN 978-3-9301-2868-6.

Weblinks

 * Doris Blum: Der Mann, der eine kluge Frau hatte in Die Welt, 30. Mai 2001
 * Martha Rauert auf der Webseite der Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Hamburg