Sigrid Bauschinger. [The Cassirers. Entrepreneurs, art dealers, philosophers. Biography of a family]

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Sigrid Bauschinger
Die Cassirers. Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen. Biographie einer Familie
[The Cassirers. Entrepreneurs, art dealers, philosophers. Biography of a family]

Munich, C.H. Beck, 2015

Review by Francesco Mazzaferro

Fig. 1) The volume by Sigrid Bauschinger dedicated to the Cassirer family, published in 2015

In the blog “Letteratura artistica” we have often written about three members of the Cassirer family.

As to Else Cassirer (1873-1942), we reviewed the excellent anthology of letters from German and European artists of the nineteenth century, which she prepared in the early 1910s. The anthology was published by her husband Bruno in the imminence of the outbreak of the First World War. We devoted a detailed and systematic commentary in seven parts to her work also because, in our view, it testified to the existence, at least in part of the German art world and public opinion, of an internationalist and Europeanist orientation, which certainly did not want the Franco-German conflict and promoted the embrace between the two cultures.

We referred to her brother Paul Cassirer (1871-1926), merchant, collector and art publisher, as well as promoter together with his cousin Bruno of the Berlin Secession, in our reviews of the writings of Max Liebermann  (1847-1935), Max Klinger (1857-1920), Lovis Corinth (1858-1925), Arthur Kampf (1864-1950), Emil Nolde (1867-1956) and Arno Breker (1900-1991). For some of them Paul was a long-life friend, at least until 1911-1913, when, due to serious divergences within the Secession, several friendship relations  were put into question.

Else Cassirer married the cousin Bruno Cassirer (1872-1941), also an art publisher, collector and promoter of secessionist artists. We talked about Bruno in the reviews of the writings of Lovis Corinth, George Grosz (1893-1959) and Otto Griebel (1895-1972).

I have therefore read with great curiosity the "family biography" of the Cassirers, published in 2015 by the scholar of German literature and culture Sigrid Bauschinger (1934-). When I opened the volume, I wanted to deep dive into three questions. Who were the three Cassirers, and in particular how did they mark the German art literature of the early twentieth century? What role did they play in a Jewish family that had produced four generations of entrepreneurs, intellectuals and men of culture, first of all another cousin of Else, Paul and Bruno, i.e. the philosopher Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945)? And what was their role in German and European society (and in the art world) of those years?

It must immediately be said that, while I have learnt a lot about the Cassires, not all my questions have found complete answers and that much remains to be studied and researched in this field. In defence of the authoress it must be said that her goal was precisely that of a collective biography, or as we read in the title, a ‘Biographie einer Familie’ (a biography of the family). Therefore, she reconstructed a cultural milieu that goes far beyond the history of the three individuals in the world of Berlin art of the first half of the twentieth century. The history of the Cassirers, as narrated by Buschinger on the basis of traces discovered in the archives of half the world, included many generations and extended from Germany to England, the United States and even South Africa (the Nobel prize laureate for literature Nadine Mortimer (1913-2014) married a Cassirer there) after the arrival of Nazism had forced all family members to take refuge abroad. Furthermore, her research method is not that of an art historian, but of a historian of culture: given her education as a Germanist, Bauschinger found herself above all at ease when she was analysing the activities of Paul and Bruno as publishers of literature (prose and poetry). Therefore, reading her contribution was necessary, but is not sufficient to answer my questions.

Else Cassirer

Unfortunately, in the biography of the family edited by Sigrid Bauschinger, very little is read about Else Cassirer's contribution to art literature. Evidently, Else must have been a very shy and withdrawn person. None of the three chapters on the women in the family is dedicated to her. We do not read anything about the reasons which led her to compile the anthology Künstlerbriefe aus dem neunzehnten Jahrhundert (Letters of 19th Century Artists), a few years after the birth of her two daughters. There is no trace of her studies, including in the artistic field. The curator of the book, Sigrid Bauschinger, did not discuss the reasons and merits of the anthology and limited herself to mentioning that the work was republished numerous times (1913, 1919 and 1923, in slightly modified versions) [1].

 

Fig. 2) The anthology by Else Cassirer in the editions of 1913 and 1923

  

Obviously, Else's marriage with his cousin Bruno in 1897 is mentioned [2]; a year later Bruno and Paul opened, on the first floor of the house of Bruno and Else, an art house with the mission to spread Impressionism and Secession in the new capital of united Germany. About Else’s life, however, the authoress only returned to write when she went into exile with her husband, daughters and grandchildren in Oxford in 1938. Nothing is known of the forty years between the two dates, although we are aware of a series of events that surely must have left a mark in Else's life: her husband Bruno fell in love with Paul's first wife and the collapse of the partnership between the two cousins in 1901 was due precisely to this reason. Only four years after the marriage, Else, therefore, must have faced a scabrous episode concerning husband and brother [3]. The only other indication of an independent activity, in addition to the publication of the anthology of 1913, was that, starting from 1914, she dealt with the family foundation [4] created to help elderly and alone women [5].

