Alfred Flechtheim

Alfred Flechtheim was born and grew up in Münster, Westphalia. His parents' house was in Ludgeristraße in the middle of the old town. However, the daily "living room", at least for the male members of the family, was the so-called Flechtheimspeicher. This was the enormous granary on the south side of Münster's harbor basin, which still stands there - now a listed building. Even as a schoolboy, Alfred Flechtheim spent many hours a day in the office building next to his father's company headquarters, from where he successfully ran a grain wholesale business. As the first-born - before his brother Hermann (1880-1960) and his sister Emma (1883-1925) - Alfred Flechtheim was destined to continue his father's business.

As a pupil at the Paulinum grammar school in Münster, which was steeped in tradition, the boy's diligence and behavior obviously left something to be desired - at any rate, he was expelled from school after his first year (intermediate school leaving certificate). The grain wholesaler Emil Flechtheim (1850-1933) and his wife Emma (1856-1935) finally did what wealthy parents often do when their children cause difficulties - they sent the offspring to a French-speaking boarding school in Switzerland, where he successfully completed his schooling. This was followed by an apprenticeship with a grain merchant friend of the family in Paris. There was nothing to suggest that Alfred Flechtheim would later become an art dealer and gallery owner and certainly not that he would become one of the most important patrons of avant-garde art in Germany. And yet it was in Paris that he encountered a scene that would one day provide the occasion for such a radical change in his biography. For the time being, however, the young Flechtheim continued to follow his father's vision. His military service with the Düsseldorf Uhlan regiment was followed by further traineeships in the grain industry in port cities such as Odessa and Liverpool, which broadened the young businessman's horizons. After returning to his parents' company, whose headquarters had meanwhile been moved to Düsseldorf, the 24-year-old Alfred Flechtheim took on additional responsibility as a partner from 1902.

Since its opening in 1898, the Café du Dôme on the corner of Boulevard du Montparnasse and Rue Delambre was the favorite café of painters, writers, art lovers and art dealers. During another visit to Paris in 1906, Alfred Flechtheim met the art expert Wilhelm Uhde, an early patron of Pablo Picasso. The following year, Flechtheim met the up-and-coming Spanish painting star himself at the Café du Dôme, as well as Henri Matisse, whom he would later represent as a gallery owner. According to his biographers, his encounter with the Cubists - Georges Braque, Juan Gris and Fernand Léger alongside Picasso - must have been an "awakening experience" for Flechtheim. It was also at the Café du Dôme that he first met Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, a Parisian art dealer from Mannheim, who would help the heavily indebted Alfred Flechtheim to build an exile existence in London in the 1930s. 

The scene at the Café du Dôme awakened an interest in art in the young Flechtheim, who was still a grain merchant from Germany at the time. He began to think about doing the same as Uhde and Kahnweiler and switching his business from grain trading to art. However, he still lacked the means to do so. After all, Alfred Flechtheim could hardly assume that his father would provide him with the necessary capital for a venture in this risky sector. An unexpected opportunity came to his aid that he had not expected.

Alfred Flechtheim felt more attracted to men than to women. However, homosexuality was a punishable offense at the time - and there were already rumours about it in his family. In order to silence these, Flechtheim's parents arranged his marriage to Betty Goldschmidt from a Jewish family in Dortmund. Thanks to their real estate holdings, they were one of the richest families in the city. The Flechtheims in Düsseldorf and the Goldschmidts in Dortmund had both business and friendly private relationships. 

During their honeymoon in Paris, Alfred Flechtheim used large sums from his wife's dowry to buy art on a large scale. His horrified parents-in-law then insisted on a contractually regulated separation of property for the young couple. However, when Alfred Flechtheim set up his own gallery in December 1913, he owned three paintings by Vincent van Gogh, two by Edvard Munch, three by Henri Rousseau, two by Paul Gauguin, two by Henri Matisse, six by Georges Braque, three by Juan Gris and over 30 paintings and prints by Picasso. Research would later describe him as a major early collector of Picasso.

Shortly before the First World War, Emil Flechtheim's grain wholesale business had run into financial difficulties. In the summer of 1913, the company was only barely saved from bankruptcy. Shortly before Hanukkah (which coincided with Christmas that year), he finally agreed that his now 35-year-old son Alfred would go his own way in business. With funding from his wife and a guarantee from the Berlin gallery owner Paul Cassirer, Alfred Flechtheim opened his gallery at Alleestraße 7, not far from the renowned Düsseldorf Art Academy. It turned out to be a good thing that he had acted as treasurer at the art exhibition of the Sonderbund, an association of artists, museum directors, collectors and dealers (all men!) in Cologne the year before. This had brought him into contact with numerous Rhenish art collectors, which he was now able to use for his own business. Because of his preference for paintings from France, his art dealership was labeled a "French gallery", which Flechtheim took as a compliment. The following summer, however, this very attribution led to a personal and business catastrophe.

