Collection Alexander Fiorino, Kassel
Documents regarding the confiscation of the assets and art collection of Alexander Fiorino, 1939–41, 519/3 36136, pages 18, 25, 33–34, 44, 104, 108–110, 114–116, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Wiesbaden
Security directive from the Chief Financial President Kassel (Foreign Exchange Office) against Alexander Fiorino pursuant to the § 59 Foreign Exchange Act dated December 12, 1938, April 19, 1939, 519/3 36136, page 18, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Wiesbaden
Confirmation of the receipt of the security directive through the Dresdner Bank branch in Kassel, May 10, 1939, 519/3 36136, page 25, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Wiesbaden
Security directive from the Chief Financial President Kassel (Foreign Exchange Office) against Alexander Fiorino, statement on injunction limitations, October 28, 1939, 519/3 36136, pages 33 and 34, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Wiesbaden
List of Alexander Fiorino’s assets according to form Dev. VI 3 Nr. 2, November 17, 1939, 519/3 36136, page 44, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Wiesbaden
Letter from Alfred Dellevie, attorney, to the Chief Financial President Kassel (Foreign Exchange Office) on the export of “non-Aryan” artworks to Switzerland, January 10, 1941, 519/3 36136, page 104, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Wiesbaden
Shipping list of “non-Aryan” artworks to be exported to Switzerland, January 10, 1941, 519/3 36136, pages 109 and 110, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Wiesbaden
Permission for the export of “non-Aryan” artworks by the Chief Financial President Kassel (Foreign Exchange Office), January 15, 1941, 519/3 36136, page 108, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Wiesbaden
Letter from Alfred Dellevie, attorney, to the Chief Finance President Kassel (Foreign Exchange Office) on the “liquidation” of artworks from the estate of Alexander Fiorino with reference to Appendices 1 and 2, January 27, 1941, 519/3 36136, page 114, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Wiesbaden
Appendix 1: Artworks “acquired” by the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Kassel (Kassel State Art Collections) from the estate of Alexander Fiorino, January 27, 1941, 519/3 36136, page 115, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Wiesbaden
Appendix 2: Works to be auctioned from the estate of Alexander Fiorino, January 27, 1941, 519/3 36136, page 116, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Wiesbaden
Alexander Fiorino and his sisters (around 1860), Photograph, Stadtmuseum Kassel
Alexander Fiorino and his wife Henriette, née Lieberg (around 1900), Photograph, Stadtmuseum Kassel
Jüdische Wochenzeitung für Kassel, Hessen und Waldeck (Jewish weekly newspaper for Kassel, Hessen, and Waldeck), May 27, 1932, vol. 9, no. 20, Stadtmuseum Kassel
Johann August Nahl d. J., Johann Christian Ruhl (1789), Oil on lead-tin alloy Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel, Graphische Sammlung
Ludwig Sigismund Ruhl, Cleopatra (1817), Graphite, ink, and watercolor on paper, partly heightened with gold, affixed to a drawing book, Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel, Graphische Sammlung
Text by Valentina Ehnimb
Translation from German by Alicia Reuter
Translation of documents by Büro LS Anderson
With kind support from Bettina Leder-Hindemith, curator of the exhibition Legalisierter Raub. Der Fiskus und die Ausplünderung der Juden in Hessen 1933–1945, a project of the Fritz Bauer Institut and the Hessischer Rundfunk.
Collection Alexander Fiorino, Kassel
“A particularly endearing trait in the nature of the venerable old man, to whom this issue is dedicated, must be his inclination for ancient art and the homeland’s history.” With these words on May 27, 1932, Dr. Kurt Luthmer, Director of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Kassel (Kassel State Art Collections), began his appreciation of a long-established citizen of Kassel, to whom, on his ninetieth birthday, the Jüdische Wochenzeitung für Kassel, Hessen und Waldeck (the Jewish weekly newspaper for Kassel, Hessen, and Waldeck) dedicated an entire issue. The philanthropist Alexander Fiorino (1842–1940) not only owned a significant art collection, but was also active in numerous societies—including the Gesellschaft für Humanität (Society for Humanity) and the Verein für hessische Geschichte und Landeskunde (Association for Hessian History and Regional Studies)—playing a considerable role in shaping the public life of his hometown Kassel.
Only six years later Fiorino’s art collection was confiscated. It served as collateral for the payment of the “Jewish Property Tax” imposed on Jewish citizens after the November pogroms in 1938. The Landesmuseum Kassel (Kassel State Museum, part of the State Art Collections), to which Fiorino had given numerous works since it was founded in 1913, took over the custody of the collection.
The “security directive” issued by the Chief Financial President (Foreign Exchange Office) on April 19, 1939, deprived Fiorino of the right to dispose over his property himself—including his bank deposits, potential proceeds from the sale of land, and his art collection. In order to pay the “Jewish Property Tax” and the “Reich Flight Tax,” which amounted to about eighty percent of his assets, Fiorino was compelled to leave the majority of his artworks to the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen who, in return, settled the tax claims imposed on him by the authorities. Thus, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen had already attained numerous paintings and hundreds of prints and miniatures, from Ludwig Emil Grimm as well as the Tischbein and Ruhl artist families, among others, by 1939. In particular, it benefited the Kupferstichkabinett, today the Graphische Sammlung (Collection of Prints and Drawings) of the Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel, which holds numerous works from Fiorino’s collection, such as Ludwig Sigismund Ruhl’s Cleopatra (1817). Many works were auctioned by the Leipzig-based art antiquary C. G. Boerner.
Fiorino died in 1940 at the age of ninety-seven. His daughter, Johanna Wohlgenannt, who lived in Switzerland, attempted to save some of the works in her father’s collection. To this end, she entrusted the lawyer Alfred Dellevie, a resident of Kassel. He succeeded in obtaining an export license for those “miniatures, etc.” which were “from non-Aryan artists, or depicted non-Aryan persons, respectively” (Alfred Dellevie, letter dated January 10, 1941). The lists from January 27, 1941, document the double “liquidation” of Fiorino’s estate. One part of the mixed lot was absorbed by the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, including the portrait Johann Christian Ruhl by Johann August Nahl the Younger (1789). Auctioneer Georg Horn in Kassel auctioned the second part.
Those works, which were auctioned between 1939 and 1941, are, with only a few exceptions, today considered “missing.” The Rose Valland Institute calls on the public to research works of art acquired in Kassel and Leipzig during this period that are privately or publicly owned and to provide provenance information to the Institute.