"Aber wer denkt im Ausland an Sammler irgendwo in Brünn!" : Hugo Hanak und der Sammeleifer im Brünn der Zwischenkriegszeit

Abstract

Based on the catalogues of exhibitions organized between 1930 and 1938 by the Moravian Art Association (Mährischer Kunstverein), contemporary journalism and sporadically preserved archival documents, this contribution attempts to present and evaluate the results achieved in Brno by nowadays mostly forgotten German, mainly Jewish, art lovers and collectors. It devotes attention to the genre and artist make-up of the picture collections they created, as well as the fates they shared after 1939. Above all, however, it focuses on the reconstruction of one of them, the small but carefully selected collection of the textile manufacturer Hugo Hanak (1880–1957), whose focus was the works of French landscape painters of the second half of the 19th century (Gustave Courbet, Eugène-Louis Boudin), in particular representatives of the Barbizon school (Pierre Etienne Theodore Rousseau, Constant Troyon, Charles-François Daubigny) and their German and Austrian fellow travellers (Heinrich von Zügel, Tina Blau, Olga Wisinger-Florian, Jacob Emil Schindler and Eugen Jettel). [Appendix II]