The Zwingergraben in Dresden

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The Zwingergraben in Dresden

The Zwingergraben in Dresden is an approximately 48.5 × 80.0 cm oil painting by Bernardo Bellotto , called Canaletto.

Description of the work

The vedute shows a view of Dresden . In the foreground is the moat of the Zwinger with the moat bridge . The kennel is on the left bank of the canal, on the right you can see an avenue with staffage. The slightly cloudy sky stretches over the city. The work is a repetition of a larger painting of the same name by Canaletto, which is now in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister Dresden.

The Zwingergraben in Dresden (Old Masters); this picture has a different format than the one described in the article, but is very similar to it

Provenance

Until 1925, the painting belonged to the collection of the Duke of Anhalt-Dessau , who had received it as a gift from Tsarina Catherine of Russia. In 1928 the painting was owned by the Berlin gallery Bachstitz .

At the end of the 1920s it was transferred to the Max Emden collection via the Munich Caspari Gallery, founded by Georg Caspari in 1913 . After Georg Caspari's death in 1930, his widow Anna Caspari , née Napthali, took over the gallery, which subsequently suffered greatly from the poor economic situation and subsequent repression by the Nazi regime. Since she was Jewish, Anna Caspari had to close the gallery in 1939 , despite her services as a broker and appraiser for important art dealers of the “Third Reich” such as Karl Haberstock and Julius Böhler . An attempt by Casparis to emigrate failed; on November 20, 1941 Anna Caspari was deported from Munich to Lithuania and murdered in Kaunas .

In the mid-1920s, Max Emden owned department stores in many German cities, which he sold to the Karstadt company in 1926 . He lived in Switzerland from 1929, but was also persecuted as a Jew after the Nazis came to power in Germany and was forced to sell his property. He also sold three city views by Bellotto to the Haberstock Gallery in Berlin through the art dealer Anna Caspari, who was already known to him . The sale of the painting to Haberstock was dated June 30, 1938.

In the same year Haberstock was appointed a member of the “Commission for the Exploitation of the Products of Degenerate Art ”. Because of his network and because of his contacts with the leadership of the Nazi regime, he was one of the most important art dealers for the planned “Führermuseum” in Linz. The painting was acquired from Haberstock on June 30, 1938 by the German Reich for the “ special order Linz ” and was given the Linz number 115. From 1943, to protect the work from the war, it was stored in the Alt-Aussee salt mine in Styria . After being seized by US soldiers, it was taken to the Central Collecting Point in Munich after the end of the war on June 29, 1945 .

On December 1, 1948, the American military government handed the plant over to the trusteeship of the Bavarian Prime Minister Hans Ehard ; When the Federal Republic of Germany was founded, the work became federal property in 1949 in accordance with Article 134 of the Basic Law .

From 1961, the Canaletto painting adorned the dining room of the Federal President's residence in Bonn, the Villa Hammerschmidt . Since 2004 Emden's grandson, Juan Carlos Emden from Chile, has been fighting for the return of the painting. When the then Federal President Horst Köhler found out about the origin of the picture, he let it hang up in 2005.

Then the picture was brought to the Federal Office for the Settlement of Open Property Issues (BARoV) in Berlin. Restitution was rejected by the Federal Office in 2005. The picture was later stored in Dresden and part of the permanent exhibition of the Dresden Military History Museum .

On the recommendation of the advisory commission at the coordination office of the federal government, the federal states and the central municipal associations, the painting from the earlier collection of Max Emden was restituted to the legitimate successor in March 2019 (see also: List of restitution cases ). On July 28, 2020, the painting was auctioned on behalf of the heirs via the London auction house Sotheby’s for 5.437 million pounds (almost 6 million euros).

Web links

Commons : The Zwingergraben in Dresden  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c The Zwingergraben in Dresden. In: Provenance Database. Federal Art Administration , accessed on July 29, 2020 .
  2. ↑ The Zwingergraben in Dresden , online collection of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
  3. ↑ a b Federal Archives Koblenz (Barch Koblenz), B323 / 652, Property Card of the CCP Munich , Mü-Nr. 1648.
  4. ↑ Sebastian Peters: The Caspari Gallery, 1913–1939. Networks and scope for action of a Jewish art dealer under National Socialism. Master's thesis, Munich 2016, here p. 50 ( online as PDF ).
  5. ↑ See Peters 2016, pp. 49–52. It is noted on the property card of the CCP Munich that Haberstock bought the work from the Arthur Tooth & Sons gallery in London; However, the involvement of this gallery has not been proven and, according to Peters, is to be assessed as incorrect. See Peters 2016, p. 50.See also: Horst Keßler: Karl Haberstock. Controversial art dealer and patron. Munich / Berlin 2008, p. 270, purchases 1937/1938.
  6. ↑ See Keßler 2008, p. 270, purchases 1937/1938.
  7. ↑ Christof Trepesch: Karl Haberstock and the art collections and museums in Augsburg. Pp. 9–15, in: Keßler 2008, here pp. 9ff.
  8. ↑ See Federal Republic of Germany, Federal Art Administration, Property Card of the CCP Munich, Mü-Nr. 1411 and Keßler 2008, p. 283, sales 1938/1939.
  9. ↑ See Federal Republic of Germany, Federal Art Administration, associated property card of the CCP Munich.
  10. ↑ dispute Canaletto: Heritage urges paintings back from the federal government. Press portal, accessed on July 29, 2020 .
  11. ↑ a b c Art auction in London: Dresden-Canaletto “Zwingergraben” auctioned for six million euros. In: mdr.de. Retrieved July 29, 2020 .
  12. ^ A b Uta Baier: Restitution: Who Owns the Zwingergraben? In: The world . December 22, 2005 ( welt.de [accessed July 29, 2020]).
  13. ↑ For the reasons for the recommendation of the advisory commission, see: Advisory commission for the return of cultural assets seized as a result of Nazi persecution, in particular from Jewish property, justification of the recommendation of the advisory mission in the matter of Dr. Max James Emden ./. Federal Republic of Germany, April 23, 2019 ( online as PDF ).