Showing posts with label art collectors in Holocaust. Show all posts

Dec 19, 2021

Art collectors and the Holocaust: itineraries from birth to death

Henri Rieger, born in Sered, died in Theresienstadt

Henri Hinrichsen, born in Hamburg, died in Auschwitz

Rosa Oppenheimer, born in Berlin, died in Auschwitz

Ernst Pollack, born in Vienna, died in Theresienstadt concentration camp

Margarete Mauthner, born in Berlin, escaped Nazi Germany to die thousands of miles away in Johannesburg South Africa

Maria Altmann, born in Vienna, escaped Nazi Austria and died thousands of miles away in Los Angeles, California.

Click on the Play Arrow

https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/8168334/

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How was this interactive data visualization created?

Note: this map only shows birth and death places, not the many other places these art collectors lived.

1) Gather the birth and death places of the selected art collectors and dealers, along with coordinates, latitude and longitude. (Wikidata Query)

https://w.wiki/4a4s

#Places of Death or Birth (with coordinates long and lat) for Art historians dealers collectors museum directors restorers 
SELECT DISTINCT ?place ?placeLabel ?coord ?lat ?long
WHERE 
{
  {?item wdt:P106 wd:Q1792450} UNION {?item wdt:P106 wd:Q173950} UNION {?item wdt:P106 wd:Q10732476} UNION {?item wdt:P106 wd:Q674426} UNION {?item wdt:P106 wd:Q22132694} UNION {?item wdt:P106 wd:Q2145981} 
  
?item (wdt:P20|wdt:P19) ?place.
   ?place wdt:P625 ?coord.
   ?place p:P625 ?statement.
   ?statement psv:P625 ?coordinate_node .
  ?coordinate_node wikibase:geoLatitude ?lat .
  ?coordinate_node wikibase:geoLongitude ?long .

  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "[AUTO_LANGUAGE],en". } # Helps get the label in your language, if not, then en language
}

Download the result of the query. This will provide the location data file for Flourish.

2) Gather the names, descriptions, birth and death places and dates (as well as additional information) about the art collectors.

Link to Wikidata query used in this data visualisation with birth and death places

https://w.wiki/4Zsq

3) Select a data visualization template in Flourish

Selected template
Connections globe4.0.0

4) Upload two data files into Flourish, a file with the geographical names and locations, and a file with the birth and death places of the art collectors and dealers selected

5) Format (still in progress) and publish

Dec 31, 2020

Portraits of Murder and Plunder

Amalie Zuckerkandl was at the height of her beauty when Gustav Klimt begin this (unfinished) portrait of her in 1917-8. A member of the Viennese Zuckerkandl family, Amalie was murdered in the Holocaust along with her daughter Nora Stiansy because they were Jewish, and her portrait was stolen by Nazis.

Serena (Szeréna) Lederer was the model for this beautiful portrait by Gustav Klimt. Her family, which was Jewish, was plundered by the Nazis. Serena Lederer died in 1943 as a refugee from Nazism.

This magnificent portrait by Klimt depicts the Jewish Austrian intellectual and feminist Adele Bloch-Bauer. Commissioned by her husband, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a Jewish banker and sugar producer, the painting was looted by the Nazis in 1941, along with numerous other artworks.

Irène Cahen d'Anvers was eight years old when her father, the French Jewish banker Louis Cahen d'Anvers, commissioned this lovely portrait from Pierre-Auguste Renoir in 1880. During World War II, the Nazis stole the portrait and murdered Irène's daughter, Béatrice, her ex-son-in-law and their two children because of their Jewish ancestry.

The painter Eduard Einschlag was murdered in the Treblinka concentration camp in 1942, and his estate was confiscated. He painted this self portrait in 1930.

Renoir painted this portrait of the Austrian actress Tilla Durieux (Ottilie Godeffroy, 1880–1971) in 1914 when she was married to the art dealer Paul Cassirer. After Cassirer's suicide she married Ludwig Katzenellenbogen who was deported and murdered in the Nazi Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1944 because Jewish.

