Valerie Alport

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Valerie Alport , née Valerie Mankiewicz (born May 23, 1874 in Posen , † December 11, 1960 in Marseille ) was a German art collector and patron.

Life

The Troplowitz Villa, seen from the side of the Alster
Alport burial site on the way to the women's garden

Valerie Mankiewicz came from an assimilated Jewish pharmacist family and was a cousin and later sister-in-law of Oskar Troplowitz (1863-1918), who was married to her sister Gertrud (1869–1920) and who took over the Beiersdorf company in Hamburg in 1890 . She too moved to Hamburg together with her husband Leo Alport (1868–1935) , who was also from Poznan, and became a co-owner of the group. Leo Alport was Chairman of the Supervisory Board at Beiersdorf until the National Socialists came to power . He died in Great Britain in 1935 when the family emigrated there in 1933. The couple had two children.

Before the First World War , Valerie Alport studied art history in Paris and began building an art collection. From 1921 she lived with her family in the Troplowitz Villa, at Agnesstraße 1, at the head of the Outer Alster in Hamburg-Winterhude , which she inherited from her sister Gertrud († 1920), and organized concerts and cultural lectures there. From 1931 she was a member of GEDOK . In 1937 she emigrated to England with her son Eric Alport. She was able to carry out her art collection unhindered, as it was mainly expressionist art, which was considered worthless by the authorities.

After the war, Valerie Alport suffered from lung and heart diseases. She died in Marseille in 1960 , but was buried in the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg near the women's garden .

The art collection

Valerie Alport's art collection included modern art, including a self-portrait by Marc Chagall , a floral still life by Vincent van Gogh , a nude by Henri Matisse and the painting Lady in Blue by André Derain . A main focus of the collection was on artists from the Hamburg Secession .

Pictures by Anita Rée

From the 1920s on, Valerie Alport became friends with the painter Anita Rée , supported her financially and bought many of her works. After the artist's suicide in 1933, Alport also inherited another part of the paintings from the artist's estate. In total, she owned 85 works by Anita Rée in the 1930s. In 1937 she donated some of these pictures to the Jewish Museum in Berlin before emigrating to Oxford . After the museum was destroyed in 1938, it was believed that the collection had also been destroyed, but the pictures were found in the basement of the Reich Chamber of Culture after the Second World War .

Picasso's absinthe drinker

After the painting Absinthtrinkerin ( Buveuse assoupie ) by Pablo Picasso was confiscated in the course of the “ Degenerate Art ” campaign, Valerie Alport, as her sister's successor, filed a lawsuit in 1941 against both the Hamburger Kunsthalle , to which her sister had bequeathed the work, and the Galerie Fischer in Lucerne , which was commissioned to auction the picture. She cited the fact that the painting, which Oskar Troplowitz had acquired in 1914, had been explicitly given by Gertrud Troplowitz to the Kunsthalle and thus to the Hamburg public and that the German Reich did not have the right to sell this gift. However, the planned auction could only be temporarily suspended by means of an injunction ; in the end it was sold to Othmar Huber , President of the Glarner Kunstverein. It has been on display at the Kunstmuseum Bern since 1979 .

Honors

Her grave in the Ohlsdorf cemetery is in the access area to the women's garden and has been included in the published souvenir of the supervising association. In Stephen Spender's novel The Temple , he describes a stay at Alport's house on Agnesstrasse in Hamburg and dedicates a portrait of the figure of Mrs. Stockmann to Valerie Alport.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rita Bake et al. a .: The women's garden - a place of remembrance with historical gravestones from graves of important women and a final resting place for women , Hamburg 2009, without ISBN, p. 77
  2. ↑ Ulrich Luckhardt (Ed.): Private treasures. About collecting art in Hamburg until 1933 ; published on the occasion of the exhibition: Picasso, Beckmann, Nolde und die Moderne. Masterpieces from early private collections in Hamburg in the Hamburger Kunsthalle from March 23 to June 17, 2001 , Christians Verlag Hamburg, 2001, ISBN 3-7672-1383-4 , p. 214
  3. ↑ Maike Bruhns: Art in the Crisis. Hamburg Art in the “Third Reich” , Dölling and Galitz Verlag, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-933374-94-4 , p. 234 ff.
  4. ^ Thomas Buomberger: Looted art - art theft. Switzerland and the trade in stolen cultural goods during the Second World War, Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-280-02807-8 , pp. 60 ff.
  5. ^ Gravestone with legible inscription at genealogy.net
personal data
SURNAME Alport, Valerie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mankiewicz, Valerie (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art collector and patron
DATE OF BIRTH May 23, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Poses
DATE OF DEATH December 11, 1960
Place of death Marseille