Paul Robert Ernst von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (born 14 November 1875 in Berlin; died 10 May 1935) was a German Jewish banker and art collector. The persecution of his family under the Nazis has resulted in numerous lawsuits for restitution.
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Paul Robert Ernst von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (born 14 November 1875 in Berlin; died 10 May 1935) was a German Jewish banker and art collector. The persecution of his family under the Nazis has resulted in numerous lawsuits for restitution.
Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was the eldest son of the banker Ernst von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1846–1909) and Marie, née Warschauer (1855–1906), a granddaughter of Alexander Mendelssohn. After a few months at Balliol College in Oxford, studying law in Bonn and Berlin, and joining the Society of Friends in 1901, he became a partner in the family bank Mendelssohn & Co. in early 1902. A few months later, he married Charlotte (Lotte) Reichenheim, who became known as Lotte von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. The couple remained childless. After the divorce, he married Elsa Lucy Emmy Lolo von Lavergne-Péguilhen (born 8 January 1899 in Strasbourg; died 11 March 1986).
Together with his wife, Lotte, Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy built a collection of the finest quality paintings by Pablo Picasso (Boy with Horse and Le Moulin de La Galette) [1] in the Stadtpalais Alsenstrasse 3 / 3a (architect: Bruno Paul) and in Schloss Börnicke (rebuilt by the same architect), [2] Vincent van Gogh ("Sunflowers", "Mutter Roulin im Profil, mit ihren Bab"y, "St. Paul's Krankenhaus", "Junges Mädschen mit Kornblume" and "Trunk of an old yellow tree" [3] ). They also owned artworks by Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Georges Braque [4] as well as by Henri Rousseau, Dégas, Cézanne, Derain, and Toulouse-Lautrec. [3]
When the Nazis rose to power in 1933, von Mendelssohn-Bartholdly was persecuted because of his Jewish origin. [5] Nazi laws designed to ostracize, bankrupt and plunder the Jews were applied to the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy family.
Much controversy surrounds the circumstances under which Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and his heirs relinquished the artworks in his collection, under the Third Reich's racial laws, which forced family members into exile and the destruction via Aryanisation of their bank Mendelssohn & Co.
A series of lawsuits demanding the restitution of the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy artworks was initiated in 2008 by the heirs of Mendelssohn, with Julius H. Schoeps as their spokesman. [6] [7] The artworks claimed included:
There was also a question concerning the Picasso's Boy with a Pipe which Mendelssohn-Bartoldy's widow had sold to Walter Feilchenfeldt, Zürich, who sold it to Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney in 1950. [17]
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue between 88th and 89th Streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It hosts a permanent collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions throughout the year. It was established by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1939 as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, under the guidance of its first director, Hilla von Rebay. The museum adopted its current name in 1952, three years after the death of its founder Solomon R. Guggenheim. It continues to be operated and owned by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.
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Le Moulin de la Galette is an oil painting on canvas created in 1900 by Pablo Picasso, and currently owned by the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Lotte von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was a German author and art collector.
Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was a relative of the composer Felix Mendelssohn and the Enlightenment philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn and Co., the bank his family established in 1795, was one of Germany's five largest privately owned banks. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's collection also included works by Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Georges Braque.
The heirs of Mendelssohn-Bartholdy have previously reached settlements with the current owners of three other Picassos they claim Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was forced to sell at the same time as "Head of a Woman." They include "Boy Leading a Horse," now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art; "Le Moulin de la Galette," now in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and "Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto" (also known as "The Absinthe Drinker"). The latter was sold at a Christie's auction in London for $51.8 million, with commission, to a private collector by the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation after the foundation had reached a settlement with the heirs.
Another declaratory judgment action, filed by the MoMA and the Guggenheim, sought to shut down the claims of Julius Schoeps, heir to Paul Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, for paintings that passed throughThannhauser's hands.2 77 The museums alleged that it is simply implausible and contrary to common sense to suggest that any Jewish art dealer would take advantage of a fellow Jew.278
Schoeps, a descendant of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and the composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, has joined 29 other heirs of the Berlin banker Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy in requesting the return of the Picasso painting "Madame Soler" from the Bavarian State Painting Collections.
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