Oskar Federer (born May 4, 1884, in Jičín – died July 21 1968 in Canada) was a Jewish industrialist living in Czechoslovakia. Forced to flee by the Nazis, his property and art collection were plundered first by Nazis and later by the communist regime in Czechoslovia.

Businessman

In the journal ''Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente,'' Federer was described as "one of the most important and exciting personalities of the Czechoslovak economy in the interwar period". Federer worked with the Viennese

Rothschilds The Rothschild family ( , ) is a wealthy Ashkenazi Jewish family originally from Frankfurt that rose to prominence with Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744–1812), a court factor to the German Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel in the Free City of F ...

for over thirty years, and was the general director of the Vitkovice Mining and Ironworks Union, one of the largest industrial firms in the country.

Art collector

Federer's art collection included works by

Lovis Corinth Lovis Corinth (21 July 1858 – 17 July 1925) was a German artist and writer whose mature work as a painter and printmaker realized a synthesis of impressionism and expressionism. Corinth studied in Paris and Munich, joined the Berlin Se ...

Claude Monet Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During ...

, and

Paul Gauguin Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (, ; ; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French Post-Impressionist artist. Unappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of colour and Synthetist style that were distinct fr ...

Nazi persecution

Persecuted by the

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

because of his Jewish heritage, he emigrated to Canada. Most of his property, including most of his art collection was confiscated by the Nazis. After the war, the paintings came into the possession of the Czechoslovak state.

Legacy

The Canadian heirs of Oskar Federer filed restitution claims against several Czech galleries, obtaining the restitution of twenty paintings that belonged to Oskar Federer before the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. Works included those by

Edvard Munch Edvard Munch ( , ; 12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian painter. His best known work, ''The Scream'' (1893), has become one of Western art's most iconic images. His childhood was overshadowed by illness, bereavement and the dr ...

Oskar Kokoschka Oskar Kokoschka (1 March 1886 – 22 February 1980) was an Austrian artist, poet, playwright, and teacher best known for his intense Expressionism, expressionistic portraits and landscapes, as well as his theories on vision that influenced the ...

, Otakar Nejedlý and

Antonín Slavíček Antonín Slavíček (16 May 1870 – 1 February 1910) was a Czech Impressionist painter who worked mostly in the area surrounding Kameničky. Life In 1887, he entered the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague, where he studied landscape painting with Ju ...

. Oscar Federer's grandson demanded the return of the paintings in the early 1990s. However, in 2009 the Czech "Federer collection" was auctioned at

Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, and ...

. In 2003, historian Magda Veselská published a biography of Oskar Federer entitled Oskar Federer - businessman and art collector (Oskar Federer - Unternehmer und Kunstsammler)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Federer, Oskar Jewish art collectors Jewish refugees Art and cultural repatriation after World War II Subjects of Nazi art appropriations 1884 births 1968 deaths Czechoslovak emigrants to Canada Jews who emigrated to escape Nazism

Businessman

Art collector

Nazi persecution

Legacy

See also

References