Exhibition "An Unfinished Story" opens

Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz have opened their first special exhibition dedicated to provenance research, entitled An Unfinished Story. At its heart is the now-dispersed art collection which belonged to Lola and David Leder. 

The exhibition traces the couple’s legacy: presenting works they donated to Städtische Kunstsammlung Chemnitz, it sheds light on the Leders’ views on art and their collecting activities. At the same time, it raises questions about the provenance of artworks that have yet to be fully answered. The German Lost Art Foundation funded a project at Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz that included an in-depth investigation of Gustav Schaffer’s painting Bildnis David Leder [Portrait of David Leder] (1920).

Lola and David Leder began collecting art in the late 1910s. They maintained close relationships with artists and cultural figures and were friends with the painter and draughtsman Otto Theodor Wolfgang Stein as well as Chemnitz collectors Senta and Erich Goeritz. Their activities included buying and selling works by Max Liebermann, Lovis Corinth, Karl Hofer and others. Chemnitz painter and graphic artist Gustav Schaffer was commissioned to paint David Leder’s portrait in Chemnitz in 1920. This work is a central feature of the exhibition, which explores the history of the work, the artist’s career and the painting’s retrospective cataloguing in the collections of Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz during the GDR period. As a result of collaboration with descendants of the Leder family, the exhibition also examines the provenance of the painting.

Born in Iași, Romania, David Leder moved to Chemnitz with his family in 1889, where he learned the trade of merchant in the business run by his father Leon Leder (1860–1923), a dealer in stockings and gloves. In 1914, David married Lea Laura Bernstein, known as Lola. The couple had three children: Rudolf (1915–1997, later known as Stephan Hermlin), Alfred (1917–1943) and Ruth (1918–1999). David Leder was interned in Holzminden in 1916, returning to Chemnitz in 1918. The family lived in Berlin from 1921 to 1925, where Leder established a company trading in wool and cotton. After returning to Chemnitz once again, the business declared bankruptcy in 1928. In 1930 the family moved back to Berlin, where David Leder worked as an agent for a number of textile companies. The Nazi seizure of power in 1933 marked the beginning of the persecution of the family as Jews. During the night of pogroms in November 1938, David Leder was arrested and deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. His wife Lola secured his release by handing over a painting by Lovis Corinth. Lola and David Leder emigrated to London in July 1939. The two shipping crates they had packed with valuable furniture, much of their library, clothing and works of art were never forwarded to them: the items remained in Berlin, where they were seized in 1942 and subsequently either auctioned off or sold in 1944.

Beginning in the 1910s, Lola and David Leder assembled a remarkable art collection featuring works by Paul Cézanne, Lovis Corinth, Albrecht Dürer, Karl Hofer, Max Liebermann, Edvard Munch, Rembrandt, Max Slevogt, O. Th. W. Stein, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Lesser Ury, Maurice de Vlaminck, Jakob Steinhardt and many others. Some items from the collection were sold through three auctions, from 1924 onwards. A number of paintings were sold to Erich Goeritz, while another group of works was placed on loan with the Tel Aviv Museum in 1935. Following the end of the Nazi regime in 1945, the Leders were left completely impoverished. David Leder died in London in 1947. Lola Leder was forced to sell almost all the works from the collection that she managed to recover from Berlin and Tel Aviv. She died in West Berlin in 1977. Today, members of the family live in Israel, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Further information on the exhibition and accompanying programme: https://www.kunstsammlungen-chemnitz.de/en/ausstellungen/eine-unvollendete-geschichte-2/  

To the project: Provenienzforschung zu Zeichnungen, Druckgrafiken und Büchern mit Originalgrafiken der Grafischen Sammlung der Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz im Erwerbungszeitraum 1933 bis 1945 [Provenance research on drawings, prints and illustrated books in the graphic arts collection of Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz acquired between 1933 and 1945] (September 2019 – February 2022)