Julius Heyman

Julius Heyman (born December 17, 1863 in Diez an der Lahn, Germany ; † October 17, 1925 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a Frankfurt banker and art collector.

origin

As the son of the Jewish businessman and banker Wolf Heyman and his wife Mina, b. Seckel was born Julius on December 17, 1863 in Diez an der Lahn. In 1872 the family moved to Frankfurt, their mother's hometown, and bought the house at Palmstrasse 16. Julius Heyman grew up as an only child because his older brother had died before he was born. His mother also died early so that he grew up alone with his father and was brought up in the traditional Jewish faith. Julius Heyman attended the Jewish Philanthropin High School . At the age of 14 he began a bank apprenticeship in Frankfurt with further training in Berlin and Paris. From 1893 to 1902 he ran a small banking business in Mainzerstr. 53 together with his partner Zacharias Lorch. With the death of his father in 1894 a decisive turning point took place in his life. He collected art and set up a private museum. He remained unmarried, but had the kindergarten teacher Maria Wagner (1894–1981) as a partner. As a separate department of the Städtisches Historisches Museum, Heyman bequeathed his collection and his house to the city of Frankfurt in a will in 1924. He died on October 17, 1925.

Interest in art

On several trips throughout Europe in the 1890s, Julius Heyman had evidently trained and sharpened his taste for art. This initially led to the acquisition of numerous high-quality works by contemporary artists such as Anton Burger , Ludwig Thoma , Peter Burnitz and Jakob Nussbaum . Julius Heyman was one of the most idiosyncratic Frankfurt collectors, who was distinguished by his high understanding of art and a meticulous passion for collecting. With the establishment of a private museum in the Gothic and Renaissance style , he created a " total work of art " and a living environment for himself, the aesthetic arrangement of which he composed himself with great care and according to his own discretion. His collection showed good taste and helped him to gain prestige and public recognition in collector circles. In 1905 Heyman wrote an extensive publication about his collection and his collection intentions, which corresponded well to the scientific and art-historical demands of his time, and in 1922 a very knowledgeable essay on faiences . He took an active part in the art and cultural life of his city, lending his exhibits to all important exhibitions in Frankfurt from 1912 to 1925. He was also a member of numerous cultural-political and social clubs and associations, such as the "municipal commission for art and objects of antiquity" , of which he was a member from 1906 to 1920 - he held a public position in Frankfurt. He visited collections and auctions in Cologne, Munich and Lucerne, for example. The visit to the Swiss National Museum had inspired him to furnish complete rooms in his house in the style of the Gothic and Renaissance. No expense was too great for him; his publication from 1905 describes an excellent collection that he carefully expanded in order to donate it to his hometown as a private museum. Around 1900 there was an extraordinary variety of collections in Frankfurt. It ranged from the excellent collections of contemporary modernism to that of the art of the old masters to collectors who focused on Gothic sculptures.

The legacy and its destruction

Julius Heyman bequeathed his collection and his house to the city of Frankfurt am Main in 1924 on the condition that the collection should remain intact for at least 100 years. In addition, Palmstrasse was to be named after the founder. On January 19, 1926, the Heyman donation was accepted in an extraordinary meeting of the city council. Its value was estimated by three acting museum directors at 500,000 to 1,000,000 marks. From October 16, 1928, the “Julius Heyman Museum” on Heymanstrasse was open to the interested public with free admission.

From 1938 the creeping but steady process of the museum's dissolution began. The heiress had not respected Heyman's donor's will - the collection began to be liquidated in 1939 with the consent of almost all of the responsible curators, museum and office managers. Contrary to the provisions of the will and the will of the founder, the Heyman collection was distributed to other Frankfurt museums such as the Städtische Galerie, the Liebieghaus and the Kunstgewerbemuseum. Ernstotto zu Solms-Laubach , director of the Frankfurt Historical Museum , also arranged for valuable collections to be sold to the art trade. Julius-Heyman-Strasse was renamed again, and Maria Heyman-Wagner, the collector's adoptive daughter, was forced to renounce her will for life. Not very many of the many objects in the collection and furniture have remained here in the museum depot. Today the Historisches Museum Frankfurt is conducting a research project on the fate of this unique private collection. But even if missing objects can be found again - the ensembles and historical rooms that Julius Heyman designed with them are irretrievably lost.

literature

• Julius Heyman: Gothic and Renaissance in my house, Palmstrasse 16 , Frankfurt 1905.
• Ursula Kern: Sold and forgotten. The private museum of the Jewish collector Julius Heyman (1863-1925) . In: Frankfurt collectors and donors (= writings of the Historical Museum Frankfurt Volume 32). Frankfurt 2012, pp. 191–208.

Web links

• Entry in the Frankfurt dictionary of persons