Selfportrait by the German Jewish painter Ernst Oppler, showing himself as an art collector. Ernest Oppler died in 1929, thus escaping the Holocaust, but many members if his family were plundered and persecuted by the Nazis; his brother, the doctor Berthold Oppler, committed suicide in detention on 6 January 1943 to avoid imminent deportation to a Nazi death camp.

The German Jewish painter Charlotte Salomon looks warily at the viewer in this self-portrait from 1940; her family fled Germany for France after Kristallnacht but, five months pregnant, she was captured and murdered in Auschwitz in 1943.

This brooding self-portrait was painted by the German Jewish artist Felix Nussbaum who died in Auschwitz in 1944.

Getrud Loew was the daughter of Gustav Klimt's doctor, Anton Loew. She was 19 years old when this portait was painted (see full length here). She managed to escape Nazi Vienna in 1939, under her widowed name Gertha Felsöványi.

"Pieces with titles that referenced their Jewish origins, were completely changed. For example, The Portrait of Margaret Stonborough Wittgenstein (a Jew) became Damenbildnis in Weiss (Portrait of a lady in white)." - (Morowitz, Laura. “‘Heil the Hero Klimt!’: Nazi Aesthetics in Vienna and the 1943 Gustav Klimt Retrospective.” Oxford University Press 39, no. 1 (2016): 122-23. cited by Gabrielle Knight in Honors Thesis)

Little is known about Walburga "Wally" Neuzil, the blue-eyed model painted by Egon Schiele in 1912. The portrait was stolen by a Nazi art dealer from the collection of Jewish collector Lea Bondi Jaray when her gallery was Aryanized by Nazis in 1939 and she was forced to flee Vienna as a Jew.

For more reading, see:

Un tableau de Klimt volé par les nazis n'a jamais été restitué à son propriétaire

‘Heil the Hero Klimt!’: Nazi Aesthetics in Vienna and the 1943 Gustav Klimt Retrospective

Leipzig gibt jüdischer Familie ein Stück Geschichte zurück

A Blood-Stained Renoir on Exhibit in Paris

Leipzig Mayor Hand Delivers Nazi-era Art to Painter's Heirs

Case Review: Cassirer v. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation

Holocaust Victim Assets Litigation Case No. CV96-4849

Ein Haus wie ein Museum

Die Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz gibt Kunstwerke aus der Sammlung des von den Nationalsozialisten verfolgten und ermordeten Max Silberberg zurück.

Münchner Kunstfund Bewusst verschleiert

A Tale of Two Portraits, by Rudolf Beran

Raubkunstverdacht: Der Kandinsky-Konflikt

Der Schandfleck

Bank's Kandinsky painting was looted by Nazis, says family

Apr 30, 2020

Tracing Jewish Art Collectors and other #LostArtPeople by Place of Death

In our previous post, we introduced the idea of using Wikidata Queries to Trace Jewish art collectors and their collections.

In this post, we begin to look at how we might identify these Jewish individuals, many of whom have been not only forgotten but deliberately written out of history.

What information or feature might help us to identify them?
What do we know about them?

They died after 1932
They were connected to the arts in some way: as collectors, dealers, curators, historians, curators, museum directors, gallery owners, possibly as artists
Their names might have appeared in exhibitions or catalogs as owners or lenders or donors or experts, or in books or articles as authors, in the provenance texts of collections, for example.

The above criteria is very large and not specific to Jewish collectors in the Nazi era. How can we further narrow the criteria? One element that distinguishes the fates of Jewish individuals from others is how and where they died, and whether or not they were interned, spoliated or became refugees.

What kind of markers can we look for in the data?

Place of death
Year of death
Cause of death
Place of internment
Significant events like aryanization or arrest or deportation

All of the above correspond to "Properties" that are defined in Wikidata. Not all these properties have been updated for every Wikidata item. But they could be.

A Wikidata Query can easily show us all the people who are known (in Wikidata) to have died or been interned in a Nazi camp or ghetto.

How to do this?

There were so many Nazi camps in so many countries (see below) that we look for a way to take each one into account without necessarily naming each one in a query.

