Emma Budge

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Emma Ranette Budge , née Lazarus (born February 17, 1852 in Hamburg ; died February 14, 1937 there ) was a German-American art collector, founder and patron . Her extensive fortune and her villa in Hamburg, the Budge-Palais , were largely taken over by the city of Hamburg after her death on the basis of anti-Jewish laws, and her famous art collection with well over a thousand exhibits was auctioned off.

Life

Emma Lazarus was the daughter of the Hamburg merchant Ludwig Lazarus and his wife Emilie, née Hofmann, from Karlsruhe . The family belonged to the German-Israelite community in Hamburg. In 1879 Emma married the banker Henry Budge , who was born in Frankfurt am Main on November 20, 1840 . He had lived in the USA since 1866 and had been a partner in the L. Hallgarten & Co banking house since 1875 . She moved with him to the United States and obtained American citizenship in 1882. Henry Budge acquired a fortune in the millions through the reorganization and restructuring of the American railroad companies in the following years.

Budge Palais in Hamburg-Harvestehude

In 1903 the childless couple returned to Germany and settled in Hamburg. Budge bought a villa here on the Alster in 1900 and commissioned the architect Martin Haller to expand and remodel it. The so-called Budge-Palais was built on Harvestehuder Weg , which became a center of social and cultural life in Hamburg during the Budges' lifetime. In the following years Emma Budge put together a high-level arts and crafts collection, which consisted of furniture, textiles, sculptures , goldsmithing , paintings , porcelain and faience as well as fans . The value of the collection was put at one million Reichsmarks in the mid-1930s.

In the 1920s, the couple established numerous foundations with social objectives in Hamburg, Wetzlar and Frankfurt am Main . These existed expressly to support those in need without distinction of faith and should promote the coexistence of Jews and non-Jews. Before the First World War , Henry Budge provided half a million Reichsmarks to found Frankfurt University . He also wanted to support the construction of a new temple building in Hamburg, but he stipulated that women and men should sit there together like in a New York reform community. The offer was then rejected by Rabbi Jacob Sonderling .

Henry Budge died in Hamburg on October 28, 1928. After his will, Emma Budge was given power of disposal over his property. With a joint declaration by the couple, the art collection was to be bequeathed to the Hamburg Museum of Art and Industry after the death of the surviving spouse . With this in mind, Emma Budge negotiated the establishment of another Emma Budge Foundation with the then State Councilor Leo Lippmann in spring 1932 , after which the entire property on Harvestehuder Weg became the property of the city and, with its art treasures, was opened as a museum should be.

After the takeover of the Nazis Emma Budge and the members of her family came under increasing anti-Semitic pressure of the Nazi regime . In 1935 she revoked the will and the intention to donate:

"I see myself forced to abolish this and to reorganize it due to the change in my own financial situation in Germany, which changes make it seem absurd to me to keep a decree that I had previously made in favor of the city of Hamburg."

- Emma Budge : will from 1935
Grave of Emma and Henry Budge in the Jewish cemetery in Frankfurt, Rat-Beil-Strasse

Emma Budge died in Hamburg on February 14, 1937, a few days before her 85th birthday. She was cremated and buried next to her husband in the old Jewish cemetery at Rat-Beil-Strasse in Frankfurt am Main.

The testament

In the most recent version of the will from November 1935, Emma Budge reacted to the uncertain political situation. She appointed four executors who were to realize the property, the art collection and the property at their own discretion. She expressly decreed that the estate , neither house nor art collection, could come under the control of the city of Hamburg. She had appointed the banker Max Warburg , the lawyer Hermann Samson and the Budge nephews Max Kronheimer and Ludwig Bernstein as administrators. In the event that these representatives were to be canceled and someone else should be named, it was provided that they would have to be someone of Jewish faith. Thirteen Jewish relatives were included in the will.

