Rudolph Lepke's art auction house

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The building of Rudolph Lepke's Kunst-Auctions-Haus in Potsdamer Strasse, built in 1912 .

Rudolph Lepke's Kunst-Auctions-Haus was a Berlin art trade and auction house .

history

Foundation and early years

Rudolph Lepke (1845–1904) first learned a bookseller and began in the early 1860s as an art dealer in the family business founded by his grandfather NL Lepke in 1812, the Berlin art dealership Lepke, which after the death of his grandfather was shared by his father Louis Eduard Lepke and his uncle Julius Lepke was continued under the company NL Lepke . In 1869 they opened the Lepke painting salon in the house of the Prussian Ministry of Spiritual, Educational and Medicinal Affairs in the former Cumberland Palace on Unter den Linden 4a, corner of Wilhelmstraße (today Unter den Linden 71, used by the German Bundestag). In 1885/86, after the brothers' death, Rudolph took over the company, now trading as Rudolph Lepke's Kunst-Auctions-Haus , and moved to Kochstrasse 28/29, while Eduard Schulte took over the rooms on Unter den Linden . Lepke's 100th catalog was published in 1875, the 500th catalog in 1884 and the 1000th catalog in 1895. Within the first 500 catalogs - including the almost twelve-month break during the war in 1870/71 - 100 catalogs were always issued over three years, but some auctions were held without a catalog, while in later times an average of 50 catalog auctions took place annually.

Lepke developed into one of the most important auction houses in Berlin. His specialty was the auctioning of entire estates and pieces from Prussian history and the royal family, with which he set up his own collectors' market in Berlin.

Lepke was friends with Wilhelm von Bode , who in 1887 had 1062 paintings from the depot of the Nationalgalerie auctioned off at Lepke for deacession . For many years he was an expert on art matters at the Royal District Court I and municipal auction commissioner.

Change of ownership and new building

In 1900 Lepke gave up the auction house. One third of the new owners were his long-time employee, the art historian and dealer Hans Carl Krüger (* May 9, 1870 - July 5, 1949), as well as the brothers Adolf Wolffenberg (* July 26, 1870 - around 1954) and Gustav Wolffenberg (born May 27, 1873; † 1953). They continued it under the previous company Rudolph Lepke's Kunst-Auctions-Haus and significantly expanded its position in the Berlin art market.

In 1912 the company was able to move into a spacious new five-story building at Potsdamer Straße 122a / b. The plans came from Adolf Wollenberg , who worked with Wilhelm Bröker on this project . Bröker took over the technical management, while Wollenberg took care of the artistic design. The building, grouped around two large inner courtyards, contained administration and exhibition rooms as well as a large hall for the auctions. The German art and decoration magazine wrote in a comment:

“This is not just a new building, rather a symptom: Berlin has become an international art market. The proud palace that Lepke built is a retrospective memorial to the success of the Lanna auction, and is at the same time a reference to upcoming events like the Weber auction with which the new house was inaugurated. "

  • Facade to Potsdamer Strasse

  • Entrance in the first courtyard

  • Large painting room on the 3rd floor

During the First World War , the house lost its leading role in the Berlin market to Paul Cassirer and Hugo Helbing .

In the course of the nationalization of the Royal Collections of Dresden, Lepke held two spectacular auctions in the immediate post-war period: on October 7th and 8th, 1919 in Berlin (catalog 1835: Porcelain and weapons from the Royal Saxon Collections in Dresden ) and on October 12th , 1919 Until October 14, 1920 in Dresden (Catalog 1854: Porcelain: Meissen - China - Japan, ivory sculptures, paintings and weapons from the Saxon State Collections - Johanneum - Green Vault - Picture Gallery in Dresden ).

The Russian auctions

Rudolph Lepke's Art Auctions House was the Soviet government's most important Western partner in the sale of works of art for foreign exchange in the 1920s . Since 1923, the company has been able to select goods directly on site in Petrograd , later Leningrad, through its own experts - for three years even without competition. The Soviet government diversified and increased sales with various partners and also directly as part of its first five-year plan from 1928, which led to Lepke's notorious and so-called Russian auctions by the press .

