Sally Falk

Due to its location on the Neckar, Heilbronn has been an important trading center since the Middle Ages. In the 19th century, the city developed into a center of industrialization in Württemberg. The Jewish inhabitants played a considerable part in the economic upswing. The successful among them owned liqueur, metal, shoe and cigarette companies as well as other industrial enterprises in the city.

After a centuries-long ban on settlement and trade, Jews were allowed to live in Swabian Heilbronn again from 1828 and were able to participate in the economic upswing. The Jewish community reached its highest number of members around 1895 with just under 1000 people. Samuel Falk's parents, Ida and the merchant Felix Falk, lived at Schillerstrasse 9 on the edge of the old town. Sally was born there on March 22, 1888. The family then moved to Rosenbergstr. 4. Sally spent his childhood here, about which little is known. His parents were most likely members of the Jewish community in Heilbronn. They identified with their religion, as indicated by the design of their tombstone in the Jewish cemetery in Mannheim. 

The family moved from Heilbronn to Mannheim on June 30, 1899, where Felix Falk was registered as a Württemberg citizen. 

The two former homes of the Falk family in Heilbronn were destroyed in the British air raid of December 4, 1944. The entire old town fell victim to it.

The Falk family settled in Mannheim's best residential area, the newly developing Oststadt. From 1900, the small family is registered in the newly built house at Lameystr. 7 on the second floor. Even then, they had a telephone connection, which indicates that Felix Falk's business was flourishing. Several changes of residence followed. Viktoriastr. 8 was an interim address before they moved to Lameystr. 28. The associated "coachman's apartment" for the chauffeur of the "60 P.S. Benzwagen" was located at Wespinstr. 8. As a widow, Ida Falk lived at Augustaanlage 27. 

Sally attended the Oberrealschule in Mannheim until 1903. To perfect his English language skills, he went to a business school in Brighton (England) for a year and worked in Boston (USA) for a further year as a trainee in a large textile raw materials business. He then joined his father's business. 

The name Felix Falk appears again and again in the "Mannheimer Generalanzeiger". A mysterious advertisement in 1902 mentions slander by an unknown person. Falk hoped to find this "slanderer" in exchange for a large reward. Further newspaper advertisements from the family concern the search for domestic servants. They show the growing prosperity of the Falks. While in 1905 they were still looking for a "perfect cook", in 1910 they needed to find "a perfect lady cook and a perfect chambermaid" for the three-person household. In 1914, they wanted "an experienced, reliable chauffeur with Ia. Certificates for 60 P.S. petrol cars for a high salary immediately". Felix Falk's interest in art is demonstrated by his participation in the Mannheim Art Association's Christmas raffle, in which he won one of the raffled works of art according to the press report of December 22, 1910. Felix Falk is also mentioned several times in the newspaper as a donor. In 1909, for example, he is listed in a list of donors for the "Relief campaign for the benefit of earthquake victims in southern Italy" with 50 marks, and after the start of the war in 1914 he donated 300 marks to the Red Cross. After his son Sally Falk took over the company in 1914, the evening edition of the Generalanzeiger reported on September 22, 1915 that he had subscribed 100,000 marks to the war bond.

The father, who died on November 1, 1914, was buried in a prestigious grave in the Jewish cemetery in Mannheim. Ida Falk was also laid to rest here in 1921. The site is dominated by a stylized aedicule, a temple shape, made of black granite. The two text inscriptions, in both Hebrew and German, point to the parents' roots in the Jewish faith. 

The Hebrew inscription reads: "Here rests a sincere, respectful man who always did the right thing, charitable and God-fearing all the days of his life. His memory will remain until the end of all generations." 

The German inscription reads: "For behold darkness covereth the earth and clouds the nations - But the Eternal shall shine upon thee, and his glory shall appear upon thee Isaiah 60/2"

In 1900, Felix Falk founded the company Falk & Stern for cotton waste and cleaning wool in Industriestraße, which was later renamed Rhenaniastraße. The co-founder of the company in the Rheinauhafen area was Falk's business partner Heinrich Stern. With the factory for recycling cotton waste and cleaning wool, which was located at Rhenaniastrasse 46 between the Neckarau and Rheinau districts, the Falk family was part of Mannheim's rapid economic rise. 