At the time of Emma Budge's death, several of the heirs had already emigrated from Germany, while others were preparing to emigrate . The executors therefore decided to sell the art collection and the Budge Palais, as they saw no other way of exploiting them. The collection was sold in two large auctions at the Paul Graupe Berlin auction house in 1937 . The over a thousand objects were acquired by private owners and representatives of important museums in the German Empire, as well as from the Netherlands and Switzerland. The proceeds amounted to around one million Reichsmarks and were paid into an estate account with a security order at the MM Warburg bank , as stipulated by the National Socialist legal situation for Jewish assets.

The palace was also offered for sale, in autumn 1937 the Reichsstatthalter and Gauleiter of the NSDAP, Karl Kaufmann, asserted the city of Hamburg's claim to the house, on December 11, 1937, the property of the city of Hamburg including its property and the outbuildings became the property . The total price of 305,000 Reichsmarks was also credited to the blocked account.

The budget estate also included other assets, particularly foreign securities and dollar balances . Overall, the inheritance is assumed to have a total value of six million Reichsmarks, which the National Socialist state took for the most part in the following years by deposition of the executors, the heirs still living in Germany being prevented from emigrating and in some cases imprisoned, and ultimately apparently legally no payment amount remained through security orders , special taxes and levies. The former tax advisor Emma Budges, the auditor Gottfried Francke, was appointed by the National Socialist Hamburg authorities as the new administrator.

The art collection

Cris de Paris , 16 Meissen figures from the Emma Budge collection

In August 1937 the various collections, the paintings, the furniture and the porcelain were brought from Hamburg to Berlin in five furniture vans and offered there at the Paul Graupe auction house. The auction was to take place from September 27 to 29, 1937, but was postponed to October 4 to 6. For this first auction, entitled The Emma Budge Collection † Hamburg , the Schlossmuseum Berlin compiled the corresponding catalog with a total of 1,020 lot numbers, some of which included several art objects. These were porcelain, ceramics, textiles, silver and goldsmith work and 23 paintings. The objects were unlimited, which meant that they had to be auctioned at any price. Two months later, from December 6 to 7, 1937, further objects were auctioned under the title Various German Art Ownership. Paintings by old and new masters (mostly from the Budge † collection, Hamburg). Plastic / bronzes / furniture / tapestries / textiles / silver / porcelain / majolica / faience. offered in 338 ticket numbers. These included 39 paintings that had not found any buyers in the first auction. It was the largest private collection that was auctioned during the Nazi era, and with revenues of around one million Reichsmarks, it was the highest auction proceeds that were achieved.

The extraordinary porcelain collection included exhibits from important early manufacturers in Vienna , Nymphenburg , Höchst and Meissen . There were 13 items of tableware, 20 depictions of animals and 99 Meissen figures from the 18th century, including Apollo and the nine muses and 16 miniatures from the Cris de Paris series by the artist Johann Joachim Kändler . The most valuable piece in the collection was a statuette made of reddish brown Böttger stoneware , which presumably represents Prince Elector Friedrich August , the son of Augustus the Strong . The Landesmuseum Schwerin acquired these for a purchase price of 2,185 Reichsmarks. This figure was restituted to the heirs in 2001 following the Washington Declaration and acquired by the museum in 2012 after an amicable agreement.

Charles André van Loo: Courtly summer party from the Emma Budge collection

In addition to the handicrafts, around sixty paintings and ten miniatures, mostly by Dutch and English painters from the late 19th century, came up for auction in December 1937. The most highly valued work of these was the courtly summer part by Charles André van Loo , which was offered at a price of 20,000 Reichsmarks. Other works came from Andreas Achenbach , Oswald Achenbach , Francesco Bartolozzi , William Adolphe Bouguereau , Narcisse Virgilio Díaz , Jules Dupré , Jean-Léon Gérôme , Ludwig Knaus , Théodore Rousseau , Benjamin Vautier and Adriaen Hendriksz Verboom (the painting The skittles was attributed to Job Adriaensz Berckheyde in the catalog ). Most of the auctioned collection is still considered lost today. In addition to the paintings and miniatures, 45 prints , 65 sculptures , 34 pieces of antique furniture and 1105 exhibits of the arts and crafts including the porcelain collection are entered as search messages in the Lostart register , the database of the coordination office for the loss of cultural assets in Magdeburg . There is also a doll's house, which has since been assigned to the Museum of Arts and Crafts, and a doll shop.

