Ludwig, Peter

Ludwig, Peter (1925–1996). German businessman and art collector, born in Koblenz. He studied art history at Mainz University (writing a doctoral thesis on Picasso in 1950), then went into business and ran various firms, including his wife's family's chocolate factory, which he took over in 1952. His collecting interests were initially very broad, but he came to concentrate on contemporary art, in which he built up one of the world's largest collections, particularly rich in American Pop art (which he bought en bloc at Documenta IV in 1968). He made many donations to public collections, and several cultural bodies in Germany and Austria now bear his name, notably the Ludwig Museum in Cologne (founded 1986), which is one of the world's leading galleries of modern art. According to his obituary in The Times, Ludwig ‘displayed a quasi-scientific approach to collecting and a monastic aversion to the limelight'; his ‘aloofness, and a certain irritability with interviewers, saw to it that his name was not well known outside Germany'. See also BREKER.