Max Silberberg (27 February 1878, in Neuruppin – after 1942, in Ghetto Theresienstadt or Auschwitz concentration camp) was a major cultural figure in Breslau,[1] a German Jewish entrepreneur, art collector and patron who was robbed and murdered by the Nazis. His art collection, among the finest of its era, has been the object of numerous restitution claims.[2]

Early life

Max Silberberg was born in Neuruppin in Brandenburg in 1878 as the son of the tailor Isidor Silberberg. Silberberg's talents were recognized and he was sent to high school while his sister Margarete trained as a seamstress.[3] After completing his military service, the family moved to Beuthen in Upper Silesia. At the age of 24,Silberberg joined the factory for metal processing M. Weißenberg, part of the Vereinigung der Magnesitwerke cartel, which manufactured refractory building materials for lining blast furnaces. He married the daughter of the owner, Johanna Weißenberg, and became a co-owner of the company. Their son Alfred Silberberg was born on 8 November 1908.[4]

In 1920 Max Silberberg moved to Breslau with his family. The Silberbergs lived here in a large villa at Landsberger Straße 1–3 (today ul. Kutnowska). The dining room, including the furniture and the carpet, was designed by architect August Endell in 1923 in the Art Deco style and decorated with outstanding collection of paintings, mostly with German and French works from the 19th and 20th centuries. Silberberg also had an extensive art library - mainly with French-language literature on modern art.[5]

Silberberg was involved in the cultural life of Wroclaw and invited to lectures in his house - for example on the history of Judaism. He was one of the co-founders of the Jewish Museum Association in Wroclaw, as its 1st chairman since March 1928. Together with the director of the Breslau Castle Museum, Erwin Hinze, he was one of the organizers of the exhibition Judaism in the history of Silesia in 1929. In addition, he supported the Jewish Museum as a patron and donated a silver Torah shield from the 18th century and a silver Torah pointer. He was also a member of the board of trustees of the Silesian Museum of Fine Arts and helped found and was a member of the board of the Society of Friends of Art, which supported the museum as a funding institution.[6]

In 1932, Silberberg sold 19 artworks at the George Petit auction house in Paris. After the auction he still owned more than 200 artworks, including "works by Courbet, Delacroix, Manet, Pissarro, and Sisley and remained an avide collector, even continuing to purchase new works".[7]

Nazi persecution, robbery and murder

The robbery and murder of Silberberg by the Nazi was described as a "Model Case" of Jewish persecution by the historian Monika Tatzkow in her chapter on Silberberg published in Lost lives, lost art: Jewish collectors, Nazi art theft and the quest for justice.[8]

When the Nazis came to power on 30 January 1933, Silberberg's position changed overnight. In Breslau (now called Wroclaw) Nazi persecution of Jews was immediate and devastating. Silberberg, like another famous Jewish Breslau art collector, Ismar Littmann, immediately lost all of his public offices and was hounded and robbed.[9] In 1935 SS-Sturmbannführer Ernst Müller took Silberberg's villa for the SS security service,[10] forcing the sale at a low price. Silberberg moved with his family into a small rented apartment and was forced to part with the majority of his art collection, which was auctioned in several "Jew auctions" at the Graupe auction house in Berlin.[11] In addition to paintings and drawings by Menzel, Degas, Cézanne and others, and sculptures by Rodin, his extensive library was also sold off.[12]

During the November pogroms in 1938, his son Alfred Silberberg was deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp and imprisoned for eight weeks. Released on the condition that he leave Germany immediately, Alfred and his wife Gerta fled to Great Britain.

Silberberg's Weissenberg company was “Aryanized”[13] and transferred to industrialist Carl Wilhelm from Breslau, and Silberberg's wealth plundered by special taxes designed by Nazis to rob Jews of their assets. Forced to sell some of the few works of art in his possession to the Silesian Museum of Fine Arts, Silberberg did not receive the sales proceeds, which went to the "Aryanized" company Weißenberg.[14] The few artworks that remained in his possession until 1940, were "Aryanized" by the Museum of Fine Arts in Breslau.[15]

At the end of 1941, his son Alfred, living in exile in London, received the last sign of life from his parents. Max and Johanna Silberberg were deported by the Nazis from Grüssau monastery assembly camp, on 3 May 1942 - presumably to the Theresienstadt ghetto. There are no records of the exact day or place of death. Various historians assume that Silberberg and his wife were murdered in Auschwitz. After the Second World War, Alfred Silberberg had his parents declared dead on 8 May 1945.