Else died in exile in 1942, a year after her husband.

Paul Cassirer

Paul played a quite more prominent role in the family biography by Sigrid Bauschinger. In fact, he was, at the same time, a man with great qualities and serious flaws, as Max Liebermann would even state in the eulogy dedicated to him, breaking the rule that one should always speak well of a dead person. Among the qualities, there is certainly the fact of being a man with a vivid spirit of initiative and undoubted entrepreneurial skills. He occupied a central role in the world of culture in Berlin at the turn of the two centuries, although he never completed the course of legal studies in Munich; in the German capital he became the reference point not only for artists, but also for men of letters and theatre. Among the flaws, I would like to quote the lack of consistency, which led him - within a few years - first to be the privileged vehicle of economic-cultural relations between Berlin and Paris, then to support the German attack on France in 1914, becoming an active part in the propaganda of anti-French war and, finally, to proclaim himself at the end of the war convinced pacifist and communist. One aspect of his inconstant soul was the tormented sentimental life: if his first wife had perhaps a story with his cousin Bruno in 1901, he repaid her with protracted and continuous betrayals that led to divorce (as the court certified, because of the husband’s fault) in 1904. Then, in 1910, Paul married one of the most famous prose actresses of the time (Tilla Durieux), but he continued to live a serial libertine lifestyle; when even his second wife filed for divorce, Paul committed suicide in his lawyer's office. It was 1926.

Fig. 3) One of the eight volumes of the collection of works shown in the Cassirer Gallery, curated by Bernhard Echte and Walter Feilchenfeldt and published by the Swiss publisher Nimbus in 2011.

In the field of art, Paul was above all (but certainly not only) an important gallery owner. About two hundred exhibitions, exposing twenty thousand works, were organised in his galleries in Berlin (1898), Hamburg (1902) and Amsterdam (1923) [6]. Today that role is universally recognized, among others with the publication, in the last decade, of the complete illustrated catalogue in eight volumes of all the works exhibited by the Cassirer Gallery from 1905 until 1933, the year in which the gallery managed by the heirs was closed by the Nazis. This has occurred thanks to the Swiss publisher Nimbus, which benefited from the work of the art historian Bernhard Echte (1958-) and the gallery owner Walter Feilchenfeldt (1939-) [7].

Fig. 4) Another of the eight volumes by the publisher Nimbus displaying the artworks shown in the Cassirer Gallery. This volume was printed in 2011.

  

Paul was born in the German Breslau and the current Polish Wrocław, in the year of German unification under Prussia, and reached Berlin in the high school age. He was the scion of a family of industrialists who had been able to make the best use of the opportunities offered by a young and rampant economy in a newly-united country being speedily modernized. A listless student in Munich, he made however acquaintance there with the painters and writers with whom he would make his fortune in Berlin, first of all the German Impressionists Lovis Corinth and Max Slevogt (1868 - 1932) [8]. From Munich he moved with his first wife to Brussels, the cultural centre of Art Nouveau, where he made friends with the architect and designer Henry van de Velde (1863 - 1957), another future darling of Berlin's cultural life. From Brussels he began to frequent Paris, where he met the gallery owner Paul Durand-Ruel (1831-1922) in 1894 and discovered Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. At that time, after a new short break in Munich, he decided to convert himself from an indolent dandy to a brilliant art market operator in Berlin, being able to benefit from the economic resources of a very wealthy family.

Fig. 5) Another volume of the collection of works shown in the Cassirer Gallery dedicated to the exhibitions, published by Nimbus in 2016.

In those years Berlin had almost doubled its inhabitants in just over a decade. As Sigrid Bauschinger mentions, it hosted twenty-five railway stations, sixty theatres and one hundred newspapers [9]. Nevertheless, it was still a backward city in the cultural sphere, also due to the policy of the emperor Wilhelm, who entrusted the academy to the historical painter Anton von Werner (1843 - 1915) with the task of forging generations of artists who would celebrate the Prussian dynasties in an outmoded, conventional way. The Kaiser inaugurated a tradition (which would continue with Hitler) of men of power who not only dealt directly with art, but even theorized and imposed criteria of aesthetic taste. Just as Hitler would brand, decades after, every form of modernism as a degenerate art, William declared war against Impressionism (and all the art of the hated France, including Delacroix, Courbet and Daumier, who were also artists of clear Republican political orientation).

