Cornelius Müller Hofstede (* February 2, 1898 in Geisa; † July 29, 1974 in Berlin) was a German art historian and director of the Berlin Gemäldegalerie from 1957 to 1963.
Life edit
Cornelius Müller Hofstede was born the son of the priest Müller. His mother was a sister of the Dutch scholar Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930). One of his sons was the art historian Justus Müller Hofstede (1929-2015).
He passed his school-leaving examination in Weimar in 1918. He then studied in Munich with Heinrich Wölfflin as well as in Vienna and Berlin and received his doctorate in 1924 in Berlin under the art historian Adolph Goldschmidt with a dissertation entitled "Contributions to the History of the Biblical Historical Image in the 16th and 17th Centuries in Holland". Even at that time he worked for a time with his uncle Hofstede de Groot in The Hague. In the following years he published several studies on Dutch Baroque painting, which show him to be an excellent connoisseur of this period.
After a period as a trainee at the Bavarian National Museum in Munich and at the State Museums in Berlin under Wilhelm von Bode, he took up a position as assistant and senior assistant at the Art History Seminar of the Berlin University under Adolph Goldschmidt and Albert Erich Brinckmann from 1927 to 1934. He subsequently chose the name Müller Hofstede to avoid confusion with colleagues.
In 1934, he decided to enter the museum service and took a provisional position at the Silesian Museum of Fine Arts in Wroclaw, and two years later he was appointed as the Executive Director. During his tenure, several interesting exhibitions should be noted, which, in addition to 16th century Silesian painting, were particularly devoted to 19th century German painting, including Caspar David Friedrich, Carl Blechen and Adolph Menzel. The Wroclaw Museum, as a central state cultural institute, was also concerned with the care and registration of private art collections in Silesia and acquired knowledge that the National Socialist dictatorship intended to use in order to gain foreign currency and prepare for war. Here, it was primarily a matter of Jewish art ownership, for the value-relevant and material safeguarding of which Müller Hofstede was responsible as director. In this respect, as far as the relevant files allow a judgment, he "decisively and actively promoted the exploitation of former Jewish art possessions".“ Müller Hofstede's activity in Breslau ended in 1944 when he was called up for military service.
At the end of the war, Müller Hofstede had to leave Breslau and, after a stopover in Weimar at the Goethe and Schiller Archive, found a new sphere of activity in Braunschweig in 1945, where he was appointed director of the Gemäldegalerie in 1947 and, from 1955, director of the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum. The Braunschweig collections owe numerous studies to his scholarly activity, which were primarily concerned with the paintings of Rembrandt and his circle. He also published important results on the determination of Giorgione's famous self-portrait.
The culmination of his professional career began with his appointment in 1957 as director of the Gemäldegalerie der Ehemals Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, which at that time was located in Berlin-Dahlem as a result of the division of the city. The return to the German capital and to the beginnings of his education also meant a challenge for the goals of his research, which were now primarily focused on Rembrandt. The genesis and reconstruction of Rembrandt's painting "The Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis" in the Swedish National Museum in Stockholm formed a special focus.
Müller Hofstede was a member of the Historical Commission for Silesia. From 1961 to 1970 he was chairman of the Kunstgeschichtliche Gesellschaft zu Berlin.
Publications (Selection) edit
- Abraham Bloemaert als Landschaftsmaler. In: Oud Holland 44, 1927, S. 193–208.
- mit Iohan Quirijn van Regteren Altena: Der Maler Jacob van Geel. In: Jahrbuch der preußischen Kunstsammlungen 52, 1931, S. 187–188.
- Bemerkungen zu Michael Willmanns Landschaftskunst. In: Der Oberschlesier 19, 1937, S. 245–247.
- Monumentale Glasgemälde von Ludwig Peter Kowalski in Schlesien (1940)
- Ausstellung von fünf Glasmalereien mit verschiedenen Entwürfen für Gobelins und Mosaiken, einer Applikationsarbeit und ausgewählter Gemälde von Ludwig Peter Kowalski anlässlich seines fünfzigsten Geburtstages (1941)
- Hinter Drahtzaun und Bahnschranke: zur Ausstellung von Professor Alexander Olbricht im Schlesischen Museum der bildenden Künste in Breslau (1941)
- Rembrandts Familienbild und seine Restaurierung (= Kunsthefte des Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museums 7). Braunschweig 1952.
- HdG 409. Eine Nachlese zu den Münchener Civilis-Zeichnungen. In: Kunsthistorisk Tidskrift 25, 1956, S. 42–55.
- Untersuchungen über Giorgiones Selbstbildnis in Braunschweig. In: Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 8, 1957, S. 13–34.
- Zwei schlesische Madonnen von Lucas Cranach: eine Erinnerung. Kulturwerk Schlesien, Würzburg 1958.
- Das Selbstbildnis des Lucas van Leyden im Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in Braunschweig. In: Festschrift Friedrich Winkler, Berlin 1959, S. 221–238.
- Das Stuttgarter Selbstbildnis von Rembrandt. In: Pantheon 1963, S. 65–100.
- Michael Willmann. Die Jakobsleiter. In: Schlesien, 1965, S. 193–201.
- Zur Genesis des Claudius Civilis-Bildes. In: Otto von Simson, Jan Kelch (Hrsg.): Neue Beiträge zur Rembrandt-Forschung, Berlin 1973, S. 12–30, 41–43.
Literature edit
- Fedja Anzelewski: Nachruf auf Cornelius Müller Hofstede. In: Kunstgeschichtliche Gesellschaft zu Berlin. Sitzungsberichte NF 23, 1974, S. 59–60.
Weblinks edit
References edit
[[Category:1974 deaths]] [[Category:1898 births]] [[Category:German people]] [[Category:Nazi Party members]] [[Category:Museum directors]] [[Category:Art historians]]