Foreword
“The way to the source leads against the current.” Confucius
Whoever visits the Kunsthaus Zürich’s collection will encounter a lifesize portrait of a man with a jaunty moustache. He leans against a table and gazes on the viewer with a mischievous smile. The painting is dated 1923 and is by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch. The sitter is Wilhelm Wartmann (1882–1970), the first Director of the Kunsthaus Zürich. For forty years, from 1909 to 1949, he managed the museum’s fate.
As I read through Wartmann’s notes, one of his thoughts caught my eye: “I don’t know whether I am such a consummate diplomat that the countless words I have spoken at the Kunsthaus over the past forty years could really have served only one purpose, namely to conceal the thought of how much if anything of what is there would be necessary and useful to preserve?” 2 Who is this person? My interest was piqued.
In the library of the Kunsthaus Zürich, the librarian Thomas Rosemann points me towards the archive that Wartmann compiled during his long tenure. The encounter with the rich collection is overwhelming. A labyrinthine world lies before me. Wartmann’s public life is meticulously documented in the basement of the Kunsthaus, where countless copy books – carbon copies of the curator’s outgoing correspondence –open a cultural window in time. It is only at second glance that I realise the richness of the minutes from the meetings of the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft (Zurich Art Society). The aesthetic handwriting of the artists’ letters makes my heart beat faster.
These documents are only one side of the coin: in following my way to the source, I pursue the traces of the living. After a long search, I find Wartmann’s two daughters – unfortunately, the younger daughter, Gabriele, died in May 2011, while Louise lives in Paris. I ask my friends in Paris for help and we discover a telephone number for a family called Koronéos-Wartmann.
Fondation Baur, Musée des arts d’Extrême-Orient, Genève
Institut Ferdinand Hodler, Delémont
Auktionshaus Koller, Zürich
NZZ Libro and Team, especially Harald S. Liehr and Teresa Keller
Kunstfreunde Zürich
I would like to thank all the private owners, museums and foundations for the valuable pictorial material they made available.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank my family and friends for their understanding of my passion for research. I would also like to thank everyone who has supported me with advice and assistance.
Special thanks go to:
Ernst Volker Braun, Paul Müller, Peter Doppelfeld and Erica Hänssler, Hans Baumgartner, Christian Klemm, Felix Baumann, Christina Feilchenfeldt, Lukas Gloor, Susanna Tschui, Kathrin Frauenfelder, Ruth Häusler, Petra Cordioli, Vincent Koronéos, Ines Rothermund, Markus Castor, William Stevens, Roland Waespe, Nadia Veronese, Sibylle
Cazajus-Reichenbach, Catherine Hug, Hans-Peter Thür, Urs Hofmann, Markus Schöb, Aglaja Kempf, Sandra Gianfreda, Bärbel Küster, Franca Candrian, Claudine Müller, Regula Walser, Jacqueline Burckhardt, Christoph Becker, Tina Fritzsche, Ann Demeester, Claudia Steinfels, Hubert and Ursula Looser, Gianni Jetzer, Gitti Hug, Alexandra Koller, Walter B. Kielholz, Elisabeth Oltramare, Claudia Brunner.
This publication was made possible thanks to the generous support of the following foundations:
IMAF, Walter B. Kielholz Stiftung, Georg and Bertha Schwyzer-Winiker Stiftung, and Fondation Hubert Looser.
The institution
Wilhelm Wartmann takes up his post almost simultaneously with the opening of the new Kunsthaus. He writes the history of the institution, and its history writes itself with him. His exhibitions reflect contemporary discourse, but also continue to weave traditional threads. His institution develops into a focal point for contradictory interests and expectations. This biography is framed by his boundary-pushing art-historical, academic, journalistic, and social commitment and its embedding in its contemporary historical context. It closes in on the head of an institution and a complex human personality.The search for clues focuses on how the Kunsthaus Zürich is expanding and changing, the threads he is weaving, and how he uses his academic knowledge and character traits to achieve his goals. The Kunsthaus’s extensive archive was created under his aegis and, along with the family’s personal archive, forms the basis for this book. In 1940, Wartmann reflects on the significance of the Kunsthaus and its dominance over all other concerns in his life. “My work at the Kunsthaus is not business, but a task … I am always bound by this task, I cannot organise my private day as I wish … And this bondage is somehow … the meaning of life and the reason for being here and ultimately being able to enjoy life somehow.” 5 This passage from a letter formulates a central aspect of Wartmann’s self-image. He is tied to the Kunsthaus with his heart and soul, and everything else has to take second place to this task. He will travel any distance in his Mercedes-Benz to organise an exhibition. No hour of the night will prevent him from writing a letter to secure a painting. His extensive network of contacts connects him with artists, museum directors, art dealers, collectors, and art lovers. The centre of his life is the work of art. Questions about the creation and origin of art drive his life.