Fig. 6) Another volume from the collection of works shown in the Cassirer Gallery, edited by Bernhard Echte and Walter Feilchenfeldt and published by the Swiss publisher Nimbus in 2016.

In 1889 the Cassirer cousins, instead, inaugurated the Gallery in the Viktoriastrasse 35 in Berlin, just with the (successful) ambition to make Berlin a centre of interest for the new French art. The location was optimal: a road next to the sumptuous Tiergarten park in the city centre (as mentioned, this was part of the villa where Bruno and Else lived). The Cassirers openly supported the newly established Secession (of which Paul was secretary), which in Berlin was set up that year by Max Liebermann, Walter Leistikow (1865-1908) and August Gaul (1869-1921). The rooms of the Gallery were designed by the architect van de Velde. The exhibition policy of the Gallery was to combine German and foreign artists together [10]. It began with Liebermann, Edgar Degas (1834-1917) and Costantin Meunier (1831-1905). It continued with Édouard Manet (1832-1883), Claude Monet (1840-1926) and Giovanni Segantini (1858-1899), then with van Gogh and Alfred Kubin (1877-1959), and, again, with Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Corinth, Leistikow and Fritz Klimsch (1870-1960). Paul and Bruno chose artists of the two previous generations, mingling different tastes and inspirations (realism, taste for nature, cursed painting). The success of the two cousins was astonishing. In the early years, the shows of the Cassirer Gallery even followed one another at a weekly pace (later on, about every two months), always showing new artists. The paintings often came from Paris, thanks to Durand-Ruel, with whom Cassirer acquired, among other things, in 1910 the paintings owned by Auguste Pellerin (1852-1929), one of the key private collections in France.

Fig. 7) On the left: The essay by Max Liebermann on Degas. On the right: The essay by Alfred Lichtwark on Böcklin, entitled Seele und Kunstwerk (The soul and the work of art). Both texts were published in 1899.

In parallel to the Gallery, Bruno and Else established (also located in the villa) the publishing house, with a very clear aim to support the Secession: for example, in addition to various folders of drawings, they published an essay on Degas written by Liebermann. The two cousins also edited a monograph on Böcklin by Alfred Lichtwark (1852-1914), one of those progressive art historians who were active from within the museum system (he was the director of the Hamburg Kunsthalle and a great friend of Liebermann).

While documenting all what written above, Sigrid Bauschinger did not address some themes that emerge from the reading of the writings of the already mentioned German artists. Paul was at the same time owner of his own gallery and secretary (and later director and chairperson) of the Secession. The Secession was not just a congregation of artists: it had its exhibition spaces (in the elegant Charlottenburg district) and organized exhibitions to sell the members' paintings. The exhibitions organized in parallel by the Cassirers concerned the same authors (the French impressionists, the German anti-academic contemporaries), with the difference that the income of the Secession was divided between the members while those of the Cassirer Gallery went directly to Paul (and Bruno in the first years). There was therefore an evident conflict of interests, which was inevitably due to lead to endless disputes, first with Nolde in 1910, then with an increasingly numerous group of artists (including the fraternal friend Corinth) and, finally, in 1912, even with Liebermann himself, whose 'historic' position of president of the Secession Cassirer occupied in 2013. At that point Paul was really a monopolist of the art market in Berlin. This circumstance would lead to the decision of many artists to move to Düsseldorf, where Cassirer did not control exhibitions and trade. It is really a pity that the volume flies over all this. The recent conclusion of the publication of Max Liebermann's letters in eight volumes (thanks to Deutscher Wissenschafts Verlag) could help to understand what happened between this core of originally friendly personalities.

In 1901 the ways of the two cousins ​​had suddenly (forever) parted. It has already been said that, in the opinion of Sigrid Bauschinger, the real reason was neither trade- or taste-related nor had its roots in the mutual incompatibility of character with which the Cassirer family justified the incident for generations. It was a sentimental issue and, perhaps, a question of sex. The agreement for the division of the assets - formally signed and registered in the commercial registers of Berlin - was that Paul would continue the activity as a gallery owner and Bruno would acquire the publishing house (with a written commitment by Paul not to compete with him for eight years) [11].

