Max Liebermann

On July 21, 1847, the industrialist Louis Liebermann published an advertisement in Berlin in which he proudly announced: "Early at eight o'clock in the morning, my dear wife Philippine gave birth to a healthy baby boy". The day before, little Max had been born as the second son into the wealthy Jewish merchant family Liebermann. Three days later, the "Law on the Circumstances of the Jews" comes into force, which Jewish people in Prussia granted almost the same rights as non-Jewish Prussians.  

Max Liebermann's grandfather Josef Liebermann had been a textile entrepreneur and was the first in Prussia to develop a machine for the industrial production of cotton fabrics, enabling him to break the English monopoly. In this way, he had amassed a significant family fortune and founded an industrial dynasty, the management of which he eventually passed on to his sons Louis and Benjamin Liebermann. The historian Chana Schütz writes in a short biography: "Max Liebermann was equally proud of what his grandfather Joseph Liebermann and his father's generation had achieved as entrepreneurs in Prussia. Although he chose a different career path as an artist than that of a merchant, he always remained part of this Jewish bourgeois tradition, which was particularly at home in Berlin (Schütz, p. 8). Elsewhere, the biographer quotes Max Liebermann, "who called himself a 'dyed-in-the-wool Jew'", who "incidentally felt himself to be German". (Schütz, p. 11) Liebermann not only did not deny his Jewishness, but "had been proud throughout his life to belong to a respected Berlin Jewish family". (Schütz, p. 13) However, Liebermann is not known to have been significantly involved in the Berlin Jewish community. In contrast to his family, about whom his biographer Chana Schütz writes: "For several years, family members were represented on the board of the community and supported Jewish welfare organizations. Conversion to Christianity and baptism were never an option for any of them." (Schütz, p. 15) 

When Louis Liebermann announced the birth of his son Max, the family still lived at Burgstraße 29, not far from the old Hercules Bridge. Max Liebermann had five siblings, including his older brother Georg, who - like his grandfather and father before him - became a successful entrepreneur. Over the course of his life, Georg Liebermann wore a Art and Antiques Collection together. After his death, this was auctioned off at the Rudolph Lepke auction house in May 1927, including several oil paintings by his brother Max. The younger brother Felix made a name for himself as a historian and was awarded honorary doctorates by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.  

Max Liebermann was not yet going to school when the family moved to Behrenstraße moved to that inconspicuous street that ran parallel to the glamorous boulevard Unter den Linden. Today, the Komische Oper is located here. Even then, the history of this street knew many prominent names as residents: the mathematician Leonhard Euler, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Heinrich Heine and others. However, industrialist Louis Liebermann's family of seven only lived here for a short time before moving about 800 meters away to a prestigious city palace right next to the Brandenburg Gate. Max Liebermann was ten years old at the time. 

Max Liebermann's parents were keen to provide their sons with an excellent school education. To this end, Louis Liebermann chose the Friedrichwerdersche Gymnasium in Kurstraße - on the site where the Federal Foreign Office is located today. Founded in 1691, the school was considered a prestigious educational institution by Berlin's upper middle classes. Otto von Bismarck's sons were also educated here. Even though Max Liebermann later recalled being a bad pupil, this is by no means consistent with biographical research. How else could it be explained that he came fourth in his year in the Abitur examinations? Despite this, he was often teased as a dreamer by his classmates during his school years. But he was also given the feeling at home that he was not particularly intelligent. This was mainly due to the fact that his older, more "sensible" brother Georg was held up to him as a role model. 

At the age of 15, he attended a political event at which the socialist Ferdinand Lassalle gave one of his most passionate speeches. His ideas fascinated the millionaire's son. When asked about his political views, Max Liebermann would always make the same statement throughout his life: "As I was born in 1847, it is not surprising that my political and social Views were and remain those of a forty-eight." 

