Lempertz (officially Kunsthaus Lempertz KG) is a German auction house which emerged from a bookstore and art gallery founded 1845 in Bonn, Germany. It is entirely owned and controlled by the Lempertz family and headquartered in Cologne, Germany.
Early years
Lempertz's roots go back to 1802 when Johann Matthias Heberle (1775–1840) opened a printing company in Cologne in 1802, which was later expanded to include an “antiquarian and auction house”. The first auction of the J. M. Heberle company took place in 1811. After the company's founder died in 1840, his 24-year-old employee Heinrich Lempertz (1816–1898) took over the company, which from then on became “J. M. Heberle (H. Lempertz).[1]
Mathias Lempertz (1821–1886), the brother of Heinrich Lempertz, opened the “Buch- und Kunsthandlung Heberle-Lempertz” in 1845 as a branch of the Cologne company at Fürstenstrasse 2 in Bonn.[2] In the same year, the first public auction of August Wilhelm Schlegel's posthumous library took place on December 1. In 1854 the Bonn branch became an independent company owned by Mathias Lempertz.
In 1875 Peter Hanstein (1853–1925) bought the company, paying 20,000 gold marks for the name Math. Lempertz, bookstore and antiquarian bookshop. Three years later he founded the Peter Hanstein Verlag, which focused on history, philosophy and theology. In 1888 the bookstore moved to new premises in Hof 40, later in Franziskanerstraße 6 in Bonn. As more paintings by old masters and applied arts were auctioned, a branch was opened in Cologne in 1902, which was initially located at Domhof 6 in the house of the Archbishop's Diocesan Museum. In 1908 Lempertz was the first European auction house to start auctioning East Asian art.[3]
In 1918 the Math. Lempertz company acquired the classicist house Fastenrat at Neumarkt 3, corner of Cäcilienstraße 48, from the estate of Johannes Fastenrath.[4][5]
After Peter Hanstein's death in 1925, his two sons Hans Hanstein (1879–1940) and Josef Hanstein (1885–1968), who had been partners since 1912, inherited the company. Manfred Faber converted and expanded the office building on Neumarkt in 1933/34 before being murdered in the Holocaust.[6] From 1937 to spring 1938 Heinrich Böll apprenticed as a bookseller in the Lempertz bookstore in Bonn.[7]
Nazi Germany 1933-1945
Lempertz was involved in auctioning off Jewish property seized by the Nazis or sold due to Nazi persecution.[8][9]
228 artworks from Jewish art dealer Max Stern (1904–1987) whose gallery was closed by the Nazi Reich Chamber of Fine Arts was sold off at Lempertz.[10][11] On 12./13. December 1939, the collection of the Jewish art dealer Walter Westfeld (1889–1943) arrested by Nazis and plundered, was sold off at Lempertz.[12][13]
Lempertz after 1945
Bookstore
In 1947 the bookstore was re-established as Mathias Lempertz Buchhandlung und Antiquariat GmbH in Bonn at Fürstenstrasse 1. It gradually developed into a university bookstore and in 1983 also became the official depository bookstore of the Bibliotheca Vaticana publishing house. In 1996 the publisher Franz-Christoph Heel bought the bookstore and in the following year founded the book publisher "Edition Lempertz" in Bonn, whose book program deals particularly with topics of Catholic theology and regional publications. The manager of Edition Lempertz was Antje-Friederike Heel, who in 1999 also took over the management of Matthias Lempertz Buchhandlung und Antiquariat GmbH. In 2003 Edition Lempertz and Siegler Verlag were merged. The Siegler Verlag program mostly includes military history publications, published under the imprint of the Brandenburg publishing house. Its naming rights come from the former military publisher of the German Democratic Republic. On December 31, 2005, the Lempertz bookstore in Bonn was closed after more than 150 years.