The Silberberg Collection

At the beginning of the 20th century, Max Silberberg built up one of the most important private art collections in the German Empire.[16] He was part of a remarkable group of art collectors, many of them Jewish, living in Breslau in the early 20th century. Many of their remarkable collections were seized by the Nazis. Among the Jewish collectors were Emil Kaim, Leo Lewin, Ismar Littmann, Theodor Loewe, Wilhelm Perlhöfter, Max Pringsheim, Adolf Rothenberg, Carl Sachs, Max Silberberg and Leo Smoschewer.[17][18][19]

Art historians estimate Silberberg's art collection at around 130 to 250 paintings, drawings and sculptures, one of the most important art collections in the German Empire, with a focus on German and French art from the 19th and early 20th centuries.[20] including works such as Portrait of a Man with Glasses by Wilhelm Leibl,[21] Wilhelm Trübner's paintings The Way to the Church in Neuburg near Heidelberg and Lady with White Stockings, and Self-portrait with a yellow hat, by Kleinenberg from 1876 and The Labung from 1880 by Hans von Marées. Silberman donated Still Life with a Bundle of Leeks, Apples and Cheese dome by Carl Schuch to the museum in Breslau, which is now in the Warsaw National Museum. The collection also included German Impressionism such as In the Kitchen and Market in Haarlem by Max Liebermann or Flieder im Glaskrug by Lovis Corinth as well as drawings by Adolph Menzel, Hans Purrmann and Otto Müller and sculptures by his contemporary Georg Kolbe. Silberman also owned drawings by Gustav Klimt and Paul Klee and Stockhornkette mit Thunersee by Ferdinand Hodler.[22]

The Silberberg Collection works of Realism and Impressionism[23] included Algerian Women at the Well (now private property) and Odalisque resting on an ottoman (Fitzwilliam Museum) by Eugène Delacroix, and the works of Poetry by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot (Wallraf-Richartz Museum) and Thatched Roof Hut in Normandy (Norton Simon Museum). Silberberg also collected works by Honoré Daumier, Adolphe Monticelli, Jean-François Millet and Gustave Courbet whose Grand Pont in currently in the Yale University Art Gallery,[24] Reading Young Girl (National Gallery of Art) and The Rock in Hautepierre (Art Institute of Chicago).[25]

Impressionist works included Pertuiset as a lion hunter (Museu de Arte de São Paulo) and Young Woman in Oriental Costume (Foundation EG Bührle Collection) by Édouard Manet[26] and The Reading (Louvre), Little Girl with Hoops (National Gallery of Art) as well the privately owned pictures Laughing Girl, Gondola, Venice and Bouquet of Roses by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The collector owned the paintings Boats on the Seine (private collection) and Snow in the Setting Sun (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen) by Claude Monet. Other Impressionist works in this collection were The Seine at Saint-Mammès (private collection) by Alfred Sisley, Boulevard Montmartre, Spring 1897 (Israel Museum) and Path to Pontoise (Musée d'Orsay) by Camille Pissarro and Landscape with Chimneys (Art Institute of Chicago), La sortie du bain (Musée d'Orsay) and Ballet Dancers (private collection) by Edgar Degas.

Late Impressionist works in Silberberg's collection included the paintings Still Life with Apples and Napkin (Musée de l'Orangerie), Jas de Bouffan (private property) and Landscape in the Aix Area (Carnegie Museum of Art), as well as the drawing of a male's back view Nude (Hermitage) by Paul Cézanne. There was also Die Brücke von Trinquetaille, (private property) by Vincent van Gogh, of whom Silberberg also owned the drawing L’Olivette, works by Paul Signac as well as the cubist works Strand in Dieppe (Moderna Museet) and Still Life with Jug by Georges Braque, and works by Georges Seurat, Alexej von Jawlensky and Paul Klee.

He acquired the wooden sculpture Die Mourning by Ernst Barlach from the actress Tilla Durieux, featured at the entrance of the Silberberg house. Other works, mostly small bronzes, came from artists such as August Gaul, Auguste Rodin, Aristide Maillol, Constantin Meunier, Renée Sintenis and Henri Matisse.

Restitution claims for Nazi looted art

After the Second World War, the heirs of Max Silberberg had great difficulties in asserting claims on their former property.[27][28]

Breslau had become a Polish city and the files that could have documented the systematic expropriation of Silberberg's property were either destroyed or inaccessible to the heirs.[29] While the Polish authorities refused to compensate former German property - for example, land - the German authorities did not see themselves as responsible. The former art possessions were scattered around the world through auctions and resales and their whereabouts were in most cases unknown. In addition, although allied law had generally recognized that “loss of property through sale” was also to be viewed as robbery, since the sale took place under the pressure of persecution, national regulations made it difficult or impossible to demand return. From the end of the 1960s, most of the claims were barred.

It was not until the Washington Conference on Holocaust Era Assets, held in Washington, D.C., United States, on 3 December 1998, that there was progress.[30][31] After the death of Silberberg's son in 1984, the collector's daughter-in-law, Gerta Silberberg, managed to claim restitution for some works of art after 1998. Most of the collection is still considered lost.[32][33]

Claims in Germany

In 2003 the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart restituted the painting Still Life with a Cane by Georges Braque to the Silberberg family. A settlement concerning Corot's painting Poetry was reached with the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne. The Berlin National Gallery which had acquired Hans von Marées' Husband with a Yellow Hat at the forced Graupe auction of 1935,[34] restituted the painting to the Silberberg heir in July 1999 and then bought it back the same year. The Refreshment, also auctioned at Graup in 1935, was the subject of a settlement between the Wiesbaden Museum in 1980[35] and the Silberberg heirs. Vincent van Gogh's drawing Olive Trees in Front of the Alpilles Mountains, also auctioned at Graupe in 1935, was restituted to Greta Silberberg who later sold it. It had been acquired by the Association of Friends of the National Gallery and given to the Kupferstichkabinett.[36][37] The Kupferstichkabinett also reached a settlement in 1999 concerning the drawing Woman with a shawl by Caspar David Friedrich, which Max Silberberg had to leave to the Breslau tax office in 1940 to settle alleged tax debts.