At the beginning of 1928 Hans Carl Krüger came to Leningrad to select goods for the anniversary auction in autumn, which was then shipped via Stettin to Berlin in June . To mark the 60th anniversary of the company's founding, the house organized a two-day auction of Soviet art and antiques on behalf of the commercial agency of the Soviet Union in Germany. In addition, the auction house brought out its 2000th catalog, written by Wilhelm von Bode and Otto von Falke . The catalog of works of art from the holdings of Leningrad museums and castles: Ermitage , Palais Michailoff , Gatchina, etc. lists a total of 447 works, mainly from the 18th century. Among them was little genuine Russian, but mainly French and German furniture, tapestries, gold boxes, gold bronzes and paintings. The auction took place in the large hall of the Brüdervereinhaus in Kurfürstenstrasse 115/116 (later the seat of the Eichmann department ; demolished in 1961).

Prior to this, there were a number of lawsuits from Russian emigrants in Berlin and London who had recognized their (former) property. Although they led to the temporary confiscation of individual lots, they were all rejected. In the Anglo-Saxon legal area, the Act of State doctrine was decisive; but the German courts also rejected the interference and dismissed the class actions with reference to the Soviet expropriation decrees.

Furniture by David Roentgen was one of the top items at the legendary auction . The district museum in Neuwied acquired the Apollo clock by Roentgen and Peter Kinzing from the collection of Iwan Iwanowitsch Schuwalow .

The top lot for the paintings was a Madonna and Child by Cima da Conegliano with a hammer price of 55,000 Reichsmarks . The total proceeds of more than 2 million RM significantly exceeded the estimate of 1.7 million RM.

The second part of the auction took place on June 4 and 5, 1929 (2013 catalog). This auction was nowhere near as successful; An initial drop in prices became noticeable, which was exacerbated by the global economic crisis .

The third of the auctions took place on May 12 and 13, 1931 (Catalog 2043: Stroganoff Collection, Leningrad: on behalf of the trade agency of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. ) The museum in the Stroganov Palace was closed in 1929 and parts of the collection here auctioned, mixed with pieces of other provenance, which was not always made clear. A Roentgen desk from the auction has been part of the collection of the Bavarian National Museum in Munich since 1975 . Several lots later became the subject of restitution claims: the lots Portrait of Antoine Triest, Bishop of Ghent (Triest Portrait) by Anthony van Dyck and a Diderot bust by Houdon (lot 225, now Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York) were the subject of the proceedings Stroganoff-Scherbatoff vs. Weldon . For Peter Paul Rubens ' Allegory of Eternity , the San Diego Museum of Art agreed with nine heirs of Jakob and Rosa Oppenheimer, owners of the Berlin gallery van Diemen , which owned the painting from 1932 to 1935. The double painting Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder, also auctioned with the Stroganoff Collection . Ä. , bought by Jacques Goudstikker and owned by the Norton Simon Museum since 1971 , is the subject of a complicated, highly regarded restitution procedure in the USA, which initially came to a conclusion in 2016 with a decision in favor of the museum.

  • Lucas Cranach the Elder Ä .: Adam and Eve (Lot 44/45)

  • Peter Paul Rubens: Allegory of Eternity (Lot 73 as The Rosary )

  • Jacob van Ruisdael: A View of Haarlem and Bleaching Fields (Lot 74)

  • van Dyck: Portrait of Antoine Triest, Bishop of Ghent (Lot 80)

Aryanization and the end

On December 31, 1935, the auction house was " aryanized " by co-partner Hans Carl Krüger by taking over the shares of the Wolffenberg brothers . From 1936 onwards, the auction house also participated in the exploitation of the movable assets of Jewish citizens and was operated until the end of 1938. The last auction took place in November 1938. The Wolffenberg brothers escaped the Holocaust and are recorded in the files of the Swiss Federal Archives from 1939 . Adolf Wolffenberg can be found on the expatriation lists published in the Reichsanzeiger . In the database Lost Art of the coordination office for the loss of cultural property , the consignments of Gustav Wolffenberg are also listed in connection with the recording of claims from consignments to Lepke in the database art and cultural property auctions 1933–1945 . According to a message in Die Weltkunst on May 7, 1939, the auction house moved to Großadmiral-von-Koester-Ufer 61 to clear the Tiergartenviertel for the new National Socialist town planning. Krüger continued to work as an art dealer, but did not hold any more auctions.