Madonna mit Kind an der Fassade der Galerie (2007)
Auction house
After the war, Josef Hanstein (1885–1968) and his son Rolf Hanstein (1919–1970) continued to run the “Kunsthaus Lempertz”. The building has been a listed building since September 3, 1993. From 1953 to 1957 the first exhibitions of the Roman-Germanic Museum and the Wallraf-Richartz Museum took place there. Since 1958 the house has held separate auctions of modern art. In 1965 the first foreign office was opened in New York,[14] further representative offices followed. The Lempertz Contempora gallery for contemporary art was also opened in 1965. After Rolf Hanstein's premature death in a car accident in 1970, his son Henrik Hanstein (* 1950) took over the business.[15] As the leading German auction house, Lempertz has been auctioning contemporary art as well as photography and photographic works in its own auctions since 1989.
With its representative offices in Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Zurich, Brussels, Paris, Tokyo and Shanghai, the Kunsthaus Lempertz is one of the most important art auction houses in Europe today. Around 14 auctions are held each year, accompanied by illustrated catalogs and one-week preview. In addition to the spring and autumn auctions, at which ancient art, applied arts, modern and contemporary art, photography and photo works as well as East Asian art are auctioned, there are the two auctions for books and graphics, as well as the tribal art auction in spring. The auctions take place in Cologne as well as in the branches in Brussels and Berlin. In addition, Lempertz has long acted as an intermediary between private collectors and museums and has been able to convey important cultural assets to public institutions. Lempertz is a member of the "International Auctioneer" (IA AG) group, which was founded in 1993 and brings together eight leading independent auction houses from eight countries around the world. The turnover in 2012 was 51 million euros.
Criticism
Nazi-looted art
Lempertz was listed in the 1946 OSS Art Looting Investigation Unit's Red Flag List of Names for involvement in the Nazi-looted art trade.[16] At present, the German Lost Art Foundation registers more than 680 artworks that mention Lempertz.[17][18][19]
In 1977, and again in 1996, Lempertz sold art that it had previously sold in 1937,[20] without mentioning that, under the Nazis, it had been subject to a forced sale from the collection of Max Stern.[21][22][23][24]
In May 1981 Lempertz auctioned between 20 and 30 artworks, for one million DM, from Albert Speer's possession, using the anonymous provenance indication “From private property”.[25][26]
In 2008, the heirs of Walter Westfeld, who was murdered in Auschwitz, sued Germany for the restitution of an art collection that including paintings by El Greco and Peter Paul Rubens, which had been seized by the Nazis and auctioned at Lempertz in 1939.[27] According to NBC News the "Lempertz auction house in Cologne, Germany, claimed the property was destroyed during bombing in WWII, but the lawsuit includes a copy of the December 1939 sale catalog and price list."[28]
In 2007, "Portrait of a Musician Playing a Bagpipe" by an unknown Dutch artist, originally from the Max Stern collection, was sold at Lempertz, which had conducted the forced sale in 1937 to a London dealer, Philip Mould Ltd., who then sold it to Lawrence Steigrad in NY where it was spotted by the Holocaust Claims Processing Office. It was restituted to the heirs of Max Stern in 2009.[29][30]
In 2009 New York art dealer Richard Feigen restituted, to the heirs of Max Stern, an Italian baroque painting of St. Jerome in the Wilderness, attributed to Ludovico Carracci (1555-1619), that he had acquired at Lempertz. “I was surprised that Lempertz had been the auctioneer in the forced sale in 1937 and then resold it to me in 2000,” he said.[31]
