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History Regained: New Aspects to the Provenance of a Painting by Carl Blechen, Exhibition, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, 19 March-14 June 2015

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Fig. 1, Karl Blechen, View of the Monastery of Santa Scholastica at Subiaco, 1832. Oil on canvas. Inscribed on the back, probably in the artist’s own hand, “Kloster S. Scholastyca bei Subiaco.” Formerly Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, inv. 2590; currently Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, loan of Rudolf Mosse’s heirs © Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe.




Fig. 2, Installation view of the special presentation Generous Loan: Karl Blechen’s Scolastica Painting from the Rudolf Mosse Collection, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, March 19–June 14, 2015 © Tessa Rosebrock.




Fig. 3, Installation view of the special presentation Generous Loan: Karl Blechen’s Scolastica Painting from the Rudolf Mosse Collection, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe, March 19–June 14, 2015 © Tessa Rosebrock.




Fig. 4, Franz von Lenbach, Portrait of Rudolf Mosse, 1871. Oil on canvas. © Jewish Museum, Berlin.

In spring 2015, one of the visually most striking paintings by Carl Eduard Ferdinand Blechen (1798–1840), View of the Monastery of Santa Scholastica at Subiaco (“Blick auf das Kloster Sta. Scolastica bei Subiaco”) dating from 1832 was the focus of a small, special presentation at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe curated by Tessa Rosebrock (figs. 1, 2, 3).[1] The picture shows the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Scholastica, which lies 75 km east of Rome in the Aniene valley, within the Monti Simbruini range in the Lazio region. The monastery is seen dramatically from below, perched in the sunshine high above a ravine, whose shadowy fissure opens menacingly before the viewer. Massive defensive walls rise above the dark vegetation and enclose the medieval complex, which is crowned by a Romanesque bell tower only a little taller than its surroundings. The abbey gleaming brightly under the deep blue sky seems out of reach, enthroned above ochre-colored cliffs that dominate the center of the picture as a solid, insurmountable wall. Huge boulders lie in front of the entrance to the gully, where a peasant couple is collecting brushwood beside the turquoise waters of a small stream.

The uncompromising composition is unsettling: the viewer searches in vain for a path up to the monastery on the sunny high ground, while the deep gully awakens strange fears. Helmut Börsch-Supan saw in the painting signs of Blechen’s worsening mental illness.[2] According to Klaus Herding, by contrast, the artist sought with this picture to make “a very conscious stand against the sublime” and hence was one of the first painters in the nineteenth century to sound the advent of the modernist aesthetic.[3] Dorit Schäfer, adopting a psychoanalytical approach, suggests that the ravine near Subiaco resembles a giant vagina.[4]

As a comparison with drawings by his contemporaries makes clear, Blechen has indeed radically modified the real topography and created an impressive, powerful work that seems to anticipate many of the themes of modernism.[5] To the public of his day, conditioned by academic norms, Blechen’s innovations were apparent—if not entirely palatable. When the canvas was shown at the Berlin Academy exhibition of 1832, one reviewer expressed the opinion “that vast, barren expanses are effective only in nature herself, not in her image . . . . The gully is formed by bare rock walls for which the scale is lacking, and the monastery is too subordinate to achieve a contrasting effect.”[6]

This highly charged image has now been the focal point of a small but exquisite exhibition at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe. It not only highlighted this Blechen’s canvas as one of the collection’s masterpieces but also focused on its history. For this it included a portrait that was directly commissioned by one of its previous owners (fig. 4), as well as documents, publications, and archival material that all related to this painting’s biography. The presentation of the show was chronological—opening with early 19th-century publications that mention Blechen’s View of the Monastery of Santa Scholastica at Subiaco. It was structured with large well-written text panels explaining complex issues and historic processes that were not deducible from the exhibit itself. In the end, the visitor was offered a wealth of historic information that would otherwise only be presented in a scholarly catalogue and a plethora of footnotes, thus giving open access to the research conducted by museum curators usually kept from the general public.

