Ernst Polaczek

Ernst Polaczek was born on July 6, 1870 in Reichenberg (Liberec) to well-off factory owner parents. Only the entries in the registers of the Jewish community of Liberec are known about them. Their father was a successful clothing manufacturer. 

Located at the foot of the Jizera Mountains in Bohemia, in the then predominantly German-speaking border region of what is now the Czech Republic, Liberec developed into the center of the textile industry in Austria-Hungary and a rich industrial town in the 19th century. The town's Jewish inhabitants played a considerable part in this development. In 1889, a magnificent synagogue in the early Renaissance style was inaugurated, its tower even towering over the town hall. This event did not fail to make an impression on the 19-year-old future art historian Ernst Polaczek, but his Jewish parents were probably rather secular. He himself converted to the Protestant faith in 1904. 

Ernst attended elementary school and grammar school in Reichenberg and left his hometown for his further education. He attended the commercial academy in Vienna. He graduated from the Altstädtisches Gymnasium in Prague in 1889. This was followed by studies at the universities of Prague, Munich and Vienna until 1892.

The sources are silent on the content of these courses, but he must have turned away from business and towards art history early on. Perhaps his historically rich homeland, or perhaps the North Bohemian Industrial Museum in Reichenberg, influenced his choice of studies. Until 1893, he attended philological and art history lectures at the universities of Prague and Munich, where he studied under Professor Eduard Wölfflin (1831-1908). In Vienna, he studied under the art historians and co-founders of the "Viennese School", Professors Alois Riegl (1858-1905) and Franz Wickhoff (1853-1909). At his next place of study, Strasbourg, he was able to complete his doctorate in this subject after just one year.

From 1893, Ernst studied at the University of Strasbourg, where he completed his doctorate in 1894 under the supervision of probably the most renowned art historian, Professor Georg Dehio (1850-1932). He is still known today for the reference work for art monuments in German-speaking countries named after him. 

After Ernst had completed his military service as a one-year volunteer in Vienna, the young art historian found his first job in monument inventory with the provincial curator of the Prussian Rhine Province, Paul Clemen (1866-1947). In 1899, back in Strasbourg, he habilitated and took up an assistant position with Professor Dehio. He became his close collaborator. After Polaczek converted to the Protestant faith on July 31, 1904, he himself was awarded the title of professor in 1905.

In Strasbourg, he met and fell in love with the art historian Else Gütschow, who was five years his senior. In 1903, she was the first woman to be awarded a doctorate at the University of Strasbourg with her dissertation on Pope Innocent III, because "thanks to her outstanding skills and knowledge, she succeeded in overcoming the prejudice against female students that still prevailed there". (Kulenkamp, p. 173) Else, whom Ernst married in 1906, was an extraordinary personality. In addition to her personal charisma and extensive cultural education, she was a "pioneer for the women's movement", campaigned for the protection of mothers in need and founded the Mother's Home in Strasbourg in 1908. She herself died in childbirth. Her obituary summarized the tragedy: "Her heart, which had comforted so many mothers, stopped beating when her dearest wish, to become a mother herself, was to be fulfilled." (Kulenkamp, p. 173) 

The loss of his wife and his unborn child was a heavy blow for Ernst. All the more reason for him to devote himself to art history and the Strasbourg museum system. In 1907, he became director of the city's Museum of Decorative Arts (formerly the Hohenlohe Museum) and in 1913, shortly before the First World War, he was appointed honorary professor at the University of Strasbourg and director of the Strasbourg Museum of Fine Arts in the Palais Rohan next to Strasbourg Cathedral (now the Musée des Beaux Arts). He implemented a new course for the Strasbourg museums, particularly with regard to the acquisition and presentation of exhibits, and emphasized the independence of the border region within the German Empire.

In numerous publications and lectures on the art of Alsace, he emphasized the political and artistic characteristics of the region, which was also the focus of his private interests and preferences. This made his expulsion from Alsace, which had become French again after the end of the First World War, all the more painful for him, as it affected all German Reich officials. Together with his second wife Friederike, née Löbl, whom he had married in 1916, he took up new residence in Munich.

