Collezionisti Ebrei

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 was on the New York art market in 1947 and was sold to Emil Bührle by Fritz Nathan. When exactly Martha Nothmann sold it is not known. She described it to Reinhart as her most recently sold picture.

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 may not have taken place until 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.

Today, his son Walter Feilchenfeldt (b. 1939) describes it as an orderly sale and one that was vital to his family’s survival during the war years.

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.

Since the 1990s, the Semmels’ heirs have been partially successful in bringing claims in the Netherlands, the UK, Australia, the US and Switzerland. In the Netherlands, the national Restitutions Committee ruled in 2013 and 2021 that one of the four works sold in June 1933 must be returned and compensation of 200,000 euros paid for one of the others. It was held that the sale had not been voluntary, because it was directly connected to persecution by the Nazi regime.

The extent to which this 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.

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 extent to which the sales in Switzerland constitute 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.

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

In 1927, he acquired the Brissago islands on Lake Maggiore in Ticino, had a  villa built, and also exported his art collection to Switzerland. Following the stock market crash of 1929, Emden lost much of his fortune in the Great Depression during the early 1930s, and in 1931 also sold some works from his collection. As a Jew who had converted to Christianity, he was the target of Nazi persecution and was unable to recover financially owing to the discriminatory laws and expropriations from 1933 onwards. He received Swiss citizenship in 1934.

In 1940, his son Hans Erich (1911–2001) inherited his estate, including the Brissago islands and the Monet painting. Owing to the antisemitic racial laws, the Nazi government revoked his German citizenship. He fled in 1941 to Chile, where he was able to obtain citizenship through his mother.

Before fleeing, he had sold the Monet to Emil Bührle via Fritz Nathan in St. Gallen, who like him had emigrated from Germany. Walter Feilchenfeldt, an art dealer who had been active internationally until the outbreak of war in 1939, acted as an advisor on the sale. However, there is dispute as to whether the sale by Emden, who at the time was able to dispose freely of his assets, 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 forced to sell the work to fund his escape to Chile.

Qui vedete Irène Cahen d’Anvers (La piccola Irene) di Pierre-Auguste Renoir, il ritratto di una ragazza considerato da molti un capolavoro. Fu commissionato dalla prestigiosa famiglia di banchieri ebrei Cahen d’Anvers. In seguito fu confiscato e poi restituito dopo la guerra. Dal 1949 appartiene alla Collezione Emil Bührle.

La commissione

La ragazza che vediamo è Irène Cahen d’Anvers (1872–1963). Sua madre Louise Cahen d’Anvers commissionò il ritratto nel 1880 al pittore Pierre-Auguste Renoir, all’epoca ancora sconosciuto. Tuttavia, la committente non apprezzò l’opera e la fece appendere nelle stanze del personale di servizio. Al Salon di Parigi del 1881, d’altro canto, i critici la descrissero in toni molto elogiativi. Oggi è ritenuta uno dei ritratti più belli realizzati dall’artista.

L’artista

Pierre Auguste Renoir, al pari di molti altri impressionisti, visse a lungo in condizioni di povertà. Nessuno voleva comprare i suoi quadri. Alcuni amici della buona società parigina lo aiutarono allora a ottenere commissioni per ritratti, come quello di Irène Cahen d’Anvers. In questo modo Renoir poté farsi conoscere e oggi è uno degli artisti più famosi del suo tempo.

La fanciulla ritratta

La giovane Irène volge lo sguardo carico di attese verso un luogo esterno al quadro, verso il suo futuro? Nel 1891 sposò il banchiere ebreo Moïse de Camondo, dal quale ebbe due figli. Lasciò poi il marito per l’amante, il nobile italiano Carlo Sampieri, che sposò in seconde nozze. La figlia avuta dal primo matrimonio, Béatrice, sposò il compositore Léon Reinach e nel 1933 ricevette questo quadro in dono dalla nonna Louise.

La spoliazione

Nel 1941 il dipinto fu sequestrato dall’organizzazione per le confische naziste «Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR)». Il quadro venne consegnato a Hermann Göring, «ministro del Reich» e comandante in capo della Luftwaffe, l’aeronautica militare. Göring lo cedette al mercante d’arte Gustav Rochlitz in cambio di un tondo fiorentino. Nel 1942 Béatrice Reinach, suo marito e i due figli Fanny e Bertrand fu-rono arrestati. Tutti e quattro furono uccisi ad Auschwitz.

Dopo la resa della Germania nel maggio 1945 il quadro fu ritrovato a Berlino e restituito alla proprietaria. L’erede della famiglia Reinach era la contessa Irène Sampieri (nata Cahen d’Anvers), la modella di Renoir, madre, suocera e nonna di Béatrice, Léon, Fanny e Bertrand Reinach, uccisi dai nazisti. Nel 1949, tramite la mediazione dell’artista svizzero Werner Feuz, Irène Sampieri vendette a Emil Bührle l’opera che le era stata restituita.

Il dipinto, amato da molti, è ancora oggi associato a profondi ricordi di perdita, sofferenza, morte e lutto.

Max Silberberg (1878–1942) è stato un imprenditore e appassionato d’arte attivo a Breslavia. Negli anni Venti la sua collezione comprendeva circa 250 dipinti, disegni e opere plastiche. Nel 1930 la stampa berlinese annoverava Silberberg tra i quattro collezionisti d’arte «conosciuti in tutto il mondo».

Il dipinto La Sultane di Édouard Manet si trovava fin dal 1928 in possesso di Max Silberberg. In conseguenza della crisi economica mondiale, nel 1932 egli vendette a Parigi parte delle sue opere francesi, ma non La Sultane. La presa del potere da parte dei nazionalsocialisti il 30 gennaio 1933 trasformò radicalmente le condizioni di vita della popolazione di origine ebraica, alla quale Silberberg apparteneva. Le misure discriminatorie e le tasse introdotte impoverirono la famiglia Silberberg, che fu costretta a vendere parti della sua collezione d’arte. Altre parti furono saccheggiate o prese in pegno dai nazionalsocialisti. Silberberg fu costretto a vendere la sua villa al servizio di sicurezza delle SS, e la sua azienda venne forzatamente liquidata. Nel 1942 Max e Johanna Silberberg furono deportati e uccisi in un campo di concentramento; il figlio Alfred era fuggito in Inghilterra nel 1939 con la moglie Gerta.

Il dipinto La Sultane si trovava probabilmente già prima del 1933 alla galleria parigina di Paul Rosen-berg, dunque al di fuori della sfera di potere nazista. Nel 1937 il mercante d’arte Rosenberg lo acquistò da Max Silberberg per 17'800 dollari e nel 1939 lo spedì a New York. Rosenberg, anch’egli ebreo, fu costretto a fuggire e nel 1940 raggiunse gli Stati Uniti. Emil Bührle acquistò il quadro da Paul Rosenberg nel settembre del 1953 a New York per 58'500 dollari.