A confusion
Blechen’s Santa Scholastica was a jewel in Karlsruhe’s holdings of German romanticism until autumn 2014, when its path over the last 80 years was brought to light, and the painting was restituted to the heirs of its lawful owner. The Staatliche Kunstsammlung Karlsruhe had hitherto been unaware of the painting’s true origins, having mistakenly believed that the canvas, purchased on November 17, 1969 from the Galerie Neumeister in Munich, came from the Magdeburg collection of Dr. Arthur Ebering (biographical dates unknown, born ca. 1870).[7] Prior to that, as the museum authorities were convinced on the basis of the Blechen monograph published in 1911 by Guido Joseph Kern (1878–1953), the painting had been in the collection of the Berlin publisher Georg Jakob Decker (1756–1819) and his son Rudolf Ludwig von Decker (1804–1877) at Dittersbach Castle in Silesia.[8] Following the acquisition of the work in 1969, these provenance details were carried over unchallenged onto the Staatliche Kunsthalle inventory card,[9] even though Blechen painted Santa Scolastica monastery on the edge of the Subiaco ravine in several different views and formats.

It is thanks to Tessa Rosebrock, in charge of provenance research at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe since 2010, that the record has now been set straight. In the course of her investigations, during which she has already dealt with seven major restitution cases, Rosebrock has been able to clarify the situation and reconstruct the true biography of Blechen’s painting.[10] On the basis of earlier publications by Max Schasler (1856) and Gustav Parthey (1863), she established that the Karlsruhe painting formerly belonged to the art collection of the Berlin apothecary Carl Ludwig Kuhtz (1809–1889).[11] Schasler’s catalogue also covers the Decker Collection, in which a Blechen painting under the title “Scolastica Monastery at Subiaca” (Kloster Scolastica bei Subiaco) is likewise listed.[12] From the accompanying description, however, it is clear that the Karlsruhe canvas is the one from the Kuhtz Collection, and that the painting in the Decker Collection must be the larger Monastery of Santa Scolastica at Subiaco, today housed in the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal.[13] This allows us to reconstruct the following provenance for the Karlsruhe picture: the painting was probably executed in 1832.[14] In October 1832 it was shown at the Berlin Academy exhibition, where it was perhaps purchased by the Berlin pharmacist and art collector Carl Ludwig Kuhtz;[15] it is certainly mentioned as being in his collection 34 years later by Schasler.[16] The picture is again described as part of the Kuhtz Collection by Parthey in 1863.[17] Following Kuhtz’s death in 1889, his collection remained in the possession of his wife for a further nine years until her own death in 1898, whereupon it was sold at auction. The Kuhtz art collection went under the hammer on February 15, 1898 at Rudolf Lepke’s auction house in Berlin.[18] The painting “Scholastica [sic] at Subiaco” (Scholastica bei Subiaco) by Karl [sic] Blechen is listed in the auction catalogue as Lot 57.[19] Here it was probably bought by the Jewish publisher and art collector Rudolf Mosse (1843–1920); at all events, the picture was part of the Nazi-forced auction of Mosse’s collection in May 1934.[20]

Rudolf Mosse—Pioneer, entrepreneur and collector
Rudolf Mosse originally came from Grätz in the Prussian province of Posen, today PoznaƄ, Poland (fig. 4). At the age of eighteen, he moved to Berlin where he was soon working for the satirical weekly magazine Kladderadatsch.[21] He quickly recognized the growing significance of illustrated magazines as advertising media, something previously considered neither by publishers nor advertisers. He came up with the concept of the “advertising supplement” and travelled throughout Germany, Austria and Switzerland as a publisher’s representative in order to sell advertising space. The commercial success exceeded all expectations and led Mosse in 1867 to found his own agency, “Zeitungs-Annoncen-Expedition.” Mosse’s company marked the start of the German newspaper and magazine advertising industry. In the early 1870s, the increased use of pictures and illustrations to promote products aimed at an anonymous market, combined with cheaper printing technologies, led to a substantial increase in the volume of adverts carried by the press, while the number of papers and magazines, and the size of their editions, also rose in leaps and bounds. Mosse’s achievement in this burgeoning business sector was to bring together supply and demand. He thereby opened up a new and rapidly expanding market, with publishers frequently placing the entire advertising section of their organs in his hands. Mosse for a while had a firm grip on 100 newspapers and magazines. He nevertheless proceeded to build up, alongside his advertising agencies, one of the largest newspaper and magazine publishing businesses in Germany, probably in order to spare himself the need to deal with other publishers. In 1871 he founded the Berliner Tageblatt, which later evolved into Germany’s best selling liberal newspaper and—especially during the Weimar Republic—exerted a shaping influence upon democratic public opinion.[22]

