German Jewish
The history of the Jews in Germany goes back at least to the year 321, and continued through the Early Middle Ages (5th to 10th centuries CE) and High Middle Ages (''circa'' 1000–1299 CE) when Jewish immigrants founded the Ashkenazi Jewish ...
art collector who was persecuted by the Nazis.
Early life
Flersheim was born on July 13, 1862 in Frankfurt am Main. His parents were Louis Flersheim and Johanna Gütha Flersheim. He married Gertrud von Mayer (born August 2,1872; died September 13, 1944 in Bergen Belsen). Both were arrested, deported and murdered by the Nazis.
Art collection
The Flersheim's collection included
Ferdinand Hodler
Ferdinand Hodler (March 14, 1853 – May 19, 1918) was one of the best-known Swiss painters of the nineteenth century.
His early works were portraits, landscapes, and genre paintings in a realistic style. Later, he adopted a personal form of ...
's "Thunersee mit Niesen", "A Prayer before Supper" by
Adolf Hölzel
Adolf Richard Hölzel (13 May 1853 – 17 October 1934) was a German painter. He began as a Realist, but later became an early promoter of various Modern styles, including Abstractionism.
Biography
Hölzel was born in Olmütz. His father was ...
.
Nazi-era
In May 1937, the Frankfurt auction house Hugo Helbing auctioned off the Flersheim collection and the couple fled to Amsterdam in the face of increasing anti-Semitic repression. In the Netherlands they were arrested and imprisoned. They were deported and died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1944.
Claims for restitution
After 1945, Edith Eberstadt (née Flersheim) made claims for restitution for artworks in the collection. A few paintings were located in private collections or public museums. Several restitutions or settlements took place. In May 2020, the Association for the Promotion of Fine Arts in Wiesbaden e. V. returned the painting "Procession in the Mountains" by Adolf Hölzel, which was on permanent loan to the Wiesbaden Museum, to the heirs of the Flersheim family.
The efforts by the Flersheim's grandson, Walter Eberstadt, to recover art works by the Dutch painter Jan Toorop are documented at the Leo Baeck Institute.
In 2008, the Dutch Restitutions Committee issued binding resolutions concerning several of the Flersheim claims for restitution.
See also
*
The Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
*
The Holocaust in the Netherlands
The Holocaust in the Netherlands was part of the European-wide Holocaust organized by Nazi Germany and took place in the German-occupied Netherlands.
In 1939, there were some 140,000 Dutch Jews living in the Netherlands, among them some 24,000 to ...
*
List of claims for restitution for Nazi-looted art
The list of restitution claims for art looted by the Nazis or as a result of Nazi persecution is organized by the country in which the paintings were located when the return was requested.
Australia and New Zealand
Austria
Belgium
Ge ...