Klaus Wolbert, taken in 2005 in the office on Mathildenhöhe.
(Archive photo: Günther Jockel)
DARMSTADT – Last summer he suddenly reappeared in Darmstadt, and it was as if he hadn’t been away for long. The secession celebrated its centenary, and in the garden of the design house, Klaus Wolbert made a humorous speech, in which he defended decades-old decisions and offered cheerfully to drop in again as a guide. As has now become known, Wolbert, the former cultural consultant and director of the Mathildenhöhe Institute, died on April 26 in Istanbul, where he had spent the last years of his life. He was 80 years old.
The offer to Darmstadt was a joke, but it also showed that Wolbert had found a relaxed and reconciled attitude. Even in his 2005 farewell year, he had spoken of a broken relationship with this city, whose cultural life he had been instrumental in shaping for many years. The break was a consequence of the conflict over Mario Sironi, one of the greats of Italian painting and documenta artists, but also an avowed fascist and follower of Mussolini until the end. Wolbert wanted to exhibit Sironi in Darmstadt, the plans made waves far beyond the city, the then mayor Peter Benz canceled the exhibition. Again and again the director of the Mathildenhöhe institute gently mocked the fact that he regularly brought contemporary Italian art to Darmstadt. For Wolbert, it was part of a strategy to make the exhibition program more international, “it is also the privilege of a director to be able to cultivate his own preferences,” he says once.
Wolbert, born in Aschaffenburg in 1940, was enthusiastic about music and art at an early age. He completed an apprenticeship as a typesetter, trained at the Offenbach Werkkunstschule and worked in advertising. He graduated from the Darmstadt evening grammar school while he was working at the State Museum during the day, then studied art history, worked on the first exhibition projects, wrote his doctoral thesis on the politicized understanding of art by the Nazis, and headed the Graphic Collection of the State Museum from 1982. In 1985 he moved to the Mathildenhöhe Institute, where he took over the management, including the post of Darmstadt Culture Officer, in 1989.
His work in the Darmstadt cultural enterprise went far beyond Mathildenhöhe and Italian interests.Wolbert was a strategically not always skilful but extremely committed doer, he planned the founding of the Jazz Institute and the Municipal Gallery, brought art to the Christmas market and provided for the stately one Expansion of the city’s art collection.
And he left his mark as an exhibition organizer – whether he brought in avant-garde artists to play with the rooms at Mathildenhöhe, or managed large thematic exhibitions on jazz, design, or the idea of life reform closely linked to the Darmstadt artist colony. In his retirement, he turned entirely to Italian art and became the managing director of the VAF Foundation (Frankfurt / Milan), which works closely with the art museum in Rovereto, and organized a sponsorship award for young Italian artists. The foundation honored him as a defining figure in German-Italian cultural exchange. As his last place of residence, however, he chose the city of Istanbul he loved – and there he found time to play the clarinet in a German-Turkish jazz band he founded.
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