After the death of his father on November 1, 1914, the 26-year-old son took over the management of the company, initially together with his mother and from 1916 as the sole owner. The course of the war had a positive economic impact on the company. Sally Falk bought raw materials, mainly wool, in the service of the German army command and supplied uniform fabrics. 

This made Falk a fortune. In the eyes of the painter and friend Georg Grosz (1893-1959), whom he supported, Falk was a "war profiteer". He was certainly not wrong in this assessment. He described Falk as a man whose business "was never quite over, because in the middle of the night, when you were sitting comfortably with a bottle of Veuve Cliquot, the telephone would ring: Mr. Falk, the Grand Headquarters is on the line!" (Grosz 1974) 

Rapid profits, rapid ruin: From February 1917, just one year after taking over the management as sole owner, Sally liquidated his company. On March 1, it was deleted from the commercial register and its dissolution was announced in the Official Gazette on July 18, 1917. The reasons for the company's decline can also be traced back to Falk's passion for art and his collecting activities, which bordered on obsession.

The company was transferred to Falk's authorized signatories Albert Kratzel and Gustav Jahn, who continued to run it as "Kratzel & Jahn Kunstbaumwollfabrik". The factory building in the Rheinauhafen area later found numerous changing owners and stood for over 100 years. It was demolished in 2023.

In 1907, Mannheim celebrated its 300th anniversary. An international art and horticultural exhibition was held to mark the occasion, during which the Kunsthalle was built, made possible by a donation from the Jewish couple Julius and Henriette Aberle. The young Sally Falk was inspired by the new institution and cultivated close contacts with the progressive directors Fritz Wichert (1878-1951) and Gustav F. Hartlaub (1884-1963). From 1915 at the latest, the entrepreneur's son used his financial means to satisfy his passion for art on a grand scale. He justified this in a letter to Hartlaub, stating that he wanted to use his fortune for "idealistic things and not, as the rabble of fattening money-earners do, for the accumulation of figures." (quoted from Schiller, p. 15) 

Sally Falk arranged for the sculptor Wilhelm Lehmbruck, whose patron and benefactor he was, to have his first and, during his lifetime, largest solo exhibition in Germany. The Lehmbruck exhibition shown at the Kunsthalle in the winter of 1916 paved the way for Falk's later donation to the Mannheim collection. While the exhibition was still running, Hartlaub informed the Lord Mayor Dr. Kutzer of Falk's intention to acquire works by Lehmbruck for the Kunsthalle. 

Falk brusquely resisted the idea that his collection was the work of any consultation. He emphasized to Hartlaub in 1918 that "I have created my collection solely on the basis of the love I have for paintings and art objects and have therefore never needed any advice, which would be more or less theoretical. [...] I would therefore like to state that neither you, nor any other personality, can put even a fraction of my collection on the account of your recommendation. (quoted from Schiller, p. 18) 

In 1917, the promise to lend and donate six Lehmbruck sculptures became legally binding. They formed the basis of the Sally Falk Foundation, which was expanded in 1921 despite the ruin of the company and the preceding turmoil of war. It comprised the Lehmbruck sculptures Bust of a Woman (1910), Small Pensive Woman (1910-11), Small Female Torso (1910-11), Kneeling Woman (1911), Torso of the Large Pensive Woman (1913-14) and The Stooped Man (1917). In addition, The Athlete by Edwin Scharff (1913), the life-size youth (also Suffering, 1911-12) by Ernesto de Fiori and the Slave Woman (1916) by Georg Kolbe were added to the Kunsthalle's holdings.

