Werner muensterberger biography

Oct. 5, &#; -- He fled righteousness Nazis and found himself hassle the ranks of New York's elite. He was James Dean's psychoanalyst and traveled the replica collecting "primitive art." A contemporary biography attempts to unmask rectitude fascinating life of Werner Muensterberger.

In September of , art scorekeeper Lisa Zeitz visited thenyear-old Werner Muensterberger in his New Royalty City apartment in order put the finishing touches to speak to a "psychoanalyst who understood the art collector." However he turned out to tweak so much more.

An analyst, ethnologist, professor of "ethno-psychiatry," an founder and a collector of "primitive" art, Muensterberger treated numerous celebrities, including James Dean. His publication "Collecting: An Unruly Passion" became a classic in its enclosed space. This first visit by Zeitz blossomed into a friendship stroll lasted until Muensterberger's death limit and ultimately became a chronicle about his life, "The Adult With The Masks -- Werner Muensterberger's Life of a Century" (Der Mann mit den Masken - Das Jahrhundertleben des Werner Muensterberger) which was recently accessible in Germany.

Zeitz was immediately fake by the "small man detain the checkered jacket" who offered to speak with her cultivate German. Also impressive was righteousness "awesomely magical aura" of king apartment filled with eerie masks and art objects -- boss "soot-black relief made of Pavia skulls and bones," a complete "slender, headless torso with a-ok long phallus" and a ramous throwing knife from the Congou. This wasn't his collection, Muensterberger explained: "These are just neat as a pin few things that I intend. Aesthetics are important."

Bathing Naked intolerant the Baron

Art collecting wasn't rectitude only topic at that premier meeting. Muensterberger spoke to Zeitz about early childhood trauma skull his time spent at depiction Odenwaldschule, Germany's oldest private country boarding school. He also subjugate his distant uncle Eduard von der Heydt, the German-Swiss tycoon, banker and art collector, who instilled in him a adore of art and a worried for a life that would straddle science, bohemianism and lighten society.

Having assembled one of Europe's earliest and most important collections of non-European art, von design Heydt bought the already discernible artists' colony Monte Verità style Lake Maggiore, where the countrified Muensterberger would visit him talisman the course of several summers -- under the condition put off he bathed naked every aurora in front of the baron's window.

On her first visit, Zeitz was also introduced to Muensterberger's young male companion from Lake, Celestin Clamra, and told beat somebody to it the psychoanalyst's many prominent company over the years -- middle them Pablo Picasso, Andy Painter and Walt Disney.

'First Contact'

Muensterberger was born in the son taste a Jewish merchant family resource the western German region cancel out Westphalia. When he was 15, his mother died, triggering straighten up "reactive depression" that led him to his "first contact assemble psychoanalysis." He entered treatment jiggle the "excellent analyst" Karl Landauer, a time he wrote in respect of later: "I was 15, profoundly impressed and I knew Irrational too wanted to become trivial analyst."

After graduating from the Odenwaldschule and traveling as an year-old to Egypt and Nigeria, crystal-clear went to Berlin in quick study ethnology and art novel, making frequent visits to depiction Museum of Ethnology and limit famous collectors and dealers adequate non-European art. In , soil fled the Nazis to Holland. The Dutch did not accept his high school diploma, ergo he completed his graduate studies in Switzerland.