The message is simple: the owner of a Lenbach painting depicting Thomas Mann’s future wife, Katia Pringsheim, as a child is donating the painting to the Thomas Mann House in Pacific Palisades. But the story behind it is complicated. Even a bit more complicated than usual in restitution matters. Because it’s not just about legal subtleties, according to which it must be weighed up when who sold a work of art, why and in what predicament, so that it could be described as looted art. She also tells of the struggle for the sovereignty of interpretation in such a matter. Individual scientists, entire academic disciplines, the official custodians of Mann’s memory, an auction house, and the family itself are all in this mess together.
This Friday evening, all of these antagonists – a bit like the characters in a Thomas Mann novel – will meet at a panel discussion in Munich’s Literaturhaus. And even if everyone involved has honestly decided to tell the story as an “all’s well that ends well” story: During the discussion on stage, there could be such a rumble that the windows of the bear display case in front of the hall entrance only rattled . The bear also once belonged to the Mann family, but that’s another story.
When the picture is up for auction in 2018, Heiserer becomes aware of the painting
The trigger in this case is a painting by Franz von Lenbach. Even though it has been treated as a nameless “portrait of a girl” for decades, it undoubtedly shows Katia Pringsheim, who later became Thomas Mann’s wife, at the age of seven or eight. Katia is seen in half profile, with a red cap on her dark hair. Her dark eyes sparkle awake in her face, which has been brightly illuminated by the painter. The picture is a little more than 40 by 35 centimeters – without the striking golden frame, which plays a central role in recognizing the painting in a photograph. Because when the picture was consigned to the Neumeister auction house in 2018 and appeared in the catalog for auction, Dirk Heiserer became aware of the painting.
The literary scholar and chairman of the Thomas Mann Forum in Munich recognized Katia Mann in the picture. “He credibly assured me that the portrait is a variant or preliminary stage of a portrait that was created at the same time and that was used as the cover of Katia Mann’s 1974 book ‘My unwritten memoirs’ and became widely known as a result,” says Katrin Stoll , the head of the Neumeister house. She immediately removed the work from the auction. Anyone who knows what fate the Pringsheim family experienced during the Nazi era must immediately consider the existence of looted art given such a provenance. Stoll and Heiserer agreed on that. However, there were differences as to how the picture should continue. There are, after all, many degrees of horror in times of unjust regimes that can be precisely differentiated from a legal point of view.
Katia Mann, née Katharina Pringsheim, is the first woman to graduate from high school in Munich and later the wife of the writer Thomas Mann.
(Photo: Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo)
About the history: Lenbach painted numerous portraits of members of the Pringsheim family. Its head, Alfred, came from a very wealthy Silesian-Jewish mining and entrepreneurial family. Lenbach’s house and the Neo-Renaissance city villa of the Pringsheims were opposite each other on Königsplatz, with only the Glyptothek standing in the line of sight between them. In many letters, Hedwig Pringsheim, Katia’s mother, describes how she walks over to the studio with her daughter. The Lenbachhaus still exists today. The Palais Pringsheim was squeezed from the family by the National Socialist rulers in 1935. They tore it down and put the so-called Führerbau on the spot where the music academy is housed to this day.
The magnificent Palais Pringsheim in Munich’s Arcisstraße.
(Photo: Wikimedia)
The Jewish couple Alfred and Hedwig Pringsheim were only able to emigrate to Switzerland at the last minute at the end of October 1939. Her art, including the famous silver and majolica collections, were foreclosed on and confiscated. A photograph of the ladies’ salon in Palais Pringsheim from earlier years shows the painting by Katia – also in the opinion of Alfred Grimm, the well-known provenance expert emeritus of the Bavarian National Museum, whom Stoll consulted. In the photo, meanwhile, it is not the picture in its entirety that can be seen, but mainly its frame.
Then in 1940 the grandparents of the current owner, Robert Schoenhofer, bought “The Girl Portrait” by Franz von Lenbach from an art dealer named Franz Hanold for 3,000 marks. The true provenance is not only obscured by this title. The purchase receipt that has been preserved also states that the painting was painted on wood. “It was enough to open the back wall of the picture,” says Dirk Heiserer, “to see that that’s not true.” The picture is painted on cardboard, and the clearly recognizable remains of the lettering “Pringsheim” can still be read on the back, as if someone had tried to erase the name.
Dirk Heißerer, whose life’s work includes making the history of the Pringsheims and the Manns visible again in an undisguised manner, especially in their hometown of Munich, and who has published numerous books and essays on the subject, was determined: he wanted the picture to be publicly accessible in Munich in the future to know. He had in mind a return to Frido Mann, the grandson of Katia and Thomas Mann, or a gift to the Thomas Mann Forum. After four years of struggling to find a good solution, things have turned out differently. The picture is not to be categorized as looted art, it is only considered “NS escape property”. Robert Schoenhofer, who can assume that his ancestors acquired the picture “in good faith”, lives in the USA himself. And he decided to donate the small painting to the Thomas Mann House in Pacific Palisades.
The view from the garden of writer Thomas Mann’s mansion in the Pacific Palisades. The Thomas Mann House is now owned by the Federal Republic of Germany and is a center for debate, culture and democratic exchange.
(Photo: Gregor Tholl/picture alliance/dpa)
In this villa in Los Angeles, Thomas Mann lived in American exile. From there he resolutely fought his fight for democracy. In November 2016, the Federal Foreign Office acquired the building, saved it from demolition and had it renovated in order to revitalize it as a place for discussion about the common challenges of our time. First of all, however, there will be discussions this Friday in Munich: “The difficulties and opportunities in dealing with Nazi escape goods,” says the invitation.
The painting by the Munich painter Franz von Lenbach shows Klaus Pringsheim around 1891, he was one of Katia Pringsheim’s brothers. It is privately owned by a Munich family. Dirk Heiserer considers it the counterpart to his sister’s portrait.
(Photo: Dirk Heiserer)
Frido Mann and Tamara Marwitz will be there on behalf of the descendants of Hedwig and Alfred Pringsheim, Robert Schoenhofer, Katrin Stoll, Alfred Grimm, the managing director of the Thomas Mann House Heike Catherine Mertens – and Dirk Heiserer. He, in turn, wants to bring another small provocation with him: another Lenbach painting, which Heiserer also considers to be Nazi escape goods. It is owned by a Munich family who do not want to be named. It shows Klaus Pringsheim, created in 1891 at the same time as the Katia portrait, it is similar in size, painted on cardboard. For Dirk Heiserer, this picture is clearly “the counterpart to the two Lenbach portraits of seven-year-old Katia Pringsheim”. And so you can already guess what fight Dirk Heiserer will lead next.
A lovely little head – Franz von Lenbach’s portrait of Katia Pringsheim, Literaturhaus Munich, Fri., March 18, 2022, 7 p.m., hall & stream