Julius Freund (entrepreneur)

Max Slevogt:
Portrait Julius Freund, 1925

Julius Freund (born April 18, 1869 in Cottbus , † March 11, 1941 in Wigton , Borough of Allerdale , United Kingdom ) was a German entrepreneur and art collector .

Life

The Cottbus-born textile manufacturer Julius Freund lived with his wife Clara, née Dresel, in Berlin. In 1908 the daughter Gisela was born, who became a well-known photographer as Gisèle Freund . The daughter later recalled that although both parents came from Judaism , the Jewish religion had hardly played a role in “her family”.

Julius Freund built up an important art collection, which mainly comprised German paintings, drawings and prints from the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1930 Freund told the Swiss collector Oskar Reinhart that he wanted to liquidate his household in Berlin and give his collection of works from the German Romantic era on loan to the Kunstmuseum Winterthur . However, the art museum showed little interest in the entire collection and only took over three paintings and one watercolor from Carl Blechen . Possibly as a result of the global economic crisis , he sold several works of art to Reinhart in 1930/1931, including the most famous work in the collection, the painting Chalk Cliffs on Rügen , which has been attributed to Caspar David Friedrich since 1920 and which Freund, in turn, allegedly in 1903 in the Berlin Rudolph Lepke's art auction house as a Acquired works by Carl Blechen. In 1931 he exhibited parts of his art collection in the Märkisches Museum in Berlin.

The collector lived in Italy with his wife Clara from 1931 to 1934. From there on September 1, 1933, he had his art collection - consisting of 383 paintings, drawings and etchings - brought from Berlin to the Kunstmuseum Winterthur. A total of 415 works of art from the Julius Freund Collection were brought to the Kunstmuseum Winterthur. Numerous works from Julius Freund's possession were on view there in 1934 as part of an Adolph von Menzel exhibition. "JF, Meran" was named as the lender. Other works of art were shown in June / July 1934 in the Kunstmuseum Basel and in May / June 1940 in the Kunsthalle Bern . Julius Freund returned to Berlin with his wife in 1934. Her daughter, on the other hand, had emigrated to Paris in 1933.

Despite the increasing discrimination and marginalization of Jews in Germany, the Freund couple stayed in Berlin until shortly before the Second World War . On February 18, 1939, Julius and Clara Freund managed to emigrate to Great Britain. The Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler ordered the expatriation of the Freund couple on October 15, 1940 and confiscated their property that had remained in Germany. Julius Freund died in England in 1941.

What remains of the Julius Freund Collection

For financial reasons, Clara Freund was forced to sell the art collection located in Switzerland. She commissioned her friend, art dealer Fritz Nathan, to dissolve the collection. After the Kunstmuseum Winterthur acquired a self-portrait of Lovis Corinth in August 1941 , Clara Freund gave the museum the drawing of a rocky slope with trees by Carl Blechen in 1942 .

On March 21, 1942, the Julius Freund collection was auctioned off in the Fischer Gallery in Lucerne . The foreword to the auction catalog was written by daughter Gisela, who now lives in Buenos Aires . In it she stated: “My father, Julius Freund, collected decades and always only from the point of view of artistic value, never in the thought of monetary exploitation”. At the same point it is pointed out that it was previously the intention of the collector to "bequeath his artistic possessions ... to a museum". This museum could have been the Märkisches Museum in Berlin. The catalog included larger groups of works by Fritz Boehle , Carl Blechen , Daniel Chodowiecki , Lovis Corinth , Caspar David Friedrich , Theodor Hosemann , Käthe Kollwitz , Franz Krüger , Max Liebermann , Hans von Marées , Adolph von Menzel , Max Slevogt , Hans Thoma and Heinrich Zille , as well as other works by artists such as Theodor Alt , Albert Brendel , Ludwig Buchhorn , Carl Gustav Carus , Johan Christian Clausen Dahl , Anselm Feuerbach , Eduard Gaertner , Carl Graeb , Jakob Philipp Hackert , Karl Hagemeister , Johann Peter Hasenclever , Willy Jaeckel , Friedrich Kallmorgen , Max Klinger , Gerhard von Kügelgen , Wilhelm Leibl , Walter Leistikow , Friedrich Eduard Meyerheim , Paul Friedrich Meyerheim , Friedrich von Olivier , Ludwig Richter , Johann Gottfried Schadow , Karl Friedrich Schinkel , Franz Skarbina , Carl Steffeck , Wilhelm Trübner , Lesser Ury and Anton from Werner . Only two works came from non-German artists. These were pictures by the Belgians Jean-Baptiste Madou and Léon Mignon .

In Germany in particular, there was great interest in the works of art from the 19th century from the Freund Collection. Hans Posse , Hitler's special representative for the so-called “ Führer Museum ” planned in Linz , wrote to Hitler's confidante Martin Bormann on February 11, 1942 about the Freund collection that it contained “excellent German romantics (especially CD Friedrich) and many masters from the early 19th century . Century like Krüger ... It should be one of the last opportunities to expand the period of German painting in the first half of the 19th century. ”Despite the scarce foreign currency of the German Empire, Posse acquired from the Freund collection for the so-called“ Führermuseum “113 paintings and drawings valued at 62,581.80 francs. While the paintings mostly passed into the possession of the Federal Republic of Germany after the war, the 94 graphics came from the Weesenstein Castle depot as so-called looted art in the Soviet Union .