The couple arrived in Munich on January 9, 1919 with a passport stating "Alsace-Lorraine" as their nationality. They found accommodation at Von-der-Tann-Straße 19 and from 1922 lived as subtenants with, according to the registration card, "Florian" at Germaniastraße 9. Ernst and Friederike acquired the "citizenship of the Free State of Bavaria" and thus German citizenship.

In his new place of residence, which he knew from his school days, Ernst Polaczek continued to devote himself to his studies of Alsatian art, worked as a journalist and organized exhibitions. He paid particular attention to ceramics from Strasbourg and Niderviller (Niederweiler) in Lorraine. He later acquired valuable faience from these manufactories for his private collection. He worked for the "Wissenschaftliches Institut der Elsaß-Lothringer im Reich", founded in Frankfurt/Main in 1920, and wrote numerous articles for its annual journal and other periodicals. These were mainly reviews on the art history of Alsace. In the foreword to the book "Strassburg", Polaczek wrote that this city "was the author's home for twenty years and he will feel connected to its past life until the end" (Polaczek 1926). Further publications bear the titles "Die Kaiser Wilhelms-Universität Straßburg und ihre Tätigkeit" (1922), "Volkskunst im Elsaß" (around 1925), "Georg Dehio. An outline of his work" (1925) or "Strasbourg. Berühmte Kunststätten" (1926). 

In his ten years in Munich, Ernst Polaczek was unable to gain a professional foothold. The state welfare office in Munich found him a new job in Görlitz in 1928.

In April 1928, Professor Ernst Polaczek took up his new position as director of the Oberlausitzer Ruhmeshalle (often also known as the Oberlausitzer Gedenkhalle) with the associated Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum in Görlitz, succeeding the first director, Professor Ludwig Feyerabend (1855-1927). The establishment of the museum in the Kaisertrutz, a medieval town tower, which opened in 1932, became his most challenging task, as did the Graphisches Kabinett in Neißstraße 30, which was created in the same year. In managing the museum with its extensive collections, he placed particular emphasis on modernizing the presentation, designing special exhibitions and making new acquisitions. Polaczek shaped the intellectual life of the city and the region and was a member of all scientific and most cultural associations in Görlitz. The couple lived at Goethestraße 39. 

During his time in Görlitz, and perhaps already in Munich, Polaczek was in contact with the Potsdam art collector Paul Heiland (1870-1933), who specialized in faience. His hopes for a faience museum for his more than 5,000 pieces were not fulfilled; instead, various museums in Berlin, Nuremberg, Munich and Erfurt acquired parts of his collection. Ernst Polaczek acquired faiences from Strasbourg and Niderviller from Heiland for his private collection, although it is not clear whether they passed to Polaczek as a gift or in his will. These pieces would later become a provenance case for state authorities and museums.

At the beginning of the Nazi regime, Polaczek was discriminated against because of his Jewish origins and sent into early retirement despite his services to the city on the Neisse. He left Silesia with his wife Friedrike. His former adopted home of Strasbourg was closed to him, as the city was now "enemy territory" in the eyes of the new rulers. However, he sought to be close to them and settled in Freiburg im Breisgau.

The couple moved to Freiburg in 1933. Initially, they were registered at Stadtstraße 15 in the middle-class district of Herdern, then at Villa Holbeinstraße 10 in the upmarket suburb of Wiehre. The couple were registered as Protestants, but the situation came to a head. The persecution by the Gestapo due to the Jewish origins of both spouses was obvious. Polaczek planned to leave the country and pledged securities in order to pay the "Reich flight tax". He corresponded desperately with the Freiburg tax office in order to save at least some of his assets. 

