Alexander Lewin (entrepreneur)

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Alexander Lewin (born August 18, 1879 in Vienna ; died in Switzerland in 1942 ) was a German entrepreneur and art collector .

Life

Cohn's villa in Guben, residence of the Lewin family until 1938
Share in Berlin-Gubener Hutfabrik AG from May 1928 with the signature of board member Alexander Lewin

Alexander Lewin, born in Vienna, first studied law and finished his university days with a doctorate . Then he joined the family business, the Berlin-Gubener Hutfabrik AG, vorm. A. Cohn , a. His father Hermann Lewin and his uncle Apelius Cohn founded their first hat factory in Berlin in 1859, to which a branch in Guben was added in 1876 . The Guben location soon developed into the company's main plant and the family settled across from the factory in the Cohn Villa , Alte Poststrasse 61. After the death of his father Hermann Lewin in 1920, Alexander Lewin took over the management of the company as general director and member of the board, which with its branches grew into the largest hat manufacturer in Germany by 1922 and employed more than 4,000 people in 1928.

Alexander Lewin also performed various tasks outside of the family business. He worked as honorary consul for Portugal and was a member of the foreign trade committee of the Reich Association of German Industry . In addition, since 1928 he was President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry for Lower Lusatia in Cottbus .

After the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933, the living conditions for the Jewish family Lewin deteriorated sustainable. On March 6, 1933, Alexander Lewin was again unanimously re-elected chairman of the Cottbus Chamber of Commerce and Industry, but had to give up this post a month later due to pressure from the new government. In the summer of 1938 he traveled to Switzerland - initially officially referred to as a spa stay. At the beginning of September 1938 he resigned from his position on the board of the Berlin-Gubener Hutfabrik AG . After he announced in March 1939 that he would no longer return to Germany, all of his assets in Germany were blocked. However, he was able to carry out his removal goods on June 21, 1939 - without any significant valuables. On August 4, 1941, the Reich Minister of the Interior revoked his German citizenship and his property was confiscated . Alexander Lewin died in Switzerland in 1942 at the age of 63.

Art collection

Alexander Lewin had built up an important art collection that included 19th century German art and works of French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism . In 1933 Lewin had the works of French artists taken abroad and stated that they were intended for exhibitions. This was probably done in order to avoid export duties and to obtain an export license in the first place. In fact, some of these pictures were shown in the 1933–1934 exhibition Schilderijen van Delacroix tot Cézanne en Vincent van Gogh in the Museum Boijmans in Rotterdam and in 1938 in the show Honderd Jaar Fransche Art in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam . Major parts of the collection were stored in the Art Museum St. Gallen and in the Cornavin bonded warehouse in Geneva during the Second World War . After the death of Alexander Lewin, some of the pictures were donated to Countess Hedwig Bopp von Oberstadt, who lived in Switzerland, the remaining works were inherited by Lewin's daughter Alice J. Kurz, who lived in Hastings-on-Hudson in the United States .

The paintings in the Lewin Collection that were in Switzerland when he died included smokers and absinthe drinkers by Honoré Daumier (now the EG Bührle Collection , Zurich), Alice Legouvé in the armchair by Édouard Manet ( Armand Hammer Museum of Art , Los Angeles ), Le Louvre, matin, printemps and L'Église Saint-Jacques à Dieppe, soleil, matin by Camille Pissarro and Paysage fluvial by Alfred Sisley . There were also Paysage avec saules , Les Bords de la Zaan and Paysage avec roseaux by Claude Monet , Portrair de dame , Place de la 'Trinité , Nature morte aux fraises and Un petit nu by Pierre-Auguste Renoir . Other works in the collection were a portrait d'homme , bathing women ( Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek , Copenhagen) and a view of the sea at l'Estaque ( Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe ) by Paul Cézanne and the pictures Garten in Auvers (private collection), wheat field with a stormy sky (Private collection) and self-portrait (Foundation EG Bührle Collection, Zurich) by Vincent van Gogh .

The works of art left behind in Guben were confiscated by German authorities in the course of Alexander Lewin's expatriation. Two works were transferred to the collection of the so-called Führer Museum planned in Linz via intermediaries . After the end of the war, the Federal Republic of Germany came into possession of the works and, decades later, after a decision by the Limbach Commission, returned them to the heirs of Alexander Lewin. These paintings were the painting Farmer's Girl (also Farmer's Girl Without Hat with White Neckerchief ) by Wilhelm Leibl , which was previously on permanent loan to the Kunsthalle Bremen , and the painting Two Cows in the Pasture under Pollarded Willows by Heinrich von Zügel , which had previously been was owned by the city of Wörth am Rhein .

literature

  • Thomas Flemming: Between history and challenge. The Cottbus Chamber of Commerce 1851–2001. Cottbus Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Cottbus 2001, ISBN 3-00-008410-X .
  • Esther Tisa Francini, Anja Heuss , Georg Kreis : Fluchtgut - looted property. The transfer of cultural goods in and via Switzerland 1933-1945 and the question of restitution. (=  Publications of the Independent Expert Commission Switzerland - Second World War , Volume 1.) Chronos, Zurich 2001, ISBN 3-0340-0601-2 .
  • Hans Jucker, Theodor Müller, Eduard Hüttinger: Collection Emil G. Bührle. Kunsthaus Zurich, Zurich 1958.

Individual evidence

  1. Uta Baier: Germany is losing the “peasant girl”. In: Die Welt from January 30, 2009
  2. Information on the picture on the website of the Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues ( Memento from 23 September 2015 in the Internet Archive )