(Q23062739)
Statements
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Investigation and evaluation of the acquisition of Galerie Flechtheim, Düsseldorf, by Alexander Vömel in March 1933 | Kulturgutverluste (English)
22 September 2024
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Vömel, Alexander (Alex)Buchhändler, 1922 Eintritt in die Galerie Flechtheim, Düsseldorf, 1923 Prokurist, 1927 Geschäftsführer, später Teilhaber, 1933 gründete eine eigene Galerie in den früheren Geschäftsräumen der Galerie Flechtheim, (Hauptsitz Düsseldorf, Koenigsallee, Mitglied der SA und, 1937 der NSDAP, 1941 Beschlagnahme im Galeriebestand durch die Gestapo, galt fälschlich als Ariseur der Galerie Flechtheim, deren Liquidator der von Flechtheim beauftragte Alfred Schulte war, einschlägige Korrespondenz (Selbstäußerungen) sind bekannt.Neue Forschungsergebnisse haben gezeigt, dass die Position Vömels vielschichtig zu betrachten ist (vgl. Eintrag "Flechtheim, Alfred", Stand: 04-2011).Lit.: Yvo Theumissen, „Entartete Kunst“ und privates Ausstellungswesen. Die Galerie Alex Vömel in Düsseldorf, in: Verfolgung und Widerstand im Rheinland und in Westfalen 1933–1945, hrsg. v. Anselm Faust, Köln/Stuttgart/Berlin 1992, 234-244, 234; Roswitha Neu-Kock, Alfred Flechtheim, Alexander Vömel und die Verhältnisse in Düsseldorf 1930 bis 1934, in: Kunst sammeln, Kunst handeln. Beiträge des internationalen Symposiums in Wien (hrsg. v. Eva Blimlinger und Monika Mayer), Wien 2012, 155–166 (German)
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Within months of Hitler’s assumption of power, the well-documented process of Aryanization—the confiscation of property from Jews—began in earnest. In March 1933, an art dealer named Alexander Vömel confiscated Flechtheim’s Düsseldorf gallery. “Vömel was a member of the SA (Sturm Abteilung, or Brown Shirts)—the violent Nazi paramilitary organization,” Petropoulos wrote in a report he filed in the Grosz lawsuit. “Vömel’s takeover of Flechtheim’s Dusseldorf gallery should be viewed as a kind of ‘Aryanization.’ Transfer of the Dusseldorf branch away from Flechtheim under duress is a strong indication that something similar occurred with regards to his Berlin gallery.” (English)
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After a two-year inquiry, Moderna Museet Stockholm has decided that the "Marquis Joseph de Montesqui-Fezenac", a portrait by the Austrian expressionist Oskar Kokoshka, should be returned to the family of Alfred Flechtheim. "We haven't wanted to win the case, we just want to do the right thing," Daniel Birnbaum, the museum's head, told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper of the long period of detective work involved. Sweden's National Museum bought the work in 1934, a year after Alexander Vömel, an art dealer who was a member of the Nazi Party's brownshirts paramilitary group, confiscated Flechtheim's entire Dusseldorf gallery. (English)
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Flechtheim ran galleries in Dusseldorf and Berlin, where he held dozens of exhibitions and founded an art magazine. As a Jew who sold art the Nazis condemned as “degenerate,” Flechtheim was among the first targets of persecution. He fled Germany in 1933 after a stream of hate articles in the Nazi press, escaping first to Zurich, then Paris and then London, where he settled.He died in London of blood poisoning in 1937 after treading on a rusty nail. His Dusseldorf gallery was “aryanized” in 1933 and given to his former employee Alex Voemel, a Nazi. The Berlin gallery was liquidated later that year and his private collection sold. It included works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Wassily Kandinsky, Fernand Leger, Georges Braque and Henri Matisse. In a 1933 letter to Grosz from Paris, Flechtheim said he and his wife were “poor as church mice and nervous.” (English)
Identifiers
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Sitelinks
Wikipedia(2 entries)
- dewiki Alex Vömel
- enwiki Alex Vömel