Hedwig Frida Ullmann, née Nathan, (born November 2, 1872, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany; died 1945, Melbourne, VIC, Australia) was a German Jewish art collector and refugee .

Life

Hedwig Ullmann (née Nathan) was the wife of Albert Ulmann (1962-1912) and the sister of Leopold Siegfried Nathan et Dr. jur. Hugo Nathan. Ullmann's eldest son moved to Milan,Italy, in 1929.

Nazi persecution

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Ullmann and her family were persecuted due to their Jewish heritage. Her youngest son and his family fled Germany in 1935 and settled in Milan. Ullmann emigrated to Milan on 25 May 1938 and to Australia after that. In 1938, Nazi anti-Jewish laws required German Jews to register assets above a certain value, causing Hedwig Ullmann and her two adult sons to lose much of their art collection.

Claims for restitution of the Ullmann art collection

In 2013 a provenance research project at the Historisches Museum Frankfurt resulted in the restitution of the painting “Sommer (Frau und Junge)” (Summer (Woman and Boy)) by Hans Thoma to the Ullmann heirs. In 2017 The German food processing company Dr. Oetker announced that it would restitute a Nazi-looted painting from its corporate art collection to Ulmann's heirs. Oekter's decision to restitute the painting without forcing the family to launch a lawsuit was praised in the press. In 2020

Malcolm Gladwell Malcolm Timothy Gladwell (born 3 September 1963) is an English-born Canadian journalist, author, and public speaker. He has been a staff writer for ''The New Yorker'' since 1996. He has published seven books: '' The Tipping Point: How Little T ...

dedicated an episode of his Revisionist History podcast to the story van Gogh's ''Vase with Carnations'', which Ulmann owned prior to World War II. They sold the van Gogh before fleeing Germany for Australia to escape the Nazis, and the painting eventually arrived at the

Detroit Institute of Arts The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), located in Midtown Detroit, Michigan, has one of the list of largest art museums, largest and most significant art collections in the United States. With over 100 galleries, it covers with a major renovation a ...

. When the Ullmann family, which had changed its name to Ulin, located the painting, they requested it be returned, but the museum refused. Gladwell is critical of the museum's position, stating "It was impossible to be a German Jew after

Kristallnacht () or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (german: Novemberpogrome, ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's (SA) paramilitary and (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from ...

and to imagine you were safe". However the Detroit Institute of Arts refused restitution. Ullmann died in 1945 in Australia. Her heirs are still searching for artworks that had belonged to her before the Nazis.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ullmann, Hedwig Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to Australia 1945 deaths Jewish art collectors 1872 births Jews who emigrated to escape Nazism