Helene Hecht

Helene Hecht was born into a Mainz banking family on August 19, 1854 and was given the birth name Helena Bamberger. Her parents lived in a baroque palace on Bischofsplatz near the cathedral. The Bamberger family played an important role in the social, economic, cultural and political life of the city and far beyond. It produced important politicians, scientists and cultural figures.

Helene's uncle Ludwig Bamberger (1823-1899) was one of the leading democratic thinkers in the 1848/49 revolution in Mainz. He was later a member of the Reichstag and financial politician in Berlin and played a key role in the creation of the Deutschmark as the single German currency. Initially an advisor and supporter of Bismarck, Bamberger turned away from his policies around 1880. Helene's father Rudolph Bamberger (1821-1900) was a banker and city councillor as well as a member of the Hessian state parliament.

Helene grew up in this upper middle-class family. She received an education befitting her station and learned French, Italian and to play the piano. It is not known whether, like one of her cousins, she was taught by the pianist and piano teacher Clara Schumann.

Due to her background and education, Helene Bamberger was considered a "good match" for sons from upper-class families. The renowned economist and banker Dr. Felix Hecht (1847-1909) from Mannheim eventually became her husband. The marriage certificate dated September 17, 1875 shows that Helena Bamberger and Felix Hecht married in Mainz. The couple took up residence in Mannheim.

Helene felt a lifelong bond with her youngest sister Bertel (1869-1942). She was friends with the French writer, music critic and pacifist Romain Rolland (1866-1944), with whom she corresponded regularly. The contact dated back to the time when Helene and Bertel's cousin Marie Clotilde (née Bréal, married name Rolland, married name Cortot, 1870-1947) was the wife of the famous writer. The marriage ended in divorce after nine years, but the spiritual bond between the families remained. Like his father-in-law, the linguist Michel Bréal (1832 Landau - 1915 Paris), Rolland fought against chauvinism and racism throughout his life. A generation later, Helene's nephew Ludwig Berger (shortened name Bamberger, 1892-1969) was to become a well-known German director and writer.

Helene's husband was one of the most successful business lawyers in the German Reich. At the age of 24, Felix Hecht became the first director of the newly founded Rheinische Hypothekenbank in Mannheim, which was taken over by Commerzbank in 1971, 100 years after it was founded.

Felix Hecht came from a Jewish family from Friedberg in the Wetterau region. He was one of ten children of the merchant and emigration agent Baruch Hecht and his wife Betty, née Adler. After leaving school in Frankfurt, Felix studied law and social sciences in Giessen, Göttingen and Heidelberg. He was friends with his Heidelberg teacher Johann Caspar Bluntschli (1808-1881), both were members of the National Liberal Party and belonged to the Heidelberg lodge "Ruprecht zu den fünf Rosen" as freemasons.

While Felix Hecht managed the bank during its development phase, he lectured at the University of Heidelberg and remained active in academia. Hecht's work had a formative influence on modern banking economics.

Until his marriage, Felix Hecht lived with the bandmaster Ernst Frank in a bachelor household in the Hotel Europäischer Hof in Mannheim. Frank was Kapellmeister at the Nationaltheater Mannheim from 1872 to 1877. His contact with the composer Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) led to a lifelong friendship between Brahms and the Hecht couple.

The couple initially took up residence in an apartment at B 6, 17, but moved to B 7, 6 in the 1880s. This is where the couple received their guests, including such illustrious figures as Johannes Brahms and musicians from the Mannheim scene.

The couple also had four children here: Hans Paul Jakob (1876-1946), August (1878-1879), Rudolph Ludwig (1880-1959) and Arnold Robert (1885-1886), two of whom died in infancy. Johannes Brahms took over the godparenthood for the eldest.

The division of roles between the couple followed a classical pattern. Felix Hecht was a busy bank director who also became director of the Palatinate Mortgage Bank in Ludwigshafen in 1886. Helene is described as an independent, "highly intelligent and artistically gifted woman". She was responsible for family life, cultivating friendships and maintaining the salon. The move to the large and hospitable villa at L 10, 1 in 1888 made it possible to continue the salon in prestigious rooms.