Paul then devoted himself to the commercialization of the works of van Gogh, whose numerous unsold paintings were handled wisely by Johanna van Gogh-Bongers (1862-1925), the wife of Theo van Gogh (1857-1891). Johanna did not disperse the collection (now conserved at the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam), but entrusted Paul with the targeted marketing of some specific works, which the gallery owner began to show to the German public, in Berlin and in other cities in Germany. He led this activity with a great sense of drive, achieving, at the end of the first decade of the century, a striking result: 140 van Gogh paintings were placed in Germany by 1914, many more than could be found in France or Great Britain (it is a historical responsibility of the Nazis that the number of van Gogh paintings in Germany fell to a dozen, with many works destroyed). Alongside van Gogh, Cassirer's artists ‘of attraction’ were Cézanne and El Greco, celebrated as a proto-expressionist after the publication of the monograph dedicated to him by Julius Meier-Graefe (1867 - 1935) in 1910 [12].

Fig. 8) Five titles published by Paul Cassirer: The Leatherstocking Tales by James Fenimore Cooper, The Stone of the Wise by Frank Wedekind, Between the Races by Heinrich Mann, Jewish Ballads by Else Lasker-Schüler and the Spirit of Utopia by Ernst Bloch.

In 1908, when the contractual term that had prevented him from competing with his cousin in the publishing field expired, Paul created his first publishing house (the Pan-Presse, recalling the myth of Pan). The first volume was published in 1909: they were the five Indian tales of the American James Fenimore Cooper (1789 - 1851), entitled The Leatherstocking Tales, one of which is the famous The Last of the Mohicans (1826). Cooper's novels were already known in Germany, where they enjoyed enormous popularity among kids. Cassirer had them illustrated by his friend Max Slevogt. All of Paul's publications were characterized by the systematic use of illustration by great artists: in addition to friends of previous years, he turned to new names, such as Jules Pascin (1885-1930), Ernst Barlach (1870 - 1938) and Max Pechstein (1881- 1955).

Following this policy, the weekly magazine of the publishing house, Pan (1908-1912), directed by the writer Alfred Kerr (1867-1948), became a vehicle of propagation of high quality graphics in Germany. The publishing house also brought out many texts of fiction, theatre and contemporary poetry: Cassirer’s authors included the cursed playwright Frank Wedekind (1864 - 1918), the politically committed writer Heinrich Mann (1871 - 1950), the poet Else Lasker-Schüler (1869 - 1945) and the philosopher Ernst Bloch (1885 - 1977). Sigrid Bauschinger did not fail to emphasize the extremely generous conditions applied by Cassirer to his authors, who were sometimes regularly paid (and even housed at the publisher's expense) [13]. Albeit very interesting, her discussion of the role of the publisher in the spreading of expressionist poetry in Germany exceeds unfortunately the scope of this review.

Two monographs (respectively by Eva Caspers on the role of the Pan Presse for the dissemination of art graphics and by Rahel E. Feilchenfeldt and Markus Brandis, with a complete and commented catalogue of works published by Paul Cassirer's publishing houses) have been recently published by De Gruyter; to this it should be added an essay by Feilchenfeldt on Paul Cassirer. An art dealer as an editor.

Fig. 9) Three recent studies on the role of Paul Cassirer as a publisher.

Success may also create enemies. In 1911 the Bremer Kunsthalle, in the hands of Gustav Pauli (1866-1938), one of the figures in the artistic world who most acted to promote the renewal of artistic taste, acquired van Gogh's Poppy Field for thirty thousand marks from Cassirer (a huge sum for the times). Carl Vinnen (1863-1922), a young German painter, was living in poverty in the nearby artistic colony of Worpswede. He then published an indignant manifesto, the Protest of German artists. Why had the Kunsthalle not bought any paintings of local artists? Paul Cassirer responded immediately in the weekly Pan with an article on Art and the art market. The exchange showed how different the conception of German identity was in the views of Vinnen and Cassirer: while for Vinnen local identity was prominent, Cassirer wanted to transform Berlin into the world capital of art. Despite the verbal violence of the controversy, both however shared the idea of ​​the superiority of German art over foreign art. In sum, there were different ways, in those days, of being nationalists. However, Cassirer was not the only one to answer to Vinnen: Pauli collected all the contributions in his favour in a volume brought-out by the Munich-based Piper publishing house also in 1911.

 

Fig. 10) On the left: A protest by the German artists of Carl Vinnen (1911). At the centre: An issue of the weekly Pan in 1912. On the right: The collection of writings The answer to the Protest of German Artists.

