Jewish Collectors

Moïse Lévi de Benzion (1873–1943) was an Egyptian Jewish real estate and department store owner. In Cairo, he headed the family company Grands Magasins Benzion, which was founded in 1857. He used part of his wealth to accumulate a collection of artworks as well as Asian and Egyptian antiquities. De Benzion owned a residence south of Paris. The Nazis persecuted him due to their antisemitic ideology. Under life-threatening circumstances, he succeeded in fleeing to La Roche-Canillac in the unoccupied zone of France, where he died in 1943.

De Benzion’s collection remained in his residence. The ‘Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce (ERR)’, an organisation set up by the Nazi party to loot cultural property, plundered it in 1941. More than 1,200 works of art were seized. Camille Corot’s painting Sitting Monk, Reading and Alfred Sisley’s Summer at Bougival arrived in the Lucerne gallery of Theodor Fischer in
1941, who sold them on in 1942 to Emil Bührle. De Benzion’s heirs submitted a claim to the Chamber on Looted Assets of the Swiss Supreme Court after 1945, and won their case.

Bührle returned both paintings to the heirs in 1948, then reacquired them in 1950 after their value had been reassessed. In 1951, Bührle sued Fischer to recover the amount he had paid when first acquiring the works. The Federal Court accepted the claim. They decided that the purchase had been made by Bührle in good faith and that at the time of the purchase, he could not have known of the works’ unlawful provenance. The verdict remains controversial to this day, as Bührle may very well have known about the systematic looting of the Jewish collectors in 1942.

The former owner of the painting The Visit by Gerard ter Borch was the art collector and patron Maurice de Rothschild (1881–1957). He inherited it in 1934 from his father Baron Edmond James de Rothschild. A scion of the famous French banking family, he had instead chosen a career in politics. In 1919 he became a member of the National Assembly representing the Hautes-Pyrénées region; from 1929 onwards, he was also a senator and representative of the liberal democratic party in the French Parliament.

In 1940, the Vichy regime, which was collaborating with the Nazis, revoked the de Rothschilds’ French citizenship. Forced to flee, they received support from the Portuguese consul in Bordeaux who issued visas to some 30,000 refugees, including 10,000 Jews, despite an entry ban. Thus it was that the de Rothschilds travelled via Portugal and Scotland to Switzerland, where they settled in the vicinity of Geneva.

In 1943, the ter Borch painting was confiscated for the ‘Führermuseum’ planned by Adolf Hitler in Linz. This followed a decree he had issued in 1937 giving him a right of first access in respect of works that had been stolen from people subject to political and racial persecution. After the war in Europe ended in May 1945, the Allies recovered the ter Borch picture and brought it to the Central Collecting Point in Munich. From there it was transferred to France and returned to Maurice de Rothschild on 27 March 1946.

In the years that followed, the work was sold under normal conditions and passed through a number of galleries in New York and London until, in 1955, it ended up in the hands of Emil Bührle.

Born in Vienna into a Jewish banking family, Alphonse Kann (1870–1948) grew up in Paris and soon became friendly with artists such as Maurice Denis, Paul Sérusier or Édouard Vuillard. He was also active in the world of collecting and began to put together a collection of his own. He supported the buyers’ collective initiated in 1935 by the art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler to provide financial support to artists. Due to the increasing abuse, humiliation and deprivation of rights of Jews primarily in neighbouring Germany but also in France, Kann fled from Paris to London in 1938, where he obtained British citizenship.

In 1941, the ‘Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce (ERR)’, an organisation set up by the Nazi party to loot cultural property, seized 1,802 works from Kann’s house near Paris. Edgar Degas’s paintings Madame Camus at the Piano and Dancers in the Foyer, along with Édouard Manet’s The Toilet arrived in the Lucerne gallery of Theodor Fischer in 1941 and 1942. There, they were bought by Emil Bührle: Madame Camus at the Piano for 120,000 francs, Dancers in the Foyer for 65,000, and The Toilet for 35,000.

Kann submitted a claim to the Chamber on Looted Assets of the Swiss Supreme Court after 1945, and won his case. In 1948, two months before Kann’s death, Bührle returned the three paintings to him. In early 1951, his heirs agreed to sell the works back to Bührle, who paid 24,000 pounds (around 290,000 francs) for them. In 1951, in a recovery suit, he claimed back from Fischer the price he had paid when first acquiring the works. The Federal Court accepted the claim. They decided that the purchase had been made by Bührle in good faith and that at the time of the purchase, he could not have known of the works’ unlawful provenance.

