Richard Semmel (1875–1950) was a noted German entrepreneur and art collector of Jewish faith, who lived in Berlin with his wife Claire [Cläre; Clara] Cäcilie (née Bruck, 1879–1945). The couple married in 1901 and had no children. As a young man, Semmel joined the linens and undergarments manufacturer Arthur Samulon & Co. He became a partner in 1904 and, from 1919, owned the company. From 1917, the business was based at Magazinstraße 15–16 (built in 1906) next to Berlin’s Alexanderplatz [Figs. 1–3].
In 1926, the Semmels moved into their new home at Cecilienallee (today Pacelliallee) 19/21 in Berlin-Dahlem, a leafy suburb in the south of Berlin. The house was designed by the renowned architect Adolf Wollenberg (1874–1950), who would also be forced to flee Germany in 1933 [Fig. 4].
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The Semmel collection encompassed the Old Masters (predominantly Dutch 17th century), mid-19th-century art as well as the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, including major works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley and Max Liebermann. Richard Semmel acquired the bulk of the collection in the 1920s and was a client of art dealers such as Julius Böhler, Galerie Heinemann, Kunsthandel P. de Boer, Jacques Goudstikker (through whom he sold works in the 1920s), Galerie Dr Schäffer and Galerie Thannhauser (no acquisitions recorded) [Figs. 5, 6]. He notably loaned works to exhibitions in Germany, France and the Netherlands. In 1925, the year he turned 50, a loan of six paintings to the exhibition Gemälde alter Meister aus Berliner Besitz (Old Master Paintings from Berlin Collections) resulted in the Semmel art collection becoming more widely known. Max Osborn’s art world directory Handbuch des Kunstmarkts, published the following year, mentions him as a collector of Old Masters.
In 1930, the art historian Dr Paul Wescher, then a curator in the Berlin State Museums' cabinet of prints and drawings, published a profile on the Semmel collection [Fig. 7]. While the article’s focus is on the Old Masters, the last paragraph notes:
‘Of the Impressionists, the Semmel collection includes the Avenue de l’Opéra and the view of the Louvre by C. Pissarro, Renoir’s bathers, Gauguin’s Brittany landscape, Van Gogh’s portrait study from his Paris period, painted with strong black lines and Daumier’s small “Sortie de la gare”. Among the Courbets hangs one of the versions of the motif known as “Deer in a Forest".’
Semmel was a patron of the arts, funding the Nationalgalerie’s acquisition of four works by Friedrich Wasmann (1805–1889) in 1925, and joining Berlin museum associations reflecting his collecting interests — the Kaiser Friedrich-Museums-Verein (1925 to 1933) and the Verein der Freunde der Nationalgalerie (from its foundation in 1929 to 1932/33) [Fig. 8] .
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The Semmel collection encompassed the Old Masters (predominantly Dutch 17th century), mid-19th-century art as well as the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, including major works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley and Max Liebermann. Richard Semmel acquired the bulk of the collection in the 1920s and was a client of art dealers such as Julius Böhler, Galerie Heinemann, Kunsthandel P. de Boer, Jacques Goudstikker (through whom he sold works in the 1920s), Galerie Dr Schäffer and Galerie Thannhauser (no acquisitions recorded) [Figs. 5, 6]. He notably loaned works to exhibitions in Germany, France and the Netherlands. In 1925, the year he turned 50, a loan of six paintings to the exhibition Gemälde alter Meister aus Berliner Besitz (Old Master Paintings from Berlin Collections) resulted in the Semmel art collection becoming more widely known. Max Osborn’s art world directory Handbuch des Kunstmarkts, published the following year, mentions him as a collector of Old Masters.
In 1930, the art historian Dr Paul Wescher, then a curator in the Berlin State Museums' cabinet of prints and drawings, published a profile on the Semmel collection [Fig. 7]. While the article’s focus is on the Old Masters, the last paragraph notes:
‘Of the Impressionists, the Semmel collection includes the Avenue de l’Opéra and the view of the Louvre by C. Pissarro, Renoir’s bathers, Gauguin’s Brittany landscape, Van Gogh’s portrait study from his Paris period, painted with strong black lines and Daumier’s small “Sortie de la gare”. Among the Courbets hangs one of the versions of the motif known as “Deer in a Forest".’