With the outbreak of the war, many contradictions in the thinking of Paul Cassirer soon became evident. In a few weeks he moved from a very intense relationship with the Parisian art galleries to anti-French war propaganda [14]. The Cassirer publishing house, only a few days after the start of the conflict in August 1914, began to publish the Künstlerflugblätter (the Artists' War Flyers) which testified every week to the support of the crème de la crème of the German artists for the army at the front. The idea was that the flyers should be spread among the soldiers during their victorious march towards Paris, to witness that the entire nation – artists included – was ideally by their side. At the end of September 1914, Cassirer's magazine argued in favour of the thesis that the shelling of the cathedral of Reims was not a barbarous act but a necessity, because that Gothic masterpiece had been used by the French Army for transmission of military messages; it was a response to the indignation of intellectuals from all over the world who had risen up against the German military action. The painter Walter Bondy (1880-1940) designed the cover page of that issue. As if that were not enough, Cassirer (who as civilian drove a car) enlisted in the army as a motorist for transporting messages to the front and was even decorated with an iron cross [15].

 

Fig. 11) The first two issues of the Age of War Flyers (August and September 1914) and the number 5 of September 30, 1914, all published by the publishing house of Paul Cassirer. Source: https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/feldztgkrzeit1914bis1916/0001/thumbs

The conflict, which everyone in Germany imagined was destined to end quickly with the triumph over the French, plunged into the trenches and even Paul's enthusiasm for the war faded away. Sigrid Bauschinger explains how he interrupted the publication of the weekly militarist leaflets in March 1916 and replaced them, starting in April, with the bi-monthly sheet Der Bildermann: Steinzeichnungen fürs deutsche Volk (The newsboy: lithographs for the German people). A Bildermann is, literally, a sandwich man (it is also seen in the title) and the new idea was that the sheets, with their images, should be spread among the people as a message of peace. The artists who had always been closer to Paul were now joined by designers with a clear socialist orientation, such as Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945) and Heinrich Zille (1858–1929). The publication accompanied the maturation of public opinion against the conflict during 1916, which was evident in the emergence of an antimilitarist vein between writers and artists. Even the iconography changed radically: the first issue showed a lithograph by August Gaul (1869-1921) illustrating the stalling of the war in Europe, depicted by a series of animals (the belligerent countries) divided into two fields. The fact remains that Paul was still enlisted: The publication of an antimilitarist sheet led to his immediate arrest, and he even risked being hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital.

Fig. 12) The issues one, five and twelve of The Newsboy published by the editorship of Paul Cassirer in spring and summer 1916. Source: https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/bildermann1916/0003/thumbs

Count Harry Kessler (1868-1937), one of the collectors that Paul supplied in previous years with French artist paintings, saved him. Kessler, who was the son of a German and an Englishman, a diplomat and also a museum director in Weimar, had been given the task by government to carry out an important operation in neutral Switzerland, where a parallel war was being played, and he needed Paul's help. Both sides involved in the conflict wanted to convince the non-belligerent world (the United States had not yet entered the war) of the superiority of their culture through an intense program of cultural propaganda. The Germans were operating from Zurich, the French from Geneva. To this end the French sent the Comédie-Française on tour, the Germans organized concerts of the Leipziger Gewandhausorchester, then the best symphony orchestra in the country, directed by Richard Strauss (1864 - 1949). On the pretext of culture, moreover, diplomats on both sides sought to understand whether a possibility existed of winning the conflict by forcing separate agreements for the conditional surrender of enemies (this is what Germany and Austria achieved with the withdrawal of Bolshevik Russia from the war; they would try to pursue the same goal - without success - with Italy after the military disaster in Caporetto). Zurich was also an extraordinary laboratory of revolutionary ideas: some artists from both sides who took refuge there to avoid military leverage founded the Dada movement at the Club Voltaire in 1916, but even Lenin lived in exile just a few meters from the Club, under the protection of the German secret service which helped him fomenting the communist revolution in Russia to bring down the tsar.

In Zurich Cassirer organized a series of conferences of authors of his publishing house, but, above all, he set up the Exhibition of German art of the nineteenth and twentieth century, which was held at the Kunsthaus in 1917. Paul knew very well that the exhibition which he curated was destined to be immediately followed by a French impressionist counter-exhibition. The Berlin art dealer then tried to suggest the idea that German art was more modern than the French one: he started from the romantic and realist classics of the nineteenth century, presented German impressionism, but included the expressionist avant-gardes, inserting in particular those artists who had died or had been seriously wounded in the war, such as August Macke (1887 - 1914), Franz Marc (1880 - 1916) and Oskar Kokoschka (1886 - 1980). One hundred years later, it is now believed that the German exhibition failed to beat the French: the Zurich public was unprepared for the avant-garde and preferred the Impressionists [16].

