Georg and Margarete Mecklenburg

The exact date of Georg Mecklenburg's birth is not known and is hidden in the archives of the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which in his time was called Königsberg and was an East Prussian metropolis. He was born there in 1869, the son of the merchant Louis Mecklenburg and his wife Rosalie. Nothing is known about his schooling and education in Königsberg. His biography can only be considered certain after he moved to Oberlungwitz in Saxony. The small town between Chemnitz and Zwickau was already known as the "stocking town" at the time, which is why a number of supplier companies settled here, such as the diamond black dyeing factory founded by Rudolf Kunath in 1883. Georg Mecklenburg joined the company as a partner, which is why from then on the company operated under the name "Diamantschwarzfärberei Kunath & Mecklenburg" as a hosiery and hank yarn dyeing company. Thomas Hetzel, the current mayor of the town, writes about the current location of the former company: "The factory (Diamantschwarzfärberei Kunath & Mecklenburg) in Oberlungwitz is still known today as 'Mecke', although it is now one of our last ruins." (Email from Thomas Hetzel to the author, 2024). 

Georg Mecklenburg was initially married to Lucie, née Manasse, with whom he lived in various places in Chemnitz in addition to the factory apartment in Oberlungwitz. However, Lucie Mecklenburg died in 1916 and shortly afterwards he married Margarethe, née Pulvermacher. Together with her, Georg Mecklenburg built up an impressive collection of contemporary art over many years. This also benefited the "Kunsthütte Chemnitz", an association of local artists and art lovers founded in 1860. Since 1909, the Kunsthütte Chemnitz had found a representative location in part of the newly opened König-Albert-Museum.

Georg Mecklenburg's first address in Chemnitz can be found in the historical address book of 1900 at Neefestraße 32. However, he only lived there with his first wife for two years, as well as at his next residence at Enzmannstraße 7. From April 1, 1906, Georg Mecklenburg was registered at Stollbergerstraße 21 for seven years. It is not known whether the entrepreneur traveled the approximately 20-kilometre distance between his changing Chemnitz residences and the diamond dye works in Oberlungwitz every day. However, it can be assumed that he occasionally used the apartment on the factory premises. After his partner Rudolf Kunath left the company in 1898, Georg Mecklenburg became the sole owner of "Mecke", as the company was popularly known. In the following years, the factory developed into the fifth largest dye works in Saxony. In the boom times, Georg Mecklenburg employed up to 250 workers and employees. The black dye produced here for stockings and yarns had a reputation for first-class quality due to its excellent fastness. In order to keep pace with modernization, the company also began producing coloured dyes in 1920. Until then, the raw and finished goods had been transported exclusively by horse and cart, not only to the immediate vicinity, but also to Chemnitz and smaller towns such as Thum, Geyer, Zschopau and as far as Auerbach in the Vogtland. Six horses were available for this purpose. The first delivery van, a "Presto", was purchased in mid-1920. Over the course of the next few years, more were added. 

It is assumed that Georg Mecklenburg had already started buying contemporary art a decade earlier. The reason for this assumption is that he had all four painters from the artists' group "Die Brücke" - Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff - in his portfolio. This artists' association was founded by the four painters in Dresden on June 7, 1905, but was dissolved in Berlin in May 1913. However, Mecklenburg's collection suggests that he bought those paintings when joint Brücke exhibitions were still taking place.

It was primarily contemporary art that was the focus of Margarethe and Georg Mecklenburg's art collection in Chemnitz. The collection included bronzes by Georg Kolbe, one of the most important German sculptors in the first half of the 20th century, as well as oil paintings by Robert Sterl, who was a professor at the Academy of Art in Dresden, and the artists of the "Brücke" movement Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. From exhibition and sales documents of the "Kunsthütte Chemnitz" and catalogs raisonnés, it can be concluded that the collection also included paintings by Carl Hofer, Max Pechstein, Max Liebermann and drawings by Oskar Kokoschka, Edvard Munch and Ernst Barlach. Early on, the collection also included works by Lasar Segall, who founded the "Dresden Secession" with artist friends in 1919. The following year, the renowned art historian and reviewer of the time, Paul Ferdinand Schmidt, wrote: "The strongest and most mature painter in it is undoubtedly Lasar Segall, whom the city museums of Dresden and Chemnitz have recently declared ready for the museum" https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lasar_Segall (Schmidt, Paul Ferdinand: Dresdener Kunstverhältnisse, p. 224). 