Artworks from the Silberberg collection have also been located in the Museum Georg Schäfer in Schweinfurt, including Market in Haarlem by Max Liebermann and Head of a Bavarian Girl with Inntaler Hat by Wilhelm Leibl. In 2020, a researcher hired by the museum to research the provenance of 1000 artworks, quit, telling the New York Times that she had found paintings looted from Jews, but that "no one seemed to have any plans to return them to the heirs of the original Jewish owners".[38]

In 2014, Germany's Wiesbaden Museum attempted to draw attention to the problem of looted art by hanging Hans von Marees’ Die Labung facing the wall because it had been obtained due to a forced sale from the Silberberg collection under the Nazis.[39]

Claims in Switzerland

The painting Stockhornkette mit Thunersee by Ferdinand Hodler, claimed by the Silberberg family, is in St. Gallen Art Museum on loan from St. Gallen government councilor Simon Frick, who purchased it from the Kornfeld Gallery in Bern[40][41] According to the Swiss Independent Commission the provenance had been falsified to make it appear to have been from a different collection when it had in reality belonged to Max Silberberg.[42] The Silberberg family also requested the restitution of Édouard Manet's painting Young Woman in an Oriental Costume (also La Sultane) from the Zurich E. G. Bührle Foundation which had purchased it from Paul Rosenberg[43] The museum refused, asserting that it was not sold under duress.[44] and suggesting on the museum's website that Silberberg may never have owned the painting at all.[45]

The painting Sewing School in the Amsterdam Orphanage by Max Liebermann, was restituted to the Silberberg family by the Bündner Kunstmuseum.[46]

Claims in the USA

Settlement agreements with the Silberberg heir were reached for the paintings The Rock in Hautepierre by Gustave Courbet in the Art Institute of Chicago[47][48] which had acquired it from Paul Rosenberg in 1965,[49] and Boulevard Montmartre, Spring (1897) by Camille Pissarro, in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.[50][51][52] In 2006, prior to the auctions at Sotheby's auction house, corresponding agreements were in place when the paintings Die Seine near Saint-Mammès by Alfred Sisley and Algerian Women at the Fountain by Eugène Delacroix changed hands.

Yale University Art Gallery received a claim for a Courbet which was sold at a forced auction at Paul Graupe.[53][54]

Claims in France

A painting by Eugene Delacroix from the Silberberg collection entitled Women at a Fountain (Am Brunne) located in a private collection in France was restituted to the family[55] and then auctioned at Sothebys in 2006.[56] Represented by Monika Tatskow, the Silberberg family made a claim against the Orangerie Museum in Paris for the return of the painting by Cezanne, Still Life with Apples and Napkin (Fruits, serviette et boîte à lait).[57]

United Kingdom

The Silberberg family also initiated a claim concerning rare secular Gothic ivory relief panel showing a man and woman playing chess with three figures looking over their shoulders held by the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in the United Kingdom.The UK Spoliation Panel refused restitution, stating that the moral claim "is insufficiently strong to warrant a recommendation of restitution or the making of an ex-gratia payment. However, we do recommend the display alongside the Work, wherever it is, and in whatever medium, of an account of the history of the Work in the collection of its former owner during the Nazi era, and his tragic fate and that of his wife".[58]

Poland and Russia

The Silberberg family entered into discussions with the Hermitage museum concerning a Cézanne from the Silberberg collection.[59] The Berlin auctioneer Paul Graupe is listed as the previous owner, although this drawing was also acquired by the Nationalgalerie Berlin.[60] Poland has also so far refused restitution of artworks looted from Jews in the Holocaust.[61]

See also

Literature

  • Paul Abramowski: Die Sammlung Silberberg, Breslau. In Der Sammler – Deutsche Kunst- und Antiquitätenbörse, Nummer 20, Jahrgang 1930, S. 149–153.
  • Alice Landsberg: Eine große deutsche Privatsammlung. Die Sammlung Silberberg in Breslau. In Die Dame – Illustrierte Mode-Zeitschrift, Nummer 16, Jahrgang (1930), S. 12–15.
  • Karl Scheffler: Die Sammlung Max Silberberg. In Kunst und Künstler – Illustrierte Monatsschrift für bildende Kunst und Kunstgewerbe, Nummer 30, Jahrgang 1931, S. 3–18.
  • Catalogue des tableaux, pastels, aquarelles, gouaches, dessins… provenant des collections étrangères de MM ; S… et S. Katalog zur Auktion am 9. Juni 1932, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris 1932.
  • Gemälde und Zeichnungen des 19. Jahrhunderts aus einer bekannten schlesischen Privatsammlung und aus verschiedenem Privatbesitz. Katalog zur Auktion am 23. März 1935, Auktionshaus Paul Graupe, Berlin 1935.
  • Dorothea Kathmann: Kunstwerke aus jüdischen Sammlungen – Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Provenienzermittlungen am Beispiel der Sammlung Silberberg aus Breslau In: Beiträge öffentlicher Einrichtungen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland zum Umgang mit Kulturgütern aus ehemaligem jüdischen Besitz, bearb. von Ulf Häder, Magdeburg 2001, ISBN 3-00-008868-7, S. 27–37.
  • Anja Heuß: Die Sammlung Max Silberberg in Breslau. In Andrea Pophanken, Felix Billeter (Hrsg.): Die Moderne und ihre Sammler. Französische Kunst in deutschem Privatbesitz vom Kaiserreich zur Weimarer Republik. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-05-003546-3, S. 311–325.
  • Monika Tatzkow, Hans Joachim Hinz: Bürger, Opfer und die historische Gerechtigkeit. Das Schicksal jüdischer Kunstsammler in Breslau. In: Osteuropa, Nummer 56, Jahrgang 2006, S. 155–171.
  • Marius Winzeler: Jüdische Sammler und Mäzene in Breslau. Von der Donation zur "Verwertung" ihres Kunstbesitzes. In: Andrea Baresel-Brand (Hrsg.): Sammeln, Stiften, Fördern. Jüdische Mäzene in der deutschen Gesellschaft. Koordinierungsstelle für Kulturgutverluste, Magdeburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-9811367-3-9, S. 131–156.
  • Monika Tatzkow: Max Silberberg. In: Melissa Müller, Monika Tatzkow, Thomas Blubacher: Verlorene Bilder – verlorene Leben. Jüdische Sammler und was aus ihren Kunstwerken wurde. E. Sandmann Verlag, München 2009, ISBN 978-3-938045-30-5, S. 114ff.

