Reading Aloud, 1914

About the Work

Heckel executed this woodcut in 1914 in memory of the reading-aloud evenings with his friend Dr Walter Kaesbach (1879–1961), who at the time had been an assistant at the Berlin Nationalgalerie. The depiction of Heckel’s wife Siddi (1891–1982) and Kaesbach reading aloud is one of a group of drawings, watercolours and one painting in which the artist developed and consolidated the same composition. During World War I, Kaesbach was the head of the medical platoon Heckel served in as a volunteer.

About the Acquisition

From 1900 onwards, the Frankfurt chemist and industrialist Carl Hagemann (1867‒1940) assembled one of the most important private collections of modern art. It included numerous paintings, drawings, watercolours and prints, especially by members of the artist group “Die Brücke”. After Carl Hagemann died in an accident during the Second World War, the then Städel director Ernst Holzinger arranged for Hagemann’s heirs to evacuate his collection with the museum’s collection. In gratitude, the family donated almost all of the works on paper to the Städel Museum in 1948. Further donations and permanent loans as well as purchases of paintings and watercolours from the Hagemann estate helped to compensate for the losses the museum had suffered in 1937 as part of the Nazi’s “Degenerate Art” campaign. Today, the Hagemann Collection forms the core of the Städel museum’s Expressionist collection.