In 1866, Max Liebermann graduated from high school. Although he enrolled at the Friedrich Wilhelm University (now Humboldt University) to study chemistry, he never intended to finish his studies, as he occasionally said later. The reason why the young Max Liebermann enrolled at the Berlin University's Department of Chemistry, of all places, in the face of this inner conflict is possibly due to the fact that his cousin Carl Liebermann had also opted for this subject some time previously. The choice of subject was initially intended to reassure his father and successful industrialist Louis Liebermann that his son would pursue 'serious' studies. Max Liebermann took drawing lessons from Eduard Holbein as a grammar school pupil, which was reasonably encouraged by his parents at the time. However, he did not receive any recognition for this. On the contrary! When the 13-year-old wanted to publish his first works, his father forbade him to use Liebermann's name. Now, as a chemistry student, the twenty-year-old took lessons from Carl Steffeck, who had made a name for himself as a painter of horses. The young Max Liebermann devoted himself far more to painterly studies than to scientific ones and the remained was not without consequences: on 22. On January 22, 1868, he was arrested by the University of Berlin for "Studienunfleiß" exmatriculated. As expected, this led to a fierce conflict with the father. However, after the son vehemently insisted on his actual inclination to pursue an artistic career, his parents finally gave in and allowed him to attend the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Art in Weimar. 

During his time as a student at the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Art in Weimar, which lasted intermittently from 1868 to 1873, Max Liebermann rented an apartment or studio at four different addresses. Initially, the art student lived at Frauenplan 8. The building directly opposite the Goethehaus was destroyed in an air raid in 1945. Another residential building in the Amalienstrasse was demolished in the 1980s. Only the house at what is now Humboldtstraße 18 still exists and the "Prellerhaus", a studio house built by the landscape painter Louis Preller in 1870/71. Today it is located on the campus of the Bauhaus University. 

An important teacher of Max Liebermann at that time was the Belgian history painter Ferdinand Pauwels. During a visit to the Fridericianum in Kassel, his teacher introduced him to the painter Rembrandt, which had a lasting influence on the young Liebermann's style. He studied genre painting with Ludwig Knaus, a representative of the Düsseldorf school of painting, and also with the naturalistic Hungarian painter Mihály Munkácsy. In particular, his painting "The Scharpiezupferinnen" his interest because of the simple everyday scene that served as a model for the picture. It is undisputed that this is where the idea for Max Liebermann's first major painting originated: "The Goose pluckers". When he saw the unfinished painting, his teacher Pauwels dismissed him with the remark that he could teach him nothing more. In 1872, Liebermann took part in the Hamburg art exhibition with the painting and caused a veritable scandal. It was not to remain the only one in his career. Although critics praised his skillful painting style, the art critic Ludwig Pietsch, for example, was outraged on November 5, 1872 in the Vossische Zeitung about the "distorted and ruined human images" shown in the painting (quoted from Schütz, p. 18). Max Liebermann's image as a "painter of ugliness was born. The painting was also shown in Berlin in the same year. The critical tenor of the reviews in the capital was similar. But that did not stop the railroad magnate Bethel Henry Strousberg from buying the painting. A few years later, after his bankruptcy, the painting ended up in the collection of Liebermann's father Louis, who bequeathed it to the Berlin National Gallery in 1894. 

Just outside the gates of Weimar, where he studied, Liebermann observed farmers harvesting turnips. It was the fall of 1873 when he finally decided to record these observations in oil. Karl Gussow, professor in Weimar, reminded his student of the Hamburg scandal the year before and advised him not to paint the picture. Liebermann promptly scratched the painting he had begun off the canvas again, which subsequently led to a creative crisis. 

Max Liebermann decided to turn his back on Germany and its art scene, which he considered backward and outdated at the time, for the time being. Financed by his brother Georg, he traveled to the Netherlands for the first time, where he was inspired by the light, people and landscape in Amsterdam and Scheveningen. 

