Herbert Tannenbaum

Herbert Tannenbaum was born in Mannheim on March 7, 1892, the first son of Benni Tannenbaum (1860-1916) and Emma Levi (1871-1922). He had a younger brother Otto and a sister who died shortly after their birth in 1893. Tannenbaum remained connected to Mannheim throughout his life, celebrating his bar mitzvah here in 1905 and attending the humanistic Karl-Friedrich-Gymnasium from 1901 to 1910. In addition to education, it was above all music and art that shaped his life. These continued to reverberate into adulthood: Tannenbaum played the viola, violin and flute. After passing his Abitur, Tannenbaum enrolled at the University of Heidelberg's law school for the winter semester of 1910/11 at his father's request. Despite his legal career, he continued to be active in the artistic field, especially after the founding of the "Freie Bund zur Einbürgerung der bildenden Kunst in Mannheim" (Free Association for the Naturalization of the Fine Arts in Mannheim) in April 1911. This was also the starting point for his reviewing activities for the Social Democratic newspaper "Volksstimme". At the same time, during his studies, Tannenbaum also discovered his interest in the then progressive technology of cinematography and cinema as an artistic medium. Thus Herbert Tannenbaum wrote what is considered a pioneering work under the title "Cinema and Theater." 

The art and film enthusiastic law student Herbert Tannenbaum quickly found his way into the Mannheim art scene through his lively artistic interest. His studies were accompanied by his part-time work as a volunteer at the Kunsthalle and the "Academy for Everyone" of the art historian and director of the Kunsthalle in Mannheim Fritz Wichtert (1878-1951).  He thus once again combined his artistic interest with his professional career and even set a new professional course. After successfully completing his doctorate, Tannenbaum returned to Mannheim, where he continued to lecture, write articles and reviews until 1914. At the same time, he was intensively involved with the "Mannheim Movement" in the Berlin "art world". These years were to be formative for Tannenbaum, both professionally and privately. It was here that he met his later best friends: the then director's assistant Willy F. Storck, as well as the Mannheim architect Hermann Esch. From March 1914 onwards, Tannenbaum's interest in film became so strong that he moved to Berlin to join the film factory "Projektions-AG Union", the first film company in Germany. The first film he released as a director, "Cognak Fünfstern," dates from this time.

The outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 represented a deep break in young Herbert Tannenbaum's plans for the future. As a member of the bourgeoisie initially caught up in the supposedly prevailing enthusiasm for war in August 1914, he was drafted into the replacement battalion of the Fusilier Regiment Prince Karl Anton von Hohenzollern No. 40 in Rastatt on November 18, 1914. As early as March 1915, Tannenbaum was deployed as an infantryman on the Western Front. Promoted again and again as a soldier and deployed on the most important battlefields of the Western Front (1915/16 in Champagne, 1916 on the Somme, 1916/17 at Verdun), he was wounded twice and received the Iron Cross II Class and also the Wounded Badge in Black in 1918. According to the literary scholar Joachim W. Storck about Tannenbaum, his activities in the First World War were of particular importance "because they testify to the not at all untypical patriotic commitment of a Jew, against the background of which the later developments and behavior in this country reveal their particular baseness even more clearly and, moreover, reveal the dubiousness and duplicity of everything "patriotic" in the German sense to this day."

Returning to Mannheim from his wartime deployment, Herbert Tannenbaum was already involved again in 1918 with numerous lectures, such as "Die Kunst im Hause" (Art in the Home) or "Vom Wesen des Kinos" (The Essence of Cinema) at the Mannheim Kunsthalle. At the same time, the revolutionary events of November 1918 and the associated mood of upheaval in the country also shaped Tannenbaum's social commitment. The "Kunsthaus" initiated by Herbert Tannenbaum and opened in the 1920s, from 1921 located in Q7, 17a at the corner of Friedrichsring/"Freßgasse" became, according to a passage from an obituary for Herbert Tannenbaum from 1958, "having an effect far beyond Mannheim, a byword for uncompromising quality and artistic daring." On the other hand, the interwar period was marked by many changes for Tannenbaum, both professional and private. Already before the First World War, Tannenbaum met the non-Jewish sisters Maria Therese and the older Juliana Maria Nosbisch. The latter married Herbert Tannenbaum in December 1921. Juliana Maria was always a support and advisor to him, both privately and professionally, especially in the post-war years, which were often marked by uncertainty for Tannenbaum, who had just set up his own business as an art dealer. Nevertheless, the Tannenbaums managed to put their private life on a firmer foundation. 