The Mecklenburg couple were members and patrons of the "Kunsthütte Chemnitz". Behind this name was an association of Chemnitz art lovers, founded in 1860, whose declared aim was to bring artists and art lovers together and introduce people to art in various ways. From 1872, the association had its permanent home in the Lechlaschen Villa at Annaberger Straße 25 (destroyed in the Second World War). In 1909, the König-Albert-Museum was opened in Chemnitz. The Chemnitz Kunsthütte was given its own premises in the prestigious building on Theaterplatz. The company undertook to organize its exhibitions "in a manner worthy of the purpose of the König-Albert-Museum" (quoted from Juppe/Pfalzer 1992, p. 57). This was a turning point in the history of the Kunstverein. At the opening ceremony, 500 works of painting, graphic art and sculpture were exhibited and 200 artists were invited. The majority of the exhibitors were established and generally recognized Dresden and Munich artists. 

The Mecklenburg couple acted as generous patrons over the course of time. In 1919, for example, they donated prints by Lasar Segall to the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz. The following year, they made it possible to acquire the work "Geneigter Frauenkopf" by Wilhelm Lehmbruck and in 1923 the triptych "Badende" by Erich Heckel. They had purchased the work directly from the artist in October 1922. The ensemble was given an important place in the "Gallery of Modern Art". In 1928, Georg and Margarethe Mecklenburg took part in the privately owned exhibition at the Kunsthütte Chemnitz. The private collection was kept in the Mecklenburg family's apartment in Oberlungwitz until it disappeared during the Pogrom Night of 1938. Today, there are no photos or records documenting the art collection.

From 1914, Georg Mecklenburg lived in a prestigious city villa at Reichstraße 15, initially with his first wife Lucie and then, after her death in 1916, with his second wife Margarethe. Georg Mecklenburg was active in the Jewish community of Chemnitz from the very beginning. Jewish families had settled in Chemnitz, then a center for linen production, as early as the beginning of the 14th century. However, this was only possible for a few decades. To this day, little research has been done into Jewish life in Chemnitz in the late Middle Ages. What is known, however, is that any Jewish settlement was prohibited for several centuries afterwards. It was only after Saxony joined the North German Confederation on August 18, 1866 that Jewish families were allowed to settle in the Saxon industrial city again. In May 1874, a "Provisional Israelite Association" was founded in Chemnitz, which adopted the name "Israelite Religious Community" two years later. In 1877, a Jewish cemetery was established and the following year the first Jewish prayer house in Chemnitz for more than 400 years was built in Neugasse 3.

Thanks to the commitment of individual Jewish families, solid structures in religious life soon emerged, which finally led to the official constitution of the "Israelitische Religionsgemeinde zu Chemnitz" in 1885. Georg Mecklenburg, who had come from Königsberg at the turn of the century, thus joined a relatively young Jewish community. As the number of members had grown rapidly in the last two decades of the 19th century, plans were made to build a larger synagogue. Construction began in 1897. After two years of construction, the new synagogue on Stephansplatz, which could accommodate almost 700 people, was officially opened in the spring of 1899. The community grew to 3,500 people and its members became an integral part of the city's public, economic and cultural life. The Mecklenburg couple are a representative example of this. In 1921, Georg Mecklenburg was elected chairman of the Jewish community in Chemnitz and remained so for six years. He was also a board member of the nationwide "Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith", which was based in Berlin.

On February 9, 1932, Georg Mecklenburg shot himself in his villa at Reichstraße 15. A motive for the suicide is not known; Hans Mecklenburg, his son from his first marriage, succeeded him in the management of the diamond black dye works in Oberlungwitz.

The few sources on Margarethe Mecklenburg report that she moved to Berlin after the death of her husband. However, the exact date remains uncertain. In the Chemnitz address books, there are entries for "Mecklenburg Grete, Färbereibesitzers-Witwe in der Reichstraße 15" until 1936 and then for another two years at Friedrich Schlegel-Straße 15. It is certain that she had been in a financial predicament since the "Aryanization" of the company at the end of October 1940 at the latest, which is why Margarethe Mecklenburg sold the remaining parts of the art collection in Berlin in 1941. However, there has been no trace of most of the collection since the pogrom night of November 1938. Most of the works of art had been kept in the family apartment on the factory premises in Oberlungwitz. It is unclear whether the art collection fell victim to the devastation of the SA or whether it had previously been looted by the National Socialists. Margarethe Mecklenburg's son Walter had managed to leave Germany in the early summer of 1941, but she herself was no longer able to do so. In December 1942, Margarethe Mecklenburg was deported from Berlin to the Auschwitz extermination camp, where she was murdered on August 31, 1943.