Swiss collectors and museums also bought the Freund Collection at the auction. The Kupferstichkabinett at the Kunstmuseum Basel acquired seven drawings by Blechen, Kollwitz, Liebermann, Marées and Menzel. The Kunsthaus Zürich also bought eight drawings from the collection. The Zurich collector Emil Georg Bührle bought works by Blechen, Carus, Gustav Adolf Friedrich, Hosemann, Krüger, Menzel and Slevogt from the auction. Before the auction, the collector Oskar Reinhart acquired a portrait of Caspar David Friedrich by Gerhard von Kügelgen directly from Fritz Nathan.

It was only with the Washington Declaration of 1998 that the heirs were able to obtain restitution of some works of art. In 2005, three paintings by Carl Blechen and a watercolor by Anselm Feuerbach , which had previously been on loan from the Federal Republic of Germany in various museums, were restituted to the heirs. The watercolor The Funeral of the Court Jester by Anselm Feuerbach was previously in the Historical Museum of the Palatinate in Speyer, Blechen's painting Sleeping Faun in the Reeds in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, the painting Mühle im Tal (also Mühle in Saxon Switzerland ) in the Electoral Palatinate Museum of the City of Heidelberg and Romantic Landscape with Ruin (also Dawn - Ruin ) in the Westphalian State Museum in Münster . The museum in Münster, which has since been renamed the LWL Museum for Art and Culture , was able to repurchase Blechen's painting from the heirs in 2010.

• 

  Carl Blechen:
  Mill in the valley

• 

  Carl Blechen:
  Sleeping Faun in the reeds

• 

  Carl Blechen:
  Romantic landscape with ruins

literature

• Galerie Fischer (Ed.): Julius Freund Collection, from the property of Dr. G. Freund, Buenos Aires, paintings, watercolors, drawings and prints . Lucerne 1942.
• Esther Tisa Francini, Anja Heuss , Georg Kreis : Refuge - looted property. Chronos Verlag, Zurich 2001, ISBN 3-0340-0601-2 .
• Birgit Schwarz: Hitler's Museum, the photo albums "Gemäldegalerie Linz", documents on the "Führermuseum" . Böhlau, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-205-77054-4 .

See also

• List of restitution cases
• Special order Linz

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Biographical information on http://www.badv.bund.de/ ( Memento of the original from February 12, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ According to other sources, he died in a bomb attack on London. See Manuel Jennen: Romantic painting, state museum buys back "looted art" from the rightful owners, article in the Ruhrnachrichten from April 23, 2010. ( Memento of the original from February 12, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and still Not checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ^ Christian Buckard: Gisèle Freund: A small, chatty person, article in Jüdische Allgemeine from December 18, 2008
4. ^ Francini, Heuss, Kreis: Fluchtgut - Raubgut, p. 227.
5. ^ Papers on the event of the same name at the Oskar Reinhart Museum in Winterthur on August 28, 2014 , Stäpfli Verlag AG, Bern (2015), p. 56/57
6. ^ Francini, Heuss, Kreis: Fluchtgut - Raubgut, p. 227.
7. ^ Francini, Heuss, Kreis: Fluchtgut - Raubgut, p. 229.
8. ^ Francini, Heuss, Kreis: Fluchtgut - Raubgut, p. 227.
9. ^ Francini, Heuss, Kreis: Fluchtgut - Raubgut, p. 228.
10. ^ Francini, Heuss, Kreis: Fluchtgut - Raubgut, p. 228.
11. ^ Francini, Heuss, Kreis: Fluchtgut - Raubgut, p. 78.
12. ^ Francini, Heuss, Kreis: Fluchtgut - Raubgut, p. 228.
13. ^ Francini, Heuss, Kreis: Fluchtgut - Raubgut, p. 227.
14. ^ Francini, Heuss, Kreis: Fluchtgut - Raubgut, p. 228.
15. ^ Francini, Heuss, Kreis: Fluchtgut - Raubgut, p. 228.
16. ↑ Galerie Fischer: Julius Freund Collection, p. 7.
17. ↑ Galerie Fischer: Julius Freund Collection, p. 7.
18. ^ Francini, Heuss, Kreis: Fluchtgut - Raubgut, p. 229.
19. ^ Birgit Schwarz: Hitler's Museum, p. 57.
20. ^ Francini, Heuss, Kreis: Fluchtgut - Raubgut, p. 230.
21. ^ Francini, Heuss, Kreis: Fluchtgut - Raubgut, p. 230.
22. ^ Francini, Heuss, Kreis: Fluchtgut - Raubgut, p. 230.
23. ^ Francini, Heuss, Kreis: Fluchtgut - Raubgut, p. 77.
24. ^ Francini, Heuss, Kreis: Fluchtgut - Raubgut, p. 102.
25. ^ Francini, Heuss, Kreis: Fluchtgut - Raubgut, p. 93.
26. ↑ Recommendation of the Limbach Commission dated January 12, 2005 about the restitution of three paintings by Karl Blechen and a watercolor by Anselm Feuerbach to the community of heirs of Julius and Clara Freund on the return of cultural assets confiscated by Nazi persecution ( memento of the original dated February 12, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
27. ↑ On the reacquisition of Blechen's painting Romantic Landscape with Ruins ( Memento of the original from January 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. see information on kulturstiftung.de.