With the outbreak of war with France, Flechtheim's connections to his French artists, dealers and friends were suddenly severed. Flechtheim now exhibited German artists from the "Café du Dôme" circle, such as Rudolf Großmann, Wilhelm Lehmbruck and Rudolf Levy, for the first time. But in wartime, business with art was poor. In 1917, his gallery holdings had to be auctioned off as they tied up considerable financial resources. Just two years later, in the spring of 1919, Alfred Flechtheim reopened a gallery on Düsseldorf's Königsallee, a highly prestigious location, with the exhibition "Expressionists". It was also surprisingly successful for the post-war period: Alfred Flechtheim's art trade expanded within just two years and he founded branches in Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Cologne and Vienna. Even though the connection to the parent company on Düsseldorf's 'Kö' always remained a mainstay of the business, Berlin's art and cultural scene soon played an increasingly important role for Flechtheim's art trade, as it did for him. It was the beginning of the "Golden Twenties", the dawn of a fragile political and cultural era in which Alfred Flechtheim was on the side of the winners for several years. Until the Nazis came to power, he would show more than 150 exhibitions in his galleries.

Between the two world wars, Berlin's Tiergarten district was an area where the so-called "fine public" could stroll from one gallery to the next. Alfred Flechtheim had been holding exhibitions in his gallery on Lützowufer in the German capital since 1921. In almost breathless succession, he hosted vernissages of both French and German artists, including the painter and Bauhaus teacher Paul Klee from 1928 onwards. The prominent Klee had been marketing his paintings himself for some time and turned down Flechtheim's offer of a general agency. Nevertheless, the successful painter and the no less successful gallery owner agreed on joint exhibitions, which were billed on a commission basis - a new contract model at the time.

While still in Düsseldorf, Alfred Flechtheim had also begun to work as a publisher, for example of the "Düsseldorfer Kataloge". From January 1921, he was editor of the magazine "Querschnitt", which continued to appear even after he moved to Berlin. The type of reporting on art, sport and dance was occasionally characterized by critics as a "snobbish gesture". Nevertheless, the "Querschnitt" represented the spirit and climate of the Weimar period and was comparable to that of the "Weltbühne", whose most prominent author was Kurt Tucholsky. After the first six issues, Flechtheim wrote: "Insistent requests from understanding readers of the Querschnitt have prompted us to continue publishing it; we are reluctant to do so because it costs us time and money. It will appear irregularly and only when there is something to say." But there was always something to say. Flechtheim's temporary turn to the still relatively new art movement of photography was also unusual for the time, as he exhibited works by the Berlin fashion photographer Frieda Riess.

The business relationship with Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, the art dealer he had met in 1907 at the Café du Dôme in Paris, enabled Flechtheim to present the French avant-garde in Germany, but also German modernism in France. In 1928, the solo exhibition of works by Fernand Léger became an outstanding Berlin art event with positive reviews in the national feuilletons. For Alfred Flechtheim, however, this exhibition of the French Cubist's work also represented the zenith of his career. With the onset of the global economic crisis in 1929 and the banking crisis two years later, Flechtheim's star began to sink. Today, art historians assume that his company was almost insolvent at the beginning of the Nazi regime. One indication of this is the demonstrable fact that Paul Klee waived outstanding payments, probably in order to avert the bankruptcy of the Flechtheim Gallery after all.

For several years, the couple Alfred and Betty Flechtheim kept their main residence in Düsseldorf. However, in view of Berlin's increasing importance, not only for the artistic avant-garde, but also in terms of social life in the German capital, the couple finally moved to an upper-class apartment in Bleibtreustraße in Charlottenburg, not far from Kurfürstendamm, in 1923. The prestigious residence was now regularly the venue for legendary evening invitations. The party to celebrate Flechtheim's 50th birthday was a first-class social event (not only) for the Berlin art scene. It took place on the night of March 31 to April 1, 1928, not in Bleibtreustraße, but at the Grandhotel Kaiserhof. Friends, artists and collectors had congratulated him with poems and drawings and published their congratulations in a commemorative publication, including Ernest Hemingway, Jean Cocteau, André Gide and Pablo Picasso. The evening's very diverse guest list ranged from the actress Tilla Durieux and the poet Gottfried Benn to the publisher Hermann Ullstein and the boxer Max Schmeling. It was one of the last major receptions that Alfred Flechtheim gave in Berlin. 

