Otto Schatzker

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Otto Schatzker (born February 12, 1885 ; died December 29, 1959 ) was an Austrian art dealer .

Life

Rembrandt (?): Hendrickje Stoffels ; traded by Schatzker, today in the Städel Museum , Frankfurt am Main

The origin of Otto Schatzker has not been clearly established. The birth certificate issued by the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien states that the father is unknown and Ernestine Schatzker is the mother. The record of the state brewery in Lower Austria states that she is "22 years old, Israelite, handicraftsman" and comes from Krystynopol in Galicia . After Austria was annexed to the German Reich in 1938, Schatzker denied that he was Ernestine Schatzker's son because the mother had presented false identity documents at the time of birth. Otto Schatzker was given to the foundling house in Vienna one week after the birth . From April 8, 1885 he lived with the foster mother Christine Jagos in Hungary, on June 19, 1888 he came to Agnes Höbart (or Höllbart) in Marbach am Walde in Lower Austria . In 1895 Schatzker lived in the Wiener Neustädter Asylum for a few months before he returned to Marbach am Walde on November 14, 1895 to his former foster father, the day laborer Franz Höllbart (or Höbart). There he was baptized on June 4, 1899.

Otto Schatzker had little school education. He first learned the carpentry trade , then was a lion caretaker at a Munich circus and then worked as a "house servant" later as a "servant" at an antique dealer. In 1915 he started his own business as an art dealer in Vienna. In the same year he married Marie Christ, a maid from Moravia . The son Otto Schatzker jun., Who was born in 1909, left this relationship. emerged. The family lived in a house on Köllnerhofgasse that Schatzker acquired in 1922. At the beginning of his activity as an art dealer Schatzker was supported by the entrepreneur Ernst Adler from Asch in Bohemia, who supplied him with numerous paintings. Later he and his wife ran the art shop Gemäldegalerie Schatzker in Philipphof in Augustinerstr. 8. There the Schatzkers traded paintings, other art objects, tapestries , autographs and musical manuscripts.

With the " Anschluss of Austria " in 1938, the Nuremberg Laws came into force there too . Due to the lack of proof of Aryan status - Schatzker was legally considered to be a Jew despite being baptized - he was forbidden from any activity as an art dealer. At the beginning of May 1938 he tried in vain to apply for exemption from these regulations. He had to close his shop on Augustinerstrasse. The business premises were taken over by the art dealer Sepp (Josef) Neugschwandtner. Nevertheless, Schatzker continued to trade in art objects from his apartment. There is evidence that he bought from Jews who had to flee or emigrate. In addition, Schatzker brokered art objects to other art dealers, including Maria Almas-Dietrich from Munich , who Adolf Hitler counted among her customers.

Under unexplained circumstances, Schatzker received on May 13, 1941 the certificate that he was "German or related blood within the meaning of the First Ordinance on the Reich Citizenship Law ". His wife claimed after the war that Schatzker had paid 10,000 Reichsmarks for this. His relationships with influential people may also have played a major role in the decision. Between 1941 and 1945 Schatzker's art trade flourished and he went on trading trips to the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia , the Balkans and in 1943 to Florence. Schatzker tried to gain the goodwill of leading NSDAP officials with valuable gifts . In 1942 he gave Adolf Hitler two handwritten letters from the composer Richard Wagner and a hand drawing and two letters from Adalbert Stifter went to the so-called “ Führermuseum Linz ” .

Schatzker achieved particular importance with the sale of the Mendelssohn-Gordigiani collection. The art collection of the Berlin banker Robert von Mendelssohn , who died in 1917, contained, among other things, several works of French impressionism and two paintings that were ascribed to Rembrandt van Rijn at the time . In 1942, the works of art were owned by the widow Giulietta Mendelssohn-Gordigiani, who was an Italian citizen and “Aryan” according to race laws. In financial distress, she sold the works through her middleman Dr. Aldo Cima, then General Secretary of the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Vienna. This brought Otto Schatzker in as an art dealer. While the sale of the Impressionist works (pictures by Édouard Manet , Claude Monet , Edgar Degas ) to the Austrian Gallery Belvedere with the involvement of the museum director Bruno Grimschitz and the imperial governor Baldur von Schirach went smoothly, the sale of the two Rembrandt pictures was delayed. Adolf Hitler showed an interest in buying the pictures and had the art dealer Karl Haberstock negotiate the acquisition. After negotiations that dragged on for several months, Hitler and von Schirach reached an agreement according to which the self-portrait of Rembrandt went to the Kunsthistorisches Museum for 700,000 Reichsmarks , while the portrait of Hendrickje Stoffel, acquired for 900,000 Reichsmarks, was intended for the "Führermuseum Linz". The self-portrait remained in the Vienna Museum after 1945; today it is no longer considered an independent work by Rembrandt. The portrait of Hendrickje Stoffel , whose authorship Rembrandt's is controversial, is on loan from the Federal Republic of Germany in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt .

After the Second World War, a lawsuit was initiated against Schatzker for improper enrichment and an extensive inventory of works of art was secured. He later had to hand over part of it to previous owners. The museum advisor and government councilor Ludwig Berg, on the other hand, praised Schatzker's services, who “brought a number of the most important paintings (Rembrandt, Corot, Manet, Monet, Degas, Menzel) to the state museums in Vienna”.

literature

  • Gabriele Anderl, Alexandra Caruso: Nazi art theft in Austria and the consequences. Studien-Verlag, Innsbruck 2005, ISBN 3-7065-1956-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gabriele Anderl, Alexandra Caruso: Nazi art theft in Austria and the consequences , p. 187.
  2. ^ Gabriele Anderl, Alexandra Caruso: Nazi art theft in Austria and the consequences , p. 188.
  3. ^ Gabriele Anderl, Alexandra Caruso: Nazi art theft in Austria and the consequences , p. 187.
  4. ^ Gabriele Anderl, Alexandra Caruso: Nazi art theft in Austria and the consequences , p. 187.
  5. ^ Gabriele Anderl, Alexandra Caruso: Nazi art theft in Austria and the consequences , p. 182.
  6. ^ Certificate from the director of the Reichssippenamt in Berlin. Quoted from Gabriele Anderl, Alexandra Caruso: Nazi art theft in Austria and the consequences , p. 187.
  7. ^ Gabriele Anderl, Alexandra Caruso: Nazi art theft in Austria and the consequences , p. 183.
  8. ^ Gabriele Anderl, Alexandra Caruso: Nazi art theft in Austria and the consequences , p. 190.
personal data
SURNAME Schatzker, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian art dealer
DATE OF BIRTH February 12, 1885
DATE OF DEATH December 29, 1959