August Liebmann Mayer

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August L. Mayer

August Liebmann Mayer (born October 27, 1885 in Griesheim , † 1944 in Auschwitz ) was a German art historian who was a leading expert on Spanish painting in his day. He was persecuted as a Jew and probably murdered on March 12, 1944.

Life

Mayer's career

August Liebmann Mayer studied from 1904 art history at the universities of Munich and Berlin and in 1907 in Berlin with Heinrich Wolfflin with a dissertation on Jusepe de Ribera graduated . From 1909 he worked at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich (1909 unpaid research assistant, 1912 curator for Spanish and Italian painting of the 16th and 17th centuries as well as for German painting of the 19th century, since 1920 chief curator). In addition, he was a private lecturer from 1912 and an associate professor at the University of Munich from 1920. Mayer was one of the most productive and important art historians in the first half of the 20th century and dealt a lot with old Spanish painting. He was also involved in important exhibitions on old Spanish painting, e.g. B. 1911 in the Heinemann gallery in Munich and the Nemes collection in the Alte Pinakothek, which showed some El Grecos. Mayer was known as “the” Greco specialist. Mayer published many books on art subjects that were translated into numerous languages ​​and was a widely read and successful author. In addition to his work as curator at the Pinakothek, he wrote numerous expert opinions for paintings, which provided him with extensive additional income. In accordance with regulations, he transferred parts of it to his employer, the Alte Pinakothek, which was roughly the same as his income as custodian at the time, so that his position cost the Bavarian state nothing. From January 1928 to December 1932 he was with Otto von Falke editor of the magazine Pantheon at Bruckmann Verlag .

Mayer was married (his wife died in 1941) and had a daughter who survived the war.

Anti-Semitic persecution even during the Weimar period

Mayer was publicly defamed in 1930 by Wilhelm Pinder during a lecture at the opening of an exhibition of Baron Heinrich Thyssen's Schloss Rohoncz collection in the Munich Pinakothek. Pinder accused Mayer of incorrectly attributing around 100 images in this collection. He also accused Mayer of having written a large number of expert reports for the art trade in order to increase his income, although he was actually paid by the state of Bavaria. Both claims were later found to be false.

During this time it was common practice for museum officials to write expert reports for the art trade on a private basis. Pinder's attack was the prelude to a campaign, in the course of which Mayer was charged with fraud. He gave false appraisals to increase the value of paintings and incorrectly stated his additional income from expert reports. In addition to Pinder, Mayer's colleagues Rudolf Berliner from the Bavarian National Museum , Ernst Heinrich Zimmermann from the Germanic National Museum and Luitpold Dussler from the Technical University of Munich also took part in the campaign. At the time, there was a sharp debate about the private expertise of museum people, this dispute aroused great public interest. Newspapers reported on the case for weeks. Even the Völkische observers of the NSDAP reported in bad propaganda about this case. Mayer strictly rejected the allegations. He received support from, among others, the Bavarian Minister of Education, Franz Goldenberger , the director of the Prado and the general director of the Bavarian State Painting Collections in Munich, Friedrich Dörnhöffer . Mayer's superiors corrected that he had accounted all funds correctly. They pointed out that his position at the Pinakothek would cost the State of Bavaria nothing at all due to the additional income.

The resignation

When a few false accusations were made, Mayer resigned from his position as curator on March 1, 1931, and also gave up his professorship. Not because he felt guilty, but because he believed he could take the lead from the attacks. He wanted to devote himself to the private writing of books, because he was also a very valued book author. This resignation was seen by the enemies of Mayer and by the uninformed public as an admission of guilt, although the informers of Mayer were subjected to disciplinary proceedings by the Minister of Education and by Dörnhöffer. Nevertheless, the agitation against Mayer continued. On March 11, 1931, the Völkischer Beobachter accused Mayer of concealing his Jewish origins.

