Alex Vömel

Alexander Vömel , called Alex Vömel (born September 23, 1897 in Emmishofen , † June 20, 1985 in Düsseldorf ), was a German gallery owner and art dealer in Düsseldorf. He was managing director of Galerie Alfred Flechtheim until 1933 and then founded his own gallery in the premises. The circumstances of the business transfer are unclear and it is disputed whether Alex Vömel benefited directly from the reprisals against Alfred Flechtheim. In 1941 the gallery was confiscated by the Gestapo. In 1946 Vömel reopened the gallery that had been destroyed in 1943.

Life

Galerie Vömel, Orangeriestraße 6 (2020)

Vömel was the son of the Protestant pastor Alexander Vömel (1863–1949) from Frankfurt and Elisabeth, née Bartels (1863–1922). From 1908 to 1912 he first attended a grammar school in Konstanz , then in 1916 a higher private school in Frankfurt, which he graduated with a military diploma. During the First World War he fought as an officer and was wounded. Early on he became a member of the Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten .

After an apprenticeship as a bookseller, which he completed from 1920 to 1922 in Frankfurt at "Reitz & Kölher" at Schillerstraße 15, in December 1922 he worked for the gallery owner Alfred Flechtheim for his gallery in Düsseldorf, which was reopened in 1919, at Königsallee 34. In 1924, Alex Vömel was sent to Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler's gallery in Paris for six months to familiarize himself with the work. There he came into contact with the great French painters and had personal contacts with Picasso, Braque, Leger and Pascin.

Back in Düsseldorf, Vömel soon took on a leading role at Galerie Flechtheim. He also became a member of the Rotary Club .

When Alfred Flechtheim moved to Berlin, he entrusted the Düsseldorf gallery to Alex Vömel, and in 1926 he appointed him managing director. Vömel now represented German expressionists such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , Erich Heckel , Emil Nolde , Karl Schmidt-Rottluff , Alexej von Jawlensky and Gabriele Münter . Vömel quickly came into contact with Walter Kaesbach , who had been appointed director of the Düsseldorf Academy in 1924 , and with the artists he had appointed. In addition to Heinrich Campendonk and Alexander Zschokke , it was above all Paul Klee with whom he came into close contact. He was also in close contact with the sculptor Ewald Mataré and later exhibited his watercolors as one of the first. When Vömel built his house in Büderich on Dückersstraße, exactly opposite Mataré, the relationship solidified.

In 1927 Vömel married Martha Suermondt (1897–1976), née Compes and widow of the art collector Edwin Suermondt , whose collection later traded under the name of "Sammlung Suermondt-Vömel".

Despite the distance to Berlin, Vömel remained in close contact with Flechtheim, as was particularly evident in times of crisis. When the financial problems grew as a result of the global economic crisis , both worked in a “concerted action” to rescue the company, but were only partially successful. If the German art trade was already financially stricken by the effects of the global economic crisis, from 1933 the hostility against Flechtheim in particular led to the gallery's decline. This was due to the fact that the emerging National Socialism covered Flechtheim as a Jew and as an advocate of art, which was shortly afterwards denounced as "degenerate" and "ostracized", with racist and politically motivated public slurs.

Vömel, who was financially well-endowed through his marriage to Martha Suermondt, took over the premises Flechtheim had previously rented in March 1933 and opened his own gallery there. In May 1933, Vömel's power of attorney for the Flechtheim Gallery expired. In the same month Alfred Flechtheim fled via Switzerland, first to Paris, and in 1934 to London, and wrote to George Grosz :

"[...] I'm so pretty now. outside for ½ year. My German galleries have completely collapsed financially and My liquidator [Alfred Schulte] only managed to avoid a concours with great difficulty and excitement. My creditors get 20%. He managed to save me from a complete competition. [...] "

Vömel kept in contact with Flechtheim and supplied him with art in London. After opening his gallery, he ensured that part of the debts Flechtheim left behind was covered. The process of changing from Galerie Flechtheim to Vömel could also be described as a silent handover agreement. Vömel had a long-standing, very close relationship with the art dealer Christoph Bernoulli (1897–1981) that survived the war. Vömel supplied him u. a. Works in Switzerland. In the 1930s, Bernoulli partially acted as a depot and hub for works of art by emigrants. Vömel described his situation at the time in a letter to Bernoulli:

“But I work 14 hours. We're making big changes; when they are over and in a few days the Düsseldorf gallery will be called AF Galerie Alex Vömel, then I want to go to Drove for a few days and look forward to spring and then I want to bring my good Ford back with me from there. A large house cleaning is carried out in Germany; nobody can escape it. It affects everyone; It hit us hard when the National Socialist delegation forbade us to continue the auction, which had started splendidly. But now I am happy and have courage again and believe that it had to be that way. - [...] I feel sorry for the Jews who have to feel like second-class people - AF has downright collapsed (luckily he was not in Düsseldorf on the day of the auction). "

- Vömel to Bernoulli

The rapid change and the re-establishment of the company later earned Vömel the publicly voiced accusation of being an Ariseur . According to his own statements, Vömel was a Stahlhelmer and only became a member of the SA after the Stahlhelm became a member. He had resigned from the SA during the Nazi regime. He did not join the NSDAP until May 1937.

