MAX SILBERBERG
In the 1930s, the villa on the outskirts of Park Południowy (South Park) was owned by the wealthy Jewish entrepreneur Max Silberberg, and was a center for culture, and art in Breslau. His collection was the pride of the city and the destination of many art connoisseurs. Those fortunate enough to witness Silberberg’s art collection did not hesitate to compare its creator to the most famous collectors of the time, such as American banker Andrew Mellon, whose collection laid the foundation for the Washington National Gallery.
Max Silberberg was born in 1878 into the family of a master tailor in the Brandenburg town of Neuruppin. He must have been an intelligent child, as his family decided to undertake the financial burden associated with his education at the gymnasium. After completing military service, his family, consisting of his father Isidor and sister Margarete, moved to Beuthen (today’s Bytom). Most likely, the talented young man received his commercial education there. In 1902, he was employed as a proxy in the firm “M. Weissenberg,” founded four years earlier, initially engaged in trade and the production of stoves, refractory bricks, and magnesite products. The company expanded on a large scale and became a powerhouse in the European market for these products. Shortly after starting work, Max Silberberg married the daughter of the company’s founder, Johanna Weissenberg. In 1906, their only son, named Alfred, was born. During this period, the industrialist’s artistic interests began to emerge.
Initially, the collector acquired works by Wilhelm Leibl and artists from his circle, gradually expanding his interests to other native artists (including Carl Schuch, Hans Thoma, Wilhelm Trübner, and Hans von Marées). Silberberg’s sought-after paintings were challenging to acquire due to the strong competition from museums and other art connoisseurs. According to Paul Abramowski, the author of one of the articles dedicated to Silberberg’s collection, this influenced the collector’s decision to include “easier to obtain” but high-quality works by French painters in the collection. Part of the collection, consisting of Impressionist works, was already formed in Breslau, where the Silberberg family moved in 1920. At that time, the collector was already a co-owner of the “M. Weissenberg” company and managed its branches in Świdnica (then Schweidnitz) and Düsseldorf. The extent of his wealth is evident from the large size of the villa he acquired at Landsbergerstrasse 1-3 (now Kutnowska Street), as well as the fact that Silberberg commissioned the decoration of the dining room to the renowned artist and director of the Academy of Fine Arts in Breslau, August Endell. In this stylistically consistent interior, modernist paintings were exhibited, including van Gogh’s “The Trinquetaille Bridge,” Renoir’s “Reading,” and Cézanne’s “Jas de Bouffan.” A display case showcasing antique artistic craftsmanship was also set up there.
The walls of Silberberg’s magnificent villa were adorned with a total of about two hundred and fifty works of art, including numerous works by leading Impressionists. Visitors could admire at least five paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, at least three paintings each by Édouard Manet and Paul Cézanne, two each by Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro, and several pastels by Edgar Degas. The collection also featured works by Auguste Rodin, Vincent van Gogh, and Pablo Picasso, as well as earlier-generation artists such as Eugène Delacroix, Gustave Courbet, and Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot.
Today, paintings from the Breslau collection adorn the most prestigious museums worldwide: the Musée d’Orsay and the Louvre in Paris, the Hermitage, the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
In the New York museum, we can currently admire a beautiful drawing by van Gogh depicting an olive grove in the town of Saint-Rémy, which until 1999 was part of the Nationalgalerie in Berlin. Remarkably, this drawing was one of the first works of art returned to the rightful owners based on the Washington Declaration, which defined the principles for dealing with property lost during World War II. The Prussian Trust Foundation, managing the assets of the Berlin museum, acknowledged that the auction in 1935 at Paul Graupe’s salon in Berlin, where Silberberg’s art was acquired, was not voluntary. It took place under political pressure and was a result of the persecution against the Jewish population. As a result, the van Gogh drawing was returned to Max’s daughter-in-law, Greta Silberberg. Greta decided to auction it at Sotheby’s in London, where it achieved a record-breaking sum of 8.5 million dollars—one of the highest amounts ever paid for a work on paper!
For comparison, the painting by the Dutch painter “The Trinquetaille Bridge,” also once part of the Breslau collection, sold for 20.24 million dollars at an auction at Christie’s in London in 1987. It was then the third most expensive van Gogh painting (after “Irises” and “Sunflowers”). This allows us to approximate the value of Silberberg’s art collection.
In the early 20th century, Max Silberberg’s collections became famous beyond the city limits, particularly thanks to numerous newspaper articles that enthusiastically praised the collection. Encouraged by specialist opinions, well-known art critics and enthusiasts knocked on the doors of Silberberg’s Breslau villa. Visitors included Ludwig Justi, the director of the Berlin National Gallery, and the famous critic Juliusz Meier-Graefe. Thematic lectures were organized for guests, often delivered by employees of the Silesian Museum of Fine Arts—Heinz Braune and Erich Wiese. However, even if an art lover could not travel to Breslau, they could see paintings or sculptures from the Silberberg collection in other European cities, where they were often displayed at exhibitions.
Max Silberberg, photo of the photo:. UMF
Villa at Kutnowska Street 1-3, Wrocław. photo: polska-org.pl
Silberberg’s villa
Vincent van Gogh, Trinquetaille Bridge, Max Silberberg’s collection.
The financial crisis in 1932 forced the collector to sell part of the collection at Georges Petit’s salon in Paris. Three years later, he was ordered, as a Jew, to leave the luxurious villa, part of the systematic repression of the Jewish population and the seizure of their property. The building subsequently served the NSDAP security service. The collector was allocated a small apartment at Kurfürstenstrasse 28 (today Racławicka Street), which had no space for such an extensive art collection or library. Silberberg had to part with most of the artworks, artistic craftsmanship, and the book collection through the Berlin salon of Paul Graupe at several auctions held in 1935 and 1936. Over 160 artistic objects were auctioned off in total.
A visible sign of the rapidly deteriorating situation of the Jewish population in Nazi Germany was the so-called “Kristallnacht,” during which the collector’s only son was arrested and transported to the Buchenwald concentration camp, which had been operating for over a year. Fortunately, he was released a few days later on the condition of quickly leaving the country. In 1939, he emigrated with his wife Greta to the United Kingdom. Max Silberberg and his wife Johanna, despite difficult economic conditions (their company had been taken over by the state a year earlier), decided to remain in Breslau. However, repression increased, gradually forcing them to part with valuables and the few remaining works of art. In 1941, the Silberberg couple was deported to the camp in Lubiąż, then through Theresienstadt to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where they were murdered.
The art collection amassed by the collector was breathtaking. If it could be admired in Wrocław to this day, along with other paintings gathered by other Breslau collectors (including Leo Lewin and Carl Sachs), it would be the finest gallery of Impressionist painting in this part of Europe.