References

  1. ↑ "Beyond the Bauhaus Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany Kathleen Canning, Series Editor" (PDF). Four Breslau Jews assembled particularly important, nationally recognized collections: Carl Sachs, Leo Lewin, Max Silberberg, and Ismar Littmann.
  2. ↑ Müller, Melissa (2010). Lost lives, lost art : Jewish collectors, Nazi art theft and the quest for justice. Frontline. pp. 117–131. ISBN 978-1-84832-577-7. OCLC 742252182.
  3. ↑ Müller, Melissa (2010). Lost lives, lost art : Jewish collectors, Nazi art theft and the quest for justice. Frontline. p. 117. ISBN 978-1-84832-577-7. OCLC 742252182.
  4. ↑ Ηeuβ, Anja (2001-12-31), "Die Sammlung Max Silberberg in Breslau", Die Moderne und ihre Sammler, AKADEMIE VERLAG, pp. 311–326, doi:10.1524/9783050078755.311, ISBN 978-3-05-003546-8, retrieved 2021-03-20
  5. ↑ "Silberberg Max, , 1878-1945 / , - Breslau / Kolekcje / Silesian Art Collections - Rariora Artis". 2011-03-20. Archived from the original on 2011-03-20. Retrieved 2021-03-24.
  6. ↑ Müller, Melissa (2010). Lost lives, lost art : Jewish collectors, Nazi art theft and the quest for justice. Frontline. p. 121. ISBN 978-1-84832-577-7. OCLC 742252182.
  7. ↑ Müller, Melissa (2010). Lost lives, lost art : Jewish collectors, Nazi art theft and the quest for justice. Frontline. p. 121. ISBN 978-1-84832-577-7. OCLC 742252182.
  8. ↑ Müller, Melissa (2010). Lost lives, lost art : Jewish collectors, Nazi art theft and the quest for justice. Frontline. p. 121. ISBN 978-1-84832-577-7. OCLC 742252182.
  9. ↑ Müller, Melissa (2010). Lost lives, lost art : Jewish collectors, Nazi art theft and the quest for justice. Frontline. pp. 117–123. ISBN 978-1-84832-577-7. OCLC 742252182.
  10. ↑ "From Delacroix to van Gogh - Max Silberberg's collection / Articles / Reading Room / Silesian Art Collections - Rariora Artis". 2011-03-14. Archived from the original on 2011-03-14. Retrieved 2021-04-12. Three years afterwards he was ordered, as a Jew, to leave his luxurious villa. Since then the building served to the security service of the NSDAP. The collectioner was allocated a small flat in the Kurfürstenstrasse 28 (currently ul. Racławicka) where there was enough place neither for large-scale artworks, nor for a big library. Silberberg parted with most artworks and arts and crafts' works, and with the library, in mediation of the Berliner Paul Graupe's Salon, on a few auctions that took place in 1935 and in 1936.
  11. ↑ "From Delacroix to van Gogh - Max Silberberg's collection / Articles / Reading Room / Silesian Art Collections - Rariora Artis". 2011-03-14. Archived from the original on 2011-03-14. Retrieved 2021-04-12. Since then the building served to the security service of the NSDAP. The collectioner was allocated a small flat in the Kurfürstenstrasse 28 (currently ul. Racławicka) where there was enough place neither for large-scale artworks, nor for a big library. Silberberg parted with most artworks and arts and crafts' works, and with the library, in mediation of the Berliner Paul Graupe's Salon, on a few auctions that took place in 1935 and in 1936. On those auctions were totally offered 160 artworks. Visible sing of the rapidly worsening situation of the Jewish population in the German Reich was the "crystal night", when the collector's only son was arrested and transported to the concentration camp operating for at least one year in Buchenwald.
  12. ↑ Müller, Melissa (2010). Lost lives, lost art : Jewish collectors, Nazi art theft and the quest for justice. Frontline. p. 122. ISBN 978-1-84832-577-7. OCLC 742252182.
  13. ↑ "Silberberg Max, , 1878-1945 / , - Breslau / Kolekcje / Silesian Art Collections - Rariora Artis". 2011-03-20. Archived from the original on 2011-03-20. Retrieved 2021-04-12. In 1940 Silberberg's estate and property was subject to arization by Nazi authorities and a year later both he and his wife were sent to a concentration camp in Leubus. Both were later killed in Auschwitz.
  14. ↑ "Silberberg Max, , 1878-1945 / , - Breslau / Kolekcje / Silesian Art Collections - Rariora Artis". 2011-03-20. Archived from the original on 2011-03-20. Retrieved 2021-03-24.
  15. ↑ "Final Report of the Independent Commission of Experts Switzerland – Second World War" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-03-14. His art collection and art library were put up for compulsory sale by auction five times, arranged by the Berlin auctioneer Paul Graupe in 1935/36. A smaller remnant of the collection remained in Silberberg's possession until 1940; it was then «Aryanised» by the Breslau Museum of Fine Arts (Museumder bildenden Künste) in collaboration with the financial authorities.
  16. ↑ Berman, Lazar. "Why is a German museum hanging a Nazi-looted painting backward?". www.timesofisrael.com. Retrieved 2021-04-11.
