Failed to protect monuments: Schuster-Woldan-Villa on Herrgottschrofen has completely fallen into disrepair

Created: 07/30/2022, 1:00 p.m

A picture of the destruction is presented to everyone who looks at the former artists' villa.

© Peter Black

It has been destroyed, the listed artists' villa on Herrgottschrofen near Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

And apparently irretrievable.

A case that upsets the member of parliament Robert Brannekämper (CSU): "The authorities simply do not fulfill their control task here."

Garmisch-Partenkirchen

- Multiorgan failure - for the architect Robert Brannekämper, that is what happened at Am Herrgottschrofen 17 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

The chairman of the committee for science and art in the Bavarian state parliament holds "all state and municipal levels" responsible for the fact that the listed villa has been completely abandoned to decay in recent years.

"And everyone passes the buck to the other," says the outraged CSU deputy.

The Munich resident became aware of the building, which the well-known Art Nouveau architect Martin Dülfer rebuilt and extended around 1896, on his last visit to the market town.

He and his colleague Volkmar Halbleib (SPD) inspected the former Hohenleitner department store on the corner of Fürstenstrasse and Alleestrasse.

They found this in its current condition as "not worth preserving" (we reported).

This object never made it onto the list of monuments.

In contrast to the earlier artists' villa.

The well-known Art Nouveau architect Martin Dülfer converted the property on Herrgottschrofen into an artist's villa in 1897/98.

© Josef Ostler Collection

A farmhouse with stable, threshing floor, two beehives and a garden has stood in its place since about 1850.

For his house chronicle, Josef Ostler, chairman of the association for history, art and cultural history in the district of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, researched that it had been expanded and converted in 1871.

In March 1897, Clara Schuster finally bought the property – for 23,500 marks.

"The former farmhouse is relatively far from the village of Breitenau on a large, now densely overgrown plot of land, which is bordered on one side by the Loisach," says the workbook of the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation, which is about Martin Dülfer, the pioneer of German Art Nouveau architecture.

Schuster commissioned him to redesign the property.

The old structure remained largely unchanged, "Dülfer only added the studio extension with the covered outside staircase and the wooden veranda supported by columns".

With the braided façade decoration, he took up the model of the Marie pharmacy, today's old pharmacy in Garmisch.

Raffael Schuster-Woldan met the taste of the National Socialists

The studio was used by Raffael Schuster-Woldan, who was 27 at the time of the conversion.

The young man had already had a steep career.

He was the youngest of three children of Heinrich Schuster, who published poetry under the pseudonym Heinrich Woldan, and his wife Clara Seifart.

After studying at the Munich and Frankfurt academies, he was one of the co-founders of the Munich Secession in 1893.

Between 1911 and 1920 he was a professor at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin.

With him, the National Socialists were finally able to appropriate one of the last salon painters of the late 18th century (see box).

In 1951 he died in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

His house, a two-story flat roof building, is under protection.

After the last residents moved out in 1993 (right), the house still looked pretty good.

© Peter Black

The later owners were apparently not impressed by this.

The property, in which, according to local historian Peter Schwarz, emigrants lived until 1993, has meanwhile fallen into disrepair.

Nobody wants to have noticed.

Only now, due to the debate about the former Hohenleitner department store, has this property also come into focus.

Although, the municipality had already had it on the screen beforehand.

In 2007, Mayor Thomas Schmid (first CSU, then CSB) came up with the idea of ​​realizing a hardware store on the property.

There is currently an interested party who is planning a kind of start-up center and an industrial park there.

An idea that the market is open to.

The artist's villa was apparently willfully destroyed

The fact that the listed villa may block this apparently no longer affects anyone.

"In principle, the owners are obliged to repair them, to treat them properly and to protect them from danger, insofar as they can be expected to do so," explains city hall spokeswoman Silvia Kaufer-Schropp.

An inspection in mid-May at the behest of the new owners revealed "that the property has now obviously been vandalized, judging by the machine-cut edges on the roof structure probably in the last five years".

The Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments informed the market in mid-June that "due to the condition of the monument, it is no longer possible to preserve it and a preservation claim can therefore no longer be made".

The child fell into the well.

unnoticed.

It is not possible to examine protected objects regularly.

Especially because, according to buyer-Schropp, there is no staff available for this.

Nevertheless, the municipality wants to initiate administrative offense proceedings against the owners.

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A step that comes years too late.

"The lower monument protection authorities simply do not exercise their control task," complains Brannekamper.

"Annoying," says the member of parliament.

In order to counteract this, the state parliament has approved two positions for the monument preservation task force.

"Your most urgent task is to record and map all monuments in the Free State." This gives the local authorities "political backing".

Raffael Schuster-Woldan caught the taste of the times.

© German Art Gallery

Raffael Schuster-Woldan, popular with the National Socialists

He disappeared.

Towards the end of the Second World War, the ceiling painting in the Bundesratsaal of the Reichstag building was detached from its anchorage.

By whom?

One does not know.

Where?

Unknown.

Raffael Schuster-Woldan made this from 1901 to 1911.

He chose allegorical themes that span the nine panels of the ceiling.

In the central image, a number of men in modern costume, conducting a dispute, were shown as half-length figures.

A German eagle spread its wings symbolically over them.

On either side were figures of good and pernicious elements.

This was not the only reason why Schuster-Woldan was so well received by the National Socialist rulers, but also because of his antique-mythological portraiture.

Among other things, he captured Winifred Wagner, Cosima Wagner and Emmy Göring on canvas.

His works were of particular importance at the Great German Art Exhibition in Munich in 1941.

Here the artist was granted a special show in which 27 paintings were shown.

The focus was the naturalistic nude painting "Life", which had already been exhibited in Munich's Glaspalast in 1905.

Declared in the catalog as not for sale, it was nevertheless bought by Adolf Hitler for 60,000 Reichsmarks.

This was one of the highest amounts ever paid at this exhibition.

It was delivered to the Führerbau on Munich's Arcisstraße in 1942 and confiscated by the Americans after the war.

Until 1998 it was stored in the main customs office of the city of Munich and is now part of the inventory of the German Historical Museum in Berlin, along with 23 other exhibits by the artist.