Adolph Moritz List

Although Adolph Moritz List was born on November 12, 1861 in Olkhovatka in the southern Russian governorate (oblast) of Voronezh, he was never a Russian citizen - just like his father, the Berlin-born technician Adolph List, and his mother Flora List, a native of Fass. They saw themselves as Prussian Germans. It is not known to what extent, if at all, Adolph Moritz List's family was connected to the Jewish community here or in Leipzig, where he later lived. However, the fact that Adolph Moritz List is said to have described himself as "Aryan" during the Nazi era (albeit ultimately without success) despite his Jewish origins, and that his children were probably even NSDAP members at times, suggests that the family did not practise religious Judaism. The fact that Adolph Moritz List married a non-Jewish woman in 1897 can also be seen as evidence of this.

The oblast capital of Voronezh was and is a place steeped in history in many respects. Voronezh was first mentioned in a document in 1177. The fact that Tsar Peter the Great founded a shipyard in the city in 1696 to build up a fleet was significant for the history of the city. In the first half of the 19th century, Voronezh became the economic and cultural center of southwestern Russia. The agricultural industry in particular had become very important with flour mills, butter factories and soap factories, as well as the trade in foodstuffs such as baked goods, livestock, salt and wool. During this time, Adolph Moritz List's father had built one of Russia's first sugar factories in the settlement of Olkhovatka, which belonged to Voronezh. After training as a mechanic in the USA, his younger brother Gustav built the first mechanical fire pump in his brother's sugar factory from 1856 onwards.

Adolf Moritz List did not grow up in his birthplace. There is evidence in the Leipzig address books that the family also had a residence in Leipzig from 1865, alongside the sugar factory in Olchowatka, Russia. Four years after the birth of Adolph Moritz List, his parents were listed there for the first time with a residence at Plagwitzer Str. 1. At this address, his father Adolph List is registered with the job title "Commissionair and Agent for Russia".

In the years 1867 to 1871, Adolph List, the "commissionaire and agent for Russia", and his family lived at Promenadenstrasse 16 (today part of Käthe-Kollwitz-Strasse) according to the Leipzig address book. From 1871, however, they are again registered with a residence at Plagwitzer Straße 1, as they had been in 1865/66. It is not known where the son Adolph Moritz List spent his first years of primary school, but it is certain that he attended the Leipzig Realschule from 1873. It is unclear whether he was first taught at this school at Schillerstraße 9 (now Kurt-Masur-Platz) or at Sidonienstraße 1 (now Paul-Gruner-Straße 50), where the school had moved in the course of 1873. After completing his schooling in Leipzig, Adolph Moritz List began an agricultural apprenticeship lasting several years on various estates in the Prussian province of Brandenburg. In 1882, he began studying agricultural sciences and chemistry at the University of Leipzig. He completed his studies with a doctorate in 1886. The subject of his dissertation was: "Investigations into the lower fungi found in and on the body of healthy sheep." In the same year, Dr. Adolph Moritz List entered into a partnership agreement with Constantin Fahlberg, his cousin, to found the limited partnership Fahlberg, List & Co. based in Salbke near Magdeburg - the world's first saccharin factory - as general partner on behalf of his deceased father. The Russian chemist and partner Constantin Fahlberg (1850 - 1910) had discovered the sweet taste of benzoic acid sulphimide during a series of tests on coal tar compounds and had it patented. On March 9, 1887, production of the sugar-free sweetener began in Salbke near Magdeburg. Over the course of his life, Adolph Moritz List would take on alternating roles and functions within the company on the Supervisory Board and the Management Board.

In the European sugar industry, which also included the production of sweeteners, an increasingly competitive situation developed at the end of the 19th century, which was not without consequences for the company of Adolph Moritz List and his business partner Constantin Fahlberg. Additional capital was needed to expand the product range, which made it necessary to transform the company into a public limited company - Saccharin-Fabrik AG. Adolph Moritz List chaired the supervisory board of the AG for 19 years from 1900. As a result of successful lobbying by the German sugar industry, sweeteners were banned by law on July 7, 1902. The product was only allowed to be sold to diabetics. As a consequence of this regulation, sulphuric acid initially became the company's main product. 

As early as 1907, the habilitated chemist and university lecturer August Klages took over the technical management of the company as successor to Constantin Fahlberg, who had fallen ill. Some time after Fahlberg's death on August 15, 1910, pharmaceutical production began under Klages' management, which was later followed by color products and pesticides. During the First World War, saccharin production was also reopened. This, together with the extensive expansion of the production range, brought the company an enormous increase in profits in the first years after the war. In 1919, Adolph Moritz List moved from the Supervisory Board to the position of Chairman of the Management Board. When a decline in the company's profitability became apparent at the beginning of the inflation, List entered into a coalition with "Kokswerke und Chemische Fabriken AG Berlin", which he dissolved three years later, also for reasons of profitability. Adolph Moritz List returned to the Supervisory Board. In addition to his professional activities, he had already been making a name for himself as a private collector of precious porcelain and decorative arts for some time.