  17. ↑ "Silesian Art Collections in the 19th and 20th Centuries". www.lootedart.com. Archived from the original on 2015-09-19. Retrieved 2021-04-12. The information gathered in the database is intended to enable a theoretical reconstruction of former art collections in Silesia by presenting the objects which used to belong to them and the interiors in which they were exhibited. Initial assumptions are for the database to include the descriptions of at least 200 collectors and around 5.000 works of art. In the 20th century, many of the collectors were Jewish, living in Breslau, and many of their remarkable collections were seized by the Nazis. Among the Jewish collectors profiled on the associated website are Emil Kaim, Leo Lewin, Ismar Littmann, Theodor Loewe, Wilhelm Perlhöfter, Max Pringsheim, Adolf Rothenberg, Carl Sachs, Max Silberberg and Leo Smoschewer,
  18. ↑ Ηeuβ, Anja (2001-12-31), "Die Sammlung Max Silberberg in Breslau", Die Moderne und ihre Sammler, AKADEMIE VERLAG, pp. 311–326, doi:10.1524/9783050078755.311, ISBN 978-3-05-003546-8, retrieved 2021-04-12
  19. ↑ "From Delacroix to van Gogh - Max Silberberg's collection / Articles / Reading Room / Silesian Art Collections - Rariora Artis". 2011-03-14. Archived from the original on 2011-03-14. Retrieved 2021-04-12.
  20. ↑ "MAX SILBERBERG – WROCŁAW ART COLLECTION". www.7cudow.eu. Retrieved 2021-06-16.
  21. ↑ "Malresl Working in the Kitchen". www.nga.gov. 13 April 1898. Retrieved 2021-06-16.
  22. ↑ Barnstone, Deborah Ascher (2016). "Dissemination of Taste". Dissemination of Taste:: Breslau Collectors, Arts Associations, and Museums. Cultural Modernity in Breslau, 1918-33. University of Michigan Press. pp. 108–132. doi:10.2307/j.ctt1gk088m.8. ISBN 978-0-472-11990-5. JSTOR j.ctt1gk088m.8. Retrieved 2021-06-16. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  23. ↑ "From Delacroix to van Gogh - Max Silberberg's collection / Articles / Reading Room / Silesian Art Collections - Rariora Artis". 2011-03-14. Archived from the original on 2011-03-14. Retrieved 2021-04-12. The inner walls of the sumptuous Silberberg's villa was totally decorated with about two hundred and fifty artworks, among them numerous works by the leading impressionists. The visitors could admire at least five canvas paintings by Pierre-Auguste'a Renoir, at least by three paintings by Édouard Manet and Paul Cézanne, by two by Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro and a few pastels by Edgar Degas. The collection didn't lack works by Auguste Rodin, Vincent van Gogh or Pablo Picasso, and among artist of older generations - by Eugène Delacroix, Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste Camille'a Corot. Today the pictures deriving from the Wroclaw's collection decorate the most prestigious museum institutions in the world: Musée d'Orsay and the Lovre in Paris, the Hermitage, National Gallery in Washington or Museum of Modern Art in New York. In the New York's museum we can currently admire a gorgeous drawing by van Gogh depicting an olive hurst by Saint-Rémy, which till 1999 was housed in Nationalgalerie of Berlin and was one of the first artworks returned to the apparent owners, basing on the Washington declaration referring to property forfeited within the World War II.
  24. ↑ "Le Grand Pont – Weinmann Heirs and Yale University Art Gallery — Centre du droit de l'art". plone.unige.ch. Retrieved 2021-03-20.
  25. ↑ Pophanken, Andrea; Billeter, Felix (2014-09-05). Die Moderne und ihre Sammler: Französische Kunst in deutschem Privatbesitz vom Kaiserreich zur Weimarer Republik (in German). Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. ISBN 978-3-05-007875-5.
  26. ↑ "Masterpieces marred by dubious past". nationthailand. 2015-08-26. Retrieved 2021-11-13.
  27. ↑ Kennedy, Randy (2006-07-25). "Museums' Research on Looting Seen to Lag". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-03-20.
  28. ↑ Parsons, Michael. "Art looted by Nazis continues to surface at auction". The Irish Times. Retrieved 2021-04-12. Returning the art to its rightful owners continues to be highly problematic. Many of the original owners had been murdered in concentration camps. Records were lost, incomplete or non-existent. Some of the art recovered ended up in various national galleries; some had already vanished into private collections. But, in recent years, there has been considerable progress in identifying and returning paintings to the heirs of the original owners in a process known as restitution.
  29. ↑ "Polish city of Wroclaw comes to terms with its German past". Christian Science Monitor. 2012-10-19. ISSN 0882-7729. Retrieved 2021-11-13.
  30. ↑ "Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets, 30 November-3 December 1998". www.lootedart.com. Retrieved 2021-04-12.
  31. ↑ "Summary of the Washington Conference". www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Retrieved 2021-04-12.