The verdict remains controversial to this day, as Bührle may very well have known about the systematic looting of the Jewish collectors in 1942.

Paul Rosenberg (1881–1959) was one of the most important gallerists of the 20th century. He promoted young artists such as Pablo Picasso, Marie Laurencin, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger and Henri Matisse.

In 1908, he opened a gallery in Paris. Rosenberg’s influence extended across the Atlantic. He maintained close ties with figures including Alfred H. Barr, Director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Rosenberg was of Jewish origin, and in 1940 he fled Paris to escape the life-threatening Nazi persecution and went to New York, where he managed to establish his art gallery anew. Until his death, he continued brokering works to collectors in Europe as well, including Emil Bührle.

Rosenberg had inherited the painting Before the Start by Edgar Degas in 1924, and acquired A Girl Reading by Camille Corot in 1939. In 1941, the ‘Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce (ERR)’, an organisation set up by the Nazi party to loot cultural property and led by NSDAP ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, seized the holdings from Rosenberg’s gallery that had remained in Europe. The works were swapped for others from the gallery of Theodor Fischer in Lucerne, from whom Bührle acquired them in 1942. Paul Rosenberg submitted a claim to the Chamber on Looted Assets of the Swiss Supreme Court after 1945, and won his case.

Bührle returned the paintings in 1948. A few weeks later, he reached an agreement with Rosenberg to repurchase the Corot, and the following year he was able to reacquire the Degas as well. In 1951, in a recovery suit, he claimed back from Fischer the price he had paid when first acquiring the works. The Federal Court accepted the claim. They decided that the purchase had been made by Bührle in good faith and that at the time of the purchase, he could not have known of the works’ unlawful provenance.

The verdict remains controversial to this day, as Bührle may very well have known about the systematic looting of the Jewish collectors in 1942.

The art dealer and collector Siegfried Lämmle (1863–1953) opened an art and antiques dealership in Munich in 1894, specializing in medieval sculptures, paintings, graphic works, textiles and crafts. In 1928, his son Walter (1902–1996) joined the business.

Like all artists and art dealers, they were obliged to join the Nazis’ ‘Reich Chamber of Fine Arts’ if they wished to continue working. As Jews, they were soon expelled again owing to antisemitism. In autumn 1936, they therefore had to close the art dealership and sell their works at well below their actual value. Siegfried Lämmle and his wife Betty fled to the US in September 1938 to escape the increasing antisemitic oppression in Germany. They settled in Los Angeles, where Siegfried opened the Laemmle Gallery together with his son.

In 1938, the Munich ‘Gestapo’ confiscated a number of sculptures belonging to the Lämmles, selling them to the Bavarian National Museum in 1941. This included the Styrian Holy Knight, along with two other works that now form part of the Bührle Collection. These were returned to Lämmle in March 1950. Siegfried Lämmle died in 1953 and his son took over the gallery.

In 1955, Bührle acquired five medieval sculptures from the estate of Siegfried Lämmle via the art dealer Henri Heilbronner in Lucerne.

Berthold (1865–1942) and Martha Nothmann (1874–1967) acquired Paul Cézanne’s Landscape in around 1926/27. Berthold Nothmann was director of the Huldschinsky pipe factory in Gleiwitz (now Gliwice, Poland), and became director of the Upper Silesian Steelworks Corporation after the First World War. His success enabled him to accumulate a collection of German and French art. After he retired in 1931, he and his wife moved to Berlin-Wannsee, where they remained until 1938/39, some time after the Nazis came to power.

Owing to Nazi persecution, however, they ultimately fled to London to escape the threat on their lives. They sold part of their collection in order to be able to fund their journey and pay the ‘Reich flight tax’ and the ‘Jewish capital levy’ to the Nazi regime. They were able to take some works with them, which they sold while in exile to support themselves.

