Jewish art heirs and Berlin museum reach landmark display deal

A landmark agreement has been reached between the heirs of a Jewish art collector who fled Nazi persecution, and a Berlin museum, allowing one of the paintings in his collection to remain on show in the Brücke-Museum in the German capital.

The agreement over the Ernst Kirchner painting Erich Heckel and Otto Mueller Playing Chess (1913), has been brokered by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion (SenKultGZ), and the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, representing the heirs of Dr Victor Wallerstein.

Victor Wallerstein, who was born in Prague, was an important Jewish art collector and historian, as well as a patron of modern artists. In 1919, together with Dr Fritz Goldschmidt, he founded Galerie Goldschmidt-Wallerstein in Berlin. In addition to his work as an art dealer and gallerist, Wallerstein built a private collection that included works by Oskar Kokoschka and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and maintained personal contacts and friendships with many artists in his collection.

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Due to the Nazi regime, the gallery was forced to close in the summer of 1934 and was liquidated in June 1936. Wallerstein himself was forced by Nazi persecution to leave Berlin, the centre of his life. In 1936, he sought refuge in Italy and took a small part of his private collection with him, including the painting Erich Heckel and Otto Mueller Playing Chess, by the artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.

In Florence, where he was exposed to further persecution under Italian racial laws, he had no possibility of making a living. As a result of both German and Italian repression, Wallerstein was forced to sell works of art, including the Kirchner painting, which he sold around 1940. He died in a Florence hospital in July 1944, following arrest by the SS. In 1973, the Kirchner painting passed from the art trade to the Brücke-Museum.

Now, after a restitution claim by Wallerstein’s heirs, an agreement has been reached allowing the painting to remain in the Brücke-Museum in Berlin. In September it will be presented as part of the exhibition Biographies of Modern Art, Collectors and Their Works. 

Its retention is made possible by funding from the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the Cultural Foundation of the Federal States, and the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation.

Joe Chialo, Senator for Culture and Social Cohesion, said: “Coming to terms with Nazi art theft and dealing with the fates of the predominantly Jewish victims are tasks of immense importance for society as a whole. Since 2010, the SenKultGZ has been funding projects to systematically research the provenance of individual objects and collections in Berlin’s cultural institutions. In this way, the state of Berlin is fulfilling its historic responsibility to identify, document, and return Nazi-looted property to its rightful owners on the basis of the 1998 Washington Principles. We are, and will remain, committed to fulfilling this task for the people and their families who were robbed of their property and rights, persecuted, and murdered by the National Socialists.”

Anne Webber, co-chair, Commission for Looted Art in Europe, said: “For the heirs, the fair and just solution of this restitution claim represents an acknowledgement of the pain, terror, and tragedy to which the innocent Wallerstein family was subjected.

“It is also a recognition of the cultural contribution that Victor Wallerstein and his siblings made to the arts and society in Germany which was the very essence of who they were. The heirs are glad to enable this painting, subject to forced sale in such terrible circumstances, to remain in the Brücke-Museum, and pleased that the forthcoming exhibition Biographies of Modern Art. Collectors and Their Works will pay tribute to Dr Victor Wallerstein as one of the leading patrons of German Expressionism”.