Alfred Gold
Alfred Gold was an Austrian writer, theatre critic, journalist, art collector, and dealer.
Life
Gold was born the son of the Jewish merchant Samuel Gold and Sara, née Pipper, in Vienna, where he attended grammar school from 1885 to 1892. He studied philosophy and German at the University of Vienna, where he earned his doctorate. His studied with Robert von Zimmermann, Theodor Gomperz, Jakob Minor and Alfred von Berger.Alfred Gold belonged to the Viennese modernism of the late 19th century, the "Jeunesse dorée" in Vienna and Berlin and also called himself Fin de Siécle or Alwin Goldeck. He worked as an assistant editor at Die Zeit, the weekly magazine co-founded by Hermann Bahr.
He was the author of the text of Arnold Schoenberg's first complete surviving work in hellen Träumen hab ich Dich oft geschaut for voice and piano, composed in the summer of 1893.
Until 1901 Gold worked in Vienna as editor of the journal Die Zeit and also published in the journal Pan. From 1901 to 1911 he was the Berlin correspondent of the Frankfurter Zeitung, writing also for the Neue Rundschau. Together with Alphonse Neumann, Gold, a linguist and Francophile, retranslated Gustave Flaubert's novel A Young Man into German. In 1905, Cassirer was to publish his play Ausklang; however, Max Reinhardt's planned production of the one-act play did not take place due to a dispute involving accutions of plagiarism: In November 1904, the Berliner Tageblatt accused Siegfried Jacobsohn, later editor of Weltbühne, of having taken over Alfred Gold's texts, which led to Jacobsohn's dismissal from Welt am Montag and the temporary end of his career.
In 1911, Gold published a popular science book on Frans Hals, and in 1912 he received his doctorate in Münster on Johann Carl Wilck: Ein Maler des deutschen Empire, the first monograph on the painter Johann Carl Wilck, who was born in Schwerin in 1772 and died near Nuremberg in 1819. Together with Max Liebermann, Carl Steffeck: ; seine Kunst, sein Leben, seine Werke was published to accompany the exhibition from Carl Steffeck's estate in 1913. From August 31, 1914, to the end of March 1916, Gold gave the wartime, artists' pamphlets. Heft 1 – to 64/65, published by Paul Cassirer. All 272 contributions are original lithographs; graphics by, among others. Hans Baluschek, Ernst Barlach, Max Beckmann, Walter Bony, August Gaul, Willi Geiger, Rudolf Großmann, Otto Hundt, Willy Jaeckel, Arthur Kampf, Georg Kolbe, Käthe Kollwitz, Max Liebermann, Hans Meid, Oskar Nerlinger, Max Oppenheimer, Carl Olof Petersen, Max Slevogt, Ottomar Starke, Max Unold, Wilhelm Wagner, Karl Walser, E. R. Weiß and many more. The special issue Max Liebermann appeared as issue 6. The hurrapatriotic series was discontinued as World War I progressed.
In 1917, Gold worked as a correspondent for the Berliner Tageblatt in Copenhagen. On November 5, 1917, he wrote from the Hotel Esplanade in Berlin to his acquaintance from Viennese times, Leopold Andrian, that he was to write an article on behalf of the Danish paper Politiken about the Reich Foreign Minister Ottokar Theobald Otto Maria Graf Czernin von und zu Chudenitz and asked him to arrange an audience.
After the First World War, Gold worked for several years in Paris; in 1927 he returned to Berlin and worked in the art trade. In 1929 he set up his own business in "small, intimate rooms" at Viktoriastrasse 5, showing mainly works of French Impressionism, as described in an English-language catalog from 1930. His initiative led to an exhibition of masterpieces of 19th century German and French painting in 1930, organized by the Kunstverein für das Rheinland und Westfalen in Düsseldorf in 1930. Gold also wrote the introduction to the catalog. In 1931 he established a branch in Paris at the Galerie George Petit.