SPK restitutes Nursing Madonna statuette to the heirs of Jakob Goldschmidt

The work was ac­quired in 1936 for the Sculp­ture Col­lec­tion of the Berlin State Mu­se­ums (known at the time as the Königliche Museen) and had been on loan to Mu­se­um Ulm since 1993. Jakob Gold­schmidt (1882-1955) was an im­por­tant banker and en­trepreneur dur­ing the Weimar Re­pub­lic who was among those to be per­se­cut­ed be­cause of his Jew­ish faith. Due to his promi­nent role in the world of busi­ness at that time, he was ex­posed to the re­pres­sive mea­sures im­posed by the Na­tion­al So­cial­ists at an ear­ly stage. Gold­schmidt fled first to Switzer­land in 1933 be­fore go­ing on to New York in 1936. He al­so suf­fered con­sid­er­able fi­nan­cial dis­ad­van­tages. Hav­ing been de­prived of his Ger­man cit­i­zen­ship in 1940, the as­sets be­long­ing to him that re­mained in Ger­many were con­fis­cat­ed by the Nazis a year lat­er. Though un­able to achieve the same suc­cess as he had in Ger­many, Gold­schmidt did man­age to build a new ca­reer in the USA dur­ing the last years of the Sec­ond World War and went on to spon­sor nu­mer­ous cul­tur­al in­sti­tu­tions. He died in New York in 1955.

Jakob Gold­schmidt built up an ex­ten­sive art col­lec­tion from the First World War on­wards. Af­ter his em­i­gra­tion, he was able to ex­port some items via the Nether­lands, in­clud­ing works by Im­pres­sion­ists and his porce­lain col­lec­tion. Nonethe­less, much of his col­lec­tion re­mained in Berlin and was sold at var­i­ous auc­tions, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly been used as loan col­lat­er­al. Gold­schmidt had kept the stat­uette of a Nurs­ing Madon­na in his city vil­la in Berlin’s Tier­garten dis­trict, which was fur­nished with nu­mer­ous Re­nais­sance works. The house was sold in Ju­ly 1933 and the works of art were moved to his of­fice.

Some 300 items from Gold­schmidt’s col­lec­tion were auc­tioned anony­mous­ly at the Hugo Hel­bing auc­tion house on 23 June 1936, with the Nurs­ing Madon­na be­ing of­fered as lot no. 41. The stat­uette was pur­chased at the auc­tion for 8,000 Re­ichs­mark by art deal­er Jo­hannes Hin­rich­sen, who sold it to the Sculp­ture Col­lec­tion of the Berlin State Mu­se­ums the same year.

This auc­tion is to be clas­si­fied as a loss of prop­er­ty as a re­sult of per­se­cu­tion with­in the mean­ing of the Wash­ing­ton Prin­ci­ples. Even though it is not pos­si­ble to ful­ly re­con­struct the cir­cum­stances, it is cer­tain­ly the case that Jakob Gold­schmidt was sub­ject­ed to per­se­cu­tion mea­sures which re­sult­ed in him suf­fer­ing con­sid­er­able fi­nan­cial dis­ad­van­tages. Dres­d­ner Bank in par­tic­u­lar be­haved in­creas­ing­ly un­co­op­er­a­tive­ly to­wards him, there­by im­ped­ing an am­i­ca­ble set­tle­ment of his fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion. As a re­sult, Jakob Gold­schmidt was forced to ac­cept the dis­pos­al of a large part of his art col­lec­tion, in­clud­ing the Nurs­ing Madon­na. In view of these facts, the SPK has now resti­tut­ed the stat­uette.