  32. ↑ "After Circuitous Journey, Painting Lost to Nazis Finds a Home in Israel". Los Angeles Times. 2000-02-19. Retrieved 2021-04-12.
  33. ↑ Alberge, Dalya. "Retired cook traced £10m artwork snatched by Nazis". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Archived from the original on 2020-11-30. Retrieved 2021-04-12. Gerta Silberberg used proceeds from the sale of a previously recovered work by Van Gogh to fund the hunt for a collection of about 250 works amassed by Max Silberberg, her father-in-law. The businessman, who bought 19th and early 20th-century artists such as Renoir and Van Gogh when their works were still relatively cheap, died in Auschwitz. After escaping to Britain in 1939, his son Alfred and Gerta worked as butler and cook to a doctor in Leicester. Following her husband's death in 1984, Gerta began her search...
  34. ↑ "From Delacroix to van Gogh - Max Silberberg's collection / Articles / Reading Room / Silesian Art Collections - Rariora Artis". 2011-03-14. Archived from the original on 2011-03-14. Retrieved 2021-04-12.
  35. ↑ "Nazi-stolen painting put on display, sort of - The Local". 2014-10-22. Archived from the original on 2014-10-22. Retrieved 2021-03-20.
  36. ↑ Riding, Alan (1999-06-05). "Germans Return van Gogh to an Heir". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-03-20.
  37. ↑ "AROUND THE JEWISH WORLD Artwork taken by Nazis returned, opening the door to further claims". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 1999-06-09. Retrieved 2021-03-20.
  38. ↑ Hickley, Catherine (17 March 2020). "She Tracked Nazi-Looted Art. She Quit When No One Returned It. | History News Network". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2021-03-24. Retrieved 2021-03-24. Ms. Ehringhaus's job was, in part, to determine just how much of the collection had a tainted provenance. But last year, she said, she began to ask herself why the city of Schweinfurt, which manages the museum, had bothered to hire her. After she had identified several plundered works, she said, no one seemed to have any plans to return them to the heirs of the original Jewish owners.
  39. ↑ Berman, Lazar. "Why is a German museum hanging a Nazi-looted painting backward?". www.timesofisrael.com. Archived from the original on 2014-10-29. Retrieved 2021-04-12. In a unique campaign to raise money to pay the rightful owners of the painting, the museum decided to hang the piece, sold under duress by a Jewish industrialist in Nazi Germany, facing the wall. The museum needs to come up with $371,000 (NIS 1.4 million) to buy the painting from the heirs of Max Silberberg by November 5. Once they buy the painting properly, museum staff will flip the painting around for all to appreciate.
  40. ↑ "Kontaminierte Bilder - Contaminated pictures". www.lootedart.com. Neue Zuercher Zeitung. Archived from the original on 2017-03-13. Retrieved 2021-03-21. Das Schweigen des St. Galler Museums passt zu dessen Umgang mit der seit 15 Jahren im Raum stehenden Restitutionsforderung in Bezug auf Ferdinand Hodlers Bild «Thunersee mit Stockhornkette». Die NZZ berichtete erstmals 2003 darüber. Das Bild gehörte dem jüdischen Kunstsammler Max Silberberg und musste musste 1935 unter Druck der Nazis versteigert werden. Die Erben fordern das Bild zurück oder aber den halben Handelswert des Bildes. Dieses gehört zwar der Familienstiftung des einstigen sankt-gallischen Regierungsrats Simon Frick, der das Bild nach dem Krieg bei der Galerie Kornfeld in Bern gutgläubig erworben hatte, ist aber als Dauerleihgabe beim Kunstmuseum St. Gallen.
  41. ↑ "Zur Herkunft des Gemäldes Thunersee mit Stockhornkette von Ferdinand Hodler" (PDF).
  42. ↑ "Final Report of the Independent Commission of Experts Switzerland – Second World War" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-03-14. In 1942, Max Silberberg and his wife were sent to the transit camp at Kloster Grüssau, from where they were deported on 3 May 1942, probably to Terezín (Theresienstadt), and later murdered. According to auction reports, Swiss art dealers attended Paul Graupe's first auction in March 1935. It is likely that Fritz Nathan was also present. He was interested in the only work by a Swiss artist at the auction, the painting «Stockhorn Chain by Lake Thun» («Stockhornkette am Thuner See») by Ferdinand Hodler. This painting must have been deposited with Fritz Nathan for some time; a painting bearing the same title was listed by Nathan in 1946 as being in his storerooms. This purchase of «Stockhornkette am Thuner See» from the Silberberg collection illustrates how easy it is to be misled as to provenance by relying on apparently unobjectionable credentials. Although Hodler painted various views of Lake Thun, this version is fairly easy to identify, as it shows the lake with clouds painted with broad horizontal strokes. Painted between 1910 and 1912, the picture was sold by Hodler in 1913 to