Alfred Hess (19 May 1879 – 24 December 1931) was a German Jewish industrialist and art collector.

Career

Hess was a shoe manufacturer in

Erfurt Erfurt () is the capital and largest city in the Central German state of Thuringia. It is located in the wide valley of the Gera river (progression: ), in the southern part of the Thuringian Basin, north of the Thuringian Forest. It sits i ...

, Thuringia.Jewish Heirs Want Their Art Back.
Michael Sontheimer and Andreas Wassermann, ''

Spiegel Online ''Der Spiegel (online)'' is a German news website. Before the renaming in January 2020, the website's name was ''Spiegel Online'' (short ''SPON''). It was founded in 1994 as the online offshoot of the German news magazine, ''Der Spiegel'', wit ...

'', 8 November 2006. Retrieved 25 July 2017. M & L Hess Schuhfabrik had four factories in Erfurt. He was keen on art and German expressionism. His portrait was made into a woodcut by

Max Pechstein Hermann Max Pechstein (31 December 1881 – 29 June 1955) was a German expressionist painter and printmaker and a member of the Die Brücke group. He fought on the Western Front during World War I and his art was classified as Degenerate A ...

in 1919 when he was one of the artists who stayed at the Hess house. Hess made donations to local museums and his visitors' books were so lavishly decorated that illustrations were published as a book in 1957. Hess's factory was forcibly Aryanised under the Nazis. A memorial plaque for Alfred Hess has been erected at the Hess villa in Alfred-Hess-Straße, Erfurt; the street was named after him in 1992.

Art collection

With his wife Thekla (1884–1968), née Pauson, he had an art collection of around 4,000 works that contained important

German Expressionist German Expressionism () consisted of several related creative movements in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin during the 1920s. These developments were part of a larger Expressionist movement in north and central ...

works and was looted by the Nazis in the 1930s. After her husband's death in 1931, Thekla sold some of the paintings to fund a

grand tour The Grand Tour was the principally 17th- to early 19th-century custom of a traditional trip through Europe, with Italy as a key destination, undertaken by upper-class young European men of sufficient means and rank (typically accompanied by a tuto ...

with her son Hans Hess. She moved to the UK in 1938 and helped

Leicester Museum and Art Gallery The Leicester Museum & Art Gallery (until 2020, New Walk Museum and Art Gallery) is a museum on New Walk in Leicester, England, not far from the city centre. It opened in 1849 as one of the first public museums in the United Kingdom. Leiceste ...

create an exhibition of German Expressionist art in 1944. Leicester Museum bought or was given four paintings. Hans Hess was appointed as an art assistant at Leicester shortly before the exhibition opened, then in 1947, he became keeper of art at

York Art Gallery York Art Gallery is a public art gallery in York, England, with a collection of paintings from 14th-century to contemporary, prints, watercolours, drawings, and ceramics. It closed for major redevelopment in 2013, reopening in summer of 2015. T ...

. Hans tried to sell some of the paintings after the end of the Second World War but there were no buyers. There was an auction of family paintings at the

Marlborough Gallery Marlborough Fine Art was founded in London in 1946 by Frank Lloyd and Harry Fischer. In 1963, a gallery was opened as Marlborough-Gerson in Manhattan, New York, at the Fuller Building on Madison Avenue and 57th Street, which later relocated in ...

in 1977 following the death of Hans in 1975 and his widow Lillie in 1976.£100m secret of woman they call 'Stalin's granny'.
''

Evening Standard The ''Evening Standard'', formerly ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), also known as the ''London Evening Standard'', is a local free daily newspaper in London, England, published Monday to Friday in tabloid format. In October 2009, after be ...

'', 18 November 2016. Retrieved 24 July 2017.Communist gets payout for painting stolen by Nazis.
David Sanderson, ''The Times'', 30 September 2016. Retrieved 24 July 2017. Several works, such as ''Berlin Street Scene'' (1913) by

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (6 May 1880 – 15 June 1938) was a German expressionist painter and printmaker and one of the founders of the artists group Die Brücke or "The Bridge", a key group leading to the foundation of Expressionism in 20th-centur ...

and ''Nude'' by

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (Karl Schmidt until 1905; 1 December 1884 – 10 August 1976) was a German expressionist painter and printmaker; he was one of the four founders of the artist group Die Brücke. Life and work Schmidt-Rottluff was born in ...

, have been returned to his granddaughter and heir,

Anita Halpin Anita E. Halpin (born April 1944) is an English communist and trade union activist of German-Jewish descent who has been successful in having paintings returned to her that were looted by the Nazis from her grandfather, Alfred Hess, in the 1930s. S ...

, and subsequently sold; the former sold at auction for £20.5 million to the

Neue Galerie New York The Neue Galerie New York (German language, German for "New Gallery") is a museum of early twentieth-century German and Austrian art and design located in the William Starr Miller House at 86th Street (Manhattan), 86th Street and Fifth Avenue i ...

, which also paid over £1 million to Halpin for ''Nude''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hess, Alfred German art collectors 1931 deaths 1879 births 19th-century German Jews German industrialists Businesspeople from Erfurt Jewish art collectors