In 2011, Lempertz dismissed a claim from heirs of Sophie Lissitzky-Kueppers, a Jewish art collector plundered by the Nazis, and decided to continue an auction of 1923 a Kandinsky painting “Zwei Schwarze Flecken” (“Two Black Marks”) despite the family's assertion that it had been stolen by the Nazis.[32]
Forgeries
In October 2010 Lempertz auctioned forged paintings by Wolfgang Beltracchi, including forgeries attributed to Heinrich Campendonk and Max Pechstein from a nonexistent "Jäger" collection, including the forgery of Campendonk's “Rotes Picture with horses ”at a record price of 2.4 million euros.[33][34][35] On September 1, 2012, the Cologne Regional Court sentenced the Lempertz Kunsthaus to pay more than two million euros in damages (after Lempertz had previously repaid the plaintiff €800,000).[36]
2006 Ölgemälde Emil Nolde: Marschhof 1947 (€1.400.000 ), Max Liebermann: Papageienmann (€903.000 ), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Stilleben mit 2 Holzfiguren und Blumen (€732.000 ), Salomon van Ruysdael: Flusslandschaft mit Fähre und einem mit Vieh beladenen Boot (€770.000 )
2007 Modelle Alberto Giacometti: 2 Original-Skulpturen (€1.590.000 ), Gouache und Aquarell Fernand Léger: Contraste de Formes (€1.280.000 )
2012 Gemälde Gerrit Dou: Alter Maler in seinem Atelier (€3.785.000 ), Gemälde Johann König: Auferstehung Christi (€878.000 )
2014 2 Heiligentafeln von Matteo Giovannetti von ca. 1345 aus dem Nachlass Franz von Lenbachs: (€2.656.000 ), Weltraumkapsel TKS-Raumschiff: (€1.000.000 ), Relief Trauergruppe aus einem Kalvarienberg, Sachsen 1500/1510, ehem. Sammlung Hermann Göring (€244.000 )
Claudia Herstatt: Schädliche Herkunft, Der Streit um ein wertvolles Gemälde, das einmal Albert Speer gehört haben soll. In: Die Zeit, Nr. 19/2006
Werner Höfer: Lempertz in New York, Brückenkopf des deutschen Kunsthandels. In Die Zeit, Nr. 46/1964
Swantje Karich: Rote Pferde, gelbe Häuser und ein Schrank. In: FAZ, 31. Dezember 2006
Stefan Koldehoff: Kein Bekenntnis zur Vergangenheit. Der deutsche Kunsthandel in der Nazizeit – eine Ausstellung. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, 27. Februar 2007
Catherine MacKenzie: Auktion 392, Reclaiming the Galerie Stern, Düsseldorf. FoFa Gallery, Concordia University, Montreal 2006, ISBN 0-9781694-0-9
Josef Niesen: Bonner Personenlexikon. 2., verbesserte und erweiterte Auflage. Bouvier, Bonn 2008, ISBN 978-3-416-03180-6.
Werner Schäfke: Kunsthaus Lempertz – Eine Kulturgeschichte, DuMont Buchverlag, Köln 2015, ISBN 978-3-8321-9487-1.
^"The Nobel Prize in Literature 1972". NobelPrize.org. Retrieved 2021-04-07. In spring 1937 I began as an apprentice bookseller (publishers, retail trade, antiquarian) for the Matth. Lempertz company in Bonn. I left this apprenticeship in spring 1938, started my first attempts to write, gave private lessons, read a great deal.
^"Nazi Looting: The Plunder of Dutch Jewry During the Second World War". www.lootedart.com. Retrieved 2021-04-19. Looted works of art were forcibly deposited in the Lipmann Rosenthal Bank (LIRO) from where they were sold on the art market both in the Netherlands and Germany. Auction houses and dealers selling such works of art included Mak van Waay, Amsterdam, Van Marle & Bignell in The Hague, Lempertz, Cologne, Curt Reinheldt of Berlin and the Munich Galerie für alte Kunst.
^"U.S. Customs Seize Old Master Work Lost in Nazi-Era Forced Sale". www.lootedart.com. Retrieved 2021-04-07. The bagpipe player once belonged to the Dusseldorf art dealer Max Stern, one of thousands of Jews prohibited by the Nazis from practicing his profession. He received final orders to liquidate his gallery in 1937 and sold 228 paintings through Lempertz, a Cologne auction house.
