Baudissin, Klaus, Graf von

Date born: 1891

Place born: Metz, Austria

Date died:

Place died:

Nazi-appointed director of the Folkwang Museum in Essen, after the forced retirement of Ernst Gosebruch (q.v.). Baudissin, as part of a commission headed by the painter and president of the Reich Culture Chamber, Adolf Ziegler, seized over 5,000 works from private and public collections including Emil Nolde, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Max Beckmann. Also confiscated were works by Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Giorgio de Chirico, Robert Delaunay, André Derain, Theo van Dösburg, James Ensor, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Albert Gleizes, Alexei Jawlensky, Wassily Kandinsky, Fernand Léger, El Lissitzky, Franz Masereel, Henri Matisse, László Moholy-Nagy, Piet Mondrian, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, Georges Rouault, and Maurice Vlaminck. In 1937 he was part of a three-person commission, with the artist Wolfgang Willrich (q.v.) and the journalist Walter Hansen (b. 1934) that designed the "Entartete Kunst" (Degenerate Art) exhibition in Munich.

Home Country: Germany

Sources: Stockhorst, Erich. Fünftausend Köpfe: Wer war Was im Dritten Reich. [Velbert, Kettwig] Blick & Bild Verlag, 1967, p. 44; Petropoulos, Jonathan. The Faustian Bargain: the Art World in Nazi Germany. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Bibliography: "Zeichenmeister und Maler in Heidelberg von 1720-1805." Neues Archiv für die Geschichte der Stadt Heidelberg 11 (1924): 217-243.