Hans Hess

Hans Hess (1907–1975) was a German museum curator and art historian who worked in Leicester and York.

Biography He was born in Erfurt, the son of a successful Jewish shoe manufacturer and patron of the arts Alfred Hess and his wife Thekla Hess, née Pauson (1884–1968). The artists Feininger, Kandinsky, Klee, and Pechstein were family friends as well as people like who lived in the town where his mother was born and raised. Hans Hess attended the reform boarding schools Wickersdorf Free School Community and Schule am Meer where he also got confronted with a rich variety of expressionist arts, artists like Christian Rohlfs, their paintings and art historians like .

Hess worked for the publisher Ullstein until 1933, when he was forced out for being Jewish. He moved to London in 1935 and co-founded the magazine and, in 1938, helped to launch the . He was interned on the Isle of Man as an 'enemy alien' before being deported to Canada. Hess returned to Britain in 1942. Hess was promoted to Keeper of Art following Thomas' sudden and forced departure in 1946. Later, he was appointed curator at York Art Gallery in 1948, when the gallery reopened after being bombed during the Second World War. He lived with his wife (and fellow German refugee) Lillie Williams and their daughter Anita at 56 Skeldergate in York.

During his time in York he was artistic director of the York Festival in 1954, 1957, 1960, 1963, and 1966. He left York in 1967 to take up a post with the University of Sussex after a public altercation with Jack Wood, a York councillor, regarding the programme for the 1966 Festival.

At the University of Sussex he was Reader in the history and theory of art.

Select publications Hess, H. 1959. Lyonel Feininger. Stuttgart, Kohlhammer Verlag. Hess, H. 1963. George Grosz, 1893–1959. London, Arts Council. Hess, H. 1964. The artist in an industrial society. Hull, University of Hull.