Alfred Flechtheim (1 April 1878 – 9 March 1937) was a German Jewish art dealer, art collector, journalist and publisher persecuted by the Nazis.

Early years

Flechtheim was born into a Jewish merchant family; his father, Emil Flechtheim, was a grain dealer. Alfred became a partner in his father's company after business internships in London and Paris.

Art collector

Flechtheim appeared in the art world shortly after 1900, with a collection of paintings by

Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created approximately 2,100 artworks ...

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; French Avant garde early works of

Pablo Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...

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and

André Derain André Derain (, ; 10 June 1880 – 8 September 1954) was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse. In 2025, all of Derain’s work entered the public domain in the United States. Life and career Early ...

; paintings of

Wassily Kandinsky Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky ( – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter and art theorist. Kandinsky is generally credited as one of the pioneers of abstract art, abstraction in western art. Born in Moscow, he spent his childhood in ...

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Alexej von Jawlensky Alexej Georgewitsch von Jawlensky (; 13 March 1864 – 15 March 1941), surname also spelt as Yavlensky, was a Russian expressionist painter active in Germany. He was a key member of the New Munich Artist's Association ( Neue Künstlervereinigung ...

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, and the Rhein Expressionists Heinrich Campendonk,

August Macke August Robert Ludwig Macke (3 January 1887 – 26 September 1914) was a German Expressionist painter. He was one of the leading members of the German Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider). He lived during a particularly activ ...

, Heinrich Nauen, and .

1912 Sonderbund in Cologne

Flechtheim organise
The 'Internationale Kunstausstellung des Sonderbunds Westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und Künstler
that opened in Cologne on 25 May 1912. Known as the Sonderbund, the exhibition brought together all avant-garde groups of artists and art movements in Europe (Expressionism, The Brücke, The Blauer Reiter, Fauvism, Cubism) for the first time. Flechtheim was the chairman of the steering committee and the lender of many important artworks by Picasso and other artists

Art Dealer

Flechtheim opened his first gallery in

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, seventh-largest city ...

in 1913, followed by galleries in Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne, and Vienna. Flechtheim served in the German Army during World War I, but not at the front. His art business collapsed during the war but he re-opened in Düsseldorf in 1919. Legendary, glamorous parties in Flechtheim's gallery overflowed with the glitterati of the new Berlin: movie stars, titans of finance, prizefighters and artists of every stripe. He founded the important modernist art journal '' Der Querschnitt'' (''The Cross Section'') which ran from 1921 until 1936.

Flechtheim, Nazis and Aryanization

As soon as the Nazis came into power, in 1933, Flechtheim was persecuted and his business attacked. In 1933, Nazi

Sturmabteilung The (; SA; or 'Storm Troopers') was the original paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party of Germany. It played a significant role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and early 1930s. I ...

men broke up an auction of Flechtheim's paintings. In March 1933, an art dealer named Alexander Vömel, a member of the SA or

Brown Shirts The (; SA; or 'Storm Troopers') was the original paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party of Germany. It played a significant role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and early 1930s. I ...

, confiscated Flechtheim's Düsseldorf gallery. The Nazis

aryanized Aryanization () was the Nazi term for the seizure of property from Jews and its transfer to non-Jews, and the forced expulsion of Jews from economic life in Nazi Germany, Axis-aligned states, and their occupied territories. It entailed the tra ...

Flechtheim's gallery, as they would many other Jewish businesses. After the war, former Nazi party member Vömel claimed he didn't even remember who Flechtheim was. Flechtheim's former assistant, Curt Valentin, left the Flechtheim Gallery in 1934 and began working in the Berlin gallery of Karl Buchholz, who was authorized by Hitler and Goering to sell confiscated art to raise cash for the Nazis. The Nazis seized and sold off Flechtheim's private collection, as well as the contents of his gallery.

Emigration and death

Six months after the Nazis came to power in 1933, Flechtheim, penniless, fled to Paris, and tried to find work with his former business partner, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and with the Mayor Gallery in London. However Flechtheim could not initially count on a work permit because of Great Britain's restrictive immigration laws. According to Flechtheim's biographer Ottfried Dascher, collaboration in Mayor's gallery was only possible if Flechtheim's name did not appear at exhibitions or to the press. Flechtheim subsequently organized exhibits in London of the paintings of exiled German artists. On August 8, 1935, Flechtheim wrote Alfred Barr of the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

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a letter informing him, “I lost all my money and all my pictures.” By November 1936, Flechtheim's former gallery assistant, Curt Valentin, had made a deal with the Nazis that would allow him to emigrate to New York and to sell “degenerate art” to help fund the Nazi war effort. In January 1937, with financing from Buchholz, Valentin left for New York and set up the Karl Buchholz Gallery at 3 West 46th Street which was later accused of serving as a conduit for bringing Nazi looted art, including paintings that had been seized from Flechtheim, into America. In March 1937 in London, Flechtheim slipped on a patch of ice, was taken to a hospital, punctured his leg on a rusty nail in his hospital bed, developed

sepsis Sepsis is a potentially life-threatening condition that arises when the body's response to infection causes injury to its own tissues and organs. This initial stage of sepsis is followed by suppression of the immune system. Common signs and s ...

leading to amputation of his leg, and died. The Galerie Alfred Flechtheim GmbH disappeared in its entirety on 27 March 1937.