Fig. 13) Four issues of the monthly The white sheets: The first issue, published in Leipzig in 1913; A 1916 issue, co-published in Zurich and Leipzig; A 1918 issue published in Zurich; A 1920 issue, published in Berlin by Paul Cassirer.

Originally Paul was expected to work from Zurich for three months and then return to the front. However, Cassirer used a series of subterfuges and, also thanks to false medical reports certifying his nervous instability, he returned to Germany only a week before the end of the conflict. However, in Switzerland Cassirer was associated with a new publishing venture: Die Weißen Blätter. Eine Monatsschrift (The white sheets, a monthly review). As a precaution, he never displayed his name in the magazine, which already existed in Leipzig before the war as an organ of expressionist literature. Starting in 1916, the White Sheets were published in Zurich and Leipzig as a pacifist magazine (first presented to the German government as a propaganda tool abroad). After being censored in Germany, the sheets came out only in Zurich. They would then be continued in Berlin by Cassirer himself after the war until 1920. Compared to previous magazines, the focal point was the literary text, and no longer the graphic.

In Berlin Cassirer returned as a revolutionary. Meetings of intellectuals in favour of the Republic were organized at the Viktoriastrasse gallery [17]. His publishing house now printed the works of socialist theorists like Ferdinand Lasalle (1825-1864) [18] and Karl Kausky (1854-1938) [19]. As an act of solidarity, Cassirer commissioned to Rosa Luxemburg the translation of works from Russian; she was in prison but received her pay for the work [20]. In November 1918 Paul declared himself "always a communist". On February 18, 1919, the gallery's premises saw the birth of the "Revolutionary Club", which was also attended by bankers and industrialists. Sigrid Bauschinger did not fail to underline some rather obscure episodes: at the end of November 1918 Paul was involved as a witness in an espionage process, then in early 1919 he returned to Switzerland to burn a whole series of documents concerning his activities there [21].

At this point Bauschinger’s biographical account becomes less convincing. She covered the years between 1918 and 1926, or between the end of the war and the suicide, in just five pages [22]. She observed that, since the post-war period, Cassirer's activity as art trader changed. Before the war he had promoted permanent exhibitions which were obviously sales opportunities; after the war he mainly organized auctions, open to an audience that was admitted only by invitation, during evenings that also offered dancing opportunities. I would have hoped to find an interpretation of the reasons for this change. Perhaps there was no reason anymore to exhibit paintings to the public? Or was the demand for art so pressing that it was necessary to get straight to the point, without having to submit to the long times of the exhibitions?

I believe the explanation can be found in the memoirs of Corinth and of other artists of the time: the middle bourgeoisie, upset by the absolute impossibility of preserving their purchasing power in investments tied in any way to the (non-existent) value of money, found a safe haven in the paintings of the most successful artists, who knew an extraordinary success in those years. Corinth wrote that the customers visited him in the atelier and literally snatched the landscapes of southern German lakes from his hands. Here, probably, is the reason for the auctions instead of exhibitions: one no longer bought what was considered aesthetically beautiful, but what had a market value. Above all, one needed to invest quickly, because hyperinflation was devastating the value of savings. Those artists that were not marketable because of political reasons (think of what Hans Grundig and Otto Griebel wrote) were instead literally starving. Which role did Cassirer play on the market, in this selection that resulted, for the artists, in economic affirmation or financial ruin? And what were his relations with other Berlin operators like Herwarth Walden (1879-1941)? Unfortunately, Bauschinger has not addressed these issues.

There is also a lack of reflection on the relationship between Cassirer and the new political elites in the Weimar Republic, in particular the Social Democrats. It is evident that the passion for communism was a brief parenthesis for Paul. Did he manage to establish links with the new political world? For example, the authoress mentioned, in passing the friendship with Walther Rathenau (1867 - 1922), the liberal-oriented foreign minister killed by right-wing extremists in 1922, without however clarifying what their relations were. Finally, from an aesthetic point of view, what did Cassirer think about the new post-war trends? It is obvious that he did not marry the Dadaist orientations, but what did he think of the New Objectivity, or the new style which was becoming the reference in the Germany of the mid-twenties? A careful reading of the exhibition catalogue and, if possible, of the auctions should be made to draw convincing conclusions.

Of course, for Paul things were becoming difficult. In fact, the authoress illustrated many episodes showing that Cassirer was the target of growing anti-Semitism. He was reproached for having become rich by controlling the art market in Berlin, having maintained relations with the hated France, having escaped the war with subterfuge instead of returning to the front, spending years in privileged conditions in Switzerland, having supported socialist and communist ideas, having avoided the financial collapse after the war, managing to maintain a central position in the art market [23].