Berthold Nothmann died in London in 1942, while Martha managed to reach the US before the war ended. In 1947, she offered some paintings to the collector Oskar Reinhart in Winterthur, writing: ‘Please excuse me for venturing to write to you so directly, but times are so hard and we had imagined that our lives would end differently.’ Cézanne’s Landscape from Martha Nothmann's collection was bought by the art dealer Fritz Nathan in the summer of 1947 in New York. He then sold it not to the Winterthur collector Oskar Reinhart, as Martha Nothmann suspected, but to Emil Bührle.

The extent to which this sale constitutes a confiscation as a result of Nazi persecution will be assessed as part of the Kunsthaus Zürich’s new provenance research strategy, which includes the Emil Bührle Collection. Unquestionably, it was caused by the Nazi state’s policy of persecution and looting. However, the change of ownership did not take place in a country that was occupied by Nazi Germany or limited in its freedom to act, and only after the war ended in 1945.

The art dealer Walter Feilchenfeldt (1894–1953) had been working at the art salon of Paul Cassirer in Berlin since 1919. Following the latter’s death in 1926, he took over as head of the gallery, which dealt in Post-Impressionist and European modernist artists. Owing to the Nazi party’s rise to power and the increasing threat to Jews, he fled in November 1933 to Amsterdam, where he established the local branch of the Paul Cassirer art salon. In 1936, he married Marianne Breslauer (1909–2001).

The couple were in Switzerland when the Second World War began in September 1939, and were unable to return to the Netherlands. Feilchenfeldt was issued with a residence permit for Switzerland, but not a work permit. He was only able to sell pictures in Switzerland with the assistance of third parties, such as Fritz Nathan in St. Gallen.

Vincent van Gogh’s The Old Tower had been in the possession of the Paul Cassirer gallery since 1930. Feilchenfeldt had sent it to Switzerland for safekeeping before the Second World War. Fritz Nathan purchased it for 12,000 francs in April 1942, then sold it to Emil Bührle three years later for 20,000 francs. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s portrait Georges-Henri Manuel had likewise been held by Cassirer’s gallery since 1930. Shortly after the Nazi takeover, Feilchenfeldt brought it to Switzerland, where it was displayed at the Kunsthaus Zürich from May to August 1933. It was also shown in places not under Nazi control up to 1940, including exhibitions in Rotterdam, Bern, New York, London, Amsterdam and St. Gallen.

When Feilchenfeldt ran short of money in 1942, Nathan sold it on his behalf. Feilchenfeldt received 42,000 of the 45,000 francs that Bührle paid for the work.

The Foundation E. G. Bührle Collection announced on the 14th of June 2024 that it will seek fair and just solutions with the heirs' representatives for these works.

The Road by Paul Gauguin was owned by the Berlin-based textile entrepreneur Richard Semmel (1875–1950). Shortly after the Nazis took power in 1933, Semmel, due to antisemitic persecution and his close ties to the German Democratic Party, fled Germany for the Netherlands along with his wife Clara Cäcilie Brück (1879–1945).

To finance their emigration to the US and have money to support themselves thereafter, Semmel had the art collection which he had exported from Germany sold off at the auction house Frederik Muller & Co. in Amsterdam in June 1933. The Gauguin painting failed to find a buyer. By March 1937 at the latest, it had made its way to Switzerland. It has not yet been established whether Semmel received the proceeds of the sale, or indeed how much. Emil Bührle acquired the painting in 1937 in an auction at the Max Moos gallery in Geneva, for the price of 9,000 francs.

The Semmels were able to flee to the US via Chile before the Netherlands were occupied in spring 1940, settling in New York in 1941 and living in poverty. Richard Semmel died in December 1950.

Richard Semmel's heirs have brought  anumber of successful legal claims since the 1990s in the Netherlands, the UK, Australia, the US and Switzerland. Between 2009 and 2021, the Dutch Restitutions Committee concluded on several occasions that Richard Semmel had been obliged to sell the art collection as a result of the persecution her had suffered, and recommended that, in some cases, works should be returned or financial compensation paid.

The Foundation E. G. Bührle Collection announced on the 14th of June 2024 that it will seek fair and just solutions with the heirs' representatives for this work.

Hugo Nathan (1861–1922), a banker from Frankfurt, was known for his position as director of Deutsche Bank and his role as an art collector who organized salons for art enthusiasts. Claude Monet’s The Dinner joined his art collection in 1912.