The Nazi press denigrated the acquisitions of the Mannheim Kunsthalle even before 1933 with quotes such as Judas' hand on art and art administration. In spring 1933, a "shame exhibition" pilloried "cultural Bolshevik paintings", a total of 65 paintings, two sculptures and 20 graphic works. The Mannheim "atrocity exhibition" attracted 20,000 visitors as a traveling exhibition and was the prelude and model for further exhibitions of "degenerate art" in other cities. This was followed in 1937 by the confiscation of works of "morbid fantasies" by "mentally ill incompetents" in the Mannheim Kunsthalle. Some were shown in Munich and then in the traveling exhibition "Degenerate Art", which toured the German Reich. Most of the works were destroyed, sold or have been lost. A few were returned to the Kunsthalle's holdings after 1945. The Sally Falk Foundation remained as a fragment in the Kunsthalle Mannheim.

Sally Falk was registered in Richard-Wagner-Straße from March 1915 to June 1916. The registration book does not mention the house number, but house no. 12/14 in the same street, where Gustav Hartlaub lived, who had come to Mannheim in 1913, was probably not far away. After that, Falk lived at Mollstraße 18, according to official records from July 14, 1916 to October 17, 1917. 

The 27-year-old saw the apartment in the apartment building in Mollstraße, which was newly built in 1915, as a suitable setting for himself and his newlywed wife Adèle. She came from a Christian family in Marseille and had moved to Mannheim via Geneva in 1915. Her marriage, which presumably took place in Geneva, made her a German citizen. It is not known whether she also adopted the Jewish faith. The eight rooms of the apartment in the middle-class district were quickly filled with works of art. These included paintings by Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, Paul Gauguin, Oskar Kokoschka, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, El Greco, Franz Marc, Lionel Feininger, Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, Umberto Boccioni and George Grosz, as well as sculptures by Georg Kolbe, Ernst Barsz and others.Georg Kolbe, Ernst Barlach, Alexander Archipenko and, above all, Wilhelm Lehmbruck. 

Sally Falk was the most important patron of the sculptor Wilhelm Lehmbruck (1881-1919), whom he met in 1915. Lehmbruck created several portraits of Adèle and Sally Falk, who paid the artist a monthly pension. In return, he was allowed to choose works for his art collection from Lehmbruck's studio every year and also commissioned works himself. Lembruck stayed in Falk's apartment several times and later visited him in Arosa. Lembruck's son Manfred remembers a very friendly relationship between the Falks and his parents, the generous invitations from the Falks and Adèle's striking chic. Falk supported the sculptor until his suicide in 1919. 

In 1917, Falk had the largest Lehmbruck collection in the world with almost 100 works. Among the sculptures he commissioned were two portrait busts of Mr. and Mrs. Falk, which are considered central works of expressionist portrait sculpture. Lehmbruck is a sculptor whose taciturn majesty this collector loved. In 1918, Paul Westheim wrote in his appreciation of the Falk Collection (Westheim p. 240, Schiller p. 16) that he had acquired everything that could be obtained from this still unrecognized sculptor. Many of the works of art from Mannheim, either originals or replicas, are now in the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg. The painter Georg Grosz was a frequent visitor to Mollstraße. Falk met him in Berlin in 1917. We have Grosz to thank for a vivid character description of the art patron: "Sally Falk had something completely oriental about her. Not just in his facial features, but towards his wife. He treated her like a very rare bird of paradise and literally kept her in a gilded farmer's house. He alone had the key. When he was away - and that was often, because he had to travel a lot for the German raw materials supply - he put the little bird on a golden chain. But when he was with her, everything around him disappeared, he only had eyes and ears for his 'chérie', and the rest of us at the table became transparent dolls." (Grosz, p. 107)

From 1910, Paul Cassirer's Berliner Kunstsalon am vornehmsten Tiergartenrande was one of the leading galleries in Europe and the first address for the art trade in the German Reich. The area around the former Viktoriastrasse fell victim to the redevelopment of the area after the Second World War. The art dealership was located on what is now Ben-Gurion-Strasse near the Musical Instrument Museum. Cassierer exhibited and sold works by renowned artists, primarily paintings by Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, who were still not very widespread in Germany at the time.