On April 9, 1897, Adolph Moritz List married Clara Helene, née Steinbach. The couple had two children, daughter Anna Elisabet and son Franz Edward. The family lived in the center of Magdeburg opposite the idyllic Fürstenwallpark in a prestigious town house, which was destroyed in the Second World War. Over the years, Adolph Moritz List amassed an impressive collection of arts and crafts, glass and porcelain objects totaling almost 10,000 pieces.

The collection consisted mainly of European arts and crafts from the period from the 13th to the 18th century. It included furniture, pewterware, bronzes, silver, gold, glass, ivory and boxwood carvings, miniatures, enamel work, jewelry and clocks, embroidery, tapestries, stoneware, Italian majolica, Delft faience, porcelain, pewter, a coin collection and ecclesiastical metalware. There were also paintings in the collection, mainly from the 19th century, as well as pieces of jewelry from classical antiquity. 

To this day, it is largely unknown how he acquired the pieces in his collection and whether an art agent advised him in his decisions. However, as a member of the arts and crafts associations of Magdeburg, Leipzig and Vienna, List had good contacts with other collectors and experts. 

For his porcelain collection, he kept a card index in which he meticulously recorded when and where he acquired the individual pieces. It is therefore known that the origins of this part of the List collection date back to the last quarter of the 19th century. Today's provenance research assumes that the collection of the Magdeburg entrepreneur Adolph Moritz List was ultimately one of the most important German private collections in the field of decorative arts in the first half of the 20th century. 

As for other collectors at the turn of the century, Adolph Moritz List was also inspired by the famous Parisian decorative arts collection of the Austrian art dealer Frédéric Spitzer. This had been auctioned off in 1893 and some pieces from this collection were eventually found in Adolph Moritz List's collection.

List's Jewish parents had been baptized shortly before their marriage in Insterburg (now Chernyakhovsky) in the summer of 1856. From a denominational point of view, Adolph Moritz List was therefore Protestant. At the beginning of the 1930s, Fahlberg-List AG supported the NSDAP with an election campaign donation of 2 million marks. After the National Socialists seized power, Adolph Moritz List described himself as an "Aryan" and his two children even belonged to the NSDAP for a time. In 1937, however, when Adolph Moritz List had meanwhile returned to the Supervisory Board, Otto Emersleben, a small shareholder from Berlin-Zehlendorf, accused him of being of "non-Aryan descent" at a general meeting of Fahlberg-List AG. Some time later, Fahlberg-List AG announced that List's "non-Aryan descent" had been established. Provenance researcher Sven Pabstmann states in an essay that on the occasion of the company's 50th anniversary celebrations, Nazi functionaries and top representatives of the highest state authorities threatened to cancel the event "if Dr. List gave a speech or even just appeared at it" (Pabstmann, p. 283). As a result, List did not attend the ceremony - officially "due to illness". Adolph Moritz List finally gave in to the company management's insistence and resigned from the Supervisory Board on April 15, 1937. The "Aryanization" of Fahlberg-List AG was thus considered complete from the point of view of the Nazi economic leadership.

On June 17, 1938, not long after his resignation from the supervisory board of Fahlberg-List AG due to persecution, Adolph Moritz List died. His widow Clara Helene commissioned the Berlin auction house Hans W. Lange at Bellevuestraße 7 in Berlin's Tiergarten district to auction off parts of the collection, which was valued at one million Reichsmarks. This took place over two auctions. Provenance researcher Sven Pabstmann reports in detail: 

"In the first auction, which took place from March 28 to 30, 1939, 973 items with around 2,000 individual objects with an estimated value of 357,065 Reichsmarks were called. As can be seen from annotated auction catalogs, handwritten estimate lists and published price reports, the hammer prices were often higher than the estimates. With total proceeds of 385,478 Reichsmarks, the auction was extremely successful. The second part, which comprised 569 lots with around 1,000 individual items at an estimate of 130,190 Reichsmarks, went under the hammer from January 25 to 27, 1940. [...] As the auction reports for hammer prices over 500 Reichsmark show to some extent, the second auction was probably a comparable success." (Pabstmann, p. 284 f) 

Clara Helene List probably did not sell the art collection out of financial necessity. Immediately after the two auctions, she acquired three apartment buildings in Leipzig for a purchase price of around 300,000 Reichsmarks, which is why it can be assumed that the proceeds from the two auctions actually accrued to her and that she was able to dispose of them freely. In addition, it can be proven that she received a high widow's pension until December 1939. For this reason, after thorough examination by provenance researchers, a Nazi-persecution-related sale of the List Collection [...] was ruled out (cf. Pabstmann p. 286). Nevertheless, the auction of the List Collection destroyed one of the most important German private collections in the field of decorative arts.