Robert von Mendelssohn (the elder)

Georg Alexander Robert von Mendelssohn (born on December 13, 1857 in Berlin as Georg Alexander Robert Mendelssohn; died on August 20, 1917 in Berlin) was a German banker, art collector and patron.

Life

Grave site (right edge of the picture) together with father and brother and their wives

Robert von Mendelssohn was a member of the well-known German-Jewish family Mendelssohn . His parents were the banker Franz von Mendelssohn and his wife Enole, née Biarnez. His younger brother Franz von Mendelssohn was born in 1865. The family was ennobled in 1888. In 1898 Robert von Mendelssohn married the pianist Giulietta Gordigiani, daughter of the Italian painter Michele Gordigiani . He had met his wife through his friend, actress Eleonora Duse . From this marriage the actress Eleonora and the cellist and theater director Francesco emerged. The youngest daughter Angelica died in 1920 at the age of 17. The family lived in a villa at Koenigsallee 16 in Grunewald .

In 1884 Robert von Mendelssohn became a partner in the Mendelssohn & Co. banking house . In 1908, he succeeded Ernst von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy as senior head of the bank. In addition, he held numerous supervisory board mandates, including at the Deutsch-Asiatische Bank and the Berliner Hagel-Assekuranz-Gesellschaft , with the latter as chairman of the supervisory board from 1909. He was also a member of the board of directors of the bank of the Berliner Kassenverein. From about 1901 he acted as Swedish-Norwegian consul general , from 1905 as royal Swedish consul general .

His grave is located together with that of his wife, his parents, his brother and his son in Cemetery I of the Jerusalem and New Church Congregation in Berlin-Kreuzberg .

Robert von Mendelssohn as a patron

As a patron, he supported the department of sculptures from Christian epochs (today the sculpture collection and museum for Byzantine art in the Bode Museum ) and the Berlin National Gallery . He was also a member and sponsor of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum Association , the Orient Committee , the German Orient Society and the Association of Friends of Ancient Art . His donations to the Berlin museums began in 1890 with panes of glass with a coat of arms to the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin . In 1896 he and other art friends donated Édouard Manet's painting In the Winter Garden to the National Gallery. In the years that followed, the museum received Charles-François Daubigny's Spring Landscape (together with other art lovers), Paul Cézanne's Still Life with Fruit (individual foundation) and Max Liebermann's Die Gartenbank (together with Margarete Oppenheim). In 1905 von Mendelssohn donated 10,000 marks to the department of sculptures from Christian eras for the acquisition of sculptures and paintings. In 1906, together with other sponsors, he donated ancient Persian and Syrian faience for building up the Islamic art collection . In 1912 Robert von Mendelssohn and the Berlin industrialist Eduard Arnhold were one of the main donors of the Tschudi donation . In this context, they jointly donated paintings by Paul Cézanne, Gustave Courbet , Paul Gauguin , Henri Toulouse-Lautrec , Maurice Denis , Henri Edmond Cross , Paul Signac , Théo van Rysselberghe , Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard to the Neue Pinakothek in Munich . There were also sculptures by Aristide Maillol and Georg Minne .

Pictures from the Arnhold-Mendelssohn donation as part of the Tschudi donation

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  Gustave Courbet:
  Landscape near Maizières

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  Paul Cézanne:
  Self-Portrait

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  Paul Gauguin:
  Te Tamari no Atua

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  Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec:
  Woman in an Armchair

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  Théo van Rysselberghe:
  Fountain in Sanssouci Park in Potsdam

Private collection of Robert von Mendelssohn

Robert von Mendelssohn's private collection included two paintings attributed to Rembrandt van Rijn during his lifetime . The self-portrait in fur, with chain and earring is now considered the work of the Rembrandt School (today Kunsthistorisches Museum , Vienna), while Rembrandt's authorship is disputed for the portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels (today Städelsches Kunstinstitut , Frankfurt am Main). In addition to other works by old masters , von Mendelssohn began collecting works from French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism at the beginning of the 20th century . These include Edouard Manet 's oil painting The Port of Bordeaux (private collection) and the pastel Lady in Furs ( Austrian Gallery Belvedere , Vienna). Also in the Belvedere in Vienna are the pastel Harlequin and Columbine by Edgar Degas from the Mendelssohn collection and the painting Weg in Monet's Garden in Giverny by Claude Monet . The Metropolitan Museum of Art now houses the paintings City Garden in Pointoise by Camille Pissarro and Vase with Irises by Vincent van Gogh . Another work by Van Gogh from the Mendelssohn collection is the painting Wheat Field behind the Hospital Saint-Paul with Farmer , which is now in the Indianapolis Museum of Art .

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  Rembrandt School:
  Self-Portrait in Fur, with Chain and Earring ,
  Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

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  Édouard Manet:
  Lady in Fur
  Austrian Gallery Belvedere, Vienna

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  Edgar Degas:
  Harlequin and Columbine
  Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna

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  Claude Monet:
  Path in Monet's Garden in Giverny
  Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna

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  Vincent van Gogh:
  Vase with Irises
  Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

literature

• Thomas Blubacher : Is there anything better than longing? The siblings Eleonora and Francesco von Mendelssohn. Henschel-Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-89487-623-4
• Thomas Blubacher: Eleonora and Francesco von Mendelssohn. 1900–1951 and 1901–1972 , in: Melissa Müller and Monika Tatzkow, Lost Pictures. Lives lost. Jewish collectors and what became of their works of art , Munich 2009, licensed edition for the Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt, ISBN 978-3-534-23471-4 , pp. 72–85.
• Rudolf Elvers: The Mendelssohns in Berlin, a family and their city . Reichert, Wiesbaden 1983, ISBN 3-88226-185-4 .
• Cella-Margaretha Girardet: Jewish patrons for the Prussian museums in Berlin, a study on patronage in the German Empire and in the Weimar Republic . Hänsel-Hohenhausen, Egelsbach 1997, ISBN 3-8267-1133-5 .
• Johann Georg Prinz von Hohenzollern , Peter-Klaus Schuster (ed.): Manet to van Gogh, Hugo von Tschudi and the struggle for modernity. Nationalgalerie Berlin and Neue Pinakothek Munich 1996, ISBN 3-7913-1748-2 .
• Andrea Pophanken, Felix Billeter: Modernism and its collectors, French art in private German ownership from the Empire to the Weimar Republic. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-05-003546-3 .
• Julius H. Schoeps: The legacy of the Mendelssohns . Fischer, Frankfurt 2009, ISBN 978-3-10-073606-2 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cella-Margaretha Girardet: Jewish patrons for the Prussian museums in Berlin, a study on patronage in the German Empire and in the Weimar Republic , pp. 188–89.
2. ↑ Johann Georg Prinz von Hohenzollern, Peter-Klaus Schuster: Manet bis van Gogh, Hugo von Tschudi and the struggle for modernity , p. 435.