Personal life

Flechtheim married Betty Goldschmidt, a wealthy Dortmund merchant's daughter. On a honeymoon trip to Paris, Flechtheim invested Betty's dowry in cubist art, to the horror of his inlaws. The marriage was childless. Betty Flechtheim was with her husband in London during his final days. Then she returned to Berlin. In 1941, when she was ordered to report for deportation to Minsk, she ingested a lethal dose of

Veronal Barbital (or barbitone), sold under the brand names Veronal for the pure acid and Medinal for the sodium salt, was the first commercially available barbiturate. It was used as a sleeping aid (hypnotic) from 1903 until the mid-1950s. The chemical ...

. The

Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...

seized her art collection. Professor Ossip K. Flechtheim, who in mid-1940s coined the term "Futurology", and later became a director of Otto-Suhr-Institut in West Berlin, was Alfred Flechtheim's nephew.

Recovery of artworks

Flechtheim's heirs are attempting to recover artworks stolen from Flechtheim. These works reside in German museums and American museums, including the

. In 2014 the

Museum Ludwig Museum Ludwig, located in Cologne, Germany, houses a collection of modern art. It includes works from Pop Art, Abstract and Surrealism, and has one of the largest Picasso collections in Europe. It holds many works by Andy Warhol and Roy Lic ...

in Cologne restituted Oskar Kokoschka's “Portrait of Tilla Durieux” (1910) to the Flechtheim heirs after a long investigation. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's "''Das Soldatenbad"'' (1915) remained in the custody of Flechtheim's niece Rosi Hulisch in Berlin. It was acquired in 1938 by Kurt Feldhäusser, a member of the Nazi party. Upon Feldhäusser's death in 1945, the ownership of his collection passed to his mother, who brought the work to the United States and consigned it to the

Weyhe Gallery Weyhe Gallery, established in 1919 in New York City, is an art gallery specializing in prints. It is now located in Mount Desert, Maine. History Erhard Weyhe (1883–1972) established the Weyhe Gallery in 1919. He also operated a bookstore, the ...

in New York in 1949. It was then purchased by American philanthropist and collector Morton D. May of Saint Louis in 1952. May amassed one of the largest collections of German Expressionist art in America and donated over one thousand works from his collection to various institutions; Das Soldatenbad was donated to The Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1956. In an exchange in 1988, the work became part of the collection of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. In 2018 Das ''Soldatenbad'' was restituted to the heirs of Alfred Flechtheim by The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation after an extensive examination of the circumstances surrounding the painting's history. In November 2018, it sold at Sotheby's for $21,975,800 (including fees).

Oskar Kokoschka Oskar Kokoschka (1 March 1886 – 22 February 1980) was an Austrian artist, poet, playwright and teacher, best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes, as well as his theories on vision that influenced the Viennese Expre ...

's "Joseph de Montesquiou-Fezensac" (1910) was sold by Alex Vömel to the National Museum of Fine Arts in Stockholm where it would later be transferred to the Moderna Museet. It remained in the Moderna Museet's collection until 2018, when it was restituted to Flechtheim's heirs. In November 2018, it sold at Sotheby's for $20,395,200 (including fees).

Gallery

File:Bildnis Alfred Flechtheim.jpg, Portrait of Alfred Flechtheim by Hanns Bolz File:Jules Pascin, Alfred Flechtheim Dresses Toreador, 1927.jpg, Flechtheim dressed as a toreador, by

Jules Pascin Julius Mordecai Pincas (March 31, 1885 – June 2, 1930), known as Pascin (, erroneously or ), Jules Pascin, also known as the "Prince of Montparnasse", was a Bulgarian artist of the School of Paris, known for his paintings and drawings. He ...

, 1927 File:Alfred Flechtheim. Foto Hugo Erfurth, 1928.jpg, Portrait by

Hugo Erfurth Hugo Erfurth (14 October 1874 – 14 February 1948) was a German photographer known for his portraits of celebrities and cultural figures of the early twentieth century. Life Early years Erfurth was born in Halle (Saale), in what was then t ...

, 1928 File:Alfred Flechtheim by Nils Dardel, 1913.jpg, Portrait by Nils Dardel, 1913

References

External links

Alfred Flechtheim: Art Dealer of the AvantGardeThe Devil and the Art Dealer

Haunting MoMA: The Forgotten Story of 'Degenerate' Dealer Alfred Flechtheim
, Observer, by Nina Burleigh, 2012
Internationale Kunstausstellung des Sonderbundes Westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und Kunstler zu Coeln 1912
{{DEFAULTSORT:Flechtheim, Alfred 1878 births 1937 deaths German publishers (people) German art dealers Jewish art collectors German art historians Writers from Berlin Subjects of Nazi art appropriations Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom German Army personnel of World War I People from the Province of Brandenburg German male non-fiction writers German magazine founders