Mosse’s papers were perceived on the whole as left-wing to “red” at court and in middle-class circles. Like fellow publisher Rudolf Ullstein (1874–1964), Mosse thereby paved the way for the modern mass media by printing vast numbers of each edition and is even considered the inventor of the tabloid press in Germany. Rudolf Mosse was thus a man whose economic importance and political influence within the German Empire can be compared with the global influence of media magnate Rupert Murdoch (b. 1931) today. The advertising business upon which he had founded his empire remained his most important source of turnover and profit and enabled him to amass a vast private fortune. With its growth, Mosse and his wife Emilie (1851–1924) became involved with numerous benevolent and cultural institutions, among other things establishing the charitable Mosse Foundation for children and families in need.[23] The Mosse family was also closely involved with the Jewish reformist community in Berlin, providing both financial and organizational support. The pension fund that Mosse set up for his employees in 1892 (and which remained in place until after the Second World War) was a pioneering step in terms of social welfare, and unique within the German newspaper industry.



Fig. 5, Cover of the catalogue published by Berlin auction house Rudolph Lepke to accompany the sale of the Rudolph Mosse Collection on May 29 and 30, 1934. Heidelberg University Library, Heidelberg.

The entrepreneur lent visual expression to his steadily increasing wealth, lastly, with the construction of the Mosse-Palais (1881–1885) on Leipziger Platz. He proceeded to fill his magnificent private mansion with choice antiques and a collection of paintings.[24] A 1932 publication by Mosse’s son-in-law, Hans Lachmann-Mosse (1885–1944), and the 1934 auction catalogue with its introduction by Hans Rosenhagen (1858–1943), provide details of Mosse’s art collection and give an insight into the taste and lifestyle of the liberal Jewish upper middle classes in Berlin (fig. 5).[25] Alongside exquisite works of applied art and antique furniture, French Gobelins tapestries, Benin bronzes, Egyptian and Greek antiquities, and Chinese porcelain, Mosse surrounded himself in his Berlin palace with Old Master paintings primarily by Italian, Flemish, and Dutch artists, as well as over a hundred paintings and works on paper by leading artists of his own day, including important works by Andreas (1815–1910) and Oswald Achenbach (1827–1905), Oskar Begas (1828–1883) Arnold Böcklin (1821–1901), Anselm Feuerbach (1829–1880), Eduard von Grützner (1846–1925), Franz von Lenbach (1836–1904), Wilhelm Leibl (1844–1900), Walter Leistikow (1865–1908), Max Liebermann (1847–1935), Gabriel von Max (1840–1915), Adolph von Menzel (1815–1905), and Hans Thoma (1839–1924). Blechen’s View of the Monastery of Santa Scholastica at Subiaco was also among them, and on May 29, 1934 appeared as Lot 12 in the sale conducted at Rudolf Lepke’s auction house in Berlin (fig. 1).[26]

Rudolf Mosse did not live to see the break-up of his collection, having died in 1920. The circumstances surrounding the auction nevertheless deserve closer examination, for this was evidently one of the first forced auctions of Jewish assets after Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) came to power.[27]

