Fritz Mannheimer

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Chardin's picture from 1737, which Mannheimer owned, was returned to France in 1946 and to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1949
Heerengracht 412 in Amsterdam
Hobbemastraat 20 in Amsterdam
Rembrandt van Rijn , Ephraim Bonus . The picture of the Jewish doctor was in the possession of Mannheimer, today: Saint Louis Art Museum

Fritz Mannheimer (born September 19, 1890 in Stuttgart ; died August 9, 1939 in Vaucresson , Hauts-de-Seine ) was a German-Dutch banker and art collector.

Life

Fritz Mannheimer grew up in Stuttgart, where his father Max Mannheimer ran a wine trade and was married to Lili Sara Fränkel. He studied law in Heidelberg, where he received his doctorate in criminal law in 1911. He then went to Berlin, during the war he was initially employed by the Kriegsmetall AG founded by Walther Rathenau and then sent to Amsterdam in 1917 by the Deutsche Reichsbank . The Amsterdam banking business “Dr. Fritz Mannheimer, Amsterdam "became in 1920 with the participation of the Nederlandsche Handel Maatschappij and" Pierson & Co. "to a holding company of the banking house Mendelssohn & Co. Berlin in Berlin and Mannheimer in turn became a personally liable partner in Mendelssohn, he finally owned 8.28% of the shares. Amsterdam's banking business flourished under his leadership in the 1920s . Mannheimer influenced the international financial world through the Amsterdam Stock Exchange and worked for central banks in Germany, Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Romania. He became Romanian consul in Amsterdam in 1930 . He twice turned down the offer to take over the presidency of the German Reichsbank.

As early as the session of the Reichstag on November 22, 1920, MP Hermann Robert Dietrich applied to have Mannheimer's accounts checked . During the inflation period 1921–1923, Mannheimer and Camillo Castiglioni speculated against the French franc. Mannheimer was said to have speculated against the German currency with the dollar during the occupation of the Ruhr , thereby violating national interests, and credit restrictions by the Reichsbank in 1924 were due to his attack on the German currency. However, the allegations have never been proven.

From 1933 Mannheimer concentrated his activities on France, where he became a member of the Legion of Honor , Belgium, where he received the Order of the Crown in 1938 , and Amsterdam, where he was still a partner in the bank "Mendelssohn & Co. Amsterdam". His fortune was estimated at £ 20 million (400 million Reichsmarks ) in the mid- 1930s, a tremendous fortune at the time. Mannheimer had an excessive personal lifestyle with large apartments in the Netherlands and near Paris. In contrast to the Calvinist , outwardly modest lifestyle of the banking world in Amsterdam, which came to the Amsterdam Stock Exchange on foot or by tram, at most a taxi, he was chauffeured in his Rolls-Royce . Unmarried, he provoked the bourgeoisie with ladies of his choice in his box in the Stadsschouwburg . He had his bank in a representative house from the 17th century, the Herengracht 412. His apartment at Hobbemastraat 20 was popularly called "Villa Protsky" . His person became the target of anti-Semitic ( Zwart Front ) and right-wing radical ( Anton Mussert ) agitation in the Netherlands. Despite this hostility, he received Dutch citizenship on July 8, 1936 .

Under pressure from the National Socialists, in which Reichsbank Vice President Friedrich Dreyse also took part, he, Paul Kempner and Rudolf Löb left the Mendelssohn & Co. in Berlin as Jews on December 5, 1938 and transferred their shares to the other shareholders without replacement silent partner Marie von Mendelssohn for her part on her descendants classified as "Aryan" . On December 31, 1938, the Berlin bank Mendelssohn & Co. went into liquidation, the active business was transferred to Deutsche Bank , from whose side Hermann Josef Abs was involved in the transaction.

Mendelssohn & Co. Amsterdam got into trouble in mid-1939 in connection with the issue of French government bonds. Fritz Mannheimer was accused of wrong speculation. On June 1, 1939, he married the twenty-seven years younger German-Brazilian diplomat daughter Marie Annette Reiss (* 1917; † February 29, 2004). One of the best man was Paul Reynaud , then Finance Minister of the Third Republic of France. On August 9, 1939, Fritz Mannheimer died under unexplained circumstances in his second home "Monte Christo" near Paris. Mannheimer was very overweight and had previously suffered several heart attacks. The bank Mendelssohn & Co. Amsterdam was already in financial difficulties at the time , because two French government bonds could not be placed . It now stopped all payments, Mannheimer's private assets were frozen, and the creditors laid hands on his assets and collections, and the Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij had to make provisions of 30 million guilders. The settlement of the bankruptcy of the bank withdrew due to the war back twenty years.