A few months after moving into the large apartment at Mollstrasse 18 in Mannheim, Falk traveled to Berlin and made his first purchase from Cassirer, probably on 27 March 1916. Initially he bought a bronze by the sculptor August Kraus, whom he knew from his work for the Mannheim industrialist family Lanz, for 50 marks. The next day, he bought a statuette by Aristide Maillol for 500 marks. This broke the dam, because the next day he bought "Dorf unter Bäumen" by Paul Cézanne for 35,000 marks and a few weeks later "Arleserinnen bei Mistral" by Gauguin, two works by Wilhelm Lehmbruck and "Heiliger Franziskus" by El Greco. 

Sally Falk's wealth, acquired at a young age, enabled him to make every purchase. He went into a veritable buying frenzy and purchased works by André Derain, Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Odilon Redon, Auguste Rodin and Vincent van Gogh at Cassirer's auctions. The total price of the presumably 41 works purchased from Cassirer was around 560,000 marks, which would be over 3.5 million euros today. 

Falk also found what he was looking for in Munich. Heinrich Thannhauser's Moderne Galerie, which opened in 1909, and Georg Caspari's gallery, which opened in 1913, sold him paintings by Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Honoré Daumier, Eugène Delacroix, Vincent van Gogh, Franz Marc, Oskar Kokoschka, Pablo Picasso and others. In Frankfurt, Falk liked to drop by Ludwig Schames' art dealership  

Falk proved to have a feel for the best the market had to offer. Price or "talents" were not a criterion, but rather, as Wichert put it, he sought out the "revelators who created completely new sensations [...], completely new principles of expression" (Dorn p. 124). He intuitively grasped the artists who pointed the way for modern art and included their works in his collection. 

Falk was a passionate art collector, obsessed with art. His passion for collecting ultimately drove him to financial ruin. The frenzy ended as abruptly as it had begun. On September 26, 1917, many months after he had already begun the liquidation of his company in Mannheim, he appeared as a buyer at Cassirer for the last time. He was also troubled by the onset of pleurisy. He went to a lung sanatorium in Switzerland.

"I've been lying here in bed with a high fever for months with severe pleurisy. During this time, the most terrible drama has been going on in & around me. During my absence in Germany, people I trusted & with great powers of attorney have brought my financial situation to the point where I have to sell my collection in order to save my existence. I have been fighting for weeks to preserve my collection, which, as you know, is one of the most precious things in my soul." (Schiller p. 38) Falk wrote this to Hartlaub in Mannheim on February 4, 1918. In Arosa, he and "Madame Falk" were among the spa guests at the Altein sanatorium. Falk was ill, heavily in debt and also had to fear being called up for military service.

Whether the "people" in Germany, such as his authorized signatories, into whose ownership the company then passed, had robbed him of his fortune or whether his own financial behaviour and passion for collecting had contributed to this, he had to sell parts of his collection. Among the 50 paintings, over 150 graphic sheets and watercolors as well as 15 sculptures were works by van Gogh, Cézanne, El Greco and Picasso. According to Falk himself, he was bound to the Berlin art dealer Paul Cassirer when selling his works of art. As a result, the Kunsthalle Mannheim, which was interested in many of the objects, was not interested. 

The remaining works of art were to form the basis of a new collection. However, this did not happen due to tax demands from the German Reich. At the beginning of 1919, the Baden State Treasury, Customs and Tax Administration, initiated a seizure. Anticipating this, Falk had finally settled in Switzerland at the end of 1918. He was now a tax exile and had to sell his collection, with the exception of selected sculptures by Lehmbruck. His Swiss business friend Rudolf Pfrunder took it over and sold it to the art dealer I. B. Neumann in Berlin. The latter donated eleven sheets from Sally Falk's graphic collection to the Kunsthalle Mannheim in gratitude for the mediating role assumed by Gustav F. Hartlaub. 

The Falk collection was practically dissolved. The art historian Paul Westheim wrote regretfully in 1918, "at the moment when these lines appear, this collection is unfortunately no more, Falk's art collection as a clearly and convincingly orienting gallery of (...) artistic creation of the time and as a model for a new generation of collectors". (Schiller p. 38) 

The couple moved to Geneva around 1919.

