Barbara Göpel, née Barbara Malwine Auguste Sperling (24 February 1922,

Arnsberg Arnsberg (; ) is a town in the Hochsauerland county, in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It is the location of the Regierungsbezirk Arnsberg (region), Arnsberg administration and one of the three local administration offices of the Ho ...

– 26 September 2017, Munich) was a German art historian.

Life

Her father Hans Sperling was a lawyer and came from Berlin. Her mother Auguste Elisabeth was also from Berlin. In 1934, the Sperling family returned to Berlin. Barbara worked in the Palais Beauharnais at the German embassy under

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

's ambassador to France

Otto Abetz Otto Friedrich Abetz (26 March 1903 – 5 May 1958) was a German diplomat, a Nazi official and a convicted war criminal during World War II. Abetz joined the Nazi Party and the SA in the early 1930s later becoming a member of the SS. Abetz pla ...

in Paris. In autumn 1943 Barbara met her future husband, Erhard Göpel, who, as the procurer of art objects for Hitler's Führermuseum Linz, was involved in looting art from Jewish art collections. After the war, she worked in the secretariat of the weekly newspaper

Die Zeit (, ) is a German national weekly newspaper published in Hamburg in Germany. The newspaper is generally considered to be among the German newspapers of record and is known for its long and extensive articles. History The first edition of was ...

. In 1950, she married the art historian

Erhard Göpel Erhard Göpel (born June 3, 1906 in Leipzig, † October 29, 1966 in Munich) was a German art historian and high level Nazi agent who acquired art, including looted art, for Hitler’s Führermuseum. Life and work before 1939 Erhard Göpel (als ...

. Together they worked on the catalog of

Max Beckmann Max Carl Friedrich Beckmann (February 12, 1884 – December 27, 1950) was a German painter, drawing, draftsman, printmaker, sculpture, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the m ...

's paintings. After the death of her husband in 1966, she completed the catalog of the paintings in 1976 with the help of the Max Beckmann Society, which she co-founded in 1951. In her will, she bequeathed a collection of works by Max Beckmann to the Staatliche Museen Berlin, including the works ''Self-Portrait in a Bar'' (1942) and ''Portrait of Erhard Göpel'' (1944) as well as 46 drawings and 52 prints. In 2018, she donated a collection of Max Beckmann artworks to the Berlin State Museums, which caused a controversy because of her husband

's involvement in looting artwork from

Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

victims.

Publications

* ''Leben und Meinungen des Malers Hans Purrmann'', Limes Verl., Wiesbaden 1961 * Max Beckmann, zusammen mit Erhard Göpel, ''Kornfeld'', Bern

References

External links

Beckmann-Sammlung in Berlin: Nachlass eines Kunsträubers
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gopel, Barbara 2017 deaths 1922 births Art historians German women art collectors Women art dealers German art historians