Hermann Josef Abs

Who was Hermann Josef Abs?

Hermann Josef Abs was a German banker. He was a member of the board of directors of Deutsche Bank from 1938 to 1945. After World War II he was chairman of Deutsche Bank, and contributed to the reconstruction of the German economy.

Conceptual artist Hans Haacke created a work in 1974 called Manet-PROJEKT '74, which was supposed to be displayed in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum. Manet-PROJEKT '74 was a "ten-panel work about the turbulent and surprising fate of a painting by Édouard Manet, Bunch of Asparagus, as it passed through the hands of its various owners before being bought for the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum by an acquisition committee of the museum's friends. Every temporary owner of the painting was presented, along with their biographical data, including that of the Chairman of the committee, the German banker Hermann J Abs, who had played a key role in the economic design and stabilization of Nazism. Such biographical details had tended to be suppressed in the post-war period, but Haacke had only to go the Bonn University library to dig them up".