The obituary in Time magazine was not very flattering: “This financial emperor was a fat-lipped, mean, noxious, cigar-smoking German Jew. No one ever liked Fritz. "

Mannheimer's daughter, Anne France Mannheimer, was born on December 24, 1939 after his death.

Mannheimer Collection

Frans van Mieris' brothel scene was intended for the Führermuseum in Linz , it is now hanging in the Mauritshuis
Jan van der Heyden , view of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam from the south. Mannheimer acquired the picture in 1936.

Fritz Mannheimer owned one of the most valuable private collections in Europe and thus competed ideally with American collectors such as Isabella Stewart Gardner and Andrew W. Mellon . His collection included paintings by Rembrandt, Watteau, Fragonard, Crivelli and Canaletto, including the man and woman at a spinet, forged by Han van Meegeren in 1932 in the style of Vermeer . The collection was bought with the money from the bank's own bank and in 1934 went to the "Artistic and General Securities Company Limited" for 6.5 million guilders , which the bank had to set up.

After the outbreak of war , his widow brought the part of the collection in France to Vichy , the other part of the collection stayed in Amsterdam, and a smaller part was in London.

At the beginning of 1941 Hitler ordered the "immediate purchase of the Mannheimer Collection" by his "special agent" Hans Posse . The purchase negotiations with the creditor banks were conducted by Kajetan Mühlmann . The Reich Commissioner for the Occupied Netherlands Seyss-Inquart and Mühlmann were of the opinion that the Mannheimer collection was Jewish property, but confiscation by the Mühlmann Office was out of the question, as neither Mannheimer's widow nor the creditors were considered Jews.

The creditors of Mendelssohn & Co. Amsterdam asked for seven and a half million guilders for the Dutch part of the collection , Mühlmann offered five and a half. In 1941 the collection was acquired at the price offered by Mühlmann and first brought to Munich, later to Hohenfurth Abbey and finally to Altaussee . After the war, Mühlmann declared that he had reinforced his offer with the threat that the collection would be confiscated as enemy property if his offer was not accepted.

Hitler only succeeded in acquiring the part of the collection that had been moved to Vichy three years later - again with the help of Mühlmann and his middlemen in France. At the end of the war, the collection in Altaussee was reunited.

The collection was restituted to the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam in 1952 , with the Dutch state selling around half.

Varia

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Schoeps: The legacy of the Mendelssohns , pp. 317–321: The Mannheimer case
  2. ↑ see Dutch Wikipedia nl: Jan Lodewijk Pierson Sr.
  3. ↑ Schoeps: Das Erbe der Mendelssohns , p. 376
  4. ↑ Ingo Köhler: The "Aryanization" of the private banks in the "Third Reich" , p. 246
  5. ↑ Schoeps: Das Erbe der Mendelssohns , p. 380
  6. ↑ see English Wikipedia en: Jane Engelhard
  7. ^ Christoph Kreutzmüller: Dealers and sales assistants. The Amsterdam financial center and the major German banks (1918-1945). Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-515-08639-0 , p. 45
  8. ^ Obituary in Time , Monday, Aug. 21, 1939, [1]
  9. ↑ see English Wikipedia en: Annette de la Renta
  10. ↑ The reason for the purchase was the article by the art historian Abraham Bredius , An Unpublished Vermeer , The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 61, No. 355 (Oct., 1932), pp. 145-144
  11. ↑ See the description in Jean Vlug: Vlug Report 25 December 1945
  12. ↑ J. Freek Heijbroek, Een onbekend portret van Fritz Mannheimer door Kees van Dongen , in: The Rijksmuseum bulletin, 35.1987, p. 329-333; the picture is shown at: [2]
personal data
SURNAME Mannheimer, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Dutch banker and art collector
DATE OF BIRTH September 19, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH August 9, 1939
Place of death Vaucresson , Hauts-de-Seine