After 1933

In 1933 Mayer's opponents came to power . State authorities have now taken up the pursuit of Mayer on their behalf. On March 24, 1933, Mayer was imprisoned and held for several months and tortured. From April 6, 1933, the tax authorities were also used for the pursuit. The tax office raised an additional tax claim of 115,000 Reichsmarks against Mayer. Since Mayer did not have this money, the tax office confiscated the Mayers house in Tutzing. After 4 months of detention with daily harassing interrogations, Mayer attempted suicide on June 15. Following Dörnhöffer's intervention, he was released on July 11, 1933.

Exile in France

In January 1936, Mayer, meanwhile completely destitute, emigrated to France, where friends supported him. Thanks to his international reputation, Mayer was able to work again as an art historian in Paris. He edited a catalog raisonné by Diego Velázquez , which appeared in London, and prepared a catalog raisonné by Titian . Mayer also planned to publish a novel entitled "Toledo". Mayer made his living by continuing to produce expertise for art dealers.

After the occupation of France by the Germans

After the declaration of war against Germany, Mayer was taken to southern France by the French authorities and interned, while his wife, who died in 1941, and his child were able to stay in the Paris apartment. After the occupation of France by the Germans, Mayer had to stay in the unoccupied southern France. He settled in the Italian zone in Nice and fled to Monaco in 1943 after the occupation of this zone by the Germans .

When the art dealer Bruno Lohse came to the art theft organization Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg in Paris in 1941 , he initiated a manhunt for Mayer. The Rosenberg task force searched the apartment in 1941 and robbed Mayer's remaining pictures and his library. In the American art theft investigation Activity of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg in France CIR 1 from 1945, for the creation of which Lohse was also interrogated, the search by the special staff of fine arts of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg in the Mayers apartment on Rue Montabor, No. 9, Paris, without the interrogators from the Art Looting Unit of the OSS 1945 secret service being aware of August Liebmann Mayer and his fate and the connection with the manhunt initiated by Lohse.

In February 1944, Mayer was with a group of Jews by French art dealer Louis Declève to in Monaco fahndende for Jews in hiding Gestapo betrayed and entered the transit camp Drancy . On March 7, 1944, he was deported to Auschwitz , where he was presumably murdered on March 12, 1944.

Rehabilitation and reparation efforts

Mayer's daughter Angelika Mayer fought for reparations from 1956, which was initially viewed by the authorities as unfounded. In 1963 she received some pictures back as part of a settlement and compensation. However, the library and most of the pictures remained gone. Mayer's anti-Semitic denunciation continued in the Federal Republic. Mayer's work and his reports were still dismissed as dubious in the Federal Republic of Germany at the end of the 1980s. By contrast, anti-Semitic critics of Mayer who had participated in his denunciation and persecution, such as Luitpold Dussler, were able to continue their career in the Federal Republic unhindered. Dussler was appointed full professor at the Technical University of Munich in 1947. Bruno Lohse was the undisputed art dealer in Munich from 1950 until his death in 2007.

When the truth about August Liebmann Mayer's persecution and his further fate became known through new research results in 2008, provenance researchers at the Bavarian museums looked for former property of Mayer. In 2010 the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen returned four Mayer paintings to the lawyer of the daughter, who lives in the USA. The pictures had been in the museum's possession since 1954 and 1981, respectively, after they were stolen from Mayer in 1933. In April 2012, the Bavarian National Museum returned a valuable bronze statue Mayer to his daughter. The museum acquired the statue at an auction in Munich in 1937.

Publications (selection)