In the following year, massive financial problems set in and he was soon heavily in debt. When the Nazis came to power on January 30, 1933, anti-Semitic attacks on his person increased in the press. The works of art he exhibited were described by Nazi art functionaries as "impudent Jewish-Nazi defilement of the German people's soul". In March 1933, Alfred Flechtheim organized an auction, the proceeds of which he intended to use to pay off his creditors. However, the auction was so severely disrupted by SA thugs that it had to be aborted, which led to Flechtheim's physical collapse. The result was the dissolution of Alfred Flechtheim GmbH and ultimately the emigration of its owner. It was a blessing that Flechtheim's parents-in-law had insisted on the separation of property after the couple's honeymoon. The assets of Flechtheim's wife Bertha (called Betty) could not be touched for the liquidation. At the beginning of October 1933, Alfred Flechtheim left Berlin without his wife and initially looked for new fields of activity in Switzerland, Paris and finally London.

During his time in London from the fall of 1933 until his death on March 9, 1937, Alfred Flechtheim apparently lived exclusively in hotels. He initially stayed at the Burlington Hotel, but the correspondence available to his biographer Ottfried Dascher also lists the Garlands Hotel, the Regent Palace Hotel and the Cumberland Hotel as his addresses during those three and a half years.

Alfred Flechtheim's plans to go to the USA for the French art dealer Paul Rosenberg had come to nothing, so in December 1933 he accepted Fred H. Mayor's offer to work for his London gallery. Flechtheim was to contribute his experience and, in particular, his French connections to the business. The following year, he was Mayor's representative for Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, his friend from the Café du Dôme in Paris. In order to open up the British market for the French Cubists and German Modernism, Flechtheim now commuted several times between London and Paris. He exhibited their works at the Mayor Gallery - with moderate success. By 1936, he had also managed to enter and leave Germany several times without being bothered. This may have been possible because he had applied for the status of a German abroad and was therefore considered a useful source of foreign currency for the Reich. However, a permanent stay abroad would have threatened him with expatriation, which is why he applied for French citizenship at the same time. In the hope of speeding up the naturalization process, he gave the French state the painting "La Noce" by Fernand Léger, which now hangs in the Centre Pompidou. 

Betty Flechtheim had remained in Berlin so as not to risk the significant real estate and capital assets belonging to her and her sisters in the event of emigration due to the associated Reich flight tax. On the occasion of their silver wedding anniversary in 1935, Betty and Alfred Flechtheim took a trip to Italy together, but divorced the following year. According to the Flechtheims, it was a temporary divorce. They feared that Alfred Flechtheim, whose passport was only valid until November 1937, could be expatriated by the German authorities. It was possible that the Nazis would force Betty to pay the Reich flight tax on her husband's behalf, despite the agreement on the separation of property. 

At the turn of 1936/37, Alfred Flechtheim was admitted to a London accident hospital after a fall. There he injured himself on a rusty nail on his hospital bed and contracted blood poisoning. By the end of February, his condition had deteriorated dramatically, prompting his wife Betty to travel to London. Flechtheim's infected leg was amputated, but the operation could not save him. Alfred Flechtheim died on March 9, 1937 in the presence of his wife at St. Pancrats Hospital in London. Two days later, his ashes were buried in Golders Green Cemetery in London. The eulogy was held by Lord Ivor Churchill, an art collector who was friends with Alfred Flechtheim beyond their business relationship. Bertha Flechtheim had returned to Berlin and was unable to emigrate at a later date. On the evening of November 13, 1941, before her announced deportation, she took an overdose of the sleeping pill Veronal. Two days later, Betty Flechtheim died in the Jewish Hospital. The Flechtheim couple's art collection probably comprised 60 to 70 paintings at this time. It is not known which of these paintings were still hanging in Betty Flechtheim's apartment when the Gestapo sealed it up. Flechtheim's business records in the Mayor Gallery were destroyed by the "London Blitz" flown by the German Luftwaffe in September 1940, Royal Air Force bombs destroyed the Düsseldorf gallery in 1943 and no business records have survived from the Berlin gallery. No artist or customer card indexes have survived, nor have any entry, exit or stock books.