The Budge Palace

The villa in Hamburg-Harvestehude acquired by Henry Budge was built in 1884 by the Hamburg architect Martin Haller , who expanded it in stages from 1900 onwards. The middle, two-storey wing and the two outer wings with bay windows have been preserved from the original building. On the side of the Alster, the building was extended with the semicircular central projections and the steep roofs. In the years 1909/1910 a hall extension was added to the rear, which was set up as a mirror hall and served private theater and music performances. After the National Socialists came to power, Gauleiter Karl Kaufmann Emma Budge made an offer to buy the villa, which she refused. After her death in 1937, the city of Hamburg took possession of the house. The last occupants of the villa, Henry Budge's nephew Siegfried Budge (1869–1941) and his wife Ella Budge (1875–1943), had to leave the house after the transfer of ownership, both of whom died during further persecution by the National Socialists. In 1938, the Reich Governor moved into the Budge Palais, along with two neighboring villas. In 1939/1940, Kaufmann had a bunker set up for himself and his staff on the rear property.

Budge Palace, 2006

In 1945 the British troops confiscated the building and used it as an officer's accommodation until 1955. On November 10, 1952, following a ruling by the Hamburg Regional Court, the Budge-Palais, including the ancillary properties, was sold to the city for an additional payment of DM 22,500. The building has been used and expanded by the University of Music and Theater since 1959 . The hall of mirrors built in 1909 was removed. Its interior was housed in the Museum of Arts and Crafts and was reconstructed there in 1986. On the occasion of a memorial day on October 25, 1991, 50 years after the start of the deportations of Jewish citizens from Hamburg, the artist Dan Richter-Levin installed the bronze sculpture Stage of Remembrance in a connecting room . Since May 16, 1993, a bronze plaque at the entrance to the Milky Way has been commemorating Henry and Emma Budge; on this date the old building of the music college was officially renamed Budge-Palais.

In summer 2007, two stumbling blocks were placed in the sidewalk in memory of Ella and Siegfried Budge .

The Fortune

After the city of Hamburg came into possession of the Budge Palais, the authorities also tried to get hold of the extensive assets from Emma Budge's legacy. Not only were the applicable laws, in particular the anti-Jewish special laws, applied, but also arbitrary acts and blackmail intervened. The bulk of the budget estate was made up of a custody account with foreign securities and dollar balances that was deposited with the Schweizerische Kreditanstalt in Zurich . It was thus withdrawn from the direct access of the National Socialist authorities. The executors appointed by Emma Budge planned to wait for the heirs who were still in Germany to leave the country before the inheritance shares were to be divided up, but the German authorities urged a rapid division and subsequent transfer to Germany. In September 1938, the Hamburg Foreign Exchange Office deposed the executors. In addition, she made a request for administrative assistance to the foreign exchange office in Frankfurt, since most of the heirs still living in Germany lived in its catchment area. From there, the Gestapo intervened , and two of the heirs were arrested and transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp . The authorities confiscated the passports of the other heirs. With this measure, the consent of the heirs living abroad to the transfer of considerable property shares, around two thirds of the estate stored in Switzerland, to Germany could be blackmailed. In return, the two prisoners were released from Buchenwald and all those affected were allowed to leave the country. The state kept the property on the basis of various anti-Jewish Nazi laws.