In Paris, the epicenter of the art world at the time, Max Liebermann rented a studio on Montmartre in the Rue Larochefoucault. With the financial means provided by his brother Georg for his study trips, he was also able to move into an apartment on the Boulevard de Clichy in the neighborhood of Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and other painters. Time and again, however, Max Liebermann traveled to the countryside. From 1874 onwards, he increasingly devoted himself to the life and work of ordinary people in his paintings. In Barbizon, a village near the forest of Fontainebleau, he followed in the footsteps of the artists of the "Barbizon School", who were of great importance for the development of Impressionism. Max Liebermann was more interested in the methods of the artists gathered here than in their motifs. During this stay, he remembered the study he had made in Weimer, "Workers in a Turnip Field". He found a similar subject in Barbizon and began work on the painting "Potato Harvest in Barbizon". However, he evidently did not trust the motif at this point, as he only completed the painting years later, when he had long since become an established painter. In 1875, Liebermann spent three months in Zandvoort in the Netherlands. In Haarlem he extensively copied portraits of Frans Hals from the 17th century. Liebermann's study of the latter's method of sweeping, undetailed application of paint would subsequently influence his work at least as much as the French Impressionists. From that summer until the outbreak of the First World War, Liebermann would regularly spend several weeks studying in the Netherlands. He would find his motifs in the lives of ordinary people, such as for the painting "Sewing Girls in Huyzen". He himself called it the "poetry of the simple life". Contact with Dutch painter colleagues such as Jozef Israëls, the Jacob brothers, Matthijes Maris and Anton Mauve had a formative influence on Max Liebermann's painting. He would later recall: "Around this time I began to paint pictures in front of nature, or at least to start painting in front of nature, a Principle to which I have remained faithful until now" (Schütz, p. 27). 

On his return to Paris, he temporarily fell into a deep depression. This was probably triggered by the psychological burden of having to account to his parents for what he had achieved so far. A creative and life balance that could not be satisfactory even before his own judgment at this time. As a result, he produced only a few paintings during this phase of his life. He did take part in the Paris Salon several times, but without any notable success. Liebermann was rejected by the art scene of the French metropolis for chauvinistic reasons. His paintings were not "French" enough. Liebermann now made the final decision to leave Paris. In 1878, he traveled to Italy for the first time. In Venice, he wanted to see works by the great Renaissance artists. Liebermann hoped to draw inspiration from the paintings of Vittore Carpaccio and Gentile Bellini. In the lagoon city, he met a group of Munich painters around Franz von Lenbach, with whom he spent a few weeks. He eventually followed them to the Bavarian capital, which had become the German center of naturalistic painting with the "Munich School". 

The term "Munich School" refers to a style of painting that emerged at the end of the 19th century in the environment of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and quickly gained great importance in academic painting. In December 1878, Liebermann took on a motif that Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn and Adolph Menzel had already attempted before him: "The twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple". Max Liebermann had evidently had the idea for this painting for quite some time, as he had already made initial sketches in the synagogues of Amsterdam and Venice. Now the finished work caused one of the biggest scandals in the German art world of the 19th century. Although the infant Jesus at the center of the painting radiated a religious claim, he was depicted as poor, barefoot and wrapped in a short cloak. In addition, the reddish hair with the beginnings of temple curls were a reminder of the boy's Jewish origins. And Liebermann had dispensed with euphemistic costumes of the high priesthood and impressive decorations in the temple. He certainly did not depict the scene of a divine miracle; instead, he captured an event that is taken for granted from a Jewish perspective: the bar mitzvah of a carpenter boy.  

When the painting was exhibited at the Munich Academy Exhibition in 1879, it immediately caused a sensation far beyond the borders of the Bavarian capital. The later Prince Regent Luitpold sided with Liebermann and important artists such as Friedrich August von Kaulbach and Wilhelm Leibl also took sides with his work. However, the newspaper editors, who claimed to represent the voice of the people, were less than impressed. The Augsburger Allgemeine wrote, for example, that the artist had painted "the ugliest, nosiest Jewish boy imaginable" (quoted from Wikipedia, "Max Liebermann"). Max Liebermann was publicly vilified as a "desecrator of the Lord". The conservative Member of Parliament and priest Balthasar von Daller denied the artist the right to depict Jesus in this way in the Bavarian Parliament because of his Jewish faith. In Berlin, the court preacher Adolf Stoecker the debate about the painting in just in an offensive manner. Later, he is even said to have claimed that he had become anti-Semitic as a result of this picture. Liebermann painted over the picture in response to the criticism. He pulled the put on little Jesus sandals, lengthened his robe and painted over his face and hairstyle. 30 years later, on July 5, 1911, Max Liebermann confessed in a letter to Alfred Lichtwark, the director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle, that he had resolved at the time in Munich "never to paint a biblical subject again". And he therefore. 

