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Lot Essay
We would like to thank Joachim Laube for his help with researching this work.
Little by little, the names of Max Rüdenberg and his wife Margarethe, are once more seen in the district of Limmer, a suburb of Hannover. In September 2017, a square was re-named ‘Margarethe-und-Max-Rüdenberg-Platz’, dedicated to this most cultured and philanthropic Jewish couple almost seventy-five years to the day after they were deported to Theresienstadt. By now offering Schmidt-Rottluff’s recently restituted watercolour Marschlandschaft mit rotem Windrad for sale on behalf of Max and Margarethe’s heirs and by recalling the events that ended in its restitution from Hannover’s Sprengel Museum in June 2017, Christie’s is honoured to contribute to this process of remembrance.
Further connection to the Rüdenberg family may be made by a visit to the Schwanenburg, a concerts, events and gastronomy venue in Hannover’s Limmer disctrict, that was once owned by Max Rüdenberg. The name ‘Schwanenburg’ recalls his business, the importation of swan feathers from Shanghai to Germany, for use in the bedding industry. Max Rüdenberg’s crates returned to Germany not just full of feathers, however, but were packed with exquisite examples of Chinese porcelain, bronzeware, screens, furniture and objets d’art initially purchased during his own visits and later acquired on his behalf by his agents in China. Rüdenberg’s Asian art collection was famed throughout Germany and beyond. On a philanthropic level, Max Rüdenberg also excelled. Amongst other public acts of service, he was a founding member of the Kestner-Gesellschaft, a counsellor in Limmer and Hannover, founded and funded a children's home for low income families, and, during World War I, had made the former concert hall at the Schwanenburg available as a field hospital for injured soldiers returning from the front, an act of charity that earned his family recognition from General Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg.
Max Rüdenberg (born 9 April 1863 in Bad Oeynhausen) and Margarethe ('Grete'; born 17 July 1879 in Armsberg) established a thriving and cultured home at their Villa at the Schwanenburg, an idyllic surrounding that would vanish when Hitler seized power. In 1935, Max Rüdenberg advised his son Ernst to leave Germany immediately, so Ernst and his companion and later wife, Elizabeth, emigrated to Amsterdam. Without funds to pay for their emigration to South Africa, his mother Grete came to their aid, travelling by train to Amsterdam. As a Jew, she was searched on the train for valuables, but fortunately the diamond bracelet she had hidden in a sausage was not found. The subsequent sale of this jewel allowed the couple to purchase tickets to Cape Town. Meanwhile, Max Rüdenberg’s daughter, Eva, by then married to Heinz Rheinhold and mother to three young children, remained in Germany. In 1937, Heinz Rheinhold was arrested by the Gestapo (he was later deported) and the pressure on Max Rüdenberg to find ways to secure safe passage out of Germany for his daughter and grandchildren increased. In December 1938, Heinz’s eldest son Peter reached England with a Kindertransport, followed by his sister Marianne in March 1939. Eva was finally able to leave Germany for England with her third child in the middle of 1939. For Max and Grete Rüdenberg who had financed their children’s escapes and who still remained in Hannover, prospects for emigration became increasingly bleak with the outbreak of war in September 1939. In April 1940, they were forced out of their villa and into a neighbouring ‘Jew House’ shared with eighty other residents, and the feather business was aryanised. By late 1940, the Rüdenberg collection, numbering over 400 objects, had come to the attention of the Nazi authorities and negotiations to acquire it from the family began. These faltered due to the difference in value placed on the collection by its owner and the city authorities and in August 1941, with Max Rüdenberg’s agreement, the entire Chinese collection was moved to the Kestner Museum to protect it from bombardment. In February 1942, Max Rüdenberg agreed a fire price for the sale of his property to the city, but it was too late to save the couple. Max Rüdenberg, then aged 79, and Grete, 63, were deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto in July 1942 where they both perished.
The deaths of the couple did not impede the Nazi authorities in acquiring the Rüdenberg Asian art collection. In January 1943, 49 of the most important pieces of Chinese porcelain stored in the Kestner Museum were purchased by the museum in an agreement between the mayor and the finance authorities, and the remainder of the Rüdenberg collection was put up for sale by an auctioneer called Urban. More than 350 objects were dispersed and their whereabouts are unknown today. The crates of porcelain purchased by the Kestner Museum miraculously survived the war intact hidden in a salt mine and the 49 objects were returned to Max and Grete’s children, Eva and Ernst, after the war.
Although Max Rüdenberg was closely associated with the Kestner-Gesellschaft where Schmidt-Rottluff’s work was frequently exhibited, it is thought that the artist gifted the present work to him as the two were acquainted. By the end of the 1930’s, the watercolour had entered the collection of the Hannover chocolate manufacturer, Bernhard Sprengel, who had acquired it for 180 Reichmarks from an art dealer. Details of what occurred are still obscure, but the watercolour was in all likelihood sold by Max Rüdenberg as he sought to raise funds to assist his immediate family in fleeing from Nazi Germany. The restitution of Schmidt-Rottluff’s Marschlandschaft mit rotem Windrad from his collection – made possible through the survival in the Sprengel Museum’s archive of an inventory card on which was a note that Max Rüdenberg was a former owner, and through an exhibition catalogue entry in 1969 for a retrospective at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart - evokes painful memories for his heirs, but by making the watercolour available to a wider audience today, they have ensured that the legacy and memory of Max and Grete Rüdenberg can be told and preserved.