Square L 10 near the palace was created in the 1880s when the nursery gardens were abolished. Popularly known as the "Millions Quarter", it offered privileged building plots for the upper middle classes at the time, even before the development of Oststadt. The Hecht family commissioned the Swiss architects Philipp Jelmoli and Karl Blatt to design a spacious villa in L 10, 1. The renowned architects also designed the palazzo-like building in Mannheim in D 4, 9-10, which was built in 1901 as a bank and today houses the Mannheim Lending Office.

In 1888, the Hechts moved into the "Villa Helene", which had a simple neo-Renaissance exterior and was converted into a prestigious residence by Rudolf Tillessen in rococo style around 1900. Organizing the household for the family of four and the numerous visitors in twelve rooms took up much of Helene's time. Instead of fairy tales, she told her granddaughter Charlotte about great operas, and after attending concerts she could predict what the critics would write about them in the newspapers. Charlotte described her grandmother: "It was only in the evenings that she found the time to write her extensive correspondence. She wrote beautiful letters: I remember, apart from Brahms, the painter Franz von Lenbach, the violinist Joseph Joachim, Cosima Wagner and, if I am not mistaken, even Max von Baden, with whom she exchanged letters." (Becker, p. 288)

Helene Hecht ran the second largest salon in Mannheim after that of Berta Hirsch (1850-1930). Berta Hirsch was the daughter of Ferdinand Eberstadt, the first Jewish mayor of Worms, and the wife of grain wholesaler Emil Hirsch in Mannheim. The Hechts' hospitable villa was furnished with two grand pianos, luxurious Renaissance furniture, oriental carpets and many other works of art. Johannes Brahms is said to have had his favorite spot by the fireplace.

Between 1899 and 1903, the Hecht couple had a lively exchange with the Munich painter Franz von Lenbach, partly because of the portraits he painted of both of them. At the beginning of 1901, von Lenbach created the large portrait "Frau Geheimrat Hecht mit Hund". The sitter traveled to Munich several times to pose for the artist. A short time later, he painted a smaller bust portrait of his "revered patroness" (as he called her in his letters) and a portrait of Felix Hecht.

In 1899, the couple became patrons of the Mannheim University of Music, which was founded in October of that year. The rooms they initially rented in B 2, 6 were too small and the university moved to the specially purchased building in M 1, 8 in 1900.

Felix Hecht received numerous honors, including the Order of the Crown of Italy in 1892 and the Knight's Cross I Class of the Order of the Zähringer Lion in 1894. He held the title of Privy Councillor. In 1901, Felix Hecht resigned his directorships at both banks, Rheinische Hypothekenbank and Pfälzische Hypothekenbank, and only acted as a member of the supervisory board in each case. He now devoted most of his time to his academic and political work. He moved to Berlin to work on the German Reich's legislative projects. In 1909, he died unexpectedly on a train between Eisenach and Weimar during a trip to the imperial capital.

After the First World War, Helene had to sell many of her art possessions. To earn a living for herself and her grandchildren, she rented out rooms in her house. After the Nazi regime came to power, she was subjected to numerous reprisals as a Jew. She, who had brought great musicians to Mannheim and supported the founding of the music academy, was now forbidden from attending concerts and operas.

However, she still lived in seclusion with her granddaughter Charlotte in the house that had once been a center of cultural life in Mannheim. In order to pay the "Jewish property levy", Helene Hecht had to sell her household effects, including the two monumental paintings by Franz von Lenbach. She received 2,000 RM for them.

Helene Hecht made several trips to Munich to pose as a model for the artist Franz von Lenbach. Franz von Lenbach's villa in Munich consisted of a studio building on Brienner Strasse, which was completed in 1888, and the main building, which was finished in 1890. Directly opposite the neoclassical Königsplatz with the Propylaea, he created a residence that he wanted to turn into a center of art in Munich. "I intend to build myself a palace that will eclipse all that has gone before; the powerful centers of great European art should be connected there with the present" - Lenbach wrote in a letter in 1885. The patron of the arts Adolf Friedrich von Schack, the poet Paul Heyse and other artists and art lovers had settled in the neighborhood.