The foundations

Henry and Emma Budge-Heim on Wilhelmshöher Strasse in Frankfurt am Main-Seckbach
  • On November 20, 1920, Henry and Emma Budge founded the Henry and Emma Budge Foundation in Frankfurt am Main as an institution for elderly people of Jewish and Christian faith in need of support.
  • Also in 1920, the couple established another Henry and Emma Budge Foundation in Hamburg . to support women in need from educated middle-class circles regardless of belief. The share capital made available was one million marks.
  • The Emma Budge Foundation was established in 1922 . to support infant and child care and the education and training of young people, also endowed with a share capital of one million marks.

Refunds

Francke, the executor appointed by the National Socialists, did not close the Budge estate until after the end of the Second World War, despite regular warnings from the probate court . In 1949 the lawyers of the heirs living in the USA requested the Hamburg District Court to depose Francke as the acting executor. But this request was rejected. Instead, Francke negotiated a settlement with the City of Hamburg over the property complex on Harvestehuder Weg during the reparation proceedings, which lasted from December 1949 to November 1952 , without the heirs being notified of the progress of this proceedings.

Another claim for reimbursement, here with regard to the confiscation of the property, in particular the securities, took place in autumn 1959 at the direct request of the heirs before the district court in Hamburg. The matter was rejected in the first instance , but on April 8, 1960, the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court , which was appealed immediately, recognized the claim in full. In addition, this court found that the former executor Francke had “only served the interests of the Reich in his work”.

In 2010 the heirs made a claim for the return of the Budge Palais. The Hamburg tax authorities examined the case. It had to be clarified whether the city of Hamburg could invoke the statute of limitations on the matter or whether it would suspend this 30-year period in accordance with the Washington Declaration. The legal facts of the purchase by the National Socialists at that time, the failure to pay the purchase price to the heirs and the settlement negotiated without the heirs from 1952 had to be legally reassessed. In April 2011 an agreement was reached: in return for compensation to the heirs, the Budge Palace became the legal property of the city, as did the hall of mirrors that had been rebuilt in the Museum of Art and Crafts.

Restitutions of the art collection

Adriaen Hendriksz Verboom: Elegant company playing skittles , identified in 2004 at Sotheby's as Nazi-looted art from the Budge collection

An art object that was identified and reclaimed by the heirs in the 1950s was a silver wedding cup that the Berlin Palace Museum bought at auction in 1937. Due to the war-related relocation, the vessel ended up in the depot of the Hessian trust administration for Prussian cultural property in Wiesbaden . In 1954 the heirs filed for restitution, but this was rejected on the basis of a false statement by the executor Gottfried Francke in a judgment of December 10, 1954.

Since the Washington Declaration of 1998 and the associated declared intentions of the Federal Republic of Germany to endeavor to return Nazi-looted art , there has been increasing research into the whereabouts of the well over a thousand objects in the former Emma Budges art collection. Around 60 works of art have since been identified and assigned, of which around 50 had been restituted by 2018, i.e. returned, compensated or otherwise agreement was reached between the heirs and the owners / institutions. At seven there was no return, for three there are still negotiations.