Little by little, the names of Max Rüdenberg and his wife Margarethe, are once more seen in the district of Limmer, a suburb of Hannover. In September 2017, a square was re-named ‘Margarethe-und-Max-Rüdenberg-Platz’, dedicated to this most cultured and philanthropic Jewish couple almost seventy-five years to the day after they were deported to Theresienstadt. By now offering Schmidt-Rottluff’s recently restituted watercolour Marschlandschaft mit rotem Windrad for sale on behalf of Max and Margarethe’s heirs and by recalling the events that ended in its restitution from Hannover’s Sprengel Museum in June 2017, Christie’s is honoured to contribute to this process of remembrance.
Further connection to the Rüdenberg family may be made by a visit to the Schwanenburg, a concerts, events and gastronomy venue in Hannover’s Limmer disctrict, that was once owned by Max Rüdenberg. The name ‘Schwanenburg’ recalls his business, the importation of swan feathers from Shanghai to Germany, for use in the bedding industry. Max Rüdenberg’s crates returned to Germany not just full of feathers, however, but were packed with exquisite examples of Chinese porcelain, bronzeware, screens, furniture and objets d’art initially purchased during his own visits and later acquired on his behalf by his agents in China. Rüdenberg’s Asian art collection was famed throughout Germany and beyond. On a philanthropic level, Max Rüdenberg also excelled. Amongst other public acts of service, he was a founding member of the Kestner-Gesellschaft, a counsellor in Limmer and Hannover, founded and funded a children's home for low income families, and, during World War I, had made the former concert hall at the Schwanenburg available as a field hospital for injured soldiers returning from the front, an act of charity that earned his family recognition from General Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg.
Max Rüdenberg (born 9 April 1863 in Bad Oeynhausen) and Margarethe ('Grete'; born 17 July 1879 in Armsberg) established a thriving and cultured home at their Villa at the Schwanenburg, an idyllic surrounding that would vanish when Hitler seized power. In 1935, Max Rüdenberg advised his son Ernst to leave Germany immediately, so Ernst and his companion and later wife, Elizabeth, emigrated to Amsterdam. Without funds to pay for their emigration to South Africa, his mother Grete came to their aid, travelling by train to Amsterdam. As a Jew, she was searched on the train for valuables, but fortunately the diamond bracelet she had hidden in a sausage was not found. The subsequent sale of this jewel allowed the couple to purchase tickets to Cape Town. Meanwhile, Max Rüdenberg’s daughter, Eva, by then married to Heinz Rheinhold and mother to three young children, remained in Germany. In 1937, Heinz Rheinhold was arrested by the Gestapo (he was later deported) and the pressure on Max Rüdenberg to find ways to secure safe passage out of Germany for his daughter and grandchildren increased. In December 1938, Heinz’s eldest son Peter reached England with a Kindertransport, followed by his sister Marianne in March 1939. Eva was finally able to leave Germany for England with her third child in the middle of 1939. For Max and Grete Rüdenberg who had financed their children’s escapes and who still remained in Hannover, prospects for emigration became increasingly bleak with the outbreak of war in September 1939. In April 1940, they were forced out of their villa and into a neighbouring ‘Jew House’ shared with eighty other residents, and the feather business was aryanised. By late 1940, the Rüdenberg collection, numbering over 400 objects, had come to the attention of the Nazi authorities and negotiations to acquire it from the family began. These faltered due to the difference in value placed on the collection by its owner and the city authorities and in August 1941, with Max Rüdenberg’s agreement, the entire Chinese collection was moved to the Kestner Museum to protect it from bombardment. In February 1942, Max Rüdenberg agreed a fire price for the sale of his property to the city, but it was too late to save the couple. Max Rüdenberg, then aged 79, and Grete, 63, were deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto in July 1942 where they both perished.
The deaths of the couple did not impede the Nazi authorities in acquiring the Rüdenberg Asian art collection. In January 1943, 49 of the most important pieces of Chinese porcelain stored in the Kestner Museum were purchased by the museum in an agreement between the mayor and the finance authorities, and the remainder of the Rüdenberg collection was put up for sale by an auctioneer called Urban. More than 350 objects were dispersed and their whereabouts are unknown today. The crates of porcelain purchased by the Kestner Museum miraculously survived the war intact hidden in a salt mine and the 49 objects were returned to Max and Grete’s children, Eva and Ernst, after the war.
Although Max Rüdenberg was closely associated with the Kestner-Gesellschaft where Schmidt-Rottluff’s work was frequently exhibited, it is thought that the artist gifted the present work to him as the two were acquainted. By the end of the 1930’s, the watercolour had entered the collection of the Hannover chocolate manufacturer, Bernhard Sprengel, who had acquired it for 180 Reichmarks from an art dealer. Details of what occurred are still obscure, but the watercolour was in all likelihood sold by Max Rüdenberg as he sought to raise funds to assist his immediate family in fleeing from Nazi Germany. The restitution of Schmidt-Rottluff’s Marschlandschaft mit rotem Windrad from his collection – made possible through the survival in the Sprengel Museum’s archive of an inventory card on which was a note that Max Rüdenberg was a former owner, and through an exhibition catalogue entry in 1969 for a retrospective at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart - evokes painful memories for his heirs, but by making the watercolour available to a wider audience today, they have ensured that the legacy and memory of Max and Grete Rüdenberg can be told and preserved.