Herwarth Walden

Wikipedia Biographical Summary:

"...Herwarth Walden (actual name Georg Lewin, September 16, 1879, in Berlin – October 31, 1941, in Saratov, Russia) was a German Expressionist artist and art expert in many disciplines. He is broadly acknowledged as one of the most important discoverers and promoters of German avant-garde art in the early twentieth century (Expressionism, Futurism, Dadaism, Magic Realism)..."

"...From 1901 to 1911 Walden was married to Else Lasker-Schüler, the leading female representative of German Expressionist poetry. She invented for him the pseudonym "Herwarth Walden", inspired by Henry Thoreau’s novel Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854). In 1912, he married Swedish painter Nell Roslund. In 1919, he became a member of the Communist Party. In 1924, he was divorced from his second wife..."

"...When the economic depressions of the 1930s, and the subsequent rise of National Socialism, compromised his activities. In 1932, he married again and left after they were divorced, because of the threat of the Gestapo. He went to Moscow, where he worked as a teacher and publisher. His sympathies for the avant-garde soon aroused the suspicion of the Stalinist Soviet government, and he had to repeatedly defend against an equation of avant-garde and fascism. Walden died in October 1941 in a Soviet prison in Saratov. The finding of his death was found by the International Tracing Service..."

SOURCE: Wikipedia contributors, 'Herwarth Walden', Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 9 September 2011, 07:48 UTC, <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Herwarth_Walden&oldid=449...> [accessed 24 September 2011]