One way is to use Wikidata's "instance of" (P31).

We can tell the query to list people who died in a place that is defined as any of the following things:

Nazi concentration camp (Q328468)
concentration camp (Q152081)
extermination camp (Q153813)
ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe (Q2583015)

We might still miss a few of the camps (due to the crowdsourcing nature of Wikidata, not every item is coded in exactly the same way,) but this should be a good start.

There are several ways to do OR type queries in Wikidata.

We will use the very straight forward UNION. (Please do not hesitate to suggest better ways).

WHERE {
{ ?placedied wdt:P31 wd:Q328468.} UNION { ?placedied wdt:P31 wd:Q152081. } UNION { ?placedied wdt:P31 wd:Q153813.} UNION { ?placediedwdt:P31 wd:Q153813.} UNION { ?placedied wdt:P31 wd:Q2583015.}

To make the Wikidata query run faster and avoid time outs, we will first check that the place of death has been entered by someone into Wikidata.

?item wdt:P20 ?placedied.

Then, instead of specifying, as we did in the previous query, that we want to list the people who died in the specific Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau

?item wdt:P20 wd:Q7341.

we want to request people who died in any place coded as an instance of Q328468, Q152081, Q153813 or Q2583015

{ ?placedied wdt:P31 wd:Q328468.} UNION { ?placedied wdt:P31 wd:Q152081. } UNION { ?placedied wdt:P31 wd:Q153813.} UNION { ?placedied wdt:P31 wd:Q153813.} UNION { ?placedied wdt:P31 wd:Q2583015.}

This should include all the Nazi camps and ghettos listed at the bottom of this post

_______

SELECT DISTINCT ?item ?itemLabel ?pic ?datedied ?placediedLabel ?placedied ?child ?childLabel ?ownedby ?ownedbyLabel ?depicts ?depictsLabel ?depictedby ?depictedbyLabel ?countryLabel ?ownerof ?ownerofLabel ?spouse ?employer ?employerLabel ?spouseLabel ?mother ?motherLabel ?father ?fatherLabel ?sibling ?siblingLabel ?investby ?investbyLabel ?sigperson ?sigpersonLabel ?party ?partyLabel ?partner ?partnerLabel WHERE {

{ ?item wdt:P106 wd:Q1792450.} UNION { ?item wdt:P31 wd:Q1007870. } UNION { ?item wdt:P106 wd:Q173950.} UNION { ?item wdt:P921 wd:Q328376.} UNION { ?item wdt:P106 wd:Q10732476.} UNION { ?item wdt:P106 wd:Q446966.} UNION { ?item wdt:P106 wd:Q22132694.} UNION { ?item wdt:P106 wd:Q674426.}

SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "en" }

?item wdt:P20 ?placedied.

{ ?placedied wdt:P31 wd:Q328468.} UNION { ?placedied wdt:P31 wd:Q152081. } UNION { ?placedied wdt:P31 wd:Q153813.} UNION { ?placedied wdt:P31 wd:Q153813.} UNION { ?placedied wdt:P31 wd:Q2583015.}

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P18 ?pic. }

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P127 ?ownedby. }

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P570 ?datedied. }

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P20 ?placedied. }

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P180 ?depicts. }

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P921 ?plunder. }

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P1830 ?ownerof. }

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P108 ?employer. }

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P569 ?birth. }

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P40 ?child. }

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P214 ?VIAF_ID. }

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P19 ?place_birth. }

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P244 ?Library_of_Congress_authority_ID. }

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P227 ?GND_ID. }

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P245 ?ULAN_ID. }

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P26 ?spouse. }

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P27 ?country. }

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P3342 ?sigperson. }

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P102 ?party. }

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P1327 ?partner. }

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P1840 ?investby. }

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P25 ?mother. }

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P22 ?father. }

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P3373 ?sibling. }

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P1299 ?depictedby. }

OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P39 ?position. }

FILTER (YEAR(?datedied) >= 1933 )

}

LIMIT 20000

_______

note: careful: the filter should read datedied "greater than or equal to" 1933. Sometimes the greater than symbol gets garbled on this blog

(Notice the word OPTIONAL? We are telling Wikidata to get the information if it is available but not to worry about it if it is not. Since we want to understand who these individuals were, the context of their lives and their relations with others, we have added much optional information to the query. This is not strictly speaking necessary, but possibly useful for future network analysis)
The Wikidata Sparql Query can present the results in many different ways.