The seizure of power by the National Socialists in January 1933 did not initially have any far-reaching consequences for the Tannenbaums, as Herbert Tannenbaum had still received the "Cross of Honor for Frontline Fighters" in 1934 for his service in World War I.
. Because of his activity as an art dealer, however, the new rulers became increasingly concerned from the end of 1936 that he would no longer be able to continue his work at the "Kunsthaus" without danger. In the eyes of the National Socialists, Herbert Tannenbaum was an enemy in two respects: as a Jew and as one who promoted art degraded by the National Socialists as "degenerate," he belonged to two groups persecuted by the National Socialist regime. For example, Marc Chagall's famous "Rabbi," which is now on display in the Basel Art Museum, fell victim to the Nazis' art theft. Under the auspices of the Nuremberg Race Laws, according to which the marriage between the Tannenbaums was considered a "mixed marriage", and after the burning of books, which rapidly diminished the book collection of the "Kunsthaus", it became increasingly dangerous for Herbert Tannenbaum to exhibit modern art in his "Kunsthaus". The Tannenbaums prepared their emigration to Holland. This included the transfer of the "Kunsthaus", as well as the farmhouse in Heppenschwand to the good friend Hermann Esch, who at the same time also became a helper in the transport of important paintings for the new professional start with a gallery in the Netherlands.

Juliana Maria Tannenbaum and daughter Beate left Mannheim in April 1937, Herbert Tannenbaum followed them a month later to the family's first apartment at Leonardostraat 6 in the south of Amsterdam. New friendships formed, especially since several modern German artists, including Max Beckmann, also found their exile in Amsterdam. With the November pogroms in 1938, however, anti-Jewish sentiment in the Netherlands grew ever stronger. Herbert Tannenbaum's attempts to obtain emigration permits from Amsterdam for relatives who had stayed behind in Germany were in vain. Tannenbaum's cousin Paula Straus and his younger brother Otto Tannenbaum (1898-1942) were murdered in Auschwitz in 1942. The Tannenbaum family tried to emigrate again, especially after the outbreak of World War II, but this proved impossible, especially after 1940. Only the status of the Tannenbaums' union, which the National Socialists called a "mixed marriage," and also the marriage of their daughter Beate to Gerhard Neumann, a young man persecuted by the National Socialists as a "Mischling of the first degree" and almost deported, were able to save the Tannenbaums from deportation and thus certain death time and again until the end of the war. However, with years of isolation, fear and danger. 

For the Tannenbaums, the plan to emigrate once again developed in the post-war period. Already on July 2, 1947, [Tannenbaum] "said goodbye for New York" to his famous portraitist Max Beckmann ("Herbert Tannenbaum on the way to New York"). On July 5, 1947, Maria and Herbert Tannenbaum emigrated to New York. Max Beckmann had previously mentioned in his diary entries repeated encounters with Tannenbaum both in Amsterdam and in New York. For example, he received "a visit from Tannenbaum, who was to reassure me about export matters and is himself going to America." In Rye, just north of New York, the Tannenbaum family settled, with daughter, son-in-law and their two daughters (now Newmann). Attached to their new home was a modern art gallery - the "Herbert Tannenbaum Gallery" - "a large well lit room hung with paintings by Van Gogh, Renoir, Degas, Utrillo, Paul Klee [...]" In 1949, another art gallery opened on 57th Street in New York. The newspaper "The Daily Item, Port Chester. N.Y." described him in 1950 as a "squarely built man with a ruddy complexion, heavy eyebrows and penetrating eyes." Tannenbaum found the American "equivalent" of his Heppenschwand in a small bungalow on a lake in the mountains of Mount Desert. In 1953, the Tannenbaum couple traveled back to their old home in Mannheim, a city scarred by the war and the persecution of its Jewish citizens. In 1957, Tannenbaum again took over the house in Heppenschwand, where he spent the following two summers, marked by a mild heart attack. On September 30, 1958, Herbert Tannenbaum died at Frankfurt Airport shortly before his departure back to the United States.