ISMAR LITTMANN

Collection of Ismar Littmann

 

Ismar Littmann was born in 1878 in Groß-Strehlitz (now Strzelce Opolskie). In 1902, he defended his doctoral thesis in law, and four years later, he settled in Breslau, where he opened a legal-notary office on Schweidnitzer Strasse. Littmann’s collecting passion emerged about ten years after his arrival in the city. It was a favorable time for art collecting during the war when artworks were relatively inexpensive. German Impressionists such as Corinth, Liebermann, and Slevogt were available at affordable prices. In just over a decade of pursuing his collecting passion, Littmann amassed over 6000 works, prompting Deborah Asher Stone to note that he must have acquired, on average, more than one object per day!

As Ruth Haller, Littmann’s youngest daughter, recalls, “The entire apartment was covered with paintings, there was no empty space (…). In the dining room, all the walls were covered with Corinth, and my oldest brother had paintings by Otto Mueller in his room.” Paintings also adorned the collector’s law office, as evidenced by archival photographs, including one showing Lovis Corinth’s landscape hanging behind Littmann’s desk.

 

Beginning around 1916, Littmann’s collection quickly gained fame. In 1928, steel industry magnates from the Krupp family offered 1,800,000 marks for the collection (equivalent to about 15-20 million dollars today). Littmann meticulously cataloged the impressive inventory of graphic works, numbering over 5800 items, by hand. Graphics were recorded chronologically according to the order of Littmann’s acquisitions. Another surviving list cataloged paintings and watercolors in 1930, commissioned by Littmann and carried out by the Breslau art historian Bernhard Stephan.

 

Littmann often acquired works directly from the artists, especially those associated with the Academy of Fine Arts in Breslau, both its professors (Otto Mueller, Alexander Kanoldt, Carl Mense) and students (e.g., Isidor Aschenheim). Many of them were guests in the spacious Littmann apartment on Eichbornstrasse 4 (today’s Ksawery Drucki-Lubecki Street). Mueller, for instance, secretly painted a nude portrait of one of Littmann’s daughters, Eva. Littmann’s connections extended beyond the Breslau artistic circle; he corresponded with various artists, including Corinth and his wife Charlotte, Käthe Kollwitz, and Max Liebermann. He directly purchased Emil Nolde’s painting “Boxwood Garden.”

 

Littmann’s vast collection comprised over 600 works by Lovis Corinth, including 13 paintings. In terms of the number of owned works, other prominent figures in Littmann’s collection were Jewish artists associated with the Academy of Fine Arts in Breslau, Heinrich Tischler, and Isidor Aschheim. Littmann also admired the work of artists affiliated with the “Die Brücke” group, including Max Pechstein and his friend Otto Mueller. The collection featured works by expressionists such as Max Beckmann, Oskar Kokoschka, Ernst Barlach, and Paul Klee. Another significant artistic movement represented in Littmann’s collection was the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit), with artists like Karl Hofer, Alexander Kanoldt, Carlo Mense, Otto Dix, and Georg Grosz. French artists were less numerous in the collection but included representatives of realism (Henri Fantin-Latour, Édouard Manet), Impressionism (Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne), and Fauvism (André Derain, Maurice Vlamick, Henri Matisse, Raoul Dufy). The collection naturally encompassed works by leading Cubists, including Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris, of whom Littmann owned two still lifes.

 

From the late 1920s, Littmann aspired to make his collection, which had adorned his family’s home and his law office, accessible to a wider audience. In 1929, he exhibited works from his collection at a contemporary art show organized by the Silesian Museum of Fine Arts. At that time, he began searching for exhibition space to permanently showcase his collections to the Breslau public. The first steps in this direction were taken in the spring of 1930 when over fifty paintings, exclusively from Littmann’s collection, decorated the villa of Alfred and Toni Neisser, designed by Hans Griesbach. During this exhibition, residents of Breslau could admire works by famous artists such as Maurice Utrillo, Juan Gris, or Robert Delaunay. The art from Littmann’s collection reappeared in the Neisser villa in 1933, and the public was then given access to a large collection of Otto Mueller’s works, among others.

 

The economic crisis of the 1930s also affected Littmann. In 1931, he consulted with the director of the Berlin National Gallery, Ludwig Justi, about selling works by Käthe Kollwitz and Lovis Corinth. In March of the following year, Littmann decided to sell over 200 works on paper at Paul Graupe’s auction house in Berlin. In November of the same year, he opted for the sale of additional works at an auction organized by the Breslau Kunstkabinett.

 

The financial downturn prevented Littmann from continuing his collecting activities. Worsening financial conditions forced him to take out a loan from the Breslau Sparkasse, using artworks displayed in the Neisser home as collateral. In 1933, when the Nazis came to power, some Jewish lawyers lost their professional licenses. It is unclear whether these restrictions affected Littmann personally, but even if not, his professional situation was seriously threatened. At the same time, contemporary art, deemed “degenerate” by the new authorities, rapidly lost value, leading banks to demand immediate repayment of art-related debts. Faced with a seemingly hopeless situation, Littmann took his own life by ingesting poison.

 

After the collector’s death on September 23, 1934, his wife Käthe and eldest son Hans decided to send 156 artworks to Berlin for auction at Max Perl’s auction house. They were to be auctioned in February 1935. Two days before the planned auction, the Gestapo confiscated 64 works of contemporary artists, including pieces from Littmann’s collection, citing their “pornographic” and “Bolshevik” nature. These confiscated works were handed over to the Berlin National Gallery to determine their value. The director of the institution at that time selected 18 works from this group, including two paintings by Mueller from Littmann’s collection that survived. The rest were deemed “degenerate art” and burned in March 1936. Over a year later, in July 1937, an exhibition titled “Entartete Kunst” (“Degenerate Art”) opened in Munich, showcasing over six hundred works, including four from Littmann’s collection. The exhibition attracted over two million visitors.

 

After his father’s death, Hans emigrated to the USA, taking with him the inventories of the collections and several hundred artworks. The artworks from Littmann’s collection held in the warehouses of Breslau museums were seized by the state after Ismar’s death. Given the immense size of Ismar Littmann’s collection, one cannot help but wonder about the fate of these artworks in the subsequent years. It is known that the collection was gradually diminished by sales from 1932 onwards. However, even assuming that all the objects auctioned that year were sold, their number would not exceed 700 pieces. Another 200 works from Littmann’s collection were to be auctioned at Max Perl’s auction after Ismar Littmann’s death. If we add the works nationalized and several hundred objects taken to the USA by the collector’s son, the total number of objects would not even account for half of Littmann’s accumulated collection. So, what happened to the remaining three thousand objects?

 

This article is based on the publication by Magdalena Palica, “Od Delacroix do van Gogha. Żydowskie kolekcje sztuki w dawnym Wrocławiu” (From Delacroix to van Gogh. Jewish Art Collections in Old Wrocław), Wrocław 2010.

 

Link to the collection

Collectors

Ismar Littmann

Littmann portrayed by Tischler, ca. 1930.

Exhibition of “degenerate art” in Munich.

Announcement of the auction of the Littmann collection.