HARTLAUB, GUSTAV

HARTLAUB, GUSTAV (1884–1963), art historian; coined the term Neue Sachlichkeit.* Born in Bremen to a well-established family, he studied modern art history and completed a doctorate in 1910 at Go¨ttingen. From 1920, when he began directing Mannheim's Sta¨dtische Kunsthalle, he spent twelve years building a major collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century art while giving lectures and hosting exhibitions. The Nazis dismissed him in 1933 due to his proclivity to exhibit Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art). He thereafter taught privately in Mannheim and Heidelberg. Appointed honorary professor at Heidelberg in 1946, he remained with the university until his death. For a major exhibition, Hartlaub began soliciting works in May 1923 that featured the ‘‘tangible reality'' found in so much of the period's art. Among others, he invited George Grosz,* Otto Dix,* and Max Beckmann* to submit their work. Cognizant of a conservative or ‘‘classicist'' wing in new realism as well as a leftist or ‘‘Verist'' wing, he included both in his exhibition. When it opened at the Kunsthalle in mid-1925, the exhibition was entitled Die neue Sachlichkeit (the new objectivity). The phrase soon became a means of describing Germany's post-Expressionist milieu. Hartlaub's 124-picture exhibition, representing thirty-two artists, traveled to Dresden and other middle German cities.