Correspondence; lecture notes; photographs; clippings; and biographical material.
REEL 496: Correspondence, mostly 1949-1962, including letters from Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Frank Lloyd Wright, Thomas Mann, Erika Mann, Zoltan Sepeshy, Julia Feininger, T. Lux Feininger, E.P. Richardson, Mrs. Albert Einstein, Fred Werner, major German museums, and others; lecture notes from Scheyer's art history classes; poetry translated from Dutch to English; photographs; clippings; and biographical material.
REEL 3471: Letters from family and friends of Lyonel Feininger for a biography of him by Scheyer. Correspondents include Julia Feininger, T. Lux Feininger, H. Francis Kortheuer, Maria and Alfred Churchill, Dayrell Kortheuer, and others. Also included is a letter from Scheyer to the Smithsonian Institution discussing his collection of works by the "Blue Four," and asking to exhibit and lecture on the group at the Smithsonian.
Biographical / Historical:
Ernst Scheyer (1900-1995) was an art historian of Detroit, Mich. Scheyer wrote extensively on his friend and artist, Lyonel Feininger. He was a proponent of the art of the German Expressionist and abstract art group, the Blue Four (Blaue Vier), whose members were Wassily Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee, and Alexei Jawlensky.
Provenance:
Material on reel 496 was lent for microfilming in 1973 by Ernst Scheyer. The material on reel 3471, except a letter to the Smithsonian, was donated by Scheyer, in 1965. The letter to the Smithsonian on reel 3471 was transferred from the National Museum of American Art in 1981.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Microfilmed materials must be consulted on microfilm.
Letters and postcards, many illustrated, from Lyonel Feininger to his good friend H. Francis Kortheuer, and a scrapbook kept by Kortheuer containing Feininger letters, drawings, photographs, and clippings of published cartoons from assorted German publications.
Biographical / Historical:
H. Francis Kortheuer was a longtime friend of Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956), d. 1959. Feininger was a painter, printmaker, cartoonist; New York, N.Y. and Berlin, Germany, born in the United States and moved to Germany. He was known as one of the masters of the Bauhaus.
Related Materials:
Lyonel Feininger papers also located at: Busch-Reisinger Museum of Germanic Culture, Harvard Universtiy, Cambridge, Mass.
Provenance:
Lent for microfilming 1959 by Feininger's friend, H. Francis Kortheuer and his son, Dayrell Kortheuer, via art historians Ernst Scheyer and Hans Hess, both biographers of Feininger.
Restrictions:
The Archives of American art does not own the original papers. Use is limited to the microfilm copy.