  • The most valuable piece in the collection was a statuette made of reddish brown Böttger stoneware , which presumably represents Prince Elector Friedrich August , the son of Augustus the Strong . The Landesmuseum Schwerin acquired these for a purchase price of 2,185 Reichsmarks. On February 5, 2001, following the Washington Declaration , this figure was restituted to the heirs and was purchased for the Schwerin Museum in 2012 with the help of the Kulturstiftung der Länder and several private foundations. In addition to the statuette, two French fans from the Budge collection could also be identified in the Schwerin Museum, which were also restituted and repurchased.
  • In the spring of 2001, two silver beakers from the Budge collection, which were acquired in the 1937 auction, were recognized in the Hamburg Museum of Art and Industry . In April 2002, the museum paid compensation to the heirs. At a later point in time, a doll's house that the museum had bought from a private collection in 1972 was found to be the former property of Emma Budges and was restituted in 2011 by amicable agreement with compensation.
  • The painting Elegant Society at Skittles by Adriaen Hendriksz Verboom , painted around 1670, was offered to the auction house Sotheby’s in London by private consignors in 2004 and, during the provenance check, was recognized as a cultural asset that had been withdrawn from Nazi persecution. The auction was canceled, and the Henry and Emma Budge Foundation was able to purchase the painting for half its estimated value.
Hunting scene , tapestry restituted in 2011 by the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten after public pressure
  • In January 2011 it became public that the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten was in possession of a tapestry from the Budge Collection made around 1750 in the Netherlands with the motif of a hunting scene after Teniers . Fritz Haerlin (1897–1975), the former hotel owner, bought it from the Munich art dealer Julius Böhler , which in turn bought it at the Graupe auction. After the public attention, the hotel returned it to the heirs. This is a special case, as the hotel, as a private owner, would not have had any legal obligation to restitute.
  • When the Rudolf August Oetker art collection was checked for Nazi-looted art from 2015, a silver cup from the former property of Budge was discovered. This so-called Augsburg joke cup is a silver cup in the shape of a windmill, which the Augsburg silversmith Tobias Kicklinger made between 1612 and 1616. The work of art was restituted in the sense that the community of heirs was compensated by the Oetker Foundation "for moral reasons for the loss of the silver cup" and the exhibit remained in the Oetker collection.
  • In November 2017, the St. Gallen Historical and Ethnological Museum presented two silver objects, two cups in the shape of a sailing ship, from the Budge collection to the heirs.

literature

  • The Mrs. Emma Budge † collection - Hamburg. Auction catalog, Paul Graupe, Berlin 1937 ( digitized version ).
  • Esther Tisa Franicisi, 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 , pp. 192–195.
  • Melanie Jacobi: The restitution of the art collection of Emma Budge (1852-1937) from Hamburg. A contribution to provenance research , Berlin / Münster: LIT-Verlag 2018 (writings from the Art History Institute of the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel; 9) ISBN 978-3-643-14206-1 .
  • Institute for the History of the German Jews: The Jewish Hamburg. Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-8353-0004-0 .
  • Karin Annette Möller, Kornelia von Berswordt-Wallrabe : To a Böttger stoneware statuette from the Emma Budge collection, Hamburg. In: Ulf Häder: Contributions by public institutions in the Federal Republic of Germany to dealing with cultural goods from former Jewish property . Coordination Office for the Loss of Cultural Property, Magdeburg 2001, ISBN 3-00-008868-7 . ( Publications of the Coordination Office for the Loss of Cultural Property 1)
  • Anja Heuss : Emma Budge's will. In: Inka Bertz, Michael Dorrmann (eds.): Looted art and restitution. Jewish property from 1933 to the present day. Published on behalf of the Jewish Museum Berlin and the Jewish Museum Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0361-4 . (Exhibition catalog for an exhibition of the same name in 2008/2009 at the Jewish Museum Berlin and the Jewish Museum Frankfurt)
  • Peter Kahn: A reparation matter : Das Budge-Palais, Harvestehuder Weg 12. Hamburg 1986/1987, OCLC 248364375 .
  • Eberhard Wiese: Here is paradise. Fates on Harvestehuder Weg. In: Eberhard von Wiese: Hamburg. People - destinies. Ullstein, Frankfurt et al. 1967, DNB 458650005 .