Seemingly, in his last years Cassirer had become increasingly isolated also in his family. In his eulogy, Liebermann spoke of a man who had "no anchor in the family, nor in religion nor in commerce." It is evident that the increasingly controversial and difficult relationship with the actress Tilla Durieux, perceived as external to the family environment, made him increasingly unpopular with his relatives, who hoped for a divorce [24]. In Bauschinger's narrative, Cassirer's life ended up in a series of dramatic events. In 1919, one of the children of the first marriage committed suicide, perhaps also due to the traumatic effects of the war (the father, to tell the truth, had not taken much notice of him); in 1921 Paul suffered a heart attack at the age of fifty years; in the following years, the relations with his wife became increasingly turbulent. As already mentioned, when the latter asked for divorce, Cassirer took his own life. All members of the family agreed not to mention Tilla’s name during the funeral.

Bruno Cassirer

Bruno's life run parallel to that of Paul in his youth: both born in Wroclaw, they moved to Berlin during their school years and then to Munich for the university, which neither of them concluded (Bruno studied art history, but he never defended his thesis [25]). They both travelled to Paris, where they were fascinated by Impressionism; after meeting Durand-Ruel, they decided to open together the art gallery and the publishing house in the Berlin villa on the Viktoriastrasse, as well as to join the local Secession. In short, the activity on the Berlin art market was for both of them, from the point of view of social legitimacy in the family and in society, a compensation for the failure of the university studies in Munich.

The personal break between Bruno and Paul entailed a practical question for the cousins: the Viktoriastrasse was not only the headquarters of the gallery and the typography, but also the home of Bruno and his wife Else. The young couple immediately moved (and could not be otherwise given the causes of the dispute): they changed the private residence to a villa in the new garden district of Berlin, very decentralized, while the headquarters of Bruno’s publishing house remained in the center [26]. Since then the lives of Bruno and Paul would never cross again.

It has already been said, speaking of Else, that Bruno and Else lived in Berlin until they were forced to flee with children and grandchildren, to England in 1938, in order to escape racial persecution. They died a few years later in exile at Oxford, where Bruno complained that he had never settled well. Bruno passed away in 1941 and Else in 1942.

Fig. 14) The first edition of the Gargenlieder, with the cover of Karl Walser (1905).

For seven years Bruno was the only one of the Cassirers to continue the publishing activity, based on the agreement stipulated with his cousin in the separation of the relative commercial activities. He did so following the same editorial model already practiced in 1898: combining literature and poetry with art graphics. In this he revealed an exceptional intuition. In 1905 he published the collection of verses Galgenlieder (Songs of the Gallows) by a then unknown cursed expressionist poet, Christian Morgenstern (1871 - 1914) who, by 1920, would be reprinted 55 times. The fortune of that collection of lyrics also depended on the secessionist drawings of the Swiss Karl Walser (1877 - 1943), who worked for a few years at the publishing house. External collaborators included artists of the rank of Max Liebermann, Max Slevogt and Alfred Kubin (1877 - 1959).

Fig. 15) The first publication of Van Gogh's letters by Bruno Cassirer in 1906. Source: https://archive.org/details/briefe1906gogh/page/n7

If the authoress did not recall it, Bruno also had a key role in the spreading of modern art literature in the early twentieth century: in particular, he was the first to publish in 1906 a wide selection of van Gogh's letters and to make them a formidable literary success (in those years the painter was above all known as a writer of letters). Bruno was also the editor of Lovis Corinth.

Fig. 16) The Legends of the Life of an Artist by Lovis Corinth, published by Bruno Cassirer in 1908

Bruno was a balanced person (perhaps even to the point of being predictable), very attached both to his family and to his company [27]. We will never read of Bruno Cassirer that, within a few years, he proclaimed himself first nationalist, then pacifist and, finally, communist. Nor will we ever be able to witness, in parallel with the changes in the political framework, the succession of diverse editorial initiatives of contrasting direction without a solution of continuity in chronological terms.

Culturally Bruno was a conservative, and loved to frequent army circles (Bauschinger presented him as the most displaced to the right of the Cassirer family, compared to the left (including extreme left) activism of his cousin Paul [28] and the liberal centralism of the other cousin, the philosopher Ernst Cassirer. From an aesthetic point of view, Bruno was in love with the French and German Impressionists and Cézanne, whom he collected and above all introduced to the Germans in his publications. Sigrid Bauschinger wrote that, beyond these masters, he made no opening to the avant-gardes; she mentioned the difficulties that even a great master like Max Beckmann (1884 - 1950) [29] met to be hosted in the periodicals of which Bruno was publisher.