the Galerie Wolfsberg in Zurich. In 1921, it reappeared at the Galerie Wolfsberg and was sold in 1923 to the A. Sutter collection in Oberhofen. In 1985, the painting turned up again at an auction arranged by the Galerie Kornfeld in Bern.27 There, the most recent provenance was cited as being the Sutter collection, thus implying that the painting had been held in private ownership in Bern ever since. The Swiss Institute for Art (Schweizer Institut für Kunstwissenschaft, SIK) in Zurich, which constantly monitors the movements of Hodler's works, accepted the information supplied by the Galerie Kornfeld. In fact, the painting had been sold to Max Silberberg in Breslau in the 1920s and sentto auction when his collection was broken up in 1935. As there was a great demand for Swiss works of art in Switzerland, this painting returned toSwitzerland through art trade.
  43. ↑ "Young Woman in Oriental Garb · Edouard Manet · Stiftung Sammlung E.G. Bührle". www.buehrle.ch. Archived from the original on 2021-12-17. Retrieved 2021-03-20. Art trade Paris & New York • by 1934/35 Exhibition of Important Paintings by Great French Masters of the Nineteenth Century, Paul Rosenberg & Durand-Ruel (Durand Ruel Galleries), New York 1934, no. 31; Tableaux du 19e siècle dans un décor ancien, Galerie Paul Rosenberg, Paris 1935, no cat. (but photographs of the installation surviving). 8Paul Rosenberg Paris & New York • 1937–1953 Acquired in 1937 for $ 17.800, AStEGB, Photocopy of Stock Book of Paul Rosenberg & Co., New York, entry no. 5106, identifying the painting with the name «Silberberg»; Letter from Paul Rosenberg, New York, to Emil Bührle, 22 September 1952, accompanying individual invoices for 10 pictures which Bührle has acquired from him, including Manet, La Sultane. 9Emil Bührle Zurich • 18 September 1953 until [d.] 28 November 1956 Acquired from the above for $ 65.000 minus a 10% discount ($ 6.500) = $ 58.500, AStEGB, Invoice from Paul Rosenberg, New York, made out to Emil Bührle, 22 September 1952, listing the name «Silberberg» in the column «Collections»;
  44. ↑ Certic, Miodrag Certic,Mia (2015-05-17). "A Swiss Merchant of Death's Nazi Friends and Suspicious Masterpieces". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 2021-03-21.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  45. ↑ "Young Woman in Oriental Garb · Edouard Manet · Stiftung Sammlung E.G. Bührle". www.buehrle.ch. Archived from the original on 2019-05-30. Retrieved 2021-04-12. When the most valuable paintings from Silberberg's collection were auctioned in Paris on 9 June 1932, Manet's Sultane was not among them, which might be understood as an indication that the painting was never really and completely owned by Silberberg, and that it therefore went back to the Durand-Ruel Gallery in Paris.
  46. ↑ "Case Nähschule – Max Silberberg Heirs and Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur".
  47. ↑ Kennedy, Randy (2018-05-02). "Museums' Research on Looting Seen to Lag - The New York Times". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2018-05-02. Retrieved 2021-03-20.
  48. ↑ "Corrections - The New York Times". The New York Times. 2021-03-20. Archived from the original on 2021-03-20. Retrieved 2021-03-20.
  49. ↑ "The Rock of Hautepierre Date: c. 1869 Artist: Gustave Courbet". artic.edu. Art Institute of Chicago. Archived from the original on 2022-01-18. PROVENANCE Adolf Rothermundt, Dresden-Blasewitz, before 1923 [according to Scheffler 1923 and 1935 Graupe sale cat. cited below]. Max Silberberg, Breslau, by 1923 to 1935 [according to 18 July 1967 letter from Fritz Nathan to Charles Cunningham in curatorial file, and Scheffler 1923]; sold Galerie Paul Graupe, Berlin, 23 March 1935, no. 20 [price given in Die Weltkunst 1935]. German private collection [according to Alexander, Graf Strasoldo of Lempertz, Cologne, letter of 21 September 1998 in curatorial file]; sold Lempertz, Cologne, 11–14 November 1964, no. 289, to Galerie Nathan, Zurich [Nathan letter cited above]; sold by Galerie Nathan to Paul Rosenberg Gallery and Co., New York, 4 June 1965 [copy of invoice in curatorial file]; sold by Paul Rosenberg Gallery to the Art Institute, 1967.
  50. ↑ "After Circuitous Journey, Painting Lost to Nazis Finds a Home in Israel". www.lootedart.com. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2021-03-20.
  51. ↑ "International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR)-Case Summary-Silberberg Heir's Settlement with Art Institute of Chicago". www.ifar.org. Retrieved 2021-03-20.
