Adolf Weinmüller

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Adolf Weinmüller (born 5. May 1886 in Faistenhaar ; died 25. March 1958 ) was a German art dealer in the era of National Socialism and in the Federal Republic of Germany .

Life

Weinmüller began training as a forest trainee at the State Forest Service Bad Reichenhall in 1905 . During the First World War he was deployed as a soldier on the Western Front, after which he worked again as a forest clerk, but left in 1921 and started his own business as an art dealer on Max-Joseph-Strasse in Munich . Little is known about its business operations in the 1920s. In 1931 he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 626.358).

Time of the transfer of power

After the handover of power to the National Socialists in 1933, Weinmüller had himself commissioned by the Reich leadership of the NSDAP to bring the "Association of the German Art and Antiques Trade" into line and ensured the dissolution of all other art dealers' associations. He himself became chairman of the "Association of German Art and Antique Dealers", which from then on was to be run as a student council in the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts . Weinmüller propagated the art trade in the New State in June 1934 in the magazine Weltkunst . In 1935, the art dealers became direct members of the Reich Chamber and thus Weinmüller's association. The Jewish boycott in 1933, which massively hindered Jewish art dealers in their activities, was followed by the reliability test provided for in the ordinance of November 1933 on the Reich Chamber of Culture Act and, in 1934, the law on the auctioning trade that came into being with Weinmüller's assistance . As a result, the Jews could now be completely driven out of this branch of the economy, but in the "Art City of Munich" it meant that the goods of the small businesses to be liquidated threatened to reach the market at the same time.

Leuchtenberg-Palais (rebuilt in 1967)
Friedrich von Amerling : Girl with a Straw Hat (1835).
The painting, which was owned by Ernst Gotthilf , was foreclosed by Weinmüller in Vienna in 1939
Carl Spitzweg : The poor poet (draft).
The picture, which Michael Berolzheimer owned , was foreclosed by Weinmüller in Munich in 1938

The large art dealers, on the other hand, hired “ Aryan ” managing directors in order to be able to continue the business, but as early as 1936 the art dealer Hugo Helbing, denounced as Jewish and excluded by the Nuremberg laws, had to drastically restrict the activities of his auction house. In the period before 1933 the house had carried out up to thirty auctions a year, but due to the Auctioneers Act in 1935 it was only able to have two art auctions carried out by an “Aryan” authorized signatory. Weinmüller took over the market and influenced the development of Galerie Helbing in his own way.

Second World War

In order to enforce his monopoly, Weinmüller also fought against the "Aryan" competition. His involvement in the art theft was less ideologically motivated, but primarily profit-oriented, which is why Weinmüller also deceived the foreign exchange office in order to be bribed by a Jewish emigrant in individual cases . One of the contradictions in his situation was that he employed the art historian and “ half-Jewish ” Hanne Trautwein (1915–2010) in his Munich company from 1941 to 1944.

In addition to his double business as an art dealer and auctioneer, Weinmüller also held exhibitions on his premises with painters who were particularly connected to the Nazi movement, including a. to Lothar Bechstein and Hans Flüggen (1875–1942). The Munich art auction house Adolf Weinmüller, which is now unrivaled in Munich, opened in 1936 in converted, rented rooms of the Leuchtenberg Palace with a memorial exhibition on August Seidel (1820–1904). After the annexation of Austria in 1938, he founded a second auction house in Vienna and Aryanized the business of the Jewish art dealer family Kende .

With Hans Posse , Ernst Heinrich Zimmermann (1886–1971) and Johannes Graf von Waldburg , Weinmüller belonged to a commission that in June 1941 inspected cultural assets at the Gestapo headquarters in Prague that had been stolen from Jews and politically unpopular Czechs by the National Socialists. The less significant part of it was auctioned at Dorotheum in Vienna and at Weinmüller in Munich.

His clientele included Martin Bormann , who was responsible for furnishing the Obersalzberg , the Brown House and the German Castle in Posen , and dealers like the gallery owner Maria Almas-Dietrich , who specifically brokered works for Hitler's special order in Linz . During the Second World War, Weinmüller had to leave the Leuchtenberg Palais, which had been destroyed in the war, in May 1943 and stored some of his goods in requisitioned rooms with the painter Adolf Schinnerer in Haimhausen . Furthermore, Art objects were in the monasteries Kloster Maria Eck , Kloster Dietramszell , Ettal Abbey , in the rectory Marquartstein in Fischbachau well as in private homes. He held the last auction in Vienna in December 1944.

post war period

At the end of the war, Weinmüller stayed at his second home in Tegernsee . In Austria he was wanted as an “Aryan”. Although Weinmüller was described by Karl Haberstock as an old fighter in 1946 , he was only classified as a follower in the Munich denazification process in June 1948 . He received Persil bills a. a. by Eberhard von Cranach-Sichart , Friedrich Heinrich Zinckgraf (the Aryan at Galerie Heinemann ), and Hans Koch (with Weinmüller, aryan at the Jacques Rosenthal antiquarian bookshop ). The Austrian preliminary investigation against him was closed in 1955.