Dispossession and its concealment
After Rudolf Mosse’s death, his daughter Erna Felicia Lachmann-Mosse (1888–1972), born before his marriage, together with her adoptive mother Emilie inherited his publishing empire as well as his entire private fortune. Felicia’s husband, Hans Lachmann-Mosse, took over the running of the publishing business, but with less success than his father-in-law. The adverse economic trends in the Weimar Republic led to substantial losses, and with the global downturn following the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the company’s debts escalated so rapidly that in September 1932 Lachmann-Mosse was obliged to file for bankruptcy.[28] This collapse was precipitated not just by the general economic climate and his own shortcomings as a businessman, but also by the editorial stance of the Berliner Tageblatt. Both at home and abroad, the newspaper had developed into a respected organ of political liberalism, which explicitly opposed the anti-democratic and anti-Semitic sentiments of the German right-wing and later of the National Socialists. Thus the Völkischer Beobachter newspaper named the Mosse family as representatives of a “Jewish press damaging to the German people” and following the Nazi seizure of power, the Berliner Tageblatt was banned from appearing for several days.[29] It was impossible for a liberal-left newspaper run by a Jewish publisher to survive under the new regime.

On 8 April 1933 the ostensibly non-profit Rudolf Mosse Stiftungs-GmbH (Rudolf Mosse Foundation) was created to manage the assets of Rudolf Mosse GmbH (Rudolf Mosse Ltd) and satisfy the demands of its various creditors.[30] The net profits earned by Rudolf Mosse, Ltd were to be transferred, via the Rudolf Mosse Foundation, to the “Reich Ministry of Labour for the German victims of the World War”.[31] Since the Foundation was headed by a board member very close to the Nazi party, to whom Hans Lachmann-Mosse was obliged, under duress, to give full power of attorney on April 15, 1933, this—on the surface, apparently legal—structure conceals a process of expropriation under the guise of donations for charitable purposes.[32] Shortly afterwards the Lachmann-Mosses emigrated from Paris to Switzerland, and in 1940 to the United States, where they lived on their foreign assets, which lay beyond the Nazi sphere of influence. It follows that the Rudolf Mosse Stiftung-GmbH was created solely for the purpose of divesting the Mosse family of its capital and property. Six months later, indeed, the Lachmann-Mosse estate was being “managed” by a so-called trust company, the Rudolf Mosse Treuhandverwaltungs-GmbH (later Treuwa Treuhandverwaltungs-GmbH).[33] Through this instrument, the Nazi regime awarded its own institutions use of Mosse properties, in the case of the Mosse-Palais on Leipziger Platz, which from 1936 to 1943 housed Hans Frank’s “Academy for German Law” (Akademie für Deutsches Recht).[34] It was also through the trust company, in 1934, that Rudolf Mosse’s art collection was auctioned by Rudolph Lepke.[35]

The auction catalogue gave no indication as to the circumstances surrounding the sale and did not, for example, qualify the provenance of the works as originating “from non-Aryan possession” (aus nichtarischem Besitz), as was frequently the case in later years in forced auctions as a result of persecution.[36] It was probably for this reason that, at this early date, even careful collectors such as the Swiss collector Oskar Reinhart (1885–1965) purchased works at the auction without their suspicions being raised.[37]

At the auction of the Rudolf Mosse Collection, the Blechen painting carried a starting price of 1,800 Reichsmarks, but sold for only 1,700 Reichsmarks.[38] This was a relatively modest price, but can be attributed to the general state of the market.[39] The buyer was very probably the art historian and Blechen biographer Guido Joseph Kern, who until 1923 was curator at Berlin’s new Nationalgalerie and who also occasionally worked as an art dealer.[40] On February 14, 1938 Kern delivered the picture to the Munich-based Galerie Heinemann, which sold it on March 28, 1938 to the Magdeburg mill owner Arthur Ebering.[41] It remained in the latter’s possession until late 1968 when it came up for auction on November 26 as Lot 1276 at the Adolf Weinmüller auction house and was knocked down to Galerie Neumeister for 50,000 Deutschmarks. On November 17, 1969 the Galerie Neumeister sold it to the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe for 70,000 Deutschmarks.[42] It remained in the Kunsthalle’s possession until Rudolf Mosse’s heirs contacted the museum in May 2014.[43]

The Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe has publicly acknowledged the case for restitution and has enquired into the possibility of repurchasing the painting. Until a decision has been reached, the painting will remain at the museum on loan for a period of eighteen months. The recent special exhibition devoted to Blechen’s painting and its history was organized in order to draw attention to this unusual situation. The Kunsthalle senior management wished to offer an example of the results achieved by the museum in the sphere of provenance research and to commemorate Rudolf Mosse as representing an important liberal position within the German Empire. The thoughtfully curated presentation was complemented by art works and archival material from the Jewish Museum in Berlin and the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich, among others. It took place in tandem with other ongoing restitution efforts by museums in Germany and Switzerland, which have been set in motion only through provenance research by art historians such as Tessa Rosebrock and through the activities of the Mosse Art Restitution Project conducted by the Mosse Foundation in Berkeley, California.[44] Karlsruhe’s small exhibition was therefore the first of its kind to be organized by one of the museums directly involved with the fateful story of the Berlin publishing magnate Rudolph Mosse, his art collection, and its break-up under National Socialism. It served as a reminder to experts and political decision-makers not only that the painful chapter of the Nazi regime and its consequences is still far from closed, but also more generally that we need to cast a fresh, critical eye over historical sources and submit inherited opinions and presumed facts to regular and unprejudiced scrutiny. Such things are imperative in our daily work if we are to fulfill our mandate as researchers. For this, we need people who dare to doubt traditional knowledge and to think what no one else has thought before. In this respect, Tessa Rosebrock’s exhibition was a courageous and successful demonstration of how our knowledge is constantly changing and how history can be regained.

Dr. Marc Fehlmann, FRSA
Museum Oskar Reinhart
Winterthur, Switzerland
marc.fehlmann[at]win.ch




[1] Paul Ortwin Rave, Karl Blechen. Leben. Würdigungen. Werk (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1940), 280, no. 885. The reconstruction of the painting’s provenance that follows is largely based on the findings of Dr. Tessa Rosebrock, provenance researcher at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe. My warmest thanks go to Dr. Rosebrock for providing invaluable details of documentary material in German archives, for research assistance, and bibliographic references. I also wish to thank my colleagues Harry Joelson-Strohbach, archivist of the Sammlung Oskar Reinhart ‘Am Römerholz,’ Winterthur, and David Schmidhauser, M.A., Junior Curator at the Museum Oskar Reinhart in Winterthur, for reading the manuscript and offering their constructive comments.

[2] Helmut Börsch-Supan, “‘Das rechte Herz, das warme Blut und der Geist in der Kunst’. Carl Blechen – Malerei in der Mark,” in Klaus-Peter Schuster, ed., Carl Blechen. Zwischen Romantik und Realismus, exh. cat., Nationalgalerie Berlin (Munich: Prestel, 1990), 27–38.

[3] Klaus Herding, “Carl Blechen – der Widerstand gegen das Erhabene,” in Nachmärz. Der Ursprung der ästhetischen Moderne in einer nachrevolutionären Konstellation, eds. Thomas Koebner and Sigrid Weigel (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1996), 100–116.

[4] Dorit Schäfer, “Auf dem Weg zum ‘eigentlichen Malerischen’. Naturstudien aus den zwanziger und dreissiger Jahren,” in Viaggio in Italia. Künstler auf Reisen 1770–1880, exh. cat., Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe (Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2010), 172–183, cited on 178.

[5] See for example, Johann Christian Reinhart, Santa Scolastica near Subiaco, 1779. Watercolor over black chalk with white heightening on paper, 73.3 x 48.8 cm. Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Graphische Sammlung. Reproduced in Herbert W. Rott/Andreas Stolzenburg, eds., Johann Christian Reinhart. Ein deutscher Landschaftsmaler in Rom, exh. cat., Hamburger Kunsthalle/Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen München, Neue Pinakothek (Munich: Hirmer, 2012), 239.

