Karl Hofer

After his birth, Karl Hofer was initially placed with two great aunts, as his father died before his birth and his mother had to earn a living. From 1884 to 1892 Hofer grew up in an orphanage before he began an apprenticeship as a bookseller at the age of 14. In 1897 he began studying painting at the Karlsruhe Art Academy, followed by a stay in Paris and his time as a master student at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart. From 1903 Hofer was supported by the Swiss patron Theodor Reinhart, which enabled him to move to Rome. After his return to Berlin, he took part in an exhibition of the “Berliner Secession” in 1908 and became a member of the new “Freie Secession” in 1913. In 1921 Hofer received a professorship at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Charlottenburg and was admitted to the Prussian Academy of Arts two years later. After his art was classified as “degenerate” by the National Socialists in 1934, he was dismissed from the Berlin academy. In 1938 he was expelled from the Prussian Academy of Arts because Hofer’s wife Mathilde was Jewish. Hofer then divorced his wife and married Elisabeth Schmidt, which led to her readmission. After the war, Hofer became director at the Hochschule der bildenden Künste in 1945 and received an honorary doctorate from Berlin University in 1948. In 1952 he was awarded the Order Pour le mérite for Science and the Arts, followed in 1953 by the award of the Grand Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.