In May 1884, Max Liebermann became engaged to Martha Marckwald. She was almost ten years younger than him to the day. Martha also came from an upper middle-class family. Her father was the wool merchant Heinrich Marckwald and her mother Amalie, née Pringsheim, daughter of an Opole landowner. After Max Liebermann's return from Munich, he and Martha exchanged vows under the ritual Jewish wedding canopy in September 1884. The couple's honeymoon first took them to Scheveningen in the Netherlands. There they met Jozef Israëls, an important representative of the Hague School, who joined them as a traveling companion to show them his Dutch homeland. They traveled to Laren, Delden and Haarlem, where Max Liebermann made drawing studies that can later be seen in other motifs in his works. 

On the northern edge of the Tiergarten - In den Zelten 11 - the young couple moved into their first apartment. At this time, Max Liebermann was accepted as a member of the "Verein Berliner Künstler". This was a professional organization that had been founded in November 1814 on the initiative of Johann Gottfried Schadow, the creator of the Quadriga on the Brandenburg Gate. The historical painter Anton von Werner, who would soon become Liebermann's opponent in his rejection of modern art, also voted in favor of Liebermann's inclusion.  

On August 19, 1885, their daughter Marianne Henriette Käthe is born. She would remain the Liebermanns' only child. In the months following Käthe's birth, Max Liebermann hardly painted and devoted himself entirely to his role as a father. When his mother's health deteriorated shortly afterwards, Max Liebermann moved into his parents' palace at Pariser Platz 7 with his small family. He followed a regular daily routine with remarkable self-discipline. He left the house at 10 am sharp, went to work in his studio at Königin-Augusta-Straße 19 and returned at 6 pm. After his mother died in 1892, Max Liebermann planned to set up a large artist's studio in the city palace at the Brandenburg Gate. He commissioned the Berlin architect Hans Grisebach to provide the designs. The emperor would have built the Liebermannsche would have preferred to have the city palace demolished so that the Brandenburg Gate would stand completely free. At least the monarch had expressed such plans on several occasions. It took several lawsuits before the artist Max Liebermann was allowed to install a glass structure in the attic of his house. This was realized at the turn of the year 1898/1899. This studio contained some outstanding works of modern art, above all by the French Impressionists. There are 17 paintings alone (mainly still lifes) by Eduoard Manet hung there, as well as works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, landscapes by Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas and Vincent van Gogh. There are also works by artist friends such as Wilhelm Leibl and Jozef Israëls. 

Max Liebermann commented on living and working in his childhood home as follows: "I live in my parents' house, where I spent my childhood, and it would be difficult for me if I were to live somewhere else." (Insel-Almanach 1952, p. 82). From his window, he was able to watch the SA torchlight procession on January 30, 1933. What has been handed down is his statement, made in the Berliner Zungenschlag: "Ick can jar nich soville eat, like ick want to puke!" 

By studying the French Impressionists from 1880 onwards, Max Liebermann discovered a lightness of colour and a lively application of paint that would shape his work from then on. Liebermann's work now stood for the transition from 19th century art to classical modernism. During this period of transition, a movement emerged on the scene of visual artists in Prussia and soon beyond, which saw itself as the antithesis of the academic art world that had dominated until then. What united them was less a common style than a protest against the art policy of the Prussian Academy of Art and the state. Above all, the jury decisions at the established exhibitions were criticized. For example, the landscape painting "Der Grunewaldsee" by the painter Walter Leistikow was rejected by the jury at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition in 1898. For many, this was definitive proof that "modern art" could expect no support from the existing organizations.  

