Leo Bendel

Leo Bendel (* 1868 in Strezwo , Poland, then Galicia , Austria-Hungary ; † March 30, 1940 in Buchenwald concentration camp ) was a tobacco dealer and art collector.

Life

Carl Spitzweg: The eye of the law

Bendel came to Berlin from Galicia around 1900 and became a tobacco dealer there. He was considered to be well-off, lived in Berlin-Dahlem and acquired several paintings and graphics over the years. After the takeover of the Nazis he was because of his Jewish origin from the position of general representative of the company cigarette paper Job dismissed. Together with his wife Else Bendel, he decided to emigrate, and between 1935 and 1937 he sold his art collection to finance it. In the summer of 1937 Leo and Else Bendel went to Vienna . After the annexation of Austria , Bendel was arrested at the beginning of September 1939 and deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar . He died there in the spring of 1940.

Else Bendel survived as a non-Jewish woman under poor conditions in Vienna. After the war, she made claims for compensation in Berlin; her application had not yet been decided when she died in September 1957. However, he was subsequently rejected due to lack of evidence.

The art collection

Carl Spitzweg: The sorcerer, 1880

Leo Bendel's collection consisted of paintings, drawings, watercolors and etchings by Carl Spitzweg , Wilhelm Trübner , Walter Leistikow and Hans Thoma . To this day, two of the paintings by Carl Spitzweg are best known:

• Carl Spitzweg, The Eye of the Law , 1857, oil on canvas

Leo Bendel sold the painting to the Heinemann Gallery in Munich in 1937 for RM 16,000, and in 1938 the art dealer Maria Almas bought it for the planned Führer Museum in Linz for RM 25,000. In October 1945 it was taken to the Central Collecting Point in Munich after it was seized by Allied troops . In August 1961 it was given to the Federal President's Office via the Foreign Office's trust company and became the permanent interior of Villa Hammerschmidt in Bonn .

In May 2006, the heirs, Leo and Else Bendels, applied for restitution in accordance with the Washington Declaration . The Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues examined the matter, determined the "loss due to persecution" and proposed the return, which took place in 2007.

• Carl Spitzweg, Der Hexenmeister , 1875/1880 , oil on canvas

Leo Bendel also sold this painting in 1937 to the Heinemann Gallery in Munich for RM 18,000; in August 1937 it was acquired by Caroline Oetker from Bielefeld , wife of the baking powder manufacturer and commercial councilor August Oetker , and passed on to her grandson Rudolf August Oetker . In June 2006, the Bendel heirs contacted the Rudolf August Oetker GmbH art collection , which owns the painting, and initiated a discussion to negotiate a fair and equitable solution in accordance with the Washington Declaration . However, the Kunstsammlung GmbH declined any discussion. In October 2016, the Oetker Group announced that the art collection was being examined for any looted art. In November 2019, the Rudolf-August Oetker GmbH art collection returned the painting to the descendants of the Jewish collector Leo Bendel. The restitution was preceded by a long international search for the rightful heirs of the original owner who had been murdered by the National Socialists.

literature

• Monika Tatzkow: Leo Bendel (1868–1940) Berlin ; in: Melissa Müller, Monika Tatzkow: Lost Pictures, Lost Lives. Jewish collectors and what became of their works of art, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-938045-30-5
• Gunnar Schnabel, Monika Tatzkow: Nazi Looted Art. Manual. Art restitution worldwide , Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-00-019368-2

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Lisa Zeitz: On the Trail of Images , faz.net of January 27, 2009
2. ↑ Lost Art: Bendel, Leo  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ Neue Westfälische: Talks rejected / Oetker does not want to negotiate with heirs because of Spitzweg's Jewish property , article from February 6, 2009 , accessed on November 28, 2011
4. ↑ Four works in Oetker's collection, possibly looted art, Neue Westfälische, October 27, 2016 , accessed on February 22, 2017
5. ↑ Press release - Kunstsammlung Rudolf-August Oetker returns paintings by Carl Spitzweg to the descendants of the Jewish collector Leo Bendel , oetker-gruppe.de, November 20, 2019, accessed on December 20, 2019
6. ↑ Jüdische Allgemeine: The company is returning another painting to the descendants of persecuted Jewish owners , juedische-allgemeine.de, November 20, 2019, accessed on December 20, 2019