Sally Falk is first mentioned in the documents of the Geneva State Archives (Archives d'Etat de Genève) on December 12, 1914. He was staying at the centrally located Hotel-Pension Minerva in Geneva on January 16, 1915, where he married the Frenchwoman Adèle Démolis, who was born in Marseille. On further visits to Geneva, the couple stayed in the city's most luxurious accommodation, the Hotel de la Paix (1917), the Hotel Metropole (1919) and later in the Maison Royale at Quai des Eaux-Vives 46, now Quai Gustave-Ador 46.

The couple were visited in Geneva by Sally's friend, the writer Theodor Däubler, who worked on the second, "Geneva version" of his epic poem "Northern Lights" as Falk's guest in the early summer of 1920. At the end of 1920, Däubler stayed there again, worked at the Exposition Internationale d'Art Moderne and then went on vacation with the Falks to Arosa. 

When Falk acquired the painting The Brown Self-Portrait by Wilhelm Morgner at the Exposition Internationale d' Art Moderne, he was described as the "most important private collector of new art in Geneva". The basis was formed by the pieces he had saved from his Mannheim collection, Cézanne, Picasso and Lehmbruck. Grosz had already sent a painting to Switzerland in the summer of 1918 and Falk had acquired a large part of his exhibition at the Librairie Kundig from Alexander Archipenko in 1919 and had himself portrayed by the artist, along with Adèle. 

The writer Stefan Zweig introduced the painter Frans Masareel to Däubler and thus also to Falk. He also found a patron in Falk, who bought woodcuts, paintings and drawings from him. Masareel was planning a film, with Romain Rolland to write the script and Masareel to set and direct it. Falk gave him hope of financial support and the painter wrote enthusiastically to Rolland about Falk: 

"Le bonhomme est très riche et habite à Génève. Il serait pret à faire ce film à ses frais et comme il est allemand il le ferait éditer par une societé suisse. Voilà, ce qu'il m'a proposé, pensant que sa nationalité nous generait." (The guy is very rich and lives in Geneva. He would be willing to make this movie at his own expense, and since he is German, he would have it published by a Swiss company. He suggested that to me because he thought his nationality would bother us). In 1921, however, only drawings by Masareel were published by I. B. Neumann in Berlin under the title Grotesk-Film. 

George Grosz remained loyal to his first patron for the rest of his life. The Falk and Grosz couple vacationed in the south of France in 1927 and the Grosz couple still planned to visit Sally Falk in Monte Carlo in 1949, after the war and persecution. The Falk couple led a nomadic existence with many changing residences. For several years, the Falks lived in Geneva, then in Rapallo, Italy. In 1924, they moved back to Germany and took up residence in Hamburg, from where they emigrated to France in 1925. They lived in Adèle's home town of Marseille until 1932. Presumably in those years, Sally changed his first name and called himself Henri.

The years of persecution are documented by the couple's sworn statements and witness reports, which can be found in the files of the Hamburg Office for Restitution. From 1932 to 1949, the couple lived mainly in Lyon and the surrounding area. Sally worked as a partner and director in one of the most important raw textile companies in France. In September 1939, Sally was interned by the French as an "enemy alien". During this time, Sally Falk lost a large part of his assets due to the liquidation of the company. After returning from internment, Sally Falk found a position as a profit-sharing managing director at a raw textile company, the Societé Roux in the Rue de Cuire in Lyon. 

His once again considerable income came to an end when the German occupation authorities controlled the allocation of textile raw materials in June 1942. In order to maintain it, the company asked Falk to cease his activities so that there were no more Jews in the management. Falk became unemployed again. The persecution by the Gestapo in Lyon that began in the same year forced him and his wife to flee into illegality under the false name Henri Fabre from Forbach. There were several life-threatening reasons for this. Sally's Jewish origins and Adèle's commitment to her Jewish husband, but also the couple's publicly known rejection of National Socialism, their closeness to the French Resistance and their friendship with the priest and resistance fighter François Boursier (1878-1944) made them particularly suspicious to the Gestapo.