The couple experienced the Reichspogromnacht in November 1938, but no details are known about what happened in their apartment. A few weeks later, on January 26, 1939, Polaczek died at the age of 68 in Freiburg University Hospital. An "intestinal ailment" was given as the cause of death. His urn was buried in a cemetery in Strasbourg, the city he had loved all his life. Friederike, left to her own devices, moved into a furnished room at Schweighofstrasse 6. As the main heiress to the art collection that Ernst had amassed over the course of his life, she tried to make a living by selling his works. Among other things, she sold outstanding faiences that Ernst had acquired from the Paul Heiland collection. 

In 2013, the provenance researcher at the Karlsruhe State Museum traced the history of the collection of faiences owned by Polaczek. The pieces came primarily from the Hannong faience manufactory in Strasbourg, which was founded in 1721 and also had branches in Hagenau and Frankenthal. Friederike Polaczek offered Marie Junghanns, who lived at Frauenberg Castle on Lake Constance, around 110 pieces of Strasbourg and Niederweiler faience, a wooden figure of a saint, five antique chairs, engravings and paintings for 10,500 marks. The Baden State Museum in Karlsruhe then intervened. Its provisional director, Dr. Ludwig Moser, began to negotiate with Mrs. Junghanns about the purchase of the "Polaczek faience collection from Strasbourg, which had been seized as coming from Jewish ownership". The man pulling the strings, however, was the director of the Kunsthalle Karlsruhe and the General Administration of the Upper Rhine Museums in Strasbourg, Dr. Kurt Martin, who was responsible for the "seizure" of Jewish-owned cultural assets for the museums. The Polaczek property was "totally seized" and on October 12, 1939, the ceramics were stored together with the rest of the household effects in the Freiburg shipping company Dietsche, Belfortstraße 12. 

Friederike never saw her property again. A year later, on October 22, 1940, she was deported to the Gurs camp in the south of France, like most of the Jews in Baden. With the help of the Alsatian Germanist and writer Robert Minder (1902-1980), an acquaintance of her husband, the widow was liberated in 1941 and taken to Grenoble for a short time. However, she was discovered by the National Socialists during a raid in August 1942, taken to Auschwitz via the Drancy collection camp and murdered there.

After the deportation of Friedrike Polaczek, the Nazi authorities had a free hand. Compensation for the widow for the confiscation of her collection, which had previously been half-heartedly considered, now seemed superfluous. On January 8, 1941, the Dietsche shipping company brought the ceramics from her estate in ten crates to the Badisches Landesmuseum. However, they were not stored in Karlsruhe Palace, but in the New Palace in Baden-Baden to protect them from war damage. A struggle began between the institutions to divide up the Polaczek art collection and to compensate Marie Junghanns for the expense of her unsuccessful purchase attempt. Polaczek's scholarly books, over 600 volumes, stored in the Freiburg University Library were also objects of desire.

The Karlsruhe museum director Kurt Martin, who was also the director of the museums in occupied Strasbourg and authorized representative for the seizure of art property in Alsace, arranged for a valuable piece to be transferred to Strasbourg: the "wall fountain" by the Hannong manufactory, Strasbourg around 1730, is still in the collection of the Palais Rohan in Strasbourg today. A settlement was reached with the heirs for DM 800 in 1951. By keeping the piece, there is also a reminder of Ernst Polaczek at the site of his early and most committed work. 

In 1951, the heirs received compensation of 9000 DM for the pieces in the Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe. They are still in the museum's collection. 

The heirs were three nieces of Ernst Polaczek. Friederike, on the other hand, had left her mother and uncle in her will. Both died in Theresienstadt, while the uncle's sons survived in Brazil. 

These were traced in 2020 as part of another restitution process. The Klassik Stiftung Weimar, in possession of prints from 1820 showing a "puzzle alphabet" designed by Adele Schopenhauer (1797-1849), the sister of philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, was suspected of being "cultural property seized as a result of Nazi persecution". The Goethe National Museum had acquired the "Rätselalphabet" from Ernst Polaczek for 40 RM in 1936, at a time when he was unemployed in Freiburg and trying to emigrate. Since February 2021, the prints have been with the rightful heirs in Brazil.