^Leo Putz. Musei provinziali Alto Adige. 2019. ISBN9788895523163. 1937 wurden in der Nazi-Aktion „Entartete Kunst" aus den Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Kassel sein Aquarell Zwei Akte und die Druckgrafiken Liegender Frauenakt und Zwei Akte beschlagnahmt und vernichtet.[3] und bekam er Berufsverbot in Deutschland. Sein Aquarell Burggespenst (60 × 46 cm) wurde mit der Sammlung es jüdischen Sammlers und Kunsthändlers Walter Westfeld beschlagnahmt und 1939 vom Kunsthaus Lempertz zwangsversteigert. Es gilt als verschollen{{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
^thecjnadmin (2009-12-03). "German auctioneer drops sale of claimed Stern art". The Canadian Jewish News. Retrieved 2021-04-19. Lempertz is the same auction house that conducted the 1937 sale forced by the Nazis of the last 200 works in Stern's Dusseldorf gallery. The estate claims the Jewish Stern was coerced between 1935 and 1937 into liquidating some 400 paintings before fleeing Germany.
^"U.S. Customs Seize Old Master Work Lost in Nazi-Era Forced Sale". www.lootedart.com. Retrieved 2021-04-18. The bagpipe player once belonged to the Dusseldorf art dealer Max Stern, one of thousands of Jews prohibited by the Nazis from practicing his profession. He received final orders to liquidate his gallery in 1937 and sold 228 paintings through Lempertz, a Cologne auction house.
^"Germany still has a problematic approach towards Nazi-era art restitution". Archived from the original on 2019-04-01. Retrieved 2021-04-19. In November, 1937, under Gestapo orders, Mr. Stern liquidated his inventory – more than 300 paintings listed at fire-sale prices – at Cologne's Third Reich-approved auction house Lempertz, still a leading business today. Mr. Stern never saw a penny from the 1937 forced sale; its proceeds were ransomed to obtain an exit visa for his mother to leave Germany.
^"Art Dealer Networks in the Third Reich and in the Postwar Period"(PDF). Among those would be the Lempertz auction house in Cologne, which sold looted art in the postwar period, including Albert Speer's art, which he had stashed with a friend in Mexico while he was in Spandau.2
^"Man sues Germany for Nazi art seizure". NBC News. 6 November 2008. Retrieved 2021-04-18. The lawsuit, filed in Davidson County Chancery Court, says today's Germany is responsible for the actions of Hitler's regime and wants a jury to award an unspecified amount for the loss to Westfield's heirs. Lempertz auction house in Cologne, Germany, claimed the property was destroyed during bombing in WWII, but the lawsuit includes a copy of the December 1939 sale catalog and price list. "The conversion and sale were part of an integrated policy in which Jews were deprived of their artwork on fabricated grounds to appear as if the government was just enforcing laws, the goal being to raise substantial liquid funds on sale for the government and party officials," the lawsuit says.
^"UNITED STATES RETURNS PAINTING, EXPROPRIATED BY NAZIS, TO THE ESTATE OF ITS RIGHTFUL OWNER, DR. MAX STERN"(PDF). United States Attorney Southern District of New York. In November 2007, Lempertz Auction House -- the same auction house that sold the Bagpipe Player in 1937 -- sold the painting to London gallery Philip Mould Ltd. In December 2008, LAWRENCE STEIGRAD, an art dealer in Manhattan, purchased the Bagpipe Player from Philip Mould, Ltd., with no knowledge of its stolen provenance, and offered it for sale on the website of his gallery, Lawrence Steigrad Fine Arts, Inc.
^"Nazi Loot Claim Fails to Hinder Planned Cologne Kandinsky Sale". lootedart.com. Retrieved 2021-04-07. The heirs say the watercolor was one of 16 works Lissitzky-Kueppers loaned to Hanover's Provinzialmuseum that were later seized by the Nazis. Lempertz says Lissitzky- Kueppers gave away the watercolor in the 1920s. "The sale will go ahead," Karl-Sax Feddersen, a member of the Lempertz management board, said by telephone. "We think this claim is totally unfounded."
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