Karl Scheffler

Born in Hamburg in 1869 and later active in Berlin, he became a leading German art critic, publicist, and writer. Reference works describe him as an important early historian of modern art, and he is especially associated with close, sometimes combative engagement with the artists and cultural institutions of his day.

He is also remembered for his long connection to the magazine Kunst und Künstler, where his criticism reached a wide audience. His work focused strongly on modern German art and on Berlin itself, a city he wrote about with unusual intensity and independence.

Scheffler died in Überlingen in 1951. Today he is mainly known as a forceful critic of modern art whose essays and reviews offer a vivid window into German artistic debates in the decades before and after the First World War.