Akram Ojjeh

Akram Ojjeh (born April 21, 1918 in Damascus ( Syria ), † 1991 ) was a Syrian- Saudi Arabian entrepreneur and art collector.

Life

Akram (Subhi) Ojjeh's father was a Bedouin who worked as a cloth dealer. First he attended school in Beirut, Lebanon, and studied at the College of Lazarist Fathers in Damascus, where he graduated with a teaching degree. He then moved to the Sorbonne in Paris to study law and philosophy . A few months after his arrival, the French capital was occupied by German troops on June 14, 1940. A short time later, Ojjeh moved to Nice in the non-occupied part of France, where he stayed until the end of the war. Ojjeh was married several times and had two sons and three daughters.

Ojjeh avoided the public eye throughout his life, so little was known about him. He was probably already a successful businessman when he first met members of the Saudi Arabian royal family , for whom he brokered exclusive contracts with numerous Western companies from 1971. These included in particular the French defense companies Thomson-CSF , Matra and Groupe Dassault . After the rise in the price of oil in connection with the 1973 oil crisis, oil revenues for Saudi Arabia soared to unprecedented levels, prompting the country to invest heavily in armaments. Ojjeh brokered the purchase of aircraft, weapons, ships and other defense technology for Saudi Arabia in return for appropriate commissions. In gratitude, the Saudi government naturalized him. Ojjeh and his family were involved in a sensational bribe affair in 1990 , in which the German armaments company Thyssen Henschel was involved.

Ojjeh invested the profits from arms deals with Saudi Arabia in a variety of ways. The purchase of the passenger liner France hit the headlines in 1977 . Ojjeh initially intended to convert the ship into a hotel with a casino and art gallery, for which he acquired the first works of art during this time. However, the project did not come to fruition and after two years Ojjeh sold the ship to Norwegian Cruise Line . In 1975, Ojjeh founded the Luxembourg-based conglomerate Techniques d'Avant Garde (TAG). In addition to various business areas such as aviation, the Swiss watch manufacturer Heuer belonged to this group of companies from 1985 . In addition, TAG has been involved in Formula 1 automobile racing since the late 1980s .

From Ojjeh's marriage to a French woman, the two sons Mansour Ojjeh and Aziz Ojjeh were born. In 1978 Akram Ojjeh married 19-year-old Nahed Ojjeh , daughter of the Syrian Defense Minister at the time, Mustafa Tlass . In the last years of his life he lived with her, among other places, in the Hôtel particulier by Marie-Laure de Noailles on the Place des Etats-Unis in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.

The numerous honors Ojjeh received include his appointment as Commander of the Legion of Honor in 1983, as well as the award of the Belgian Order of Leopold II and the Dutch Order of Orange-Nassau .

Art collection

William-Adolphe Bouguereau:
The Wave

Akram Ojjeh began building his art collection in 1977 when he bought the passenger ship France. For the planned furnishing of the ship, he first bought antiques from the 18th century and soon began building an art collection. The exact size of this art collection is not known, as Ojjeh did not appear publicly as a buyer and never loaned his works of art to exhibitions. After his death, his widow sold part of the art collection at Christie's auction house . The works of art put up for auction included paintings with oriental motifs such as The Wave by William Adolphe Bouguereau , Standing Guardsman and Koran Lesson by Rodolphe Ernst , Prêtresse d'Isis jouant de la harpe by Charles Henri Joseph Cordier , The Water Carriers by Maxime Noiré, courtyard of a harem by Ferdinand Max Bredt and Corps de garde d'arnautes au Caire by Jean-Léon Gérôme .

Vincent van Gogh:
The Bridge of Trinquetaille

The focus of the collection was on French painting from the 19th and early 20th centuries. These included La solitude. Souvenir de Vigen, Une crique au bord de la mer and Prairies au bord de l'eau by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and Vase de pivoines by Henri Fantin-Latour as well as the impressionist paintings Graniums dans une bassine de cuivre by Pierre-Auguste Renoir , Garde-Champtre dans la fort de Fontainebleau and Le pont de Svres by Alfred Sisley . In addition, the sculptures L'eau (La petite laveuse) and Maternit by Renoir and La danse espagnole by Edgar Degas were found in this auction . There were also works of late impressionism such as the paintings Dans l'escalier de la rue des Moulins by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec , Le pont de Trinquetaille by Vincent van Gogh and Baigneuses by Henri Edmond Cross .

The Ojjeh collection included Le théâtre de l'atelier sous la neige, Rue Montmartre, La maison de Mimi Pinson sous la neige , Le Moulin de la Galette sous la neige by Maurice Utrillo , Grand bouquet de tulipes, Jeune femme from the following generations of artists blonde en buste and Liliums by Moise Kisling , Portrait de femme, La valse chaloupe - Mistinguette et Max Dearly and Comedia (Montparnasse Blues) by Kees van Dongen , Crépuscule and Bouquet de dahlias by Maurice de Vlaminck , Le pécheur and En haut de la Colline by Camille Bombois . There were also the paintings Jeune fille la guitare by Marie Laurencin , Trio féminin by Salvador Dalí , Le nid by Tsuguharu Foujita , Paysage Hesnes by Albert Marquet , Paysage de Sicile by Raoul Dufy , Après le théâtre by Pierre Bonnard and Bouquet de renoncules by Marc Chagall . The sculptures Île-de-France and Méditerrane (Deux baigneuses) by Aristide Maillol also belonged to the collection.

literature

• Susanna de Vries-Evans: The Lost Impressionists . Roberts Rinehart Publishers, 1992, ISBN 1-879373-25-4 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Markus Dettmer: 220 million for the consultants . In: Der Spiegel . No. 46 , 1999 ( online ).
2. ↑ Klaus-Peter Schmid: The Savior from the Orient . In: Die Zeit , No. 21/1978