Born in Stuttgart on 29 December 1856, Wilhelm Albert Gaiser joined the art dealership H. G. Gutekunst in 1881 when it moved to its new premises at Olgastrasse 1B in Stuttgart. He was an erudite pupil and supported his patron in many ways. He was regarded as an infallible expert on Dürer and Rembrandt and brought important collections to Stuttgart and to the auctions.
So it was only natural that when Heinrich Gottlob Gutekunst wanted to retire from business life, Gaiser took over the company in 1910. That year, the company pulled off a coup: Albrecht Dürer's 1504 preparatory drawing for the engraving ‘Adam und Eva’ from the Prague collection of Baron Adalbert von Lanna (1867-1909) realised the incredible record price of 65,000 gold marks. The print was purchased by the American banker John Pierpont Morgan and is still one of the masterpieces in the J. Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. The price at the time was equivalent to 250 times the annual salary of a miner - and would be worth around CHF 18.5 million today!
The outbreak of the First World War brought the otherwise flourishing international trade to a standstill and business went badly. Perhaps this is why the tragic accident happened: in 1915, Gaiser was run over by a tram and fatally injured while walking down the street, lost in thought.
None of his five children could or wanted to take over the business, so the company F. A. C. Prestel from Frankfurt am Main, together with London based Richard G. Gutekunst, the son of H. G. Gutekunst, acquired the entire stock and ‘with all interests’ in order to continue the paternal art dealership H. G. Gutekunst under the previous name.