Dieter Högermann – Wikipedia

Dieter Högermann in 2011

Dieter Högermann (* 1934 ^[first] in Wellentrup, district of Lippe, North Rhine-Westphalia; † October 1, 2012 in Berlin) ^[2] Was a German design historian, museum curator and collector.

Dieter Högermann was born in 1934 in the village of Wellentrup in Lippe-Detmold. In 1935 his mother moved to Halberstadt to the grandparents, where he later attended the council and cathedral school and took his Abitur there in 1952.

In 1953 he moved to Braunschweig in the western Germany before the wall was built. There he studied biology for a few semesters and also worked as a lecturer at the School book publisher Westermann. ^[3]

In 1967 the move to Berlin followed and a job at the Wasmuth art bookstore, where he was employed as an antiquarian with the sale and purchase of art -historical specialist literature until June 1970.

The acquaintance with the collector Karl-Heinz Bröhan, who founded a private museum in Berlin-Dahlem in 1973, led to the employment as a research assistant and administrative manager. In 1983 the Bröhan Museum moved to Charlottenburg and received the name addition in 1996 State Museum for Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Functionalism . Högermann was employed there as a curator until his retirement in 2001 and was responsible for buying the works of art and writing scientific catalog texts. ^[4]

In addition, he was an expert at the Munich auction house Quotenbaum.

Until his death in 2012, he curated various exhibitions, for example in 2000 the exhibition “All-round form” about the designer Wolf Karnagel in the Leipzig Grassi Museum and in Stilwerk Berlin or in 2011 the exhibition “The timeless form- porcelain and ceramic designs by Hermann Gretsch (1895–1950) ”in the Berlin Ceramic Museum. ^[5]

Högermann is the author of numerous publications on the subjects of applied art, the arts and product design, which he, among others. published in the collector journal. ^{[6] [7]} From 1973 to 2001, the existing catalogs for glass art, the art of the 20s and 30s as well as the metal and porcelain art of the collection of the Bröhan Museum appeared. ^[8] In 2007 he published the work “Good Forms at Table” via the porcelain design by Hans-Wilhelm Seitz. ^[9]

From the 1970s, he built up his own collection, several tens of thousands of pieces over four decades. The focus is on the industrial design of the post -war period, everyday objects of the “good shape” made of porcelain, glass, metal and plastic. The pieces are characterized by timeless functionality and aesthetics. They are connected to the style of the works association and Bauhaus.

Pieces of well -known product designers of the 20th century are part of the Dieter Högermanns collection, such as Marguerite Friedlaender, Gerhard Marcks, Wilhelm Wagenfeld, Trude Petri, Hermann Gretsch, Heinrich Löffelhardt, Tapio Workkala or Walter Gropius. Their designs and series shaped and shape the success of leading porcelain manufacturers in Germany and Scandinavia to this day, including Arzberg, Fürstenberg, KPM Berlin, Rosenthal, Thomas Porzellan, Kahla or Royal Copenhagen.

In addition to the porcelain, other divisions of product design also shape its collection, such as cutlery, radio and television devices (brown), watches (Junghans), coffee grinders, espresso machines, chairs and thermos can. The focus here was on the design of the University of Design in Ulm, for example by Max Bill or Reinhold Weiss.

In the last decade of life, the focus was on establishing its own design museum, based on his own collections for Högermann. However, discussions and negotiations were unsuccessful.

In 2011, Dieter Högermann contacted the Leuchtenburg Foundation, which at this time worked on the redesign of the porcelain collection at the Leuchtenburg in Thuringia for the new permanent exhibition “Porcelain Virgins Leuchtenburg”. Under Högermann’s participation, the non-profit organization association Freundeskreis of the Högermann e.V. ^[ten]

The transfer of the collections into 1100 banana boxes from Berlin to the Leuchtenburg ensured media interest. ^[11]

After comprehensive processing and inventory, pieces of his collection for the first time in 2019 will be public on the Leuchtenburg in the special exhibition “The New Form World. Design of the 20th century from the Högermann collection ”, curated by Gunnar Jakobson. ^{[twelfth] [13]}