Max Stern (art dealer)

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Max Stern, ca.1925

Max Stern CM (* 18th April 1904 in Moenchengladbach , † the 30th May 1987 in Paris ) was a German-Canadian art dealer and patron of the Montreal Dominion Gallery / Galerie Dominion operational.

Life

Galerie Stern, Düsseldorf

Max Stern came from a family of art dealers. His father, the textile manufacturer and art collector Julius Stern (1867–1934), opened an art shop in 1913 at Königsallee 23–25 in Düsseldorf . After studying art history , which he completed with a doctorate to become a Dr. phil. graduated from the University of Bonn , he took over his father's art dealership in 1934.

In 1935 he was asked by the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts to sell the business within four weeks. The deadline was repeatedly extended. Before his emigration, Stern delivered a large part of the inventory to Lempertz in Cologne , where 228 paintings were put up for auction on November 13, 1937 in auction 392 . The works not sold there were returned to Stern in Düsseldorf, who also received the proceeds from the auction at Lempertz and thus had to pay the Reich flight tax . Stern gave his private collection to the Josef Roggendorf forwarding company in Cologne. From there it was confiscated by the Gestapo before the outbreak of war and handed over to auction house Hugo Hufschmidt in Cologne. The proceeds from this auction at Hufschmidt were transferred to the main government office in Düsseldorf.

Stern fled Germany and lived for a short time in Paris and London . He opened an art shop in London, but was interned on the Isle of Man in 1940 as an enemy alien . Like many Jewish refugees, he was sent to Canada in 1943 and initially interned there. He then became a partner of Rose Millman in the Dominion Gallery of Fine Arts, which she founded . From 1944 he cooperated with his brother-in-law Siegfried Thalheimer in New York. After they succeeded in regaining part of the German holdings in 1947, Max and Iris Stern bought the gallery in 1947 and made it a focal point of modern art. He was the first dealer to sell works by Kandinsky to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and had exclusive rights of representation for works by Auguste Rodin in Canada. He sponsored a large number of young Canadian artists, whom he represented from 1950 until his death. In 1958, Stern initiated various lawsuits in Germany to recover the paintings and other objects that were auctioned off in 1937. In 1964, he received compensation from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia for the “waste damage” suffered by his former gallery in 1937 .

Max and Iris Stern donated numerous works by Canadian and European artists from their private art collection to over twenty public institutions in North America and Israel .

Max Stern bequeathed his legacy to three institutions in particular: McGill University and Concordia University in Montreal and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem . The National Gallery of Canada received a partial estate , and the McCord Museum of Canadian History was able to use the heritage to establish the Max Stern Fellowship in 1991 .

Restitution project

The main heirs (McGill, Concordia and Hebrew University) decided to set up the Max Stern Art Restitution Project for the restitution of the gallery inventory that was forcibly sold in 1937. With the help of the Holocaust Claims Processing Office in New York, it tries to locate and reclaim the works that Max Stern lost from 1937 onwards. Their number is estimated at around 400 works, of which around 10 percent could be localized by 2006. Ludovico Carracci's painting Saint Jerome with the Lion and Two Angels was returned in 2009 to the Leo Baeck Institute in New York by the art dealer Richard L. Feigen . Feigen bought the picture at Lempertz in 2000, where it had been delivered from a private collection. Feigen subsequently accused Lempertz of recycling looted art and demanded compensation.

Restituted works

Artists represented by Stern

Awards

  • Order of Canada , 1984
  • Honorary Doctorate from Concordia University, 1985

Intended exhibition in Düsseldorf

There were irritations in 2018 about an exhibition on Stern's work planned for 2018 in Düsseldorf, which led to a postponement to 2019. Canadian star experts had canceled their participation. Catherine MacKenzie, Prof. em. from Concordia University and Philip Dombowsky from the National Gallery of Canada . You will still be named by the City of Düsseldorf as requested contributors. The Central Institute for Art History from Munich has also canceled. The city of Düsseldorf has commissioned Dieter Vorsteher as the guest curator of the future exhibition. After a corresponding conference in Düsseldorf on February 13, 2019, the art journalist Stefan Koldehoff reported on Deutschlandfunk that the planned exhibition at the Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf had moved into the unpredictable distance due to major differences of opinion among the people involved in the planning.

Fonts

  • Johann Peter Langer . His life and work (= research on the history of art in Western Europe, Vol. 9). K. Schroeder, Bonn 1930.

literature

  • Catherine MacKenzie: Auction 392. Reclaiming the Galerie Stern, Düsseldorf. FoFa Gallery, Concordia University, Montreal 2006, ISBN 0-9781694-0-9 .

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Digitized version of the auction catalog .
  2. ↑ Ira Mazzoni : Auction burst , Süddeutsche Zeitung , October 26, 2013, p. 19.
  3. ↑ On this measure in general see Annette Puckhaber: A privilege for a few. German-speaking migration to Canada in the shadow of National Socialism. Series: Studies in North American History, Politics and Society. Lit, Münster 2002. Zugl. Diss. Phil. University of Trier , 2000 full text
  4. ↑ Michael Anton: Internationales Cultural Property Private and Civil Procedure Law . Volume 3 of the series Legal Manual for the Protection of Cultural Property and Art Restitution Law . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2010, ISBN 978-3-89949-726-7 , p. 67 ( Google Books )
  5. ↑ Annika Zeitler: Nazi-looted art: return to Max Stern-Erben . Article from May 12, 2014 on dw.com ( Deutsche Welle ), accessed on November 18, 2017
  6. ^ Arne Lieb: Düsseldorfer Stories: The Lost Collection of Max Stern , Rheinische Post , October 26, 2013, accessed on October 26, 2013.
  7. ↑ Andreas Rossmann : Is the recycling of looted art? FAZ , December 14, 2013, p. 41.
  8. ↑ Düsseldorf remembers art dealer Max Stern Article from April 18, 2014 in the portal cjnews.com, accessed on April 18, 2014
  9. ↑ Ready to return. In: FAZ of November 2, 2013, p. 36.
  10. ↑ 2016: Düsseldorfer Auktionshaus returns paintings by Wilhelm Krafft to the heirs of Max Stern. The Krafft painting is the thirteenth to return to the Stern Foundation. on the Lost Art Database
  11. ^ Looted art painting by the Jewish art collector Max Stern returned in Düsseldorf - Rheinland - Nachrichten - WDR
  12. ^ Düsseldorf: Exhibition on Max Stern in the City Museum - Cancellations from Canada , Rheinische Post , April 27, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Star, max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Canadian art historian and gallery owner in Düsseldorf and Montreal
DATE OF BIRTH April 18, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Mönchengladbach
DATE OF DEATH May 30, 1987
Place of death Paris