  • Jusepe de Ribera. (Lo Spagnoletto) . Dissertation 1907, Hiersemann Verlag, Leipzig 1908 ( digitized version ).
  • (Ed.): The master songs of Hans Folz from the Munich original manuscript and the Weimar manuscript. Q. 566 with additions from other sources Weidmann Verlag, Berlin 1908. Unchanged reprint Hildesheim 2001, ISBN 3-615-17212-4 .
  • Toledo , EA Seemann publishing house, Leipzig 1910
  • The Sevillian School of Painting , Leipzig 1911
  • History of Spanish Painting , 2 volumes, Leipzig 1913, 1922.
  • Segovia, Avila and El Eskorial . Leipzig 1913.
  • Murillo. The master's works in 287 illustrations . DVA, Stuttgart, Berlin 1913
  • Small Velazques Studies . Munich 1913.
  • El Greco. An introduction to the life and work of Domenico Theotocopuli called El Greco . Munich, Delphin Verlag, 3rd edition. 1916.
  • with Erich von der Bercken: Handbuch der Kunstwissenschaft Volume 13: Painting of the Renaissance in Italy , Volume 2, Painting of the 15th and 16th centuries. in northern Italy . Athenaion, Berlin-Neubabelsberg 1917
  • Grünewald. The romantic of pain . Delphin-Verlag, Munich 1917.
  • (Ed.): Expressionist miniatures of the German Middle Ages . Delphin Verlag, Munich 1918.
  • Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. The painter of begging boys and Madonnas . Delphin Verlag, Munich 1918.
  • Don Gil from the dead pants , comedy by Tirso de Molina. For the German stage by August L. Mayer; Johannes von Guenther . Verlag Müller, Munich 1918
  • Old Spain , Müller & Rentsch Verlag, Munich 1921.
  • The Spanish national style of the Middle Ages . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1922 ( Library of Art History 23)
  • Medieval sculpture in Spain . Delphin Verlag, Munich 1922
  • Gothic portal sculptures in Spain . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1923 (Library of Art History 68)
  • Francisco de Goya . Bruckmann, Munich 1922 (reprinted by Kessinger Publishing. Whitefish Montana 2007, ISBN 978-1-4325-8275-3 ).
  • Medieval sculpture in Italy . Delphin Verlag, Munich 1923
  • Spanish baroque sculpture . Munich 1923.
  • with Erich von der Bercken: Jacopo Tintoretto. Munich 1923.
  • Anthony van Dyck . OC Law, Munich 1923
  • La pintura espanola . Barcelona no year
  • Diego Velazquez . Berlin 1924.
  • Dominico Theotocopuli El Greco: Critical and illustrated directory of the complete works . F. Hanfstaengl, Munich 1926
  • with Erich von der Bercken: Painting of the Early and High Renaissance in Northern Italy. Potsdam 1927.
  • The Passover Haggadah in Darmstadt: With a complete bibliography of the Haggadah. Codex orientalis 8 of the Darmstadt State Library from the 8th century. Edited by Bruno Italiener with the participation of Aaron Freimann, August L. Mayer and Adolf Schmid, Verlag Hiersemann, Leipzig 1927
  • Gothic in Spain. Leipzig 1928.
  • El Greco. Berlin 1931.
  • Velazquez. A catalog raisonné of the Pictures and Drawings. Faber and Faber Limited, London 1936.

literature

  • Christian Fuhrmeister , Susanne Kienlechner: Nice crime scene: Art history between art trade, art theft and persecution. On the vita of August Liebmann Mayer, with an excursus on Bernhard Degenhart and remarks on Erhard Göpel and Lohse. In: Ruth Heftrig, Olaf Peters , Barbara Schellewald (eds.): Art history in the “Third Reich”. Theories, methods, practices. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-05-004448-4 , pp. 405-429 ( digitized version ).
  • Christian Fuhrmeister, Susanne Kienlechner: The present and the premonition: To what extent was the Munich art historian August Liebmann Mayer (1885–1944) a role model for the character of Martin Krüger in Lion Feuchtwanger's novel 'Success' (1930)? . In: Literatur in Bayern 24, No. 93, September 2008, pp. 32–44 ( digitized version ).
  • Peter K. Klein:  Mayer, August Liebmann. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , p. 534 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Teresa Posada Kubissa: August L. Mayer. In: Enrique Arias Anglés (ed.): Historiografía del arte español en los siglos XIX y XX. Madrid 1995, pp. 377-380.
  • Teresa Posada Kubissa: August L. Mayer - an expert in Spanish art in Munich. In: Christian Drude, Hubertus Kohlen (Ed.): 200 years of art history in Munich. Munich 2003, pp. 120-130.
  • Teresa Posada Kubissa: August L. Mayer - an important connoisseur of Spanish art. Achievement and destiny. In: Exhibition catalog Greco, Velazquez, Goya. Spanish painting from German collections. Hamburg / Dresden / Budapest 2005, pp. 170–175.
  • Teresa Posada Kubissa: August L. Mayer, a great expert on Spanish art. In: Communications from the Carl Justi Association. 17/18, 2005/6, pp. 4-12.
  • Teresa Posada Kubissa: August L. Mayer y la pintura española. Ribera, Goya, El Greco, Velázquez. CEEH, Madrid 2010, ISBN 978-84-936060-4-6 (based on her dissertation at the Universidad Complutense, Madrid, July 2007).
  • Ulrike Wendland: Biographical handbook of German-speaking art historians in exile. Life and work of the scientists persecuted and expelled under National Socialism. Part 2: L – Z. Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11339-0 , pp. 429-438.