Semmel was a patron of the arts, funding the Nationalgalerie’s acquisition of four works by Friedrich Wasmann (1805–1889) in 1925, and joining Berlin museum associations reflecting his collecting interests — the Kaiser Friedrich-Museums-Verein (1925 to 1933) and the Verein der Freunde der Nationalgalerie (from its foundation in 1929 to 1932/33) [Fig. 8] .
‘I was bombarded literally day and night with threats by telephone and in writing, obscene notes arrived daily to my home; this hounding was organised by the Nazi party with support from the riled-up employees. … I was on business in St. Gallen when the Hitler catastrophe befell us, returned immediately; upon arrival at the station I was warned not to return to my home and so took a room in a hotel on Fasanenstraße. How justified this measure was would soon become evident as, at the office, Nazi representatives were acting as though they were in charge and it went so far that, as already mentioned, I was able to escape to the Netherlands at the last minute.’
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Richard Semmel was on a business trip in Switzerland when the Nazis came to power in Germany in January 1933. Facing persecution both due to their Jewish background and Richard Semmel’s involvement with the German Democratic Party (Deutsche Demokratische Partei), the Semmels fled Germany in the summer of 1933, first for Paris then Switzerland, arriving in Amsterdam in November 1934 [Fig. 9], where they were joined, in August 1935, by Semmel’s younger brother Jacob (1879–1945). Jacob Semmel also worked in textiles; he owned Semmel & Friedländer in Berlin and — with his second wife Sophie [Sofie] née Glaser (1900–1945), a dressmaker — was a partner in the clothing firm H. Grünberg & Co in Amsterdam.
Richard Semmel’s businesses were targeted by the Nazis, as were his private assets. Having sought refuge in Amsterdam and later New York, Semmel continued to face a barrage of pressures from Nazi authorities, banks and creditors. As a direct consequence, Semmel consigned Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works from his collection for sale to the Amsterdam auction house Frederik Muller & Cie on 13 June 1933 and Old Masters on 21–24 November 1933, with mixed results [Figs. 10–14].
In 1934, the Semmels’ villa in Berlin-Dahlem was sold under duress.
From the mid-1930s, Semmel consigned works of art for sale in the Netherlands and Switzerland. Between 1934 and 1938, more than 45 of the works that had remained unsold at the Amsterdam auctions in 1933 were offered for sale through Galerie Moos in Geneva. They included Renoir’s painting Pêches.
In June 1939, the Semmels left Amsterdam and emigrated via Chile to New York. They had initially hoped to return to Amsterdam but, following the outbreak of war, remained in New York, where they lived in impoverished circumstances [Fig. 15]. Following the Eleventh Ordinance to the Reich Citizenship Act in November 1941, Semmel lost his German citizenship and the remainder of his assets in Germany was seized. Furniture and paintings stored in Amsterdam were seized by the Nazi looting organisation Lippmann, Rosenthal & Co. (LiRo) [Fig. 16, 17].
In December 1943, Richard’s brother Jacob Semmel (1879–1945) and his wife Sophie [Sofie] (née Glaser, 1900–1945), were deported to the Westerbork transit camp in the north-east of the Netherlands. Jacob perished in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in February 1945, Sophie in March 1945 [Fig. 18].
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After the war, Richard Semmel made several restitution claims in the Netherlands and Germany, recovering one painting from an acquaintance who had kept it for him.
Claire Semmel died in New York in 1945, Richard Semmel in 1950. He named as his heir Grete Gross-Eisenstädt (1887–1958), a family friend from Germany, who had also fled Nazi Germany for New York. From the 1950s, Gross and her descendants submitted compensation claims to the German authorities.
Since the 1998 Washington Conference, the Semmel heirs have filed restitution claims beginning in the early 2000s, resulting in the return of a number of works of art and in settlements in the Netherlands, Australia, Switzerland and beyond. Several Semmel paintings offered in the Amsterdam auctions of June 1933 and November 1933 have been sold at Christie’s in recent years pursuant to settlements with the Semmel heirs; they include Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Pêches,Claude Monet’s La mare, effet de neige,Paul Gauguin’s La maison blanche and A dune landscape with a distant view of Haarlem by Jacob Isaacksz. Ruisdael [Figs. 19–22].
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