Although the investigation of the Weinmüller case was seen as urgent by the American art protection officers Edgar Breitenbach and Stefan P. Munsing from the Central Collecting Point (CCP), both were able to re-register the Weinmüller auction house on February 16, 1949, initially in the rooms of the Hotel Bayerischer Hof , not prevent. He was able to reclaim most of his art storage from the CCP, as he could usually state that he had acquired the goods under German civil law. Until his death in 1958, Weinmüller held 35 auctions in his rooms in the Almeida-Palais on Brienner Straße .

In July 1958, Rudolf Neumeister took over the auction house from the late auctioneer and ran it until 1978 under the name well-established among customers, later as the Neumeister Münchener Kunstauktionshaus . The owner of the Neumeister company since 2008, Katrin Stoll , provided Weinmüller's still existing business documents for provenance research and restitution efforts and had them processed by Meike Hopp . In 2013, all Munich auction catalogs from the years 1936 to 1945 were found in the premises, including the auctioneer's hand copies and documents for the tax authorities, plus eleven catalogs from the Vienna branch. The catalogs contain information about consignors and, in some cases, also about buyers. Weinmüller had always maintained that these documents had been destroyed by the effects of the war. The documents were digitized in 2014 and are available for provenance research and, if necessary, restitution.

In 2014 the TV channel arte launched the production Under the Hammer of the Nazis. The secret files of Adolf W. shown.

Fonts

  • Auction catalogs from 1936 to 1958.

literature

  • Meike Hopp : Art trade under National Socialism: Adolf Weinmüller in Munich and Vienna. Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2012, also dissertation at the University of Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-412-20807-3 .
  • Gabriele Anderl: The art trade in Austria during the Nazi era and its role in the National Socialist art theft. Studies Verlag, Innsbruck 2012, ISBN 978-3-7065-5223-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Meike Hopp: Art trade in National Socialism: Adolf Weinmüller in Munich and Vienna. 2012, p. 21.
  2. ^ Meike Hopp: Art trade in National Socialism: Adolf Weinmüller in Munich and Vienna. 2012, p. 23.
  3. ^ Meike Hopp: Art trade in National Socialism: Adolf Weinmüller in Munich and Vienna. 2012, p. 44
  4. ^ RGBl., I, 1933, p. 661.
  5. ^ RGBl., I, 1934, p. 974.
  6. ^ Meike Hopp: Art trade in National Socialism: Adolf Weinmüller in Munich and Vienna. 2012, p. 41.
  7. ^ Meike Hopp: Art trade in National Socialism: Adolf Weinmüller in Munich and Vienna. 2012, p. 59ff.
  8. ↑ Monika Mayer: Beyond Klimt. In: Gabriele Anderl u. a. (Ed.): … Significantly more cases than assumed: 10 years of the Commission for Provenance Research. Böhlau, Vienna 2009, p. 105.
  9. ^ Meike Hopp: Art trade in National Socialism: Adolf Weinmüller in Munich and Vienna. 2012, pp. 74-98.
  10. ^ Meike Hopp: Art trade in National Socialism: Adolf Weinmüller in Munich and Vienna. 2012, p. 18; Pp. 66-73.
  11. ^ Meike Hopp: Art trade in National Socialism: Adolf Weinmüller in Munich and Vienna. 2012, pp. 147–151.
  12. ^ Meike Hopp: Art trade in National Socialism: Adolf Weinmüller in Munich and Vienna. 2012, pp. 140f. / Trautwein married the writer Hermann Lenz in 1946 . Hanne Trautwein-Lenz , at DNB.
  13. ^ Meike Hopp: Art trade in National Socialism: Adolf Weinmüller in Munich and Vienna. 2012, pp. 140ff.
  14. ↑ a b Gabriele Anderl: The "Aryanization" of the art antiquarian and auction house S. Kende by Adolph Weinmüller. ["Adolph" sic!], In: David. Jewish cultural magazine, issue No. 69, June 2006.
  15. ^ Meike Hopp: Art trade in National Socialism: Adolf Weinmüller in Munich and Vienna. 2012, p. 213.
  16. ^ Meike Hopp: Art trade in National Socialism: Adolf Weinmüller in Munich and Vienna. 2012, p. 216.
  17. ^ Meike Hopp: Art trade in National Socialism: Adolf Weinmüller in Munich and Vienna. 2012, p. 298f.
  18. ^ A b Meike Hopp: Art trade in National Socialism: Adolf Weinmüller in Munich and Vienna. 2012, p. 295f.
  19. ^ A b c Meike Hopp: Art trade under National Socialism: Adolf Weinmüller in Munich and Vienna. 2012, p. 300.
  20. ^ Meike Hopp: Art trade in National Socialism: Adolf Weinmüller in Munich and Vienna. 2012, p. 9f.
  21. ↑ Ira Mazzoni: The Truth from the Steel Cupboard. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , May 28, 2014, p. 11.
  22. ↑ Press release Neumeister ( Memento of the original dated May 31, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.neumeister.com
  23. ↑ Milestone in provenance research: business documents from the time of National Socialism online. ( Memento of the original from May 31, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. At Lost Art . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lostart.de
  24. ↑ The Guilt of the Predecessor. Arte shows how an art dealer became a big stealer of looted art. In: FAZ of December 17, 2014, page 13.
personal data
SURNAME Weinmüller, Adolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art dealer
DATE OF BIRTH May 5, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Faist hair
DATE OF DEATH March 25, 1958