His major contribution to art, in editorial terms, in addition to the production of numerous monographs, was the publication of the magazine Kunst und Künstler: illustrierte Monatsschrift für bildende Kunst und Kunstgewerb (Art and artists: monthly illustrated review for fine arts and applied arts) between 1903 and 1933. To understand the extent of the success, just think that, two years after the inauguration in Germany, the magazine L'Art et les artistes: revue mensuelle d'art ancien et moderne was published in France. It was edited by Armand Dayot (1851 –1934), as one of the rare cases (Bauschinger did not mention it) where Germany set a cultural trend in France.

 

Fig. 17) The Kunst und Kunstler magazine in 1903 (directed by Hailbut and Flaischlen) and in 1906 (directed by Scheffler) and the corresponding French magazine of 1905

The life of the magazine was marked by the role played there, as director between 1906 and 1933, by the art historian Karl Scheffler (1869-1951). Sigrid Bauschinger wrote about the ups and downs of the professional relationship between Bruno and Scheffler. Unfortunately the authoress did not elaborate. We read in fact that Kunst und Künstler was a fundamentally apolitical magazine, which never even stood up for dramatic events such as war [30]. And yet there is no analysis of the role of the magazine during thirty so complex and changing years in the German art world, especially if we consider that it hosted many fundamental names in the art criticism of the era. As for the divergences between Cassirer and Scheffler, we do not know if they concerned entrepreneurial or taste issues or whether the editorial policy was even marked by the permanent existence of two divergent lines.

Finally, it should be remembered that Bruno Cassirer's publishing house went far beyond the world of art. In the philosophical field, he collaborated with the cousin Ernst. As for literature, Bruno introduced Russian and Nordic authors to the German world [31]. The authoress also payed particular attention to the years of exile, during which the now old publisher continued his activity from Great Britain and in English, but without connections to the world of art [32].

Conclusions

The family biography of Sigrid Bauschinger, dedicated to all the Cassirers, has allowed us to learn more about the history of Else, Paul and Bruno, young peers and members of the same family. They were first unite in a courageous enterprise of cultural renewal, but only three years later they split into two families that would never meet again, despite being residents of the same city and operating in the same sectors (in particular artistic publishing, quality dissemination of art and art drawing) or in adjacent sectors (the art trade).

The separation of 1901 and the suicide of Paul in 1926 undoubtedly represented two moments of grave embarrassment for a very united family and linked to the traditions of a Puritan Judaism. At the same time the two cousins spread the taste of artistic collecting among all members of the family [33].

Beyond family affairs, the role played by the three Cassirers in the art world was fundamental for Berlin, Germany and Europe, starting from the end of the nineteenth century and until the rise of Nazis took all prospects to their editorial initiatives away. Unfortunately, the volume we have reviewed here does not allow us to fully investigate their role in the art world in those decades, but is certainly a good entry point for those who would like to continue researching in the years ahead.

NOTES

[1] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen. Biographie einer Familie. Munich, C. H. Beck, 2015, 464 pages. Quotations at pages 119 e 226.

[2] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), p. 81.

[3] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), p. 83.

[4] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), p. 221.

[5] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), p. 221.

[6] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), p. 81.

[7] Not to be confused with grandfather Walter Feilchenfeldt (1894-1953), who continues Cassirer's art gallery activity after Paul’s suicide in 1926, until the gallery was closed by the Nazis in 1933.

[8] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), pp. 76-77.

[9] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), p.79.

[10] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), p.81.

[11] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), p.84.

[12] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), p.87.

[13] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), pp.91-94.

[14] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), p.101.

[15] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), p.101.

[16] See the article by Robin Schwarzenbach Deutsche Kultur als Waffe, published on the Neue Zurcher Zeitung on 13 November 2017 

(https://www.nzz.ch/schweiz/deutsche-kultur-als-waffe-ld.1328023).

[17] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), p.109.

[18] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), p.98.

[19] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), p.109.

[20] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), p.98.

[21] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), p.111.

[22] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), pp.113-118.

[23] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), pp.108 e 114.

[24] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), p.142.

[25] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), p.118.

[26] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), p.119.

[27] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), p.119.

[28] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), p.121.

[29] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), p.121.

[30] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), p.121.

[31] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), pp.120-122.

[32] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), pp.303-308.

[33] Bauschinger, Sigrid - Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen (quoted), pp.126-131.