Legal treatment

With the beginning of the synchronization of the art trade by the National Socialists, notes and references to auctions by the auction house indicate the classification as refugee goods and raise legal questions regarding the legitimate acquisition of property with regard to the provenance of such works of art. In case of doubt, the legal transaction was immoral and thus void , so that no transfer of ownership to the bidder took place.

Restitutions

Raising Lazarus from the dead

In 2017, the heirs to James von Bleichröder reached a restitution agreement with the Bavarian State Painting Collections . As part of Bleichröder's collection, the painting The Raising of Lazarus was auctioned off in 1938 at the Rudolph Lepke auction house . It came to the art collection of Hermann Göring via the art dealer Böhler in Munich and in 1961 as a transfer from state property to the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen . After the heirs demanded restitution, an agreement was reached in 2017 on the restitution and the purchase of the painting.

literature

  • Hans Brendicke : Rudolph Lepkes 1000th catalog. In: Communications from the Association for the History of Berlin. 12 (1895), pp. 46-48 ( digitized version ).
  • Good business - art trade in Berlin 1933–1945 . Catalog for the exhibition of the Active Museum in the Centrum Judaicum, 3rd edition, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-00-034061-1 .
  • Waltraud Bayer (Ed.): Sold Culture: The Soviet Art and Antiques Exports, 1919–1938. Lang, Frankfurt am Main etc. 2001, ISBN 3-631-38380-0 .