Following his death, his wife Martha (1874–1958) inherited the collection. She came from the Jewish banking family of Dreyfus-Jeidels in Frankfurt, whose company the Nazis compulsorily liquidated in 1938. Martha Nathan fled in 1937 to Paris, where she obtained French citizenship.

In 1938, she was forced to sell her villa in Frankfurt, but received only half its market value from the Nazi authorities. She was compelled to give six paintings to the Städelsches Kunstinstitut and pay the ‘Reich flight tax’. She settled in Geneva in 1939, where she lived until her death.

After the war was over, she successfully claimed compensation for the assets stolen from her in Germany and France. She had already deposited some of the works with the Kunsthalle Basel in 1930. Of these, The Dinner was shown in 1944 at Galerie Aktuaryus in Zurich, where Emil Bührle bought it. Restitution claims by the heirs of Martha Nathan in respect of works that were also deposited in Switzerland and later entered the collections of two museums in the US were dismissed by the courts in 2006 and 2007. The fact that they were exported prior to 1933 and were sold outside the area of Nazi rule was a crucial factor in the judgment.

The extent to which the sale in Switzerland constitutes a confiscation as a result of Nazi persecution will be assessed as part of the Kunsthaus Zürich’s new provenance research strategy, which includes the Emil Bührle Collection.

Franz Ullstein (1868–1945) was one of the five sons of Leopold Ullstein, the founder of the Ullstein publishing house, and head of the newspapers’ editorial staff. The Berlin-based newspaper empire spent many years attempting to combat National Socialism through its publications. In 1934, the publishing house owned by the Ullsteins, who were Jews, was compulsorily sold due to antisemitic ideology. Franz and Rudolf were forced to flee before the war, abandoning much of their wealth in the process. The family found itself in financial distress, and did not obtain partial restitution of the publishing house and their properties until 1952.

Franz Ullstein had owned Gustave Courbet’s The Sculptor Louis-Joseph Lebœuf and Monet’s Garden at Giverny by Claude Monet since 1930. In 1935, he sent the portrait of Lebœuf to an exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zürich, where it initially remained. It was transferred to his son Kurt (1907–2003) in 1936 and, in 1939, passed to the latter’s sister Lisbeth Malek-Ullstein (1905–2001), who was already in neutral Portugal and remained there until 1941. After that, she fled to the US, where she stayed until her death.

In 1941, the painting was sent to Geneva, at which point all trace of it is lost. It has not yet been possible to ascertain how much it was sold for, or whether the Ullsteins received the proceeds. It turned up in 1942 at the St. Gallen gallery of Fritz Nathan, who sold it to Emil Bührle for 26,000 francs.

Franz Ullstein tried unsuccessfully to sell Monet’s Garden at Giverny in 1936 and 1941. Finally, in March 1941, the gallerist Tony Aktuaryus in Zurich sold it to Bührle for 16,800 francs. Here again, it has not been established whether Ullstein received the proceeds of the sale.

The Foundation E. G. Bührle Collection announced on the 14th of June 2024 that it will seek fair and just solutions with the heirs' representatives for these works.

Max Emden (1874–1940) purchased Claude Monet’s Poppy Field near Vétheuil from the Caspari Gallery in Munich between 1928 and 1930. The Hamburg-based businessman had guided the family’s textile trading company to international success from 1904 onwards.

In 1927, he acquired the Brissago islands on Lake Maggiore in Ticino, had a villa built, and also sent part of his art collection there. After moving to Switzerland, Emden sold a large part of his holdings in department stores in Germany between 1927 and 1928, but retained the businesses in Budapest and Stockholm.

He amalgamated his property holdings in the company M. J. Emden & Söhne, which was compulsorily liquidated by the German authorities in 1944. Historical sources do not indicate whether his wealth was adversely affected by the stock market crash of 1929. In 1931 in Berlin, he sold some works from his collection which he had no use for at his villa in Ticino.

Emden was Jewish by birth, and despite being baptised a Christian and granted Swiss citizenship in 1934, he was persecuted, disenfranchised and had all his properties seized by the Nazis.

Following his death in 1940, his son Hans Erich (1911–2001) inherited his assets in Switzerland, essentially comprising the Brissago islands, the villa and its interior. Hans Erich Emden was not granted either permanent residence or permission to work in Switzerland. As a Jew, he also had his German citizenship revoked in 1940. In 1941, he therefore fled via a circuitous route to Chile, where he was obtained citizenship through his mother.

