Dietlinde Hamburger Collection of Carl Grossberg Papers, 1914-1999

Carl Grossberg was an artist, architect, and interior designer who was a member of the New Objectivity movement (Neue Sachlichkeit) and known for his depictions of industrial landscapes. He was born Georg Carl Wilhelm Grandmontagne on September 6, 1894 in Elberfeld, Germany. His father, Georg Grossberg, would change the family name from Grandmontagne to Grossberg in 1914 as a response to anti-French sentiment. Grossberg attended RWTH Aachen University from 1913 to 1914, where he studied architecture and painting under August von Brandis before being drafted into the German military in 1914. Grossberg served with the 118th Landwehr Infantry Regiment. When he was released from service in 1919, Grossberg applied and was accepted to the Weimar Saxon Grand Ducal Art School, which would soon be merged with the Weimar Academy of Fine Art to create the Bauhaus, where he studied under Lyonel Feininger.

Grossberg moved to Sommerhausen in August 1921 and began residing in one of the medieval towers along the city wall, where he and his family would live until his death in 1940. He married Mathilde (Tilde) Schwarz in 1923, and together they had two daughters: Eva and Leonore, born in 1924 and 1927 respectively.

Grossberg’s early works consisted of urban cityscapes, architectural studies, and surreal factory scenes that he called his dream pictures (Traumbilder). His interest moved further into industrial themes by the late 1920s and would stay firmly within that realm until his death. Grossberg used this interest to supplement his income following the stock market collapse by fulfilling industrial commissions; notable commissioning companies include BEWAG Berlin (Berliner Städtische Elektrizitätswerke Akt.-Ges.), NORTA (Norddeutsche Tapetenfabrik Hölscher & Breimer), and the food processing company Dr. Oetker. In addition to art commissions, Grossberg also began working as an interior designer in the early 1930s, designing primarily modern-styled apartments. His design clients later expanded to include the modernist architects Erich Mendelsohn, Otto Ernst Schweizer, and Adolf Meyer.

Carl Grossberg was called up again for military service in November 1939 and died on October 19, 1940 while on military leave. His exact cause of death is not clear—while the few sources that discuss Grossberg’s life say that he died in a car accident, Hamburger states in her dissertation that he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Dietlinde Hamburger nee Röll was born in Würzburg, West Germany in 1958. She began studying the cello at the University of Music Würzburg before switching to German, English, and art history at the University of Würzburg and graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1980. The following year she began a master’s program in American Studies at Yale University, and obtained her M.A. in 1982. At Yale she met her husband, fellow student Jeffrey Hamburger, and they married in 1986. 

Hamburger obtained her PhD in Art History from the University of Kassel in 1990 with a dissertation on the German artist Carl Grossberg titled Industrie and Imagination: Carl Grossberg (1894-1940) und die Neue Sachlichkeit . The dissertation is the most extensive work on Grossberg available and makes thorough use of his personal estate as well as interviews with Grossberg’s family, friends, and acquaintances.  

Hamburger was a Smithsonian Predoctoral Fellow for the Hirschhorn Museum from 1986 to 1987 and worked as the curator of the University of Toronto Museum of Art from 1997 to 2000. She authored and curated “Reclaiming a Lost Generation: The Feldberg Collection” (2002), co-authored Lyonel Feininger in Ribnitz und Damgarten (2016), and translated the book Crown and Veil: Female Monasticism from the Fifth to the Fifteenth Century (2008) from German into English.

Dietlinde Hamburger passed away in Belmont, Massachusetts in 2017.