August Liebmann Mayer (27 October 1885 – 12 March 1944) was a German curator, art historian and art collector specializing in Spanish Golden Age painting. He was fired from his job, his art collection was looted and he was murdered by Nazis because he was Jewish.
Mayer was born in Griesheim to the merchant Jonas Mayer and Bertha Mayer geb. Liebmann. Mayer studied archeology and Germanistik (German studies) in universities in Munich and Berlin, receiving his Ph.D in1907. His dissertation on Jusepe Ribera was published as a book. After traveling, Mayer took an unpaid position at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, eventually getting a job as curator in 1914. During WWI, Dr. Mayer served in an infantry unit, returning the art world when it ended.
In 1920, Mayer became Chief Curator at the Bavarian State Paintings Collection (Alte Pinakothek) and as Associate Professor at the University of Munich. His expertise in Spanish art was widely recognized.[1]
A disciple of the Swiss Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945), an eminent representative of the formalist movement, Mayer was the first to apply a modern methodology to the study of the history of Spanish art. Of Jewish origin, he was murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp, five days after being deported from Drancy.
With the rise of the Nazis, Mayer came under constant attack, notably from Luitpold Dussler (1895–1976), an adjunct professor of art history at the Technische Hochschule in Munich, a Nazi sympathizer and anti-Semite. He was forced to resign all his positions.[2]
On 24 March 1933, Mayer was detained by the Nazis, harassed and tortured, driving him to attempt suicide on 15 June 1933. He was released in July 1933 after a third suicide attempt. As was the case for Jews in Germany, he was subjected to financial fines and confiscatory taxes, his home in Tutzing was confiscated and he was forced to sell personal property, including works of art.[2]
He fled to France with his family in 1935, financially ruined but able to resume work in art. In 1939 he was arrested and released in France after friends intervened. In February 1944 while hiding in the south of France, Mayer was again arrested, this time in Nice. He was taken to Drancy internment camp where he was interned on 13 February 1944. On 7 March 1944 Mayer was deported on transport nr. 69 to Auschwitz, where he was murdered on 12 March 1944.
The notorious Nazi SS art looter Bruno Lohse was investigated for his role in Mayer's death.[3]
Mayer had a substantial art collection which he was forced to sell or which was seized outright by the E.R.R. Nazi looting organisation. Attempts to locate and recover the looted art has been the subject of numerous press articles.[1][4][5][6]
In 2012 the Bavarian National Museum restituted a looted bronze statue to Dr. Mayer's daughter.[6]
In 2014 France decided to restitute a painting the Nazis stole in 1943 to his daughter, Angelika Mayer, who was 84 years old at the time.[4]
in 2015, a 17th century, late Italian Renaissance painting attributed to the workshop of the Late Renaissance Italian painter Giovanni Battista Moroni, entitled "Portrait of a Man" was restituted by the Louvre.[5][7]
In 2020 an agreement was reached between the Diamond estate and the Mayer heirs concerning Jacopo di Cione, Madonna Nursing the Christ Child with Saints Lawrence and Margaret; Predella: the Man of Sorrows, Mater Dolorosa, and Saint John the Evangelist, with two coats of arms,(14th century)[8]
Mayer also owned the 16th-century painting Still Life with Game FowlbyJuan Sánchez Cotán, and is thought to have sold it through the Munich auction house of Hugo Helbing on 24–25 November 1933. The Art Institute of Chicago purchased it from Frederick Mont and Newhouse Galleries in 1955.[9][10]
On February 28, 1933, Hitler issued a presidential decree that essentially suspended civil rights such as freedom from unlawful arrest, search and seizure and the protection of private property. This decree provided the legal means for the Gestapo to take individuals into "protective custody" (Schutzhaft).A month after this decree was issued, on March 24, 1933, Dr. Mayer was taken into "protective custody," and the SA searched and seized items from his Munich home at Martiusstrasse 8/1. During his detention, which lasted several months, Mayer was repeatedly harassed and tortured by his Nazi oppressors to such an extent that he attempted suicide on June 15, 1933. It was only after this third attempt to take his own life that Dr. Mayer was eventually released in July 1933.At the end of April 1933, several weeks after his incarceration, a spurious charge of tax evasion was raised against Dr. Mayer. Notwithstanding any actual evidence of wrongdoing on Dr. Mayer's part, the Bavarian Tax Authority determined that he owed an exorbitant amount in taxes and fined him 115,000 RM. Unable to earn funds to pay the tax burden imposed on him, Mayer's home in Tutzing was confiscated and he was forced to sell personal property, including works of art. Several of Mayer's works were offered at Hugo Helbing's so-called『Alte und Moderne Gemälde – Plastik Buchminiauren –Altes Kunstgewerbe』auction of November 1933. The total yield from the Helbing sale was only 4,465 RM.
Toward the end of his life, there were investigations into his wartime behaviour—including an investigation into whether he played a role in the murder of art historian August Liebmann-Meyer.