Before leaving, he had instructed the art dealer Walter Feilchenfeldt to sell the Monet painting. It thus came into the possession of the art dealer Fritz Nathan, from whom Emil Bührle bought it for 35,000 francs. 

There is dispute as to whether the sale by Emden constituted a ‘conventional’ liquidation of his father’s estate or whether, as a Jew, he was acting under duress because of Nazi persecution and was compelled to sell the work to fund his escape.

The painting you see here, Irène Cahen d'Anvers (Little Irene) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, is a portrait of a young girl that is regarded by many as a masterpiece. It is commissioned in 1880 by the Cahens d’Anvers, a respected Jewish family. Later it is looted by the Nazis. It is returned to its owners after the war. In 1949, Emil Bührle acquires the work for his collection.

The commission 

The girl we see here is Irène Cahen d’Anvers (1872–1963). Her mother, Louise Cahen d’Anvers, commissions the portrait in 1880 from the then unknown painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. However, she is not happy with the result, and has it hung in the servants’ quarters of her house. When it is shown at the Paris Salon of 1881, though, it receives high praise from art critics. Today, it is considered to be one of the artist’s finest portraits. 

The artist

Like many other Impressionist painters, Pierre Auguste Renoir spends a long time living in poverty. No one wants to buy his pictures. Then, friends from the higher Parisian society help him secure commissions for portraits – including the one of Irène Cahen d’Anvers. This garners him attention, and today he is considered one of the most famous artists of his time. 

The subject

Young Irène gazes expectantly at a point outside the picture, where her future lies. In 1891, she marries the Jewish banker Moïse de Camondo, with whom she has two children. She leaves her husband for her lover, the Italian nobleman Carlo Sampieri, who becomes her second spouse. Her daughter from her first marriage, Béatrice, marries the composer Léon Reinach. In 1933, she is given this picture as a present by her grandmother Louise. 

The looting

In 1941, the painting is seized by the «Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce», an organisation set up by the Nazi party to loot cultural property. It is handed over to Hermann Göring, «Reich minister» and commander in chief of the German air force. He in turn exchanges it for a Florentine tondo from the art dealer Gustav Rochlitz. In 1942, Béatrice Reinach, her husband and their two children Fanny and Bertrand are arrested by the Nazis. All four are murdered at Auschwitz.

Following the German capitulation in May 1945, the painting is found in Berlin by the Allies and is returned to its owner. The heir to the Reinach family is Countess Irène Sampieri (née Cahen d’Anvers), Renoir’s model, mother, mother-in-law and grandmother to the murdered Béatrice, Léon, Fanny and Bertrand Reinach. In 1949, Irène Sampieri sells the portrait to Emil Bührle via the Swiss artist Werner Feuz.

To this day, the much-loved painting is imbued with profound memories of loss, suffering, death and mourning.

Max Silberberg (1878–1942) was an entrepreneur and art enthusiast from Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland). In the J.920s, his collection comprised some 250 paintings, drawings and sculptures, In 1930, Silberberg was cited by the Berlin press as one of the four art collectors 'who is known around the world',

Max Silberberg owned the Édouard Manet painting La Sultane from 1928. Caught up in the Great Depression, he sold some of his French works in Paris in 1932; however, La Sultane was not among them. The Nazi takeover of power on 30 January 1933 fundamentally changed the lives of the Jewish population, which Silberberg was a part of. The discriminatory measures and the taxes they were forced to pay reduced the Silberberg family to penury, pressuring them to sell some parts of their art collection. Other parts were looted by the Nazis or claimed in lieu of payment, Silberberg was forced to sell his villa to the SS security service, and his company was compulsorily liquidated. In 1942, the Nazis deported and murdered Max and Johanna Silberberg in a concentration camp; their son Alfred fled to the UK in 1939, accompanied by his wife Gerta.

The painting La Sultane was probably in the Paris gaIlery of art dealer Paul Rosenberg prior to 1933, putting it beyond the limits of Nazi rule. Rosenberg acquired it from Max Silberberg in 1937 for 17,8OO US dollars and sent it to New York in 1939. Rosenberg, who was Jewish himself, was forced to fIee to the US in 1940. Emil Bührle acquired the picture from Paul Rosenberg in September 1953 for 68,600 dollars.