Web links

Commons : Emma Budge  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Karin Annette Möller, Kornelia von Berswordt-Wallrabe: To a Böttger stoneware statuette from the Emma Budge collection, Hamburg. In: Ulf Häder: Contributions by public institutions in the Federal Republic of Germany to dealing with cultural goods from former Jewish property . Coordination Office for the Loss of Cultural Property, Magdeburg 2001, p. 269 ff.
  2. ^ Günter Koenke: The Budge Palais. Confiscation of Jewish assets and restitution in Hamburg. In: Arno Herzig (Ed.): The Jews in Hamburg from 1590 to 1990. Scientific contributions from the University of Hamburg to the exhibition Four hundred years of Jews in Hamburg. Hamburg 1991, p. 658.
  3. ↑ quoted from: Karin Annette Möller, Kornelia von Berswordt-Wallrabe: On a Böttger stoneware statuette from the Emma Budge collection, Hamburg , p. 270.
  4. ↑ Esther Tisa Francini and a .: Refugee property - looted property. The transfer of cultural goods in and via Switzerland 1933-1945 and the question of restitution p. 192 f.
  5. ↑ Karin Annette Möller, Kornelia von Berswordt-Wallrabe: To a Böttger stoneware statuette from the Emma Budge collection, Hamburg. P. 271.
  6. ^ Günter Koenke: The Budge Palais. Confiscation of Jewish assets and restitution in Hamburg. P. 659.
  7. ↑ Esther Tisa Francini and a .: Refugee property - looted property. The transfer of cultural goods in and via Switzerland 1933-1945 and the question of restitution. Zurich 2001, ISBN 3-0340-0601-2 , p. 192 f.
  8. ↑ Karin Annette Möller, Kornelia von Berswordt-Wallrabe: To a Böttger stoneware statuette from the Emma Budge collection, Hamburg. P. 271.
  9. ^ Precious Meissen statuette secured for the Schwerin collection ( memento from October 14, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ), press release, State Museum Schwerin, January 2012.
  10. ↑ lostart.de: Collection Emma Ranette Budge, heirs , accessed on April 5 2011th
  11. ↑ hagalil.com hagalil.com: Two "stumbling blocks" in front of the Budge Palais, accessed on April 5, 2011.
  12. ^ Livia Gleiß: The Budge family in Hamburg and their Palais an der Alster , Hamburg 2008, p. 24
  13. ^ Günter Koenke: The Budge Palais. Confiscation of Jewish assets and restitution in Hamburg. P. 660 f.
  14. ^ Günter Koenke: The Budge Palais. Confiscation of Jewish assets and restitution in Hamburg. P. 663.
  15. ^ Günter Koenke: The Budge Palais. Confiscation of Jewish assets and restitution in Hamburg. P. 666.
  16. ^ Matthias Gretzschel: Budge-Palais. The dispute over historical building continues. In: Hamburger Abendblatt. January 21, 2011, accessed April 5, 2011.
  17. ↑ Budge-Palais remains the property of the Hanseatic city ( memento of April 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), hfmt-hamburg.de, accessed on March 23, 2013
  18. ↑ Melanie Jacobi: The restitution of the art collection of Emma Budge (1852-1937) from Hamburg , Berlin 2018, p. 78
  19. ↑ Melanie Jacobi: The restitution of the art collection of Emma Budge (1852-1937) from Hamburg , Berlin 2018, p. 109
  20. ^ Precious Meissen statuette secured for the Schwerin collection ( memento from October 14, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ), press release, State Museum Schwerin, January 2012.
  21. ↑ Melanie Jacobi: The restitution of the art collection of Emma Budge (1852-1937) from Hamburg , Berlin 2018, p. 87
  22. ^ Daniel Boese: Looted art Hamburg: The fate of the Budge collection. ( Memento from February 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) In: Art. Das Kunstmagazin. January 14, 2011, accessed October 5, 2012.
  23. ↑ Melanie Jacobi: The restitution of the art collection of Emma Budge (1852-1937) from Hamburg , Berlin 2018, p. 109
  24. ↑ Neue Westfälische, article from May 19, 2017 , accessed on July 29, 2017.
  25. ↑ St. Gallen Museum presents silver trophies to Erben , srf.ch, accessed on November 11, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Budge, Emma
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Budge, Emma Ranette (full name); Lazarus, Emma Ranette (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American art collector, benefactor and patron
DATE OF BIRTH February 17, 1852
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH February 14, 1937
Place of death Hamburg