Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation restitutes three works from the Littmann collection

Littmann died in 1934 as a re­sult of an in­jury sus­tained in a sui­cide at­tempt un­der­tak­en as a re­sult of his per­se­cu­tion by the Na­tion­al So­cial­ists. The works are Die Ruhende (“Wom­an Rest­ing”, 1911) by Max Pech­stein, Selb­st­bild­nis (“Self-Por­trait” 1925) by Wil­helm Schmid and Dop­pel­bild­nis (Rab­bi S. und Tochter) (“Dou­ble Por­trait – Rab­bi S. and His Daugh­ter”,1925) by Car­lo Mense. Thanks to its do­na­tion by the heirs, the lat­ter will re­main in the Neue Na­tion­al­ga­lerie, where its his­to­ry is ex­plained in an ac­com­pa­ny­ing de­scrip­tion. These items be­longed to a col­lec­tion of more than 4,000 works of art that the State of Prus­sia pur­chased from Dres­d­ner Bank in 1935 be­fore trans­fer­ring them to the Berlin State Mu­se­ums short­ly af­ter­wards. The col­lec­tion can be traced back to mul­ti­ple for­mer own­ers, and the SPK has been look­ing in­to this back­ground by means of a prove­nance re­search project of its own be­ing con­duct­ed at the Cen­tral Archive of the Berlin State Mu­se­ums.

Is­mar Littmann (1878-1934), a Ger­man lawyer and no­tary from Bres­lau, built up an ex­ten­sive art col­lec­tion in the 1920s which con­sists of works by con­tem­po­rary artists of the day such as Lo­vis Corinth, Max Pech­stein, Erich Heck­el and Max Lieber­mann. He fi­nanced the ac­qui­si­tion of works of art pri­mar­i­ly through loans, us­ing works of art as col­lat­er­al. De­spite the eco­nom­ic cri­sis, Littmann was able to ser­vice the loans up un­til 1933: on suc­cess­ful re­pay­ment, the paint­ings used as col­lat­er­al were re­turned to him for his free dis­pos­al.

When the first per­se­cu­tion mea­sures be­gan to be tak­en against Jew­ish lawyers and no­taries, Littmann suf­fered mas­sive set­backs in his pro­fes­sion­al, fi­nan­cial and per­son­al sit­u­a­tion. He at­tempt­ed sui­cide out of des­per­a­tion at the end of 1933, and al­though he ini­tial­ly sur­vived, he died of the con­se­quences on 23 Septem­ber 1934.

As a re­sult, his fam­i­ly were no longer able to make a liv­ing and ul­ti­mate­ly found them­selves in eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ties. His wid­ow Käthe Littmann and his son Hans Littmann were forced to sell much of the art col­lec­tion at an auc­tion at the Max Perl auc­tion house in Febru­ary 1935.

The paint­ings Dop­pel­bild­nis (Rab­bi S. und Tochter) (“Dou­ble Por­trait – Rab­bi S. and His Daugh­ter”) by Car­los Mense, Die Ruhende (“Wom­an Rest­ing”) by Max Pech­stein and Selb­st­bild­nis (“Self-Por­trait”) by Wil­helm Schmid – con­signed by Dres­d­ner Bank – were among the works to be of­fered at this auc­tion, but were not pur­chased. In fact they were not sold un­til Au­gust 1935 as part of an en bloc sale of art by Dres­d­ner Bank. There is ev­i­dence that these works be­longed to the Littmann col­lec­tion from at least 1930 on­wards. De­spite sev­er­al years of ex­ten­sive re­search, how­ev­er, it has not yet been pos­si­ble to find any doc­u­ments show­ing the de­tails of any pos­si­ble trans­fer of own­er­ship to Dres­d­ner Bank by way of se­cu­ri­ty. As such, it is not pos­si­ble to clear­ly re­con­struct to what ex­tent these three paint­ings still formed part of the Littmann fam­i­ly’s as­sets at the time of the sale in Au­gust 1935. Nonethe­less, the over­all cir­cum­stances do sug­gest that the sale by Dres­d­ner Bank con­sti­tut­ed a loss of fam­i­ly prop­er­ty as a re­sult of per­se­cu­tion.

A just and fair so­lu­tion in ac­cor­dance with the Wash­ing­ton Prin­ci­ples was found with the heirs of Is­mar and Käthe Littmann: the SPK resti­tut­ed Dop­pel­bild­nis (Rab­bi S. und Tochter), Die Ruhende and Selb­st­bild­nis to the heirs, who in turn do­nat­ed the paint­ing Dop­pel­bild­nis (Rab­bi S. und Tochter) to the SPK.