The life of Olof Aschberg (1887–1960) oscillated between the financial and the art world, between socialist and communist circles. Married to Rosa ‘Siri’ (née Kugelberg, 1891–1965), the Swedish art collector was also a human rights activist, a financier and notable philanthropist [Fig.1, 2].
‘He played a dynamic but almost forgotten role in the contacts between international labor, Western finance and Soviet power across the world wars.’
Olof Aschberg was born in Stockholm into a Russian-Jewish family. His international activities ranged from finance to social entrepreneurship, from solidarity work to progressive activism.
After the Russian Revolution in 1917, Aschberg established business relationships with the new Bolshevik regime, founding the Russian Merchant Bank in Moscow in 1921. Referred to as the ‘red banker’, his engagement in trade with the Soviet Union drew criticism from the right wing and the open expression of his socialist views made him a controversial figure in business circles.
In 1926 Olof and Siri Aschberg moved to France, buying the Château du Bois du Rocher near Paris, where Olof continued to work in banking.
Olof Aschberg was also a patron who supported Scandinavian artists and social scientists travelling to Paris. In 1933 he donated his extensive collection of more than 200, predominantly Russian, icons to the National Museum of Fine Arts in Stockholm [Fig.3].
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SANCTUARY AND SOLIDARITY
When the Nazis came to power in Germany on 30 January 1933, Paris became a safe haven for left-wing internationalists and for political refugees from the rest of Europe. Aschberg played an active part in the fight against Nazism. He notably showed solidarity with the League of Nations and the Rassemblement Universel pour la Paix (International Peace Campaign).
In 1936, the Aschbergs bought the Château de la Brevière in Compiègne, north-east of Paris, where they hosted refugees from Germany, including the authors Heinrich Mann (1871– 1950), Lion Feuchtwanger (1884–1958), Anna Seghers (1900–1983) and the publisher Willi Münzenberg (1889–1940). Olof Aschberg became a shareholder in a major French film production company, Société Pathé Frères, and in Münzenberg’s publishing house, Éditions du Carrefour (1928–1940), which notably published Feuchtwanger and Seghers [Fig. 4-7].
During the Spanish Civil War, Olaf and Siri set up a nursery for German and Spanish refugee children at the Château, coordinated with the Swedish Spain Committee and the French branch of the Union Internationale de Secours aux Enfants (International Save the Children Union) [Fig. 8, 9].
In late 1935, Aschberg initiated the pacifist Cercle des Nations, a politico-cultural salon. Its president was the physicist and Nobel Prize winner Jean Perrin (1870–1942), while its honorary president was Lord Robert Cecil (1864–1958), who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1937. The circle was located at Aschberg’s eight-storey historical townhouse at 21 Rue Casimir-Périer in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, which included dining rooms and a bar. The ceilings were decorated by Aschberg’s friend, the painter Isaac Grünewald (1889– 1946) [Fig. 10].
Just a stone's throw away, fellow art collectors and political activists Hugo and Gertrud Simon lived at 102, rue de Grenelle from 1934 after their flight from Berlin. They regularly hosted meetings of German emigrés in their spacious apartment and it is therefore likely that the Aschbergs and the Simons knew each other.
The Aschbergs’ private apartment was located at 2, Rue de la Planche, in the same neighborhood as the Cercle des Nations. Here, they lived amid their books and their art collection, which ranged from paintings, and sculptures, to all manner of applied art, including tapestries, porcelain, crystal and furniture [Fig. 11].
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SANCTUARY AND SOLIDARITY
When the Nazis came to power in Germany on 30 January 1933, Paris became a safe haven for left-wing internationalists and for political refugees from the rest of Europe. Aschberg played an active part in the fight against Nazism. He notably showed solidarity with the League of Nations and the Rassemblement Universel pour la Paix (International Peace Campaign).
In 1936, the Aschbergs bought the Château de la Brevière in Compiègne, north-east of Paris, where they hosted refugees from Germany, including the authors Heinrich Mann (1871– 1950), Lion Feuchtwanger (1884–1958), Anna Seghers (1900–1983) and the publisher Willi Münzenberg (1889–1940). Olof Aschberg became a shareholder in a major French film production company, Société Pathé Frères, and in Münzenberg’s publishing house, Éditions du Carrefour (1928–1940), which notably published Feuchtwanger and Seghers [Fig. 4-7].
