Ludwig Grote
Hans Wilhelm Karl Ludwig Grote (8 August 1893 – 3 March 1974) was a German art historian and the first director of the Anhalt Picture Gallery in Dessau.
Biography
Ludwig Grote was born in Halle. He studied archaeology in Jena from 1912, then architecture at the Technical University of Braunschweig from 1912. His studies were interrupted by his participation in World War I (he finished the war as a lieutenant). In 1919, he passed the preliminary examination in architecture in Braunschweig. He transferred to the University of Halle to study art history in the winter semester of 1919, then to the University of Munich in 1920, and received his doctorate in 1922 from Paul Frankl in Halle with a thesis on the print work of Georg Lemberger.
In 1923, he received a contract in Dessau to produce the catalog of the painting collection in the Amalie Foundation there. From 1924 to 1933, he was the state conservator of Anhalt, and from 1927 he was also the director of the Anhalt Picture Gallery, which he had founded. As state conservator, he was responsible for general art and monument preservation, the restoration of the former ducal palaces and gardens, which had been neglected for decades (the restoration of Wörlitz Park in particular is to his credit), as well as for the Anhalt Art Association with the organization of changing exhibitions.
During this time, Grote was the personal advisor of the mayor Fritz Hesse, whose commitment led to the relocation of the politically hostile Bauhaus from Weimar to Dessau. At that time, he not only led the negotiations with Walter Gropius, but was also equally successful in 1930 in Berlin with the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who was to become the last director of the Bauhaus.
In 1933, Grote was labeled a "cultural Bolshevist" by the National Socialists and their press because of his close ties to the Dessau Bauhaus as well as his acquisition policy for the Picture Gallery and was retired "at his own request" from his position as state curator and museum director due to the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. Grote was able to continue publishing, including his fundamental work on the artist brothers Heinrich and Ferdinand Olivier.
After freelance work in stone restoration (Potsdam and Berlin), writing and working in the Munich art trade, he took part in World War II until 1945, finally with the rank of major.
In 1951 he became First Director of the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg, and from August 1958 he was General Director. He realized the reconstruction of the museum together with the architect Sep Ruf in the spirit of the international style of the Bauhaus. His acquisition policy for the National Museum was characterized by universality.
Grote married the writer Gertrud Maud, daughter of the doctor Wilhelm Schmitt and his wife Marion, on August 4, 1927. Their children are the art historian and museum expert Andreas Grote, born in 1929, and the writer Christian Grote, born in 1931.
Works
- Georg Lemberger. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des sächsischen Holzschnitts (1924)
- Führer durch den Wörlitzer Park: Amtliche Ausgabe der Joachim Ernst-Stiftung (1927; editor)
- Führer durch die Anhaltische Gemälde-Galerie (1927)
- Das Land Anhalt (1929)
- Junge Bauhausmaler: Hallescher Kunstverein (1929)
- Kardinal Albrecht und die Renaissance in Halle (1930)
- Die Stiftskirche in Gernrode (1932)
- Georg Lemberger (1933)
- Deutsche Stilfibel (1934)
- Die Brüder Olivier und die deutsche Romantik (1938)
- Caspar David Friedrich: Skizzenbuch aus den Jahren 1806 und 1818 (1942; editor)
- Deutsche Kunst im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert (1953)
- Hier bin ich ein Herr: Dürer in Venedig (1956)
- Erinnerungen an Paul Klee (1959; editor)
- Die Tucher: Bildnis einer Patrizierfamilie (1961)
- Dürer: biographisch-kritische Studie (1965)
- Die romantische Entdeckung Nürnbergs (1967)
- Joseph Sutter und der nazarenische Gedanke (1972)
- Von Dürer bis Gropius. Aufsätze zur deutschen Kunst (1973)