On May 2, 1898, a group of 65 artists formed the Berlin Secession, which was joined by numerous artists from the Munich scene, some of whom had relocated to the imperial capital. The artists united in the Berlin Secession vehemently demanded more say and their own exhibition halls. In the newly founded artists' association were many prominent names, for example Ernst Barlach, Lovis Corinth and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, but also - which was unusual at the time - some female artists such as Käthe Kollwitz, Dora Hitz and Sabine Lepsius. Contrary to the proper name the group was not based in Berlin, but in the neighboring, then still independent city of Charlottenburg. On the corner of Kantstrasse and Fasanenstrasse, the "Haus Grisebach", which the architect of Liebermann's studio had designed for the Secession, opened on May 19, 1899 with an exhibition of 330 paintings and prints as well as 50 sculptures. Of the 187 exhibitors, 46 lived in Berlin and the surrounding area and 57 in Munich. Foreign contributions were still missing, but were to follow in a later edition of the exhibition. The audience of 2000 invited guests was impressed, the exhibits were perceived as overcoming the prevailing 'mediocrity'. Max Liebermann, who had already been elected president of the Berlin Secession when it was founded the previous year, outlined the principles of the artists' association in his opening speech: "In the selection of works, only talent, in whatever direction it revealed itself, was decisive. [...] For us, there is no single direction in art, but every work that embodies a sincere feeling appears to us as a work of art, regardless of which direction it may belong to. Only the commercial routine and the superficial machinations of those who see only the milking cow in art remain fundamentally excluded." (Püschel, Gesammelte Schriften, p. 256). The departure from the established Berlin art scene was only possible, however, because private galleries and art dealers had already gained a foothold since the 1880s, offering artists and increasingly also women artists a forum to present their works according to different selection criteria. The Berlin Secession quickly developed into a renowned platform for contemporary art from all over Europe. 

In the years around the turn of the century, wealthy Berliners discovered the western shore of Lake Wannsee as the ideal location for their luxurious weekend residences. In 1909, the shore was largely built on. Max Liebermann was able to acquire what was literally the last plot of land with an area of 7,000 square meters and had a country house with a studio built on it. He had long been considered an established artist in Berlin society and was commissioned to paint portraits, including by the "coal baron" and patron of the arts Eduard Arnhold, whose villa stood just a few hundred meters away. 

Despite, but perhaps also because of his vehement commitment to modernism, Max Liebermann received public recognition towards the end of the 19th century that he had long been denied. It was evidently no longer possible to avoid acknowledging that he had played a decisive role in breaking new ground in art and that Berlin had thus become a showcase for modernism. On the occasion of his 50th birthday in 1897, 31 of his paintings were shown at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition and he was awarded the Great Golden Medal. He was appointed professor at the Berlin Royal Academy, albeit without a teaching position, and the following year he became a member of the Academy of Arts. For Max Liebermann, all these honors were also an unspoken triumph over Anton von Werner, the arch-conservative director of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. In the meantime, however, hostility came from completely different quarters, such as the Werdandi-Bund, founded in 1907. This nationalist alliance, which named itself after the Nordic goddess of fate, described Berlin Impressionism as a "threat to German art". From a historical distance, the first signs of a nationalist understanding of art can already be seen here, which a quarter of a century later would give rise to a term such as "degenerate art". However, the members of the Berlin Secession were still at the height of their influence on European art. Although a total of 16 artists (but no female artists) left the group in 1902, the Berlin Secession now had 97 full members and 119 corresponding members, including Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and Henri Matisse. 

Since 1910, the Liebermanns spent the summer months in their villa on Wannsee. Max Liebermann captured his garden in over 200 oil paintings, pastels and drawings, making this retreat the main motif of his late work. Today, the Liebermann Villa houses a museum, temporary exhibitions and a café and, like the garden, is open to the public. 

In 1898, Max Liebermann finally became a full member of the Prussian Academy of Arts. On his 70th birthday in 1917, this institution dedicated an extensive retrospective to its member. Three years later, on June 2, 1920, he was unanimously elected its president. When he co-founded the Berlin Secession, Max Liebermann was still opposed to the Academy of Arts. With their innovative exhibitions, the artists of the Berlin Secession had significantly influenced the development of modernism in Germany, while the Prussian Academy of Arts was seen as rigid and backward-looking in the German Empire. When the 73-year-old Max Liebermann became President of the Academy, he immediately turned his attention to reforming the spring and fall exhibitions. From then on, their exhibitions were open to both Academy members and independent entrants. With this system, he ensured that all artistic movements and emerging talents were represented, although abstract, constructivist and Dadaist works remained de facto excluded.  