The villa, which he designed together with the architect Gabriel von Seidl, had an L-shaped floor plan. A garden structured by fountains was laid out in front of the two buildings. The building and garden, a late flowering of historicism with many decorative elements based on antique models, are modeled on the Italian Renaissance. The rich interior decoration included antique sculptures, medieval paintings, tapestries and carpets, as well as copies of antique works of art. In 1892, the retired Chancellor Otto von Bismarck accepted the ovations of the people of Munich from the balcony of the villa. In 1900, the studio and main building were connected by an intermediate wing. The building complex is now home to the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus.

On October 22, 1940, Helene Hecht, already 86 years old, was picked up by the police. She was told to get ready to travel in a hurry. She was allowed to take up to 50 kg of luggage and 100 RM with her. Her granddaughter Charlotte was not on the deportation list because her father, who had been living in the USA for a long time, gave her special status. Helene set off on the journey alone. Initially, she was gathered with many other Jews for deportation, presumably in the castle or in a nearby school or gymnasium. None of those affected yet knew the destination of the deportation, the French internment camp Gurs at the foot of the Pyrenees. It was feared that they were going to the East. Rumors had spread about the extermination camps in occupied Poland.

Then Helene Hecht, along with almost 2,000 other Jews from Mannheim, was crammed into railroad wagons heading south. Once the direction of travel was recognizable at Karlsruhe and initial relief was felt, rumours began to spread that those carrying more than the permitted luggage or cash would be shot. Banknotes fluttered out of the windows. Forced out of their own homes, separated from their relatives, traveling with an unknown destination and insufficient luggage, with no prospect of returning, the situation was extremely precarious, especially for older people. After a journey of several days, the trains reached Oloron-Sainte-Marie, where the deportees had to transfer to trucks for the final stretch to Gurs.

Helene Hecht never reached the camp, which was known as the "hell of Gurs" due to the misery and cold that prevailed there. She died on the way there. In the official records, Helene Hecht was declared dead on May 8, 1945, with effect from October 24, 1940. A death certificate was never issued. Whether she found a grave is unknown.

In 1951, a granddaughter of Helene Hecht accidentally discovered the portraits of her grandparents by Franz von Lenbach in a gallery in Constance and had the paintings confiscated as Nazi-looted property. The two paintings were handed over to the Kunsthalle Karlsruhe for safekeeping as a case of restitution. In 1967, they were entered in the list of loans as "on loan from Torsten Hecht", but then fell into oblivion.

In 2005 and 2008, several great-grandchildren came forward and seven living descendants were found. Dr. Alfried Fischer, one of the relatives, took over the coordination: "Some of the relatives wanted to be left in peace with the old stories, others hoped to make a fortune." (Ragge, MM) When it became clear that the market value was not too high, everyone agreed to donate the paintings to Mannheim as a reminder of the Hecht family. Prof. Dr. Alfried Wieczorek, General Director of the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, expressed his gratitude at the handover in 2015: "The family could have sold the paintings somewhere." For the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, the handover was a matter of course.

Thus, the painting of the standing Helene Hecht with dog, which was shown publicly at the Great Annual Exhibition in the Munich Glaspalast in 1902 and in 1917 in the exhibition of Mannheim private property in the Mannheim Kunsthalle, was also returned to Mannheim.

Other objects commemorating Helene Hecht had already returned to Mannheim before the paintings. With the help of a donation from the Heinrich Vetter Foundation in Mannheim, part of Charlotte Hecht's estate was purchased and handed over to the Mannheim City Archive in 1998. Since then, today's Marchivum has around 30 original letters from Franz von Lenbach and also the letters that Charlotte and her parents were able to exchange with each other in the USA during Charlotte's internment. Charlotte Hecht survived persecution under National Socialism because, after two weeks in police custody, she was interned in a convent near Liebenau on Lake Constance in March 1942 and was protected by the Red Cross until the end of the war. She died in Munich in 1997 at the age of 90.

Helene Hecht has not been forgotten in Mannheim. Since 2009, the city of Mannheim has awarded a prize named after her to female artists every two years, which is endowed with 3,000 euros. And since 2010, a street in Neckarstadt Ost has borne her name. The Villa Hecht, where exhibitions, music and lecture events and soirées used to take place, is now used as a psychiatric day clinic by the Central Institute for Mental Health Mannheim.