Web links

Wikisource: Rudolph Lepkes Kunst-Auctions-Haus  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Auctions by Rudolph Lepke  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The spelling with apostrophes and auction follows the company's original spelling .
  2. ^ Royal Prussian State Gazette. 1864, p. 1979.
  3. ^ Hans Brendicke: Rudolph Lepkes 1000th catalog. In: Communications from the Association for the History of Berlin. 12 (1895), pp. 46-48.
  4. ^ Eva Giloi: Monarchy, Myth, and Material Culture in Germany 1750-1950. (New Studies in European History) Cambridge University Press, 2011, ISBN 978-0-521-76198-7 , p. 196.
  5. ^ Tilmann von Stockhausen: Gemäldegalerie Berlin - The history of their acquisition policy 1830-1904. Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-87584-769-0 , pp. 207 f.
  6. ↑ Berlin patronage. The Rudolf Mosse (1843-1920) art collection. Structure - meaning - loss , kulturgutverluste.de, see there project- relevant historical persons and auction houses
  7. ↑ according to the Swiss Federal Archives
  8. ↑ according to the Swiss Federal Archives
  9. ^ Papers on the event of the same name at the Oskar Reinhart Museum in Winterthur on August 28, 2014 , Stäpfli Verlag AG, Bern (2015), p. 56
  10. ^ In 1932, in the run-up to his emigration, Wollenberg had his collection auctioned off at Lepke: paintings by old masters, sculptures, and applied arts from the property of the government builder Adolf Wollenberg, Berlin. Catalog for auction on March 17, 1932, Berlin 1932.
  11. ↑ See the detailed building description with floor plans and illustrations in: Deutsche Bauzeitung 46 (1912), pp. 453f and 462.
  12. ↑ German art and decoration: illustrated monthly books for modern painting, sculpture, architecture, home art and artistic women's work 1912, p. 77.
  13. ↑ The collection of Karl Adalbert Lanna causing the sale was auctioned in 1909 and 1911 in three stir.
  14. ^ Digitized version, Heidelberg University Library
  15. ^ Digitized version, Heidelberg University Library
  16. ↑ Waltraud Bayer: Treasures for foreign currency: Soviet art exports to Germany in the interwar period. In: Yearbooks for the History of Eastern Europe. NF 48, H. 2 (2000), pp. 250-263 ( JSTOR 41050528 ).
  17. ↑ Paul Wescher : Russians auction at R. Lepke. In: Pantheon 4 (1929), p. 290.
  18. ^ Digitized version, Heidelberg University Library
  19. ↑ Lisa Hauff: Warning place Kurfürstenstraße 115/116. From the brothers' club house to Adolf Eichmann's place of work. Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-942271-59-2 .
  20. ^ Report by Paul Wescher: The auction of works from the former private collections in the possession of the Russian state. In: Pantheon 1928, pp. 523-528.
  21. ↑ Bayer (Lit.), p. 46
  22. ^ Stefan Creuzberger: St. Petersburg-Leningrad-St. Petersburg: a city in the mirror of time. DVA, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 9783421053589 , p. 153.
  23. ^ Wolfram Koeppe: Gone with the wind to the western hemisphere - selling off furniture by David Roentgen and other decorative arts of the eighteenth century. in: Canadian-American Slavic Studies ISSN  0090-8290 43 (2009), pp. 245-272 doi : 10.1163 / 221023909X00129 ; also in: Anne Odom, Wendy Salmond (eds.): Treasures into Tractors: The Selling of Russia's Cultural Heritage, 1918–1938. University of Washington Press, Seattle 2009, ISBN 978-1931485074 , pp. 215-236.
  24. ↑ Angelika Enderlein: The Berlin art trade in the Weimar Republic and in the Nazi state. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 9783050085890 , p. 61.
  25. ^ Digitized version, Heidelberg University Library
  26. ↑ See Beyer (Lit).
  27. ^ Digitized version, Heidelberg University Library
  28. ↑ Inventory no. L75 / 222 , see Wolfram Koeppe (Ed.): Extravagant inventions: the princely furniture of the Roentgens. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; Yale University Press, New Haven 2012, ISBN 9780300185027 , p. 186, catalog number 56 The Strognaov Desk .
  29. ↑ STROGANOFF-SCHERBATOFF v. WELDON
  30. ^ Van Diemen, gallery in the Lost art database
  31. ↑ Lisa Reynolds: An art provenance research guide for the researcher and librarian: A list of resources. , Pp. 24-28.
  32. ^ FAZ of September 2, 2013 ; Looted Art Beef Is All About Stroganoff ( Memento of the original from June 5, 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. from January 26, 2015; Adam, Eve, and George dated February 9, 2015 ( memento of the original dated June 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed June 4, 2014 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / blogs.artinfo.com @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / blogs.artinfo.com
  33. ^ Norton Simon Museum Prevails Against Von Saher Claim to Cranachs Looted by the Nazis
  34. ↑ Today at the Timken Museum of Art ( Memento of the original from March 23, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , San Diego. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.timkenmuseum.org
  35. ^ With Michael Hepp: The expatriation lists of German citizens 1933-45 according to the lists published in the Reichsanzeiger , Volume 2: Name register . Saur, Munich 1985 with reference to list 179 (161).
  36. ↑ Lost Art
  37. ↑ So 1940, see this provenance research ( memento of the original from September 23, 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. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.badv.bund.de
  38. ↑ Angelika Enderlein: The Berlin art trade in the Weimar Republic and in the Nazi state. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 9783050085890 , p. 123.
  39. ^ Michael Anton: Civil Law - Good Faith in the International Art Trade . Walter de Gruyter, 2010, p. 657 (with naming of the art dealers further affected).
  40. ↑ Auction catalog
  41. ↑ Inventory no. 13269 = Lost Art ID 391067
  42. ↑ Activity report of the Bavarian Provenance Research Association for the year 2015/2016
  43. ^ Painting From Goering's Collection Is Returned to Banker's Heirs. , New York Times July 21, 2017, accessed July 21, 2017