"Karl Ernst Osthaus (15 April 1874, Hagen – 25 March 1921, Merano) was an important German patron of avant-garde art and architecture.
In 1902, Osthaus founded the Folkwang Museum in Hagen, Germany. After his death, the city of Hagen was unable to purchase the museum collection and in 1922 Hagen was outbid by the neighbouring city of Essen which now houses the Folkwang Collection. A separate museum survives in Hagen, the Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum.
Osthaus was a notable patron of the European avant-garde. Although in his early life he tended to German nationalism, active in the Alldeutscher Verband, the Pan-German League, and supporting figures such as the Austrian Georg von Schönerer, Osthaus´s nationalism became tempered with interest in transforming Hagen and Germany into the leading centers of the European avant-garde. Under the guidance of Henry van de Velde, Osthaus began a collection of European modernist painting that comprised one of the first purely modernist collections to be open to the public. The Folkwang in Hagen sponsored some of the earliest exhibits of Expressionist painting, and the collection early on included works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, and Christian Rohlfs and work by non-German artists such as Aristide Maillol, Johan Thorn Prikker, and Henri Matisse." - (en.wikipedia.org 29.01.2020)
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