As a table.

As a graph.

With photos

We can zoom in close to view certain specific elements that are hard to see when looking at lots of data.

We also get an idea of where data might be missing.

Camps and ghettos listed in the Wikidata Query

SELECT ?placedied ?placediedLabel
WHERE
{
{ ?placedied wdt:P31 wd:Q328468.} UNION { ?placedied wdt:P31 wd:Q152081. } UNION { ?placedied wdt:P31 wd:Q153813.} UNION { ?placedied wdt:P31 wd:Q153813.} UNION { ?placedied wdt:P31 wd:Q2583015.}
SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "[AUTO_LANGUAGE],en". }
}

(Short link to query and result - Try it!)

... Open Art Data ...

Pages

Dec 19, 2021

Art collectors and the Holocaust: itineraries from birth to death

Henri Rieger, born in Sered, died in Theresienstadt

Henri Hinrichsen, born in Hamburg, died in Auschwitz

Rosa Oppenheimer, born in Berlin, died in Auschwitz

Ernst Pollack, born in Vienna, died in Theresienstadt concentration camp

Margarete Mauthner, born in Berlin, escaped Nazi Germany to die thousands of miles away in Johannesburg South Africa

Maria Altmann, born in Vienna, escaped Nazi Austria and died thousands of miles away in Los Angeles, California.

How was this interactive data visualization created?

1) Gather the birth and death places of the selected art collectors and dealers, along with coordinates, latitude and longitude. (Wikidata Query)

3) Select a data visualization template in Flourish

Selected template
Connections globe4.0.0

4) Upload two data files into Flourish, a file with the geographical names and locations, and a file with the birth and death places of the art collectors and dealers selected

5) Format (still in progress) and publish

Dec 31, 2020

Portraits of Murder and Plunder

Apr 30, 2020

Tracing Jewish Art Collectors and other #LostArtPeople by Place of Death

In this post, we begin to look at how we might identify these Jewish individuals, many of whom have been not only forgotten but deliberately written out of history.

A Wikidata Query can easily show us all the people who are known (in Wikidata) to have died or been interned in a Nazi camp or ghetto.

Camps and ghettos listed in the Wikidata Query

Pages

Dec 19, 2021

Art collectors and the Holocaust: itineraries from birth to death

Henri Rieger, born in Sered, died in Theresienstadt

Henri Hinrichsen, born in Hamburg, died in Auschwitz

Rosa Oppenheimer, born in Berlin, died in Auschwitz

Ernst Pollack, born in Vienna, died in Theresienstadt concentration camp

Margarete Mauthner, born in Berlin, escaped Nazi Germany to die thousands of miles away in Johannesburg South Africa

Maria Altmann, born in Vienna, escaped Nazi Austria and died thousands of miles away in Los Angeles, California.

How was this interactive data visualization created?

1) Gather the birth and death places of the selected art collectors and dealers, along with coordinates, latitude and longitude. (Wikidata Query)

3) Select a data visualization template in Flourish

Selected template Connections globe4.0.0

4) Upload two data files into Flourish, a file with the geographical names and locations, and a file with the birth and death places of the art collectors and dealers selected

5) Format (still in progress) and publish

Dec 31, 2020

Portraits of Murder and Plunder

Apr 30, 2020

Tracing Jewish Art Collectors and other #LostArtPeople by Place of Death

In this post, we begin to look at how we might identify these Jewish individuals, many of whom have been not only forgotten but deliberately written out of history.

A Wikidata Query can easily show us all the people who are known (in Wikidata) to have died or been interned in a Nazi camp or ghetto.

Camps and ghettos listed in the Wikidata Query

Selected template
Connections globe4.0.0