The written and the spoken word
Wilhelm Wartmann writes throughout his life. The historian collects a large part of his own writings, which form the basis of the Kunsthaus archive and the family’s private archive. Texts are sources that preserve the past. His father, an editor of sources on Swiss history, may have been a role model for him. “When I started school, I was asked about his profession. I said, ‘My father is a scribe.’ From the time I was a child, I always saw him standing at his desk, writing with a quill pen on small pieces of paper and then again on large sheets.” 6
The scientific context
Wilhelm Wartmann is one of the central figures in Swiss cultural life in the first half of the 20th century. While Richard Kisling, who was President of the Exhibition Committee of the Kunsthaus Zürich from 1909 to 1917, was commemorated with a biography in 2008,11 a scholarly reappraisal of Wilhelm Wartmann’s achievements is still outstanding. His importance has so far been reflected in necrologies,12 in individual essays on artists such as Edvard Munch,13 Oskar Kokoschka,14 or his contemporaries. In recent years, art history has increasingly devoted itself to the scientific study of outstanding art mediators such as museum directors, collectors, or gallery owners, as exemplified by studies on Franz Meyer, Zurich; 15 Arnold Rüdlinger, Basel; 16 Alfred Lichtwark, Hamburg; 17 Alfred Flechtheim, Berlin; 18 Ludwig Justi and the Nationalgalerie, Berlin; 19 and the most recent publication on Julius Meier-Graefe, Paris.20 Wilhelm Wartmann is rightly considered one of the most important museum directors in Switzerland. This art history biography pays him the tribute he deserves.
Fig. 1: Hermann Wartmann (1835–1929), the father
She regularly receives guests from home and abroad in her “salon.” Wilhelm remembers “how she, as the lady of the house and estate, held the reins firmly in her hands in the ironmonger’s shop or in the old Bürgli, and sometimes even got personally involved with the polecat traps.” 22
Wilhelm’s father, Hermann Wartmann, born in St. Gallen in 1835, studies at the philosophical faculties of the universities of Zurich, Bonn, and Göttingen, where he comes into contact with the academic movement promoting the systematic exploration of medieval sources. This motivates him to research St. Gallen’s historical sources, and he publishes four volumes of documents from the Abbey of St. Gallen. He finds his life’s work as an actuary for the St. Gallen Commercial Directorate, in publishing historical and commercial writings for the St. Gallen Historischer Verein (Historical Society) and the Allgemeine geschichtsforschende Gesellschaft der Schweiz (General Historical Society of Switzerland). He maintains an open and hospitable house and corresponds extensively with the leading historians of his time. In 1909, he is awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Bern.
Together with his brother Friedrich Bernhard, who was headmaster of the cantonal gymnasium and Director of the Museum für Naturkundliche Sammlungen (Museum of Natural History Collections), he becomes a leading figure in the cultural life of the city of St. Gallen.
Wilhelm’s mother, Helene Luise Hochreutiner, is from a wealthy St. Gallen business family. Her father runs an ironmongery in Marktgasse, while her mother entertains society in her home.23 While studying in Zurich and Paris, Wilhelm corresponds frequently with his mother until her untimely death in 1905.
The City of St. Gallen
In the 1880s, St. Gallen is an economically flourishing city. The dominant pillar of the economy is the embroidery industry, with businesses such as spinning mills, weaving mills, and the finishing and processing industry dependent on it. The city’s merchants are particularly adept at responding to changes in fashion and market conditions – a prerequisite for the embroidery industry to flourish – and this was probably due to the commercial activities of Hermann Wartmann, the actuary of the Commercial Directorate.
