Edward Engelberg: More on “Mona Lisa” and Kristallnacht

by Edward Engelberg

“What’s past is prologue,” Shakespeare’s Prospero famously said in The Tempest, and I can’t think of a better way to begin. On November 7^th, 2011, this website published my memories of an event both past and present, “Our Mona Lisa and Kristallnacht.” That memoir concerned the fate of two paintings by the German-Jewish artist Otto Theodor W. Stein. One painting hangs on my wall; the other was bartered for release of my father from Dachau in November, 1938.

[caption id=“attachment_9692” align=“alignleft” width=“300”] “Woman Seated in a Chair,” by Otto Theodor W. Stein[/caption]

Soon after publication, I received a comment in German from a Dr. Phil Bettina Leder of Langgöns, Germany. She revealed that her grandparents, David and Lola Leder, like my parents, were residents of Chemnitz, a textile city in Saxony, and friendly with Theodor Stein at a time when my father was also acquainted with him. She expressed disappointment that Stein had been forgotten, and pleasure that she found such a dramatic connection through me. She told me that she had found a Stein painting on eBay which she bought in Munich: a young woman sitting on a chair (see at left). Indeed, Bettina even wondered whether this was my missing picture (it wasn’t). We agreed to e-mail each other, she in German, I in English, and soon we became friends on first-name terms. In a way, she is co-author of this essay, for she supplied the facts and photos.

We exchanged stories of how our families came to Chemnitz. Bettina wanted to know more about my family, and I wanted to know all about hers. I soon discovered that her family was the prominent piece of this puzzle. It turns out that her grandfather, David Leder, was an avid art collector — mostly, but not exclusively, of contemporary painters, some of whom, including Stein, he and his wife knew well. Clearly, Bettina’s family connection with Stein far surpassed mine.

In 1888 David Leder was born a Jew in what became Rumania. David’s uncle, Wilhelm, was the first Leder to settle in Chemnitz via Berlin around 1888. Soon thereafter, David’s father Leon and his family joined them. Together they began to develop factories manufacturing women’s hose and gloves. By 1914, David was a success, and he met his future wife, Lea Laura Bernstein, a red-headed beauty born in Galicia. Her family first settled in London when she was a two-year old, but in 1900 moved to Chemnitz. Lea Laura was 22 when she married David in 1914. In time she became known as “Lola” and sat as a model for many paintings by Lovis Corinth and Max Liebermann.

[caption id=“attachment_9693” align=“alignleft” width=“254”] “David Leder,” by Max Liebermann[/caption]

As a wealthy manufacturer of textiles, David soon was known as a renowned lover of art. The collection first took shape circa 1915. Paintings and sketches in the hundreds became a treasure trove, and he was friendly with many artists, especially Otto Theodor W. Stein, Max Liebermann, and Lovith Corinth. In addition, he owned works by Durer, Cézanne, Munch, and Rembrandt, among others.

1915-17 were difficult years for the Leder family: David’s sister, Rosa, died at 28 in 1915, and because of the war, the business was seized by the Kaiser’s government in 1916 and held until 1920. A Rumanian citizen, David was not permitted to serve in the army during World War I, and for five months, in 1917, he and his father Leon were interned. At the end of the war, David’s collection grew, but when the infamous inflation ruined the German economy, it also delivered a blow to David Leder, who lost much of his business. David and Lola, now with two sons and a daughter, moved to Berlin in 1920, where two large auctions were organized. Other paintings were sold to a friend’s collection. (Although the friend’s collection is now in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, it is not clear whether any works from David Leder’s sale survived).

The Leder family returned to Berlin in 1930 where David and Lola settled until 1939.

After Kristallnacht, David was arrested and imprisoned for six weeks in the concentration camp Sachsenhausen. When David Leder asked the police for more time to prepare his emigration, it was denied along with a threat of punishment. So David and Lola fled for England via France in 1939. Lola’s account reads in part: “The Gestapo hounded us out . . .” Left behind were three wooden crates, one filled with paintings and other treasures. They were never recovered: two were seized by the Gestapo in 1942; a third was confiscated in 1944 and disappeared. Clearly, a significant portion of the collection was looted by the Nazis.

Yet a few works survived, and some remain in Bettina’s apartment and in the homes of her family. After the war, Lola miraculously found and recovered two paintings by Max Liebermann: one of Lola and the other simply called “Portrait of a Lady.” David and Lola loaned these paintings (in better times) to the newly opened Jewish Museum in Berlin.

[caption id=“attachment_9690” align=“alignright” width=“284”] “David and Lola Leder,” by Lovis Corinth[/caption]

Bettina continues her search for her grandfather’s collection and for works by Stein. While I write, I have news that three sketches by Stein appear in a catalogue provided by Dr. Jurgen Nitzshe, co-author of The Jews of Chemnitz. Some paintings of the family by Liebermann and Corinth are now housed in museums (see photos). Still others were — and still are — up for auction.

David Leder died in England on March 1, 1947. Lola returned to Berlin in the 1950s and outlived David by thirty years, dying on April 1, 1977 in Berlin as a British citizen. Of the three children the oldest, Bettina’s father, became a famous East German writer (under the nom-de-plume Stephan Hermlin) and died in 1997; the younger son, Alfred, joined the RAF in Canada and was killed during a training exercise collision in January, 1943; the daughter, Ruth, as Mrs. Frenkel, died in Israel (1999) at age 81.

In some sense, my tale of two Stein paintings and Bettina Leder is still a Prologue that appears to have no end. Two people have become friends thousands of miles apart. What do Bettina and I have in common? Roots in East European Jewry, the city of Chemnitz, her grandfather. Coincidentally, what the Leder family once manufactured, women’s hosiery, my father sold from his suitcases full of samples, on the road. And David, the famous collector of art, somehow shared knowing the painter Otto Theodor W. Stein with my father, who was the modest possessor of two Stein paintings and a sketch inscribed to him. As Jews they also lived through Kristallnacht, arrest and concentration camp. David Leder and Jakob Engelberg were both born in 1888 in Eastern Europe, and both died in their 50s, an ocean apart.

Perhaps T.S. Eliot had Prospero in mind when he wrote, “In my beginning is my end,” and “In my end is my beginning.”

Edward Engelberg is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and European Cultural Studies at Brandeis University.

Permissions:

Max Liebermann’s portrait of David Leder, courtesy photographer Thoralf Lippmann, Industriemuseum, Chemnitz

Lovis Corinth’s portrait of David and Lola Leder, photographer Gert Guyer and Museum Insel Hombroich, Berlin

Otto Theodor W. Stein’s “Young Woman Sitting in Chair,” courtesy Bettina Leder

Bettina Leder and I are grateful to Dr. Phil Jürgen Nitsche for his kindness in helping us to locate photos and other relevant information.