Edition of Max Beckmann's diaries

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Bernhard Maaz
• Subject Area: Art History
• Term: from 2019 to 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 426144012

Max Beckmann is one of the most important German painters of the 20th century. Since 1903 until the end of his life in 1950 Beckmann has thoroughly kept diaries, not only writing down everyday occurences but crucial thoughts about his working process, his personal encouters and intercommunion with his contemporaries as well as about general political and cultural occurrences. The project aims at compiling a true to original and complete edition of Beckmann’s preserved diaries of the years 1903/04, 1908/09, 1912/13 and 1940–1950. The diaries of the 1920s and 1930s are lost, since the artist destroyed them when the German troops invaded Amsterdam in spring 1940. By identifying works of art, persons and historical events mentioned in the diaries one will get a comprehensive insight into Beckmann’s creative process within the historical circumstances. Since the drawings included in the diaries will be published fort he first time within their context, new light will be shed on the genesis of certain works of art. The artist not only commented the creative process of his works, but also noted buyers and prices. Therefore his diaries are of particular interest for the history of the art market and provenance research. Beckmann’s diaries can be regarded as the painter’s most important biographical documents. They form a substantial source for networks and key events in modernism in Weimar, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, Saint Louis and New York – not only for Beckmann scholars.The Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen (Bavarian State Paintings Collections, BStGS) keep the second largest stock of Beckmann’s paintings in the world and are home of the Max Beckmann Archiv, the leading research facility on the painters’s life and work.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Oliver Kase