Letter from City Councillor Harms to Reich Governor Loeper dated 17 May 1933 with accusations against State Conservator Dr Ludwig Grote

One of the most important supporters of the Bauhaus in Dessau was the art historian Dr Ludwig Grote (1893-1974). He came from Halle (Saale), where he studied art history and completed his doctorate in 1922 with a thesis on the prints of the painter and woodcutter Georg Lemberger (around 1490/1500 – around 1540/1545). In 1923, Ludwig Grote received a contract in Dessau to produce the catalogue of the painting collection in the Amalien Foundation. The following year he was appointed Anhalt State Conservator. He was also the founding director of the Anhaltische Gemäldegalerie Dessau in Palais Reina (Kavalierstraße), which was founded in 1927. Due to his extraordinary professional expertise, Ludwig Grote earned the special esteem of Dessau’s Lord Mayor Fritz Hesse (1881-1973). Alongside Fritz Hesse, the general music director Franz von Hoeßlin (1885-1946) and others, Ludwig Grote was one of the most important supporters of the Bauhaus in Dessau. Among other things, he conducted preliminary negotiations with Walter Gropius (1883-1969) to establish the Bauhaus in Dessau, exhibited Bauhaus artists and acquired their works for the collection of the Anhaltische Gemäldegalerie.

In 1933, Grote, ostracised as a “cultural Bolshevik”, was therefore targeted by the National Socialists. He had to testify in a committee of enquiry brought against Lord Mayor Fritz Hesse for “abuse of office” and chaired by the National Socialist city councillor Dr Richard Harms (1903-?) and was ultimately dismissed from his position as state curator of Anhalt and director of the Anhalt Picture Gallery in Dessau and retired on the basis of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. Councillor Harms summarised the accusations against Ludwig Grote on 17 May 1933 to the NSDAP Gauleiter and Reich Governor in Braunschweig and Anhalt Wilhelm Friedrich Loeper (1883-1935): Grote had been the most ardent supporter of the Bauhaus, the driving force in bringing it to Dessau and responsible for the purchase of what the National Socialists considered to be inferior Dadaist paintings. The letter from Councillor Harms can be seen in the Dessau-Roßlau City Archives as Archive of the Month March 2024.

Dr Ludwig Grote became the first director of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg in 1951. He died 50 years ago, on 3 March 1974, in Gauting near Munich.