Grete Ring – for the unusual and unexpected

She expects a lot from life. When the new century begins, Grete Ring, born in Berlin in 1887, was a talented young girl. It grows up in a highly educated Jewish civil servant family, between books and pictures, museums and theaters. She knows how to use the privileged upper middle class with all the energy and is full of the close social scope that is available to women of her generation. So Grete Ring, who still has to take off her Abitur as an external, will be one of the first women who studied art history at Friedrich-Wilhelms University from 1906, initially as a guest and only then “properly inscribed”, because in Prussia the study of women is only allowed in 1908.

Last but not least, her love for art is promoted by the relationship with the famous painter Max Liebermann, whose niece she is. As one of the first women in art history, she finally received his doctorate in Munich in 1912 with a work on Dutch portrait painting in the 15th and 16th centuries. The literary and art scientist Sonja Hilzinger, who has made a name for herself with her publications about Anna Seghers, Christa Wolf or Inge Müller, wants to snatch with her book Grete Ring.

With almost detective senses, the author has discovered a variety of sources and life certificates of their protagonist in a wide variety of archives, museums and libraries, in the correspondence with widely scattered letter partners, mostly colleagues and art enthusiasts such as them – from the emperor to the 1950s. With an immense work and a lot of empathy, she focuses on the art scholar Grete Ring in the focus of contemporary history, in the professional and private contexts. This creates the panorama of an exemplary female life in the 20th century with all disasters of the era, two world wars and the horror of National Socialism.

Grete Ring initially worked in the Berlin National Gallery, from 1920 in the well -known gallery Paul Cassirer, curated exhibitions, acquired experiences in the art trade and joined the company as a partner in 1928. She herself collects a collection of hand drawings by German and French painters of the 19th century, including Caspar David Friedrich, Adolph Menzel, Max Liebermann, Eugène Delacroix, Paul Cézanne or Edgar Degas.

For years she has been on the road in the most important European art cities such as Paris, Amsterdam or Florence, visits the important exhibitions, gets to know the famous contemporary painters and publishes in the specialist magazines. The development of Picasso’s work, for example, follows her with great enthusiasm throughout his life. In this way, it becomes the recognized member of a widely branched network of like -minded art enthusiasts. And Grete Ring can write well, not a matter of course among scientists. Her constant openness to the new, unfamiliar and unexpected makes her a pioneer in the field of art history.

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In 1932/33 she curated together with the art dealer Alfred Flechtheim the much -noticed three -part exhibition sequence “Living German Art”. Only months later, the transfer of power to the National Socialists leads to an unimaginable fracture of civilization. Grete Ring has to experience how the Nazis exhibit the painting of modernity under the denunciative title “degenerate art”, including many works by artists who know and appreciate them personally. The professional opportunities for Jewish citizens are more and more restricted, and so the only way out is emigration to London.

There she uses all her courage and practical sense for a successful fresh start. In 1938 she founded the British branch of Paul Cassirer. Despite good connections, she also experiences the feeling of isolation and loss in exile that deprives those affected the soil under their feet. As they themselves had to emigrate almost all close friends, the connections to them are becoming increasingly difficult, and so art history remains refuge and the last refuge.

During these years, her big book about the French primitives is created in London. A beautiful credo, to which the art publisher feels committed for life: she wants to present the artists “not like dried plants in the herbarium, but in the garden in which they have grown, and in the climate in which they bloomed”.

One of the few preserved photos shown on the cover shows Grete Ring in front of her beloved summer house in Sacrow near Potsdam. She will never see it again. She does not return to Germany. In 1952 she died in Zurich. In 2023, Liebermann-Villa on Wannsee dedicated a worthy personnel exhibition to her, “Grete Ring, art dealer of modernity”. A woman whose departure has succeeded in a self -determined life despite many resistance.

Sonja Hilzinger: Grete Ring. Art scholar and art dealer. A biography. Reimer-Verlag 256 pages, born, € 39.