Abraham Adelsberger

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Abraham Adelsberger ( April 23, 1863 in Hockenheim - August 24, 1940 in Amsterdam ) was a German manufacturer , councilor and art collector .

Adelsberger settled in Nuremberg in 1897. His wife Clothilde, whom he married in 1893, came from Fürth . The two had two children, Paul and Sofie. Adelsberger ran a hops shop until the 1930s. In addition, he was initially a partner and later sole owner of the tin toy factory "Heinrich Fischer & Cie". The export-oriented company with around 300 employees mainly produced movable toys with flywheel or clockwork drives. In 1909 he was accepted into the Nuremberg Freemason Lodge Albrecht Dürer .

"Jupiter and Antiope" by Hendrick Goltzius

Due to the economic success of his company, Adelsberger was able to build a spacious city villa and an art collection with porcelain and works from the 19th century. The wealthy factory owner collected valuable paintings, including works by Peter Paul Rubens , Gustav Schönleber , Georg Jakobides , Carl Spitzweg , Paul Weber ; the painting “Jupiter and Antiope” by the Dutch painter Hendrick Goltzius was also in his collection.

Even before the global economic crisis , the export-oriented entrepreneur got into financial difficulties. As early as 1927/28 he took out loans for 600,000 Reichsmarks and left parts of his real estate and a small part of his private collection to the lender as security. In 1930 and 1931 he offered paintings, including “Jupiter and Antiope”, for auction in Munich without success, probably because he set too high sales prices. In 1937 Adelsberger had to sell his house and other real estate; his toy factory was aryanized .

Although his son Paul had emigrated to America in 1934 and his daughter Sofie fled to Amsterdam with her husband , Adelsberger and his wife stayed in Nuremberg. It wasn't until 1939 that they fled to their daughter in Amsterdam. When he fled, Adelsberger took a few works of art with him, including the painting by Goltzius. Abraham Adelsberger died in Amsterdam in August 1940. In 1941 Hermann Göring took possession of the picture by forcible sale in order to decorate his country home in Carinhall . Adelsberger's wife was deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1943. She survived the Holocaust and applied for reparations after the Second World War , in which her husband's art collection only played a minor role. She did not get the painting “Jupiter and Antiope” back, it stayed in the Netherlands. In 2009 it was returned by the Dutch government to the heirs of Adelsberger and in 2010 it was auctioned by Sotheby’s auction house for $ 6.8 million.

literature

  • The story of the Adelsbergers. In Frank-Uwe Betz: persecuted, resisted, exploited - about the Nazi era in the Schwetzingen - Hockenheim region. HRSG. Working group Freundliches Schwetzingen - Association for regional contemporary history eV Verlag Regionalkultur, Ubstadt-Weiher 2015, ISBN 978-3-89735-924-6 . Text online here. [1]
  • Manfred H. Grieb (Hrsg.): Nürnberger Künstlerlexikon: Visual artists, craftsmen, scholars, collectors, cultural workers and patrons from the 12th to the middle of the 20th century. Walter de Gruyter , Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-5981176-3-3 .

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Hendrick Goltzius' "Jupiter and Antiope" Among Highlights of Sotheby's Sale , artdaily.org, December 8, 2009
personal data
SURNAME Adelsberger, Abraham
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German manufacturer, councilor and art collector
DATE OF BIRTH April 23, 1863
PLACE OF BIRTH Hockenheim
DATE OF DEATH August 24, 1940
Place of death Amsterdam