[6] S[amuel] H[einrich] Spiker, “Die Kunstausstellung (Fortsetzung)” in Berlinische Nachrichten von Staats- und gelehrten Sachen (Haude & Spenersche Zeitung), October 25, 1832.

[7] All information relating to the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe archives and inventory was generously supplied to the author by Dr. Tessa Rosebrock.

[8] Guido Joseph Kern, Karl Blechen. Sein Leben und seine Werke (Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1911). Kern’s information was copied by Rave, 1940 (note 1).

[9] Provenance details given on the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe inventory card: “1968 Versteigerung Weinmüller – Ehemals Slg. Dr. Arthur Ebering, Magdeburg. Nach Kern (Lit. 1911) früher in der Slg. des Berliner Verlegers Decker und dessen Sohn R. von Decker (Schloss Dittersbach Schlesien).” English translation: “1968 Auction Weinmüller – Formerly Coll. Dr. Arthur Ebering, Magdeburg. According to Kern (bibliog. 1911) previously in the coll. of the Berlin publisher Decker and his son R. von Decker (Dittersbach Castle, Silesia).”

[10] Information kindly supplied by Dr. Tessa Rosebrock, June 5, 2015. Of the seven restitution claims, five were unfounded and in two cases, the works in question were returned to their lawful owners.

[11] Max Schasler, Die öffentlichen und Privat-Kunstsammlungen, Kunstinstitute und Ateliers der Künstler und Kunstindustriellen von Berlin (Berlin 1856), 386, no. 6, with a description of the picture. Gustav Parthey, Deutscher Bildersaal. Verzeichniss der in Deutschland vorhandenen Oelbilder verstorbener Maler aller Schulen, vol. 1 (A–K), (Berlin, 1863), 121.

[12] Schasler, (note 12), 352–354.

[13] Carl Blechen, The Monastery of Santa Subiaco at Subiaco, ca. 1830. Oil on canvas, 110 x 77 cm. Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal, inv. 0667,. See also Rave, 1940 (as note 1) 280, no. 856. The Karlsruhe and Wuppertal paintings are reproduced next to each other in Peter-Klaus Schuster, ed., Carl Blechen. Zwischen Romantik und Realismus, exh. cat., Nationalgalerie Berlin (Munich: Prestel, 1990), 117–119.

[14] Jan Lauts, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe. Katalog Neuere Meister 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Karlsruhe 1971) vol. 1, 27, and vol. 2, 33.

[15] Spiker, 1932, note 7, “No. 51 ‘Schlucht bei Subiaco mit Blick auf das Kloster S. Scholastica’.”

[16] Schasler, 1856, 386, note 12.

[17] Parthey, 1863, 121, note 12.

[18] See “Vorwort” in Katalog der Galerie Kuhtz Berlin, Ölgemälde, Aquarelle und Zeichnungen neuerer, sowie einiger älterer Meister ersten Ranges. Versteigerung in Rudolf Lepkes Kunst-Auctions-Haus Berlin, February 15, 1898, 3–4.

[19] Ibid., 36, no. 57.

[20] The auction was conducted over two days, May 28 and 29, 1934, by Rudolf Lepke’s auction house in Berlin. A copy of the auction catalogue, Kunstsammlung Rudolf Mosse, Berlin. Versteigerung bei Rudolf Lepke’s Kunst-Auctions-Haus Berlin, is preserved in Heidelberg University Library: see http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/lepke1934_05_24/0003new-win-icon (last accessed June 6, 2015). Blechen’s picture is listed as no. 12 (Carl Blechen, “Scolastica”) on p. 18.

