Justitia (Spitzweg)
_-_1857.jpg)
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| Justitia or Justice watches |
|---|
| Carl Spitzweg , around 1857 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 49 × 27 cm |
Justitia , Fiat Justitia , Auf der Lauer or Die Gerechtigkeit wacht is a painting by Carl Spitzweg that has an eventful history.
description
The high-format oil painting from around 1857 shows a statue of Justitia (goddess of justice) on a pedestal that also forms the cornerstone of a banister. The statue facing the viewer, which is in the left half and in the upper half of the picture, shows the usual attributes of justice personified with the blindfold and the scales in the left hand, the sword in the right hand and the classic long robe . The light brown stone from which it appears to be made is illuminated by sunlight from the top left. On the building behind the landing and taking up a large part of the background, the shadows cast by architectural elements can be seen: on the far left, the silhouette of a column section with a capital is evidently emerging .
From the upper end of the column shadow, a line drops diagonally to the right, above which the wall is in the shadow, while the lower part is sunny. The division into light and shadow areas of the wall runs behind the statue at about chest height and at the right corner of the building at head height of a person who stands behind this corner and is only partially recognizable. You can see a helmet with feathers, a uniformed upper body, the tip of a sword or stick and the tip of a foot. The man is apparently standing in the shade on the landing to guard the building.
Another railing can be seen on the right edge of the picture, the inclination of which shows that there is also a staircase leading downwards on the other side of the building. The background to the right of the painting is urban architecture under a green-lit sky. On the building shown there is an unlit lantern at the level of the Justitia. Behind the lower legs of the Justitia there is a dark brown notice box or notice board on the wall of the house on which a sheet of paper can be seen.
The plinth part of the Justitia belongs to a staircase that seems to lead further up on the left and shows three steps in the foreground on the right, which are parallel to the lower edge of the picture. From the perspective of the beholder, these lead up to the level on which the guard is standing and from which the notice could be read. Below these steps, a landing can be seen on the right, to which another staircase apparently leads up from the bottom left. However, this is only indicated by a single step at the lower end. Overgrown masonry below the railing in the lower left corner of the painting also indicates that another area is to be assumed in the terrain below. This lower part of the picture has dark brownish tones, while the landing and the steps on the right-hand side, which are largely sunny, show light, more ocher-colored tones.
History of the painting
Spitzweg's Justitia came into the public eye in 2007 when the German Press Agency reported on February 23 that the Federal Ministry of Finance had approved the return to the heirs of the previous owner Leo Bendel . Bendel, who came from Strzyżów in Poland, was probably a trained businessman and worked in the tobacco industry. From 1915 at the latest he lived in Berlin. As the general agent of the Berlin tobacco factory Ermeler and the cigarette paper company Job, he became wealthy and was able to build an art collection in which paintings, drawings, watercolors and etchings by Wilhelm Trübner , Walter Leistikow , Hans Thoma and Spitzweg were represented. In addition to the Justitia , he also owned the witch master von Spitzweg. In 1935 Leo Bendel, who was of Jewish origin, lost his job and had to move from Dahlem to Wilmersdorf . His evangelical wife Else, b. Golze, prepared the emigration together with her husband. In the years 1935 to 1937, the couple sold their home furnishings and numerous works of art through the Adolf Herold auction house, before finally emigrating to Vienna in 1937 . A few months later, however, German troops marched into Austria. Leo Bendel was baptized on June 17, 1938 and revoked his Polish citizenship to avoid reprisals. Nevertheless, he was arrested by the Gestapo on September 9, 1939 in his apartment at Grinzinger Allee 34 . Together with numerous other imprisoned Jews, he was initially held in the Prater Stadium and at the end of September 1939 deported to Buchenwald , where he was given prisoner number 6742. He died there on March 30, 1940. His widow was sent the urn with his ashes and his remains: a cardigan, a pair of suspenders, his glasses, a thong and 3.20 Reichsmarks. Else Bendel spent the last years of her life in poor circumstances. She worked as a cleaning lady until she lost her job in 1952, and in 1954 applied for compensation in Berlin, which had not yet been decided at the time of her death on September 4, 1957. As a result, the possibilities to apply for redress for Leo Bendel's death expired, and the application for compensation for loss of assets was rejected because Else Bendel had no evidence of the forced sales.
Only after the principles of dealing with works of art lost as a result of persecution had been formulated in Washington in 1998 did descendants of Leo Bendel's sister-in-law let historians research the whereabouts of the Bendel Collection. These were able to reconstruct that Leo Bendel had sold both the Justitia and the sorcerer to the Heinemann Gallery on June 15, 1937 . The Bendel Gallery paid 16,000 marks for the Justitia . A little later, the painting was sold on for 25,000 marks to the art dealer Maria Almas , who bought pictures for the planned “Führer Collection” in Linz . In October 1945 the Justitia came to the Central Collecting Point in Munich. The provenance of the painting was checked at the time, but was evidently found to be unproblematic because the documents did not reveal Bendel's Jewish origin. The painting was handed over to the Office of the Federal President on August 1, 1961 and hung in the Villa Hammerschmidt in Bonn , and no further checks took place until Bendel's heirs became active. In 2006 they informed Federal President Horst Köhler of the circumstances under which Leo Bendel had once sold the picture. After a review, the Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues suggested that the Federal Ministry of Finance return the picture. At first, however, there was no noticeable reaction from the public until the Cicero magazine reported on the case in March 2007 under the title “Justice is Watching”. The approval of the Federal Ministry of Finance was then reported. The painting was auctioned in May 2020 in the Neumeister Munich art auction house for 550,000 euros and went to a German private collector.
See also
literature
- Michael Anton, Handbook of the Protection of Cultural Property and Art Restitution Law. Illegal movement of cultural goods. Volume 1 (Handbook on the Protection of Cultural Property and Art Restitution Law) , de Gruyter, o. O. 2010, ISBN 978-3-89949-722-9 , p. 767
- Monika Tatzkow, Leo Bendel. 1868–1940 , in: Melissa Müller and Monika Tatzkow, Lost Pictures. Lives lost. Jewish collectors and what became of their works of art, n.v., Munich ²2009, licensed edition for the Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt, ISBN 978-3-534-23471-4 , pp. 61–71
- Stefan Trinks, "So much time without justice", in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, February 25, 2020, page 9
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ According to this source ( memento of the original from February 20, 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. (PDF; 173 kB) the return was completed in 2007.
- ↑ Spitzweg painting auctioned in Munich: Reset mit Justitia , taz.de , May 8, 2020
