Karl Scheffler

Karl Scheffler (17 February 1869 in Hamburg - 25 October 1951 in Überlingen) was a German art critic and publicist.

Life

The son of the master painter John Scheffler first learned the painter's trade in the business of his uncle Claus August Meyer in Hamburg-Eppendorf. Together with his future wife Dora, née Bielefeld, he moved to Berlin at the beginning of the 1890s and attended the Kunstgewerbeschule there. From 1895 to 1906 he worked first as a decorative painter, later as an ornamental draftsman in a wallpaper factory. At the same time, he continued his self-taught education in the field of art history and soon turned to art journalism in addition to his day job. His first articles appeared in the late 1890s in Hans Rosenhagen's journal Das Atelier and in Maximilian Harden's Zukunft. Furthermore, beginning in 1897, Scheffler reported on the Berlin art scene in the renowned monthly magazine Dekorative Kunst, published by Julius Meier-Graefe. While he showed great interest in the representatives of the Arts and Crafts movement such as Henry van de Velde, Peter Behrens and August Endell, he was initially skeptical of the Berlin Secession. But from 1902/03 on, Scheffler became one of the most passionate defenders of German Impressionism and its protagonist Max Liebermann, about whom he also published a successful monograph in 1906. In addition, Scheffler repeatedly criticized the anti-modern Wilhelmine art policy and polemicized against the historically influenced academic art, which at that time set the tone especially for public building projects and monuments.