Web links

Wikisource: August Liebmann Mayer  - Sources and full texts

References

  1. ↑ z. B. Henrik Karge (Hrsg.): Vision or Reality - the Spanish painting of the modern age. Munich 1991, p. 17.
  2. ^ Fuhrmeister, Kienlechner: Crime scene in Nice. in Heftrig u. a .: Art history in the Third Reich 2008, p. 410.
  3. ^ Fuhrmeister, Kienlechner: Crime scene in Nice. in Heftrig u. a .: Art history in the Third Reich 2008, p. 411.
  4. ↑ The documents for the planned Tizian work are now in a Moscow archive. Christian Fuhrmeister, Susanne Kienlechner: Nice crime scene. Art history between art trade, art theft and persecution. On the vita of August Liebmann Mayer, with an excursus on Bernhard Degenhard and Erhard Göpel and Bruno Lohse. In: Ruth Heftrig, Olaf Peters, Barbara Schellewald (ed.): Art history in the Third Reich. Theories, methods, practices. Berlin 2008, p. 417, note 36. Christian Fuhrmeister reported on the typescript of the novel in Bulletin No. 2 of the DHI Moscow see under web links. The special archive of the Russian State Military Archives, 2008. There is also a manuscript for a novel by Mayer The Painter of Toledo . The written estate of Mayer preserved there is incomplete.
  5. ^ Christian Fuhrmeister, Susanne Kienlechner: Tatort Nizza. Art history between art trade, art theft and persecution. On the vita of August Liebmann Mayer, with an excursus on Bernhard Degenhard and Erhard Göpel and Bruno Lohse. In: Ruth Heftrig, Olaf Peters, Barbara Schellewald (ed.): Art history in the Third Reich. Theories, methods, practices. Berlin 2008, p. 419 note 47.
  6. ↑ s. under the web links CIR 01 Rosenberg in France, attachment 10, available at Footnote.com.
  7. ^ Christian Fuhrmeister, Susanne Kienlechner: Tatort Nizza. Art history between art trade, art theft and persecution. On the vita of August Liebmann Mayer, with an excursus on Bernhard Degenhard and Erhard Göpel and Bruno Lohse. In: Ruth Heftrig, Olaf Peters, Barbara Schellewald (ed.): Art history in the Third Reich. Theories, methods, practices. Berlin 2008, p. 421.
  8. ↑ s. Christian Fuhrmeister, Susanne Kienlechner: Nice crime scene. Art history between art trade, art theft and persecution. On the vita of August Liebmann Mayer, with an excursus on Bernhard Degenhard and Erhard Göpel and Bruno Lohse. In: Ruth Heftrig, Olaf Peters, Barbara Schellewald (ed.): Art history in the Third Reich. Theories, methods, practices. Berlin 2008, pp. 405-429.
  9. ↑ Press release of the Bavarian State Painting Collections of May 12, 2010 .
  10. ^ Frankenpost April 18, 2012 Bavarian National Museum returns looted art. Reproduced on the pages of Looted Art Com Frankenpost April 18, 2012 Bavarian National Museum returns looted art.
personal data
SURNAME Mayer, August Liebmann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mayer, August L.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art historian
DATE OF BIRTH October 27, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Griesheim
DATE OF DEATH March 12, 1944
Place of death Auschwitz concentration camp