August Liebmann Mayer, né en 1885 en Allemagne dans une famille de confession juive, était un spécialiste reconnu de l'art espagnol et un historien de l'art recherché. Conservateur en chef à l'ancienne Pinacothèque de Munich – un musée essentiellement dédié à l'art européen du XIIIe au XVIIIe siècle –, il donnait des cours à l'université. Une position enviée, qui faisait de lui « une cible idéale pour les nazis », note Angelika Mayer. Le 24 mars 1933, il est mis en détention préventive pour évasion fiscale, « un stratagème régulièrement utilisé à l'époque par les hommes d'Hitler contre les juifs », indique Muriel de Bastier. Il est torturé, tente plusieurs fois de se suicider. Sa maison est confisquée, ses biens personnels vendus. En 1936, libre, Mayer quitte Berlin et s'installe rue du Mont-Thabor, à Paris, avec sa famille. Mais, dès le début de la seconde guerre mondiale, il est obligé de fuir. Il rejoint seul Toulouse, puis Nice. En 1941, sa femme meurt. En 1943, l'Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), service spécialisé dans la confiscation des biens des juifs et des francs-maçons, pille la maison rue du Mont-Thabor. Ses hommes emportent entre autres un dessin de Constantin Guys, une table du XVIIe siècle, un buste de Nicolas Renard et la copie du Portrait de Jacopo Foscarini, signée Giacomo Bassano. Mayer est livré aux autorités en février 1944. Il meurt un mois plus tard à Auschwitz. En 1949, sa fille, Angelika Mayer, contacte la Commission de récupération artistique, créée pour gérer le retour des œuvres volées et retrouvées par les Alliés au cours de leur progression en Allemagne.
Der Kunstsammler August Liebermann Mayer war unmittelbar nach der Machtübernahme der Nazis von der Gestapo festgenommen worden, seine umfangreiche Kunstsammlung wurde konfisziert – angeblich wegen Steuerschulden. Die Kunstwerke aus seinem Besitz wurden versteigert. Das Nationalmuseum kaufte die barocke Bronzestatue, die den Gott Merkur darstellt, nach Angaben des Anwalts im Jahr 1937 am Kunstmarkt. Mayer wurde zunächst wieder freigelassen und verließ Deutschland. 1944 wurde er in Monte Carlo erneut von der Gestapo verhaftet und im März 1944 in Auschwitz ermordet. Seine Tochter überlebte den Holocaust und wanderte in die USA aus. Sie bekommt die wertvolle Bronzestatue nun zurück. Im Mai 2010 hatten bereits die Bayerischen Staatsgemäldesammlungen vier Gemälde, die sich bis 1933 ebenfalls im Besitz Mayers befunden hatten, an die Tochter zurückgegeben.
n a room with a direct view of the Statue of Liberty, a 17th century painting stolen by the Nazis was returned to its rightful owner today during a well-attended ceremony held at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in downtown Manhattan. "Portrait of a Man," attributed to the workshop of the Late Renaissance Italian painter Giovanni Battista Moroni, belonged to Dr. August Liebmann Mayer, a renowned art historian and curator who worked at the Bavarian State Paintings Collection and the University of Munich. The painting has been in storage at the Louvre Museum in Paris since 1951.
Mayer resigned from his curatorial post in 1931 and eventually fled to France in 1935, despite begin arrested by the Nazis two years earlier. While in Paris, Mayer continued working as an art historian under the pseudonym Henri Antoine, but he still faced Nazi persecution in France and fled Paris for the French countryside several times until his arrest and deportation in 1944. In May 1942, Mayer's Paris residence was seized by the ERR (Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg), the Nazi art-looting organization, and a portion of his holdings, including his extensive library, were sent to Berlin. A portion of Mayer's collection was sold through Hugo Helbing auction house in Munich in November 1933, including the famed 16th-century painting Still Life with Game Fowl by Juan Sánchez Cotán, which now resides in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. It is unclear if the di Cione work was sold during this auction. "We do not know exactly how or when the Jacopo di Cione left the Mayer collection," Lucian Simmons, vice chairman and worldwide head of Sotheby's restitution department, said in an email to ARTnews. "All we know is that it was after 1927." The di Cione work resurfaced after the war as part of the Pardo collection in Paris from 1966–68.
August L. Mayer, Munich, by 1922 [see Mayer 1922, p. 361]; sold, Munich, Hugo Helbing, November 24–25, 1933, lot 79, pl. 4, as Sánchez Cotán, Küchenstilleben for 380 Marks [the price based on Die Weltkunst 1933; that the picture belonged to Mayer can be deduced from the provenance of no. 74 in this sale, which later entered the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen]. Private collection, Germany [according to 1955 receipt from Frederick Mont, in curatorial file]. Frederick Mont and Newhouse Galleries, New York, by 1955 [1955 receipt cited above and shipping invoice, in curatorial file]; sold to the Art Institute, 1955.
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