In his own gallery, Vömel focused on modern art . He also continued to exhibit artists persecuted by the Nazis as long as they were not prohibited from exhibiting, including Karl Hofer , Hans Reichel , Oskar Kokoschka , Max Beckmann , Otto Dix , Otto Pankok , Werner Gilles , Eduard Bargheer . Today's Galerie Vömel celebrates its founder as a hero in the battle of images: “In order to be able to continue exhibiting and selling the artists persecuted by the Nazis, albeit with great difficulty,” it says on the website. In 1941, Vömel was attacked as Flechtheim's successor and learned that the gallery was confiscated by the Gestapo as part of the “ Degenerate Art ” campaign. During the Second World War , the gallery was bombed three times. An air raid in 1943 completely destroyed the gallery, including his apartment, so that all business documents were destroyed.

In 1946 Vömel restarted the gallery, initially on the first floor above the Franzen porcelain shop at Königsallee 42. In 1953, his son Edwin (* 1928) entered the gallery business. In 1969 the gallery opened in the then newly built Kö-Center . After his death, Edwin Vömel moved the gallery to Orangeriestraße 6 ( Carlstadt ) in 1996 .

Publications

• Alex Vömel in WorldCat
• Alex Vömel, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Fritz Nathan: The joys and sorrows of an art dealer . Düsseldorf 1964.

literature

• Andrea Bambi, Axel Drecoll: Alfred Flechtheim: Raubkunst und Restitution , De Gruyter, May 2015, ISBN 978-3-11-040497-5
• Yvo Theumissen: Degenerate Art and Private Exhibition. The Alex Vömel gallery in Düsseldorf , in: Persecution and Resistance in the Rhineland and Westphalia 1933–1945, (Ed. By Anselm Faust), Cologne / Stuttgart / Berlin, 1992, pp. 234–244
• Roswitha Neu-Kock : Alfred Flechtheim, Alexander Vömel and the situation in Düsseldorf 1930 to 1934 , in: Collecting art, trading art. Contributions to the international symposium in Vienna (edited by Eva Blimlinger and Monika Mayer), Vienna 2012, pp. 155–166

Web links

• Alex Vömel , from Whos Who, alfred-flechtheim.com, accessed on February 5, 2016
• Stefan Koldehoff: What follows from the compulsion of the Nazis , in Die Welt, October 24, 2011, accessed on February 5, 2016
• List of images Restitutionen Flechtheim / Glaser - Acquired by Josef Haubrich via Galerie Alex Vömel, 1946 , drawings from the Haubrich collection in the Museum Ludwig Cologne, which were restituted to the heirs of Alfred Flechtheim, accessed on February 5, 2016
• Ira Mazzini: Schweres Erbe , Süddeutsche Zeitung, from August 28, 2015, accessed on April 2, 2017

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Philobiblon, vol. 29, September 1985, Hauswedell & Co., Stuttgart, p. 242
2. ↑ Private persons and corporations involved in the Nazi cultural property theft : Vömel, Alexander (Alex) , on lostart.de, Stiftung Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste - 2017
3. ↑ STEFAN KOLDEHOFF: Image return: Flechtheim, his heirs and the question of restitution . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . April 9, 2013, ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed December 27, 2016]).
4. ↑ Private genealogy Internet site with the Vömel family , on Familienbuch-euregio.eu, accessed on February 9, 2016
5. ↑ Alfred Flechtheim and Gustav Kahnweiler first opened a branch on August 9, 1921 at Gärtnerweg 63 in Frankfurt and the following year they entered into a joint shop with Mario Uzielli and Heinrich Tiedemann, who ran the Reitz & Kölher bookstore at Schillerstraße 15 - in this bookstore Alex Vömel had completed an apprenticeship. Gustav Kahnweiler was in charge of the gallery, so it soon traded under the name “Flechtheim & Kahnweiler”. The business existed until 1925.
6. ↑ Records of the 56 German and Austrian Rotary clubs founded between 1925 and 1937, which belonged to the 73rd district of Rotary International established on July 1, 1929 ( Memento of the original from February 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet tested. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
7. ^ Gallery Vömel History
8. ↑ Anna Klapheck : A Grand Seigneur, memory of Alex Vömel , article Rheinische Post. Düsseldorfer Feuilleton, June 26, 1985, accessed on February 5, 2016
9. ↑ Visit to Mataré, the later director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle Alfred Hentzen (1903-1985) reports on a visit to Ewald Mataré together with the gallery owner Alex Vömel during the cold and hungry winter of 1947
10. ^ Family book Euregio: Suermondt, Compes, Vömel
11. ↑ Ira Mazzoni: Schweres Erbe , on SZ.de from August 28, 2015, accessed on February 6, 2016
12. ^ The demolition of an auction in Düsseldorf on March 11, 1933 by an SA troop triggered a physical collapse at Flechtheim.
13. ↑ Basel University Library, manuscripts bequests / private archives NL 322 BI 377 No. 1, letter dated March 15, 1933
14. ↑ Vömel, Alexander (Alex) , on Lost Art, accessed February 5, 2016