Carl Sachs (1858–1943) was one of the first collectors of large-scale art that the Jewish community in Breslau could boast. Born in Jauer (now Jawor), Sachs began his professional career in Landeshut (now Kamienna Góra) in his uncle’s trading company. After his uncle’s death, he moved to Breslau, where he engaged in the trade of haberdashery goods. Under his leadership, the previously struggling Forell & Co. company, specializing in the production and wholesale of haberdashery, lingerie, and ready-made clothing, significantly improved its results and opened branches in Berlin and Gdańsk (then Danzig).
Sachs married Margarete Forell, the daughter of the company’s owner, and the couple lived in a villa built in 1907 at Kleinburgstrasse 18/20 (now Januszowicka Street). The villa was designed by Fritz Behrendt, and its walls were adorned with paintings from Carl’s collection. Among the guests of Sachs’s house, who had the opportunity to acquaint themselves with his collection in the following years, were critics Julius Meier-Graefe and Karl Scheffler.
Fluent in English, French, and Italian, Sachs spent a lot of time traveling across Europe and North Africa. Thanks to intense contacts with renowned critics and artists, his collection quickly gained valuable works. In building his print collection, Sachs benefited from the advice of Loys Henri Delteil, an expert in modern graphics, who facilitated some of his purchases. The collector acquired many artworks at auctions, for example, at the auction of Tadeusz Natanson’s collection, where he purchased numerous prints by French artists. It is presumed that he acquired the masterpiece “Portrait of Countess Pourtalès” by Renoir at an auction of the well-known Dresden collection of Rothermundt. Sachs also obtained artworks from Berlin art dealers, including Cassirer, from whom he most likely acquired another highly valuable painting – “Portrait of Victor Jacquemont with an Umbrella” by Monet (currently in the Kunsthaus collection in Zurich). This masterpiece, along with eighteen other paintings from Sachs’s collection, was displayed at the fourth exhibition of contemporary painting at the Silesian Museum of Fine Arts in the spring of 1911. Five years later, an exhibition was prepared at Ernst Arnold’s art salon, consisting exclusively of paintings and prints from Sachs’s collection.
Little is known about the arrangement of art in the collector’s villa, but it seems that the central point of the exhibition was Auguste Renoir’s painting “Portrait of Countess Pourtalès” (now owned by the Museu de Arte de São Paulo). The collection also included works by Courbet, Delacroix, Pissarro, and Sisley. A significant part of the collection consisted of works by German artists, including paintings by Max Liebermann, Max Slevogt, Lovis Corinth, Hans von Marées, and Carl Spitzweg, as well as sculptures by Georg Kolbe.
However, paintings did not constitute the core of Sachs’s collection. The collector’s main interests revolved around graphic works. Numerous works were presented to the Breslau public at an exhibition in 1916. At that time, visitors could admire works by Ludwig von Richter, Hans von Marées, Käthe Kollwitz, and drawings by the famous Breslauer Adolph von Menzel. Works by native artists were accompanied by prints from contemporary European artists, such as the well-known Belgian Félicien Rops and the French artists Louis Legrand and Adolph Willette. Sachs began intensively collecting graphics and drawings after World War I. The first major presentation of selected works from Sachs’s extensive collection took place in 1929 at the General Command building on Schweidnitzer Strasse. The public could see the results of the work of the most famous graphic artists, including Honoré Daumier, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Edvard Munch.
The financial crisis of the late 1920s forced Breslau art connoisseurs to dispose of part of their collections. In 1931, Sachs decided to liquidate European masters’ graphics. However, serious problems for Jewish collectors began with the Nazis’ rise to power. In 1933, Sachs, who had been experiencing vision problems since the early thirties, which was particularly painful for an art collector, received even worse news. He was excluded from the Board of Trustees of the Silesian Museum of Fine Arts, an institution he had supported for years and to which, despite the economic downturn, he had donated a valuable part of his collections. From a respected patron, he suddenly became an unwelcome guest at the museum. Soon, he also realized that his precious art collection was no longer safe in Breslau. In September 1934, Sachs decided to deposit four paintings at Kunsthaus in Zurich. In the institution’s warehouses early the next year, there were already 22 objects, including the most valuable canvases by Courbet, Delacroix, Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, Renoir, and German painters (such as Hans von Marées, Hans Thoma, and Carl Spitzweg).
Compulsory fees imposed on Jews, including Judenvermögensabgabe (Jewish property tax, including on works of art) and Reichsfluchtsteuer (Reich flight tax), led Sachs to ruin. In February 1939, the eighty-year-old collector and his wife managed to emigrate to Switzerland, where a portion of his collection had been shipped earlier, thanks to his foresight. Officially, Sachs had only 10 marks in cash left from the entire Breslau estate. For the works deposited in Zurich, Sachs took out loans that guaranteed him the means to live in emigration. He eventually decided to sell several paintings through the dealer Fritz Nathan. Monet’s portrait of Jacquemont was purchased in 1939 by Kunsthaus in Zurich, where it remains a highlight to this day.
A little over a year after Sachs’s departure, the works of art left by him in Breslau were taken over by the state, despite the collector’s efforts to export them abroad (some ended up in the municipal museum in Görlitz). The collector died in emigration in 1943.