President Max Liebermann was now also involved in numerous other topics. For example, he was involved with the Berlin art school reform in 1924 as well as the founding of the Section for Poetry two years later. However, for a long time he was unable to push through one of his key concerns, namely to rejuvenate the section for the visual arts by electing new artists. Despite his intensive efforts, conservative and politically reactionary members prevented the admission of modern artists for years. In order to end the stagnation in the membership elections, Liebermann and his allies resorted to a means of necessity: the Social Democratic Minister of Culture Adolf Grimme dissolved the Academy Council in August 1931, appointed thirteen renowned artists previously selected by the Academy as members and issued new statutes. This changed the balance of power within the Academy and led to sometimes vehement protests from conservative members. Worn down by such quarrels, Liebermann renounced a further candidacy at the end of 1931/32. On June 16, 1932, he was appointed Honorary President. Five years earlier, the city of Berlin had already made him an honorary citizen on the occasion of his 80th birthday. All this would never have been granted to him, the Jew, during the imperial era. 

On January 30, 1933, 85-year-old Max Liebermann had to witness the torchlight procession on the balcony of his house next to the Brandenburg Gate, with which the SA celebrated the takeover of power by their "Führer". To forestall the exclusion, Max Liebermann to the Academy's Presidium on February 7 and the following day publicly announced his resignation from the Academy, of which he had been a member for 35 years. Hardly any of his former companions kept in touch with him. Only Käthe Kollwitz still sought contact with him. Her attempt to visit him one last time in 1934 was unsuccessful. Noticeably dejected, she wrote: "Was with him. He is ill and cannot be spoken to" (Schmalhausen, p. 82) 

Max Liebermann died on February 8, 1935 at around 7 p.m. in his house on Pariser Platz diagonally opposite the Prussian Academy of Arts. Throughout his life, he was subjected to numerous personal attacks, often not even about his art. Liebermann once summed up the reason for this hostility as follows: "I also offered three targets: firstly, I was Jewish, secondly, I was rich and thirdly, I had talent. One of these would have been enough." (Schütz, p. 52) 

The Hebrew daily newspaper Haaretz in Tel Aviv wrote in an obituary in the February 15, 1935 edition: "What was accomplished here is more than the passing of a man - it is the conclusion of an era, the end of a rich, irretrievably departed time." No official representative of the city, of which he was still formally an honorary citizen, attended the funeral on February 11, 1935 at the Jewish cemetery on Schönhauser Allee. Nor did any of those from the art world and society who had sought Liebermann's company in the past. Under the observation of the Gestapo, only a few upright people gathered around the simple coffin covered with white lilac, including Käthe Kollwitz, the artist couple Hans and Mathilde Purrmann, the painters Konrad von Kardorff and Otto Nagel, the surgeon Ferdinand Sauerbruch and the sculptor Georg Kolbe. 

Shortly after the November pogrom of November 9/10, 1938, Liebermann's daughter Käthe and granddaughter Maria followed her husband, the Social Democrat Kurt Riezler, to emigrate to New York. Biographers differ on the behavior of Max Liebermann's widow Martha in the face of the anti-Semitic threat posed by National Socialism. The majority believe there is evidence that she refused to "abandon" her husband's grave despite the urging of friends and relatives (Schütz, p. 59). However, there are also indications that she simply could not afford the "Reich flight tax" and other levies that had to be paid before emigrating, given the robbery of her assets by the Nazi authorities. And by the time acquaintances in Sweden and the USA had managed to raise the money through fundraising, it would have been too late. The "Final Solution to the European Jewish Question" had already been decided just a few hundred meters from the Liebermann villa.  

However, biographers agree on one thing: on March 4, 1943, Martha Liebermann was informed that her deportation to the Theresienstadt concentration camp was imminent. She saw no way out and swallowed an overdose of sleeping pills the following night Veronal. The following morning, the officer who was supposed to pick her up for deportation found her unconscious. Martha Liebermann was admitted to the Jewish Hospital in Berlin, where she died on March 10, 1943.