Heumann, Carl

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:39:43 +0000

Heumann, Carl Leonhard Weidinger Tue, 11/17/2020 - 18:28

Carl Heumann

19 March 1886 Cologne – 5 March 1945 Chemnitz

Carl Heumann lived from 1908 in Chemnitz, where he was a banker in Bankhaus Bayer und Heinze (from 1908 Prokurist, from 1920 co-owner of the private bank) and vice-consul of Portugal. He was known as an art collector and used two different stamps to identify his artworks: one with his initials and one in the form of a blue flower. He also added a number, usually three digits, in pencil on the back next to the collector's stamp, although this was not always legible. The Heumann collection, consisting mainly of works by eighteen- and nineteenth-century German and Austrian artists, was known to the public through several exhibitions in the early 1930s. In 1930, around 300 sheets were presented for the first time in the Städtisches Museum in Chemnitz. Three years later the Schlesisches Museum in Breslau (now Wrocław) showed over 100, and a year later the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig had an exhibition featuring over 200 drawings. Heumann also loaned items to various exhibitions in Chemnitz, Berlin and Dresden. He was a member of the Chemnitzer Kunsthütte and appointed to the advisory board in 1933 by the director Waldemar Ballersted. Heumann also collected books and was the long-standing treasurer of the Gesellschaft der Bücherfreunde zu Chemnitz. From 1937 parts of the collection were auctioned by Kunstantiquariat C. G. Boerner in Leipzig, Kunst- und Literaturantiquariat Karl & Faber in Munich and the Hamburg book and art publishers Hauswedell & Co and were acquired by German and Austrian museums in this way. When Heumann's wife Irmgard, née Buddecke, died in 1944, Waldemar Ballerstedt attempted to protect Carl Heumann from the impending deportation. Heumann died in the attempt to salvage a box from his collection from the basement of his burning house during an air raid. Most of the collection was in the safes of Privatbank Bayer und Heinze in Chemnitz and its branches in Burgstädt and Lichtenstein. In 1940, Carl Heumann, who came from a Jewish family, had transferred his collection to his "Aryan" wife Irmgard and deposited it at the bank for safekeeping. Although the bank in Chemnitz was destroyed, the drawings in the safe survived and were rescued by one of Heumann's sons. In 1957 the children, who had emigrated after the war to the USA and Switzerland, decided to auction some of the rescued artworks with Ketterer in Stuttgart. Further auctions took place in 2004 with Kornfeld in Bern and again with Ketterer in Stuttgart.

Between 1939 and 1944, items from the Heumann collection were acquired by the Albertina via Kunstantiquariat C. G. Boerner in Leipzig and Kunst- und Literaturantiquariat Karl & Faber in Munich. After several postponements, in March 2018 the Art Restitution Advisory Board did not recommend restitution because Heumann's purchases and sales were seen as a continuation of his collecting activities that took place independently of the seizure of power by the National Socialists and persecution-related connection could not be established.

Keywords

6 January 2019

Publications about the person / institution

Beschluss des Kunstrückgabebeirats, Carl Heumann, 16.3.2018, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Heumann_Carl_2018-03-16.pdf (3.12.2020).

Erhard Göpel, Die Schicksale der Sammlung Heumann, in: Die Weltkunst 27/24 (1957), 14–15.

Thomas Heumann, Romantische Ironie. Erinnerungen an meinen Vater Carl Heumann, in: Thilo Richter (Hg.), Der Kaßberg. Ein Chemnitzer Lese- und Bilderbuch, Leipzig 1996, 184–189.

Paul F. Schmidt, Hundert Jahre deutscher Zeichenkunst. Die Sammlung Heumann in der Kunsthütte zu Chemnitz, in: Der Kunstwanderer, 30 (1930) 1./2. Maiheft, 324–327, URL: doi.org/10.11588/diglit.26238.91.

Ausstellungskataloge:

Kunst in Sachsen vor 100 Jahren, Dresden 1928.

Ausstellung 100 Jahre deutsche Zeichenkunst 1750–1850. Sammlung Konsul Heumann Chemnitz, Chemnitz 1930.

Deutsche Kunst im Zeitalter Goethes, Berlin 1932.

Deutsche Landschaftskunst 1750–1850. Zeichnungen und Aquarelle aus der Sammlung Heumann, Breslau 1933.

Bildnis und Komposition 1750–1850. Aus der Sammlung Heumann, Chemnitz, Leipzig 1934.

Heymann, Leo

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:41:12 +0000

Heymann, Leo Leonhard Weidinger Sat, 02/27/2021 - 18:24

Leo Heymann

21 July 1889 Schwersenz / Swarzędz – 29 October 1964 Freiburg im Breisgau

The coin collector Leo Heymann, born in the town of Schwersenz, which with its large Jewish community was until 1918 part of the German district of Posen-Ost and in 1919 became part of Poland under the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, moved first to Dusseldorf and then to Vienna. It is not known precisely when the moves took place. In 1924 he became Prokurist (authorized signatory) for the Gerngross department store in Mariahilferstraße and in the same year joined the Numismatische Gesellschaft (Numismatic Society) in Vienna. In 1934 he was elected to the board of administrators of Wiener Ziegelwerke AG. Even though he left the Jewish community in 1927, he was considered a Jew by the Nazis. He was able to escape persecution in March 1938, emigrating via Rotterdam to New York, where he arrived on 9 September 1938 on the SS Nieuw Amsterdam. Because he escaped early enough, he did not have to submit an asset declaration. The details of the expropriation of his assets are unknown. In July 1941 the First Director of the Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM) in Vienna, Fritz Dworschak, contacted Otto Kolb from Department II E of the Vienna Gestapo responsible for seizures and confiscation of assets. In the letter Dworschak requested a pre-emptive right to acquire the seized coin collection, which was stored with the Gestapo and was earmarked for auction in the Dorotheum. The owner of the collection was indicated by hand as "Leo Heymann". Thereafter, twenty-six medieval and modern coins from the Heymann collection were acquired by the KHM Coin Collection. The inventory does not indicate a purchase price and it is not therefore clear whether the coins were purchased from the Gestapo or allocated to the museum.

After the war, Heymann made an application in April 1946 to the US Allied Commission for Austria. By this time he was a US citizen and lived in Miami, Florida. He claimed the loss of his apartment at Jacquingasse 13 and the pictures, carpets, library and coins in it, as well as his shares in Wiener Ziegelwerke Aktiengesellschaft in Leopoldsdorf near Vienna. Heymann moved to Locarno, Switzerland, and died in Freiburg im Breisgau on 29 October 1964. It was not until the systematic provenance research in the KHM that it was determined that the twenty-six coins in the Coin Collection came from the Heymann collection. The Vugesta ledgers list a net profit of 1,940 Reichsmark. It has been impossible to determine whether this sum referred only to the coins or to other artworks as well. It is also unclear whether Heymann's coin collection was originally larger than the twenty-six coins acquired by the KHM. At its meeting of 3 December 2002, the Art Restitution Advisory Board recommended the restitution of the coin collection to Heymann's legal successors. The heirs have not yet been identified, and the whereabouts of the remaining assets are not known.

Keywords

6 July 2020

Publications about the person / institution

Beschluss des Kunstrückgabebeirats, Leo Heymann, 3.12.2002, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Heymann_Leo_2002-12-03.pdf (3.12.2020).