During the Spanish Civil War, Olaf and Siri set up a nursery for German and Spanish refugee children at the Château, coordinated with the Swedish Spain Committee and the French branch of the Union Internationale de Secours aux Enfants (International Save the Children Union) [Fig. 8, 9].
In late 1935, Aschberg initiated the pacifist Cercle des Nations, a politico-cultural salon. Its president was the physicist and Nobel Prize winner Jean Perrin (1870–1942), while its honorary president was Lord Robert Cecil (1864–1958), who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1937. The circle was located at Aschberg’s eight-storey historical townhouse at 21 Rue Casimir-Périer in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, which included dining rooms and a bar. The ceilings were decorated by Aschberg’s friend, the painter Isaac Grünewald (1889– 1946) [Fig. 10].
Just a stone's throw away, fellow art collectors and political activists Hugo and Gertrud Simon lived at 102, rue de Grenelle from 1934 after their flight from Berlin. They regularly hosted meetings of German emigrés in their spacious apartment and it is therefore likely that the Aschbergs and the Simons knew each other.
The Aschbergs’ private apartment was located at 2, Rue de la Planche, in the same neighborhood as the Cercle des Nations. Here, they lived amid their books and their art collection, which ranged from paintings, and sculptures, to all manner of applied art, including tapestries, porcelain, crystal and furniture [Fig. 11].
‘When the confiscation of Jewish-owned furniture took place after the round-up of art collections, the heads of the administrative occupation sections in Paris received the order to respond only verbally to the demands for explanations of the ongoing seizures. They were also to limit themselves to asserting that it was a matter of having to take “punitive measures”.’
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Shortly after German troops occupied France in June 1940, Olof Aschberg was imprisoned in the French concentration camp of Vernet for five months. He was released in exchange for turning over his shares in Pathé Frères to politicians in the Vichy regime. In January 1941, Olof and Siri fled France via Lisbon for the United States, where they stayed until the end of the war.
The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), plundered not only the Aschberg’s home on Rue de la Planche but also their property on Rue Casimir Périer, that had housed the Cercle des Nations, as part of the so-called Möbelaktion (M-Aktion) [Fig. 14]. The Möbelaktion targeted the property of Jews who had fled France or who had been deported.
The inventory of looted property submitted by Siri Aschberg to the French authorities after the war is more extensive than the Aschberg property catalogued by the ERR at the Jeu de Paume during World War II. The paintings looted from the collection included a portrait by Kees van Dongen (1877-1968) titled La garçonne and a pair of Marc Chagall (1887–1985) paintings titled La Mendiante au Panier, ERR inv. no. MA-B 889 a and Le Mendiant (Le nettoyage rituel), ERR inv. no. MA-B 889 b, which were taken to the Jeu de Paume in May 1943 and slated for sale [Fig. 12, 15-16].
In 1935, both Chagalls had been loaned by the Aschbergs to an exhibition at the Galerie Beaux-Arts in Paris [Fig. 13].
The two Chagall paintings went on to have vastly different paths. While Chagall’s La Mendiante au Panier was restituted to the Aschbergs in 1948, the male figure titled Le Mendiant resurfaced on the French art market in 1950 and then remained in private hands for decades until it was consigned to Christie’s. A settlement was reached between the consignor and the heirs of Siri Aschberg and the painting was offered for sale at Christie’s London on 24 March 2021.
In his literary magnum opus The Aesthetics of the Resistance (1975–1981), the German author Peter Weiss (1916–1982) mentions Olof Aschberg and the Cercle des Nations. During his stay in Paris, the novel's first-person narrator is welcomed at the Cercle des Nations on rue Casimir Périer:
‘Entlassen aus der zerfallenden spanischen Republik, am Abend in Paris eingetroffen, hatten wir unser Quartier bezogen in der Bibliothek des Cercle des Nations, an der Rue Casimir Périer, diesem Palais, das während des Zweiten Kaiserreichs errichtet worden war für den Marquis d’Estourmelle und das unter seinem jetzigen Eigentümer, dem schwedischen Bankier Aschberg, der Weltfriedensbewegung und dem Ausschuß zur Gründung einer deutschen Volksfront zur Verfügung stand.’
‘Released from the crumbling Spanish Republic, we had arrived in Paris in the evening and taken up our quarters in the library of the Cercle des Nations, on rue Casimir Périer, this palace which had been built for the Marquis d’Estourmelle during the Second Empire and which, under its present owner, the Swedish banker Aschberg, had been made available to the Movement for World Peace and the Committee for the Creation of a German Popular Front.’
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