[21] All biographical information about Rudolf Mosse is based on Hans-Henning Zabel, “Mosse, Rudolf” in Neue Deutsche Biographie, vol. 18 (1997), 213–216; online version: http://www.deutsche-biographie.de/%20pnd118785109.htmlnew-win-icon (last accessed June 1, 2015). The literature on Rudolf Mosse and his family is extensive. See inter alia Elisabeth Kraus, Die Familie Mosse. Deutsch-jüdisches Bürgertum im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1999); Georg L. Mosse, Aus großem Hause. Erinnerungen eines deutsch jüdischen Historikers (Munich: Ullstein, 2003); Jost Hermand, “Zweierlei Moderne. Das Kunstverständnis Rudolf Mosses und Hans Lachmann-Mosses” in Aufbruch in die Moderne. Sammler, Mäzene, Kunsthändler in Berlin 1880–1933, eds. Anna-Dorothea Ludewig/Julius Schoeps (Cologne: DuMont, 2012), 250–271.

[22] Redaktion des Berliner Tageblatts, ed., Fünfundzwanzig Jahre Deutscher Zeitgeschichte. 1872–1897. 25th anniversary publication, Rudolf Mosse, (Berlin, 1897); Siegfried Jacobsohn [together with Kurt Tucholsky], “Dem siebzigjährigen Mosse” in Siegfried Jacobsohn, Gesammelte Schriften. Band 2: Schrei nach dem Zensor 1909–1915 (= Veröffentlichungen der Deutschen Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung, vol. 85), (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2005), 264–270; Karl Schottenloher, Flugblatt und Zeitung. Ein Wegweiser durch das gedruckte Tagesschrifttum. Band 1: Von den Anfängen bis 1848 (Berlin, 1922) (revised, expanded and with an introduction by J. Binkowski, Munich, 1985); Gotthart Schwarz, “Berliner Tageblatt (1872–1939)” in Deutsche Zeitungen des 17.–20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Heinz-Dietrich Fischer, vol. 2, (Pullach bei München: Verlag Dokumentation, 1972) , 315–327.

[23] On Mosse as a philanthropist, see Wolfgang Hartwig, “Drei Berliner Porträts. Wilhelm von Bode, Eduard Arnold, Harry Graf Kessler. Museumsmann, Mäzen und Kunstvermittler – drei herausragende Beispiele” in Mäzenatentum in Berlin. Bürgersinn und kulturelle Kompetenz unter sich verändernden Bedingungen, eds. Günter and Waltraut Braun (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1993), 39–73, cited on p. 44.

[24] Thea Koberstein, “Das Mosse-Palais: eine feine Adresse” in Berlinische Monatsschrift, no. 6/1999: 91–95.

[25] Hans Lachmann-Mosse, Haus der Sammlungen Rudolf Mosse (Berlin, 1932); Hans Rosenhagen, “Vorwort” in Kunstsammlung Rudolf Mosse 1934, note 21. See also Sven Kuhrau, Der Kunstsammler im Kaiserreich. Kunst und Repräsentation der Berliner Privatsammlerkultur (Kiel: Ludwig, 2005), 102–104.

[26] Kunstsammlung Rudolf Mosse, 1934, note 21.

[27] See for example Melissa Müller/Monika Tatzkow, Verlorene Bilder, verlorene Leben. Jüdische Sammler und was aus ihren Kunstwerken wurde (Munich: Sandmann, 2008).

[28] Kraus, 519, note 22.

[29] “volksschädigende Pressejuden”; cited in Hermand, 266, note 22. See also Kraus, 515, note 22.

[30] Ibid., 519–20.

[31] Adolf Pochwadt to Minister Bernhard Rust, June 13, 1933 in Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Zentralarchiv I, Nationalgalerie, Spec 29, vol. II; information kindly supplied by Tessa Rosebrock in an email of September 19, 2014.

