Sichtbarmachen
Leerstellen Sichtbarmachen
As part of the ‘Making Visible – Traces of Jewish Commitment at the MdbK’ project, the team has compiled five biographies of Jewish donors. These individuals have various connections to the museum; some provided financial support, while others donated significant art collections. Some families are connected to the museum through restitution negotiations. What they all have in common is that they donated significant artworks to the MdbK. Sharon Adler wrote and recorded the biographies in collaboration with the MdbK. In doing so, she lends her voice to former Leipzig families.
Audio biographies of Jewish founders
Cläre Kirstein (1885–1939) campaigned for women's rights and, alongside her husband Gustav (1870–1934), amassed an extensive art and book collection. Following the rise of the National Socialists, she helped her children and her nephew flee to America. She was unable to emigrate herself and committed suicide shortly before her deportation on 29 June 1939. Many pieces from the art collection ended up in the MdbK's holdings and were returned in 2000.
Hermann (1865-1942) and Antonie (called Toni, 1877-1950) Halberstam were particularly active charitably and culturally. Their extensive art collection included works of German and French Impressionism. They also supported Leipzig artists, such as Eduard Einschlag (1879-1945), who was Jewish himself and was murdered in the Treblinka concentration camp. The Halberstam couple managed to escape, but many of the artworks from their collection are still considered lost today.
Moritz Kraemer (1859–1926) probably lived in Leipzig between 1913 and 1924. A director of Dresdner Bank, he came from what was then Silesia. He amassed a large art collection and was closely associated with the MdbK. Shortly before his death in 1926, he relocated to Lucerne, possibly for health reasons. He bequeathed the majority of his collection, comprising over 60 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, to the museum. His family members were persecuted and murdered under National Socialism. We know very little about the biography of this important patron.
Laura Sonntag (1893–1979) was born in Chicago and lived and worked in Leipzig. It was there that she met her future husband, Carl (1883–1930), who was a renowned bookbinder and binding artist. The couple collected art together. Carl passed away in 1930, but the family's life changed radically when the National Socialists came to power. Although Laura Sonntag and her children were able to flee, she had to leave her art collection in Leipzig. The collection was auctioned off, with some of the works being acquired by the MdbK. In 1994, the daughters were given their property back by the museum.
Wilhelm Breslauer (1887–1949) volunteered at the MdbK. He was the chairman of the Friends of the Graphic Art Collection Association, which was founded in 1921. By 1933, the association had acquired several hundred prints for the museum, as well as financing the furnishing of rooms and conservation measures. Breslauer and his two daughters emigrated due to persecution under National Socialism. His first wife, Erna (1889–1940) — the mother of his children — was murdered. She was a victim of the so-called 'euthanasia programme', which involved the systematic murder of people with mental and physical disabilities, as well as mental illnesses.
Das Stiftermosaik
As an alternative to the usual donor plaques with rows of names found in museums, Stephan Huber's Stiftermosaik (2004) presents a selection of important historical and contemporary donors, patrons, and sponsors of the MdbK. The setting for this scenic collage is Stephan Huber's Munich studio, where he places the collectors in his workshop as a space of artistic productivity. Huber describes his visual ideas as follows: "The actors, grouped around a table, are engaged in a discussion about the model of the new museum. The protagonists of the conversation are Maximilian Speck von Sternburg, whose collection forms the basis of the museum, Leo von Klenze, an architect of many ideal museum buildings and a friend of Speck von Sternburg, and Caspar David Friedrich, who not only contributed important paintings to the collection but was also a friend of Maximilian Speck von Sternburg. These three figures form the “dramatic triangle” of the composition.
Die Zuhörer um den Tisch sind zusammengefasst in einer Momentaufnahme, einer Gleichzeitigkeit verschiedener Epochen. Bestandteile dieser Simultanität sind nicht nur Fotoapparat, Freischwinger und biedermeierliches Rüschenhemd, sondern auch die in die Zukunft weisenden Kinder im Vordergrund meines zeitgenössischen Historienbildes, aber auch die im Hintergrund befindlichen Landkarten, eigene Arbeiten aus dem Jahre 2001, die dem MdbK gehören. Das Mosaik als eine der ältesten und
erhabensten Kunsttechniken, in diesem Fall unterstützt vom Computer und befreit von der persönlichen Handschrift des Verlegeduktus, nobilitiert die Freunde und Förderer des Museums. Es ist durchaus denkbar, auch zu künftige Stifter in dieses Mosaik einzufügen.“
The protagonists
The following individuals were selected for the mosaic (from left to right):
Maximilian Speck von Sternburg (1776–1856) and his wife Charlotte Hänel von Cronenthal (1787–1836)
The extensive painting collection of the merchant and art collector Maximilian Speck von Sternburg, which included paintings by Rogier van der Weyden and Caspar David Friedrich, was one of the most renowned private collections in Germany at the time.
Speck von Sternburg made it accessible to the public at an early stage.
Hermann Härtel (1803–1875)
Härtel ran the music publishing company Breitkopf & Härtel together with his brother Richard, was a founding member of the Leipzig Art Association, and donated his important collection of cartoons and plaster casts of Italian Renaissance sculptures to the museum.
Hans-Peter Bühler (born 1942) and Marion Bühler-Brockhaus (born 1944)
The collector couple Bühler-Brockhaus, who worked as art dealers for many years, are members of the Friends of the Museum of Fine Arts Association and are donating an important collection of paintings, sculptures, and drawings, with a focus on the Barbizon School, to the museum on the occasion of the opening of the new building.
Carl Lampe (1804–1889)
Entrepreneur Carl Lampe was one of the founding members of the Leipzig Art Association and dedicated his life to the Museum of Fine Arts, to which he donated important works of art such as Meister Francke's Man of Sorrows.
Heinrich Brockhaus (1804–1874)
Heinrich Brockhaus came from one of Leipzig's most important publishing families, which produced the legendary Brockhaus encyclopedia. He was one of the founding members of the Leipzig Art Association in 1837.
Fritz von Harck (1855–1917)
The art collector and historian Fritz von Harck, who was a friend of Wilhelm von Bode, the long-time director of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin,
was particularly interested in Italian Renaissance art. He was deeply committed to the Leipzig Museum of Decorative Arts, to which three-fifths
of his estate went, while two-fifths went to the Museum of Fine Arts. Masterpieces such as Hans Baldung Grien's The Seven Ages of Woman come from his collection.
Leo von Klenze (1784–1864)
Klenze is one of the great museum architects of the 19th century, who created a new type of picture gallery in Munich with the Alte Pinakothek (completed in 1836). Klenze was acquainted with Maximilian Speck von Sternburg, who also owned a painting by him.
Adolf Heinrich Schletter (1793–1853)
The silk merchant and art collector Schletter bequeathed his fortune and art collection to the city of Leipzig on the condition that a new art museum be built within five years. The first “picture museum” on Augustusplatz was thus established on his initiative.
Paul Geipel (1869–1956)
Geipel, a physician, pathologist, and art collector who worked at the Johannstädter Hospital in Dresden and at the Saxon Serum Factory, made sculpture his preferred area of collecting. He donated an extensive collection of animal sculptures by August Gaul to the museum, as well as the painting Salome II by Lovis
Corinth.
Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840)
The most important Romantic artist in Germany, who also worked on commission for Maximilian Speck von Sternburg.