François Boursier perhaps saved their lives. He officiated in the church of Sainte-Thérese-de-l'Enfant-Jésus in Villeurbanne, the neighboring town of Lyon, and enabled the couple to hide from the end of November 1942 until 1944, mainly in the attic of a schoolhouse of the Catholic church in the Rue Alsace-Lorraine in Villeurbanne. The former storage room for gymnastics equipment was inhumane accommodation, there was no light, no heating and it rained inside. As they couldn't get their own food, Boursier's maid Marie brought it to them. Only when raids were feared did the Falks flee to other hiding places, such as the Dominican church in the Rue Vauban in Lyon, where the prior locked them in overnight and they slept on the stone floor. After Boursier's arrest on June 16, 1944, the couple, completely impoverished and in ruined health, found refuge in the Lumière Saint-Roch clinic at 2 Rue Frédéric Mistral in Lyon. It belonged to the benefactor and scholar Auguste Lumière (1862-1954), who gave shelter here to several persecuted people. They stayed there for several months, interrupted by periods when Gestapo raids on the clinic were feared. After the liberation of Lyon, the Falks moved into an apartment in Impasse Chatigny, Villeurbanne on September 11, 1944. They had lived for two years with false identities and without ration cards. 

Despite free treatment from two doctors during this time, their health was very poor, Sally suffered from chronic bronchitis and Adèle was nervously shattered. The 66-year-old's failing health prevented him from resuming any professional activity. On the advice of Dr. Jean Lacroix in Lyon, the couple were advised to move to a warmer climate. This is how they ended up in Monte Carlo.

Sally and Adèle Falk spent the rest of their lives on the French and Italian Riviera. After their years in Monte Carlo (Monaco), they lived in Sanremo (Italy) until Sally's death. From Monaco, Sally Falk filed an application for compensation with the State Office for Restitution in Stuttgart in 1950. It was also about the inheritance of his parents, who came from Württemberg. In 1959, Sally Falk filed a claim with the Office for Restitution in Hamburg for "damage to body and health and loss of liberty". The couple lived at Via Vallarino 6 in Sanremo. At the end of the 1950s, Sally Falk was still impoverished and in poor health. He lived from the sale of his art objects. In 1960, he sold several works by his friend George Grosz, which Grosz had given him in the 1950s, to the Kunsthalle. His request to the City of Mannheim for financial support in 1961 was granted. According to an official statement: "Some of the valuable sculptures he donated to the Kunsthalle were also shown in the exhibition 'In Memory of the Jewish Citizens of the City of Mannheim'. According to estimates by Dr. Fuchs [Dr. Heinz Fuchs, then director of the Kunsthalle, author's note], the value of the donations today is more than half a million DM. Mr. Falk is 73 years old and seriously ill; his wife is 72 years old. According to his statements, he only lives from the sale of the valuables he has left. He is not entitled to a restitution pension as he emigrated to France before 1933. In view of Mr. Falk's generous donation and his difficult fate as a Jewish citizen of the city of Mannheim, Mr. Falk should be granted an honorary salary." 

The honorary salary was transferred to Falk retroactively from April 1961 in the amount of DM 500 per month. In the event of Sally Falk's death, his widow was to receive 300 DM. Just one year later, in a letter dated June 4, 1962, Adèle Falk informed the city of her husband's death and asked for the honorary salary to continue to be paid in the original amount, which was granted.

As a widow, Adèle moved to Marseille in 1962, where she lived with her sister, Madame Juramy, at 36 Rue Adolphe Thiers. In 1890, her father Joseph had run a maison meublée (furnished room rental) at 22 Rue des Trois Rois, where she grew up. After her sister passed away, Adèle moved in with her nephew Léonce Juramy at 300 Rue Paradis in 1970, who informed the city of Mannheim in a letter on June 20, 1972, that Adèle Falk had passed away and thanked Mannheim for everything it had done for his aunt.