  52. ↑ Tarsis, Irina; says, Esq (2014-01-14). "Sotheby's to auction restituted Pissarro's "Boulevard Montmartre"". Center for Art Law. Archived from the original on 2019-10-01. Retrieved 2021-03-20. Max Silberberg's collection of works, including pieces by Manet, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Cezanne and van Gogh, was well published and exhibited around the world up through 1933. By 1935, Max Silberberg had become victim to the Third Reich's antiemetic laws. After his company was Aryanised and sold and his home was acquired by the SS, Silberberg was compelled to consign most of his collection at a series of auctions at Paul Graupe's auction house in Berlin in 1935 and 1936 (including Boulevard Montmartre). While Silberberg's son, Alfred, fled to England after brief internment at Buchenwald, Max Silberberg and his wife were eventually deported to Theresienstadt and then Auschwitz in 1942, where they both perished. (Sotheby's Press Office, 23 Dec. 2013; Bazyler, Holocaust Justice, 205.)
  53. ↑ "Yale Researching Provenance of Courbet Painting". YaleNews. 2001-01-23. Retrieved 2021-04-11.
  54. ↑ "Gustave Courbet Painting Donated to Yale University Art Gallery". YaleNews. 2001-10-23. Retrieved 2021-04-11. The confirmed history of Le Grand Pont is that it belonged to the Marczell de Nemes collection until 1913, but by the 1920s was held in Breslau, first in the collection of Leo Lewin and then Max Silberberg. It remained in the Silberberg collection until 1935, from which it was sold at auction by Paul Graupe of Berlin. There is no known record of the purchaser of the work from that sale. Dr. Schaefer and Silberberg's son settled an ownership claim for the painting out of court in Germany in the 1970s. The painting had been the subject of a recent ownership claim asserted by Mr. Eric Weinmann of Washington, D.C. After Yale University notified Dr. Schaefer of Mr. Weinmann's claim, Dr. Schaefer agreed that the painting would remain on loan to Yale while further historical research into the painting's provenance during and after World War II was completed.
  55. ↑ "Am Brunnen / Women at a fountain | Lost Art-Datenbank". www.lostart.de. Retrieved 2023-01-28. Provenienz Petit, Bernheim; Sammlung Max Silberberg, Breslau; Privatbesitz Frankreich; Privatbesitz; 2006 Restitution, Versteigerung nach Vergleich
  56. ↑ "Eugène Delacroix French, 1798 - 1863". Sothebys. Provenance Galerie Georges Petit, Paris Georges Bernheim, Paris (1927) Max Silberberg, Breslau, by 1930 (acquired from the above) Knoedler, London
  57. ↑ "Les musées français tardent à restituer les biens juifs spoliés par les nazis". France Inter (in French). 2015-02-20. Retrieved 2023-01-28. C'est le cas de Monika Tatskow , une historienne allemande qui représente la famille Silberberg à Berlin . Elle a récemment retrouvé au musée de l'Orangerie , à Paris, un tableau de l'impressionniste Cézanne qui avait appartenu à ses clients. Elle oeuvre pour que le tableau leur soit rendu mais en vain, comme elle l'explique à Cyril Sauvageot : Les héritiers Silverberg ont fourni toute la documentation requise. Nous refusons la réonse qui nous a été donnée.
  58. ↑ "REPORT OF THE SPOLIATION ADVISORY PANEL IN RESPECT OF A GOTHIC RELIEF IN IVORY, NOW IN THE POSSESSION OF THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM, OXFORD" (PDF).
  59. ↑ "Around the Jewish World: Russia to Inventory Looted Artwork That the Nazis Stole from the Jews - Jewish Telegraphic Agency". 28 October 1999. Retrieved 2021-03-20.
  60. ↑ Golenia, Patrick; Kratz-Kessemeier, Kristina; Chermont, Isabelle Le Masne de; Savoy, Bénédicte (2016-01-18). Paul Graupe (1881–1953): Ein Berliner Kunsthändler zwischen Republik, Nationalsozialismus und Exil. Mit einem Vorwort von Bénédicte Savoy (in German). Böhlau Verlag Köln Weimar. ISBN 978-3-412-22515-5.
  61. ↑ "Who Owns Bruno Schulz? The Changing Postwar Fortunes of Works of Art by Jewish Artists Murdered in Nazi-Occupied Poland" (PDF). The documentation of works of art and culture destroyed and looted in German-occupied Poland (1939-1945), as well as the active search for these works abroad and the restitution of recovered objects have ranked among the key priorities of the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage since the early 1990s. In regard to questions of restitution, the Ministry of Culture is in constant competition with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: every recovered item is widely presented as a great victory for justice, while at the same time it is presented as a victory for the ministry involved. However, what is never mentioned is the fact that after the war, national institutions and private individuals often became the new owners of objects that had once belonged to private people or organizations persecuted by the Nazis. In the majority of cases, this affected Jewish individuals, Jewish communities and Jewish institutions. This attitude of silence contradicts the 1998 Washington Conference Principles, confirmed by the Terezín Declaration in 2009. It prevails despite the fact that Poland has signed both documents and benefits from them in cases of foreign restitutions.
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