[32] Kraus, 520, note 22. The various affidavits and sworn statements by lawyers in compensation and restitution dossiers compiled in the 1950s and 1960s show that all these measures were implemented as a result of persecution and also under duress: lawyer Carl Hermann to the Berlin Compensation Office (application on behalf of Felicia Lachmann-Mosse for a pension in compensation for existential damages), April 18, 1957, Landesamt für Bürger und Ordnungsangelegenheiten, Hans Lachmann-Mosse Compensation Files, reg. no. 65543, sheet 1131; lawyer Kalle in an identically worded application to the Berlin Compensation Office, February 17, 1961, Appendix A, Remarks, in ibid., sheet E 13. A congruent statement was also placed on record by Carola Lachmann, the second wife of Hans Lachmann-Mosses; see Carola Lachmann, “Anmeldung von Schaden an Körper und Gesundheit,” February 25, 1958, in ibid., sheet B1 verso. See also Dr Ludwig Leighton, “Begründung des Anspruchs in der Rückerstattungssache Felicia Lachmann-Mosse gegen Deutsches Reich,” December 11, 1953, at the Landesarchiv Berlin, B Rep. 025–08, no. 3956/51, sheets 23–25. I am indebted for this information to Dr Rosebrock and her emails of 1.12.2014 and 5.6.2015.

[33] Kraus, 520–523, note 22.

[34] Koberstein, 1999, 95, note 25.

[35] Kraus, 515, note 22.

[36] Kunstsammlung Rudolf Mosse 1934, note 21. The designation “from non-Aryan possession” is found, for example, at the auction of the art collection of Max Meirowsky (1866–1949). See Hans W. Lange, Gemälde, Plastik, Kunstgewerbe aus einer Berliner Privatsammlung (nichtarischer Besitz), Versteigerung Freitag, den 18. November 1938 (Berlin 1938). See also Meike Hopp, Kunsthandel im Nationalsozialismus. Adolf Weinmüller in München und Wien (Cologne: Böhlau, 2012).

[37] On June 23, 2015 the Oskar Reinhart Foundation in Winterthur voluntarily, and on the basis of its own provenance research, restituted Adolf von Menzel’s pastel Dame mit roter Bluse from the Rudolf Mosse Collection to Rudolf Mosse’s heirs. See the press release issued by the Museum Oskar Reinhart on June 23, 2015: http://museumoskarreinhart.ch/de/oskar-reinhart/provenienzforschung.htmlnew-win-icon (last accessed July 8, 2015); and Neue Zürcher Zeitung, June 24, 2015, 15.

[38] According to the hand-written entry in the copy of the auction catalogue preserved in Heidelberg University Library (note 21), see http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/lepke1934_05_24/0020?sid=83ea9382ea4947d1d70d14e2f52d10b0new-win-icon (last accessed 5.6.2015). This is confirmed by the price reports “Preisberichte – Rudolf Lepke Berlin, 29.–30. Mai 1934, Slg. Rudolf Mosse” in: Die Welkunst, vol. VIII, no. 22, June 3, 1934, 3.

[39] Hammer prices at this auction were in general relatively low and only two lots–again according to the Heidelberg copy of the catalogue–went for over 10,000 Reichmarks: Lot 50, Wilhem Leibl’s Bildnis des Appellationsrats Stenglein for RM 16,000 and Lot 115, Adriaen von Ostade’s (1610–1685) Dorflustbarkeit, likewise for RM 16,000.

[40] Heinrich Brauer, “Kern, Guido Joseph” in Neue Deutsche Biographie, vol. 11 (1977), 521; Online version: http://www.deutsche-biographie.de/sfz40604.htmlnew-win-icon (last accessed June 5, 2015).

[41] Galerie Heinemann purchase ledger, EB-1-45, doc. ID 21905, sheet 43, November 5, 1934 to November 3, 1938, p. 43 at: http://heinemann.gnm.denew-win-icon (last accessed 5 June 2015). Galerie Heinemann card index of sold pictures, KV-B-626, doc. ID 884 and card index of buyers, KK-E-5, doc. ID 16125, at: http://heinemann.gnm.denew-win-icon (last accessed 5 June 2015). On Arthur Eberinger’s art collection, see idem., Meine Sammlung (Magdeburg 1937) with addendum in 1940, n.p.

[42] Archives of the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe: proof of purchase in files and on the inventory card for inv. 2590.

[43] Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe press release of March 12, 2015.

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