Two “newcomers” in Bavaria
Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv 🔍 Über das Bild mit der Maus fahren, um zu vergrößern
Semaya Franziska and Julius Davidsohn were “Zuagroaste”, the Bavarian term for “newcomer”. She was from Frankfurt am Main and he came from Hanover, the couple married in 1901 in Mannheim, and then lived for a while in Berlin until a change of job took them to Bavaria. Julius Davidsohn became the manager of the graphite mine in Untergriesbach, near the Bavarian city of Passau.
1914 saw the outbreak of World War One. Julius Davidsohn signed up as a volunteer in the Landsturm, an auxiliary military force that assisted the Bavarian army in World War One.
John Warwick Brooke, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
As he had a driver’s license, he was assigned to the Bavarian Driver Replacement Battalion and served in Flanders, where the fierce fighting resulted in a particularly high number of casualties.
Stadtarchiv München, DE-1992-FS-PK-ERG-09-0153
Military hospital
On two occasions he became so seriously ill that he had to be sent to a military hospital – the first in Landshut and the second in Munich. He was in active service until the end of the war in 1918.
Turbulent times: the Weimar Republic
Stadtarchiv München, DE-1992-FS-PK-STR-00737
After the war, the Davidsohns moved into an apartment in Widenmayerstraße, right by the river Isar and a stone’s throw away from the Deutsches Museum (German Museum).
These were turbulent times. The Bavarian monarchy was overthrown, there were revolutions and economic crises, civil unrest was rife, and society became increasingly polarized.
As a salesman and entrepreneur, Julius Davidsohn was particularly exposed to economic fluctuations. Business would be going well one moment and then badly the next. The advertising firm in which he was a partner had to file for bankruptcy in the early 1930s.
Fotografie aus dem Kennkartendoppel. Stadtarchiv München, DE-1992-KKD-1681
The Davidsohns did not have any children of their own. Semaya Franziska looked after her brother Ludwig Hirsch, who was deaf. He lived with the couple in their home.
Stadtarchiv München, DE-1992-FS-NS-00084 🔍 Hover over the image to enlarge
Gradual deprivation of rights
With the seizure of power by the National Socialists, the couple's life changed. The Kristallnacht pogrom on 9 November 1938 shows the full brutality of the regime. Not far from the Davidsohns' apartment is the synagogue on Herzog-Rudolf-Straße, one of the many synagogues in the German Reich that was destroyed in the night of November 9 to 10.
After the Kristallnacht pogrom, more than 1000 Jewish men are taken to the Dachau concentration camp. Among them was Julius Davidsohn. He was imprisoned there until November 20, 1938.
Just returned home, the horrors continue.
Systematic art theft
Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen
On 25 November 1938 the doorbell rang at the Davidsohns’ home. Gestapo officials and the antiques dealer Ludwig Schrettenbrunner were at the door. They had come to confiscate the Davidsohns’ cultural property.
Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen
Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen
Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen
Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen
Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München
Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München
Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München
Bayerisches Nationalmuseum
Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen
The elderly couple looked on helplessly as their pictures, a carved ivory relief depicting Schiller’s “Lied von der Glocke” (Song of the Bell), and a magnificent soup tureen made of Nymphenburg porcelain were removed and place in a furniture van waiting in front of the building.
ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Thomas-Mann-Archiv / Fritz Krauskopf / TMA_0212
The Davidsohns were not the only ones to be robbed in the days that followed “Reichskristallnacht” (The Night of Broken Glass), a wave of orchestrated anti-Jewish violence in November 1938. Similar scenes played out in around 70 apartments in and around Munich where Jews were resident. This art theft operation was meticulously planned with the help of art and museum experts and carried out under the perfidious pretext of wanting to protect the artworks from being destroyed or looted. The initial victims were the owners of large, well-known collections in Munich, for example Alfred and Hedwig Pringsheim, the parents-in-law of the writer Thomas Mann. They were forced to sell their city-center villa to the Nazis and they now lived in the same street as the Davidsohns, Widenmayerstraße, at number 35.
Private property
The Pringsheims had a renowned art collection. Alfred Pringsheim was an avid collector of work produced by silversmiths from the Renaissance period. The Gestapo seized 96 of these artworks on 21 November 1938.
Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Dok. 199, Mappe 3
However, soon the looting operation went on to target people who only owned a few artworks such as the Davidsohns, who lived ten buildings down from the Pringheims.
There is a precise record of the items that the Gestapo removed from the apartment. An inventory listed each and every item along with its estimated value.
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The confiscated artworks were taken to a depot at the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum (Bavarian National Museum) and in 1940 Munich’s museums were given the chance to purchase them. The Bayerisches Nationalmuseum bought the porcelain tureen.
Forced changes of residence and deportation
Bundesarchiv Bild 183-C0716-0049-019
The Davidsohns’ suffering continued.
In 1939 they had to vacate their apartment in Widenmayerstraße and in the years that followed they had to live in so-called Jew houses (Judenhäuser), collective accommodation assigned to Jews. Julius Davidsohn had to undertake grueling forced labor. The couple were ultimately taken to the internment camp in Berg am Laim, from where they were deported to Theresienstadt on 16 July 1942. They did not survive the horrific conditions in the ghetto and concentration camp. Julius Davidsohn perished on 11 August 1942 and Semaya Franziska on 24 April 1943.
Semaya’s brother Ludwig Hirsch also perished in Theresienstadt.
Bayerischer Senat, Bildarchiv 169 000
Shortly before being deported, Semaya Franziska Davidsohn appointed the Munich attorney Siegfried Neuland as executor of the couple's will. Neuland was a friend of the Davidsohns, as he later recounted:
“During the time I lived in Schwabing, up until 1937, I regularly went to the Davidsohns’ apartment at 45 Widenmayerstr. on Sunday evenings to play chess with Julius Davidsohn. It was what you call a mansion apartment. When I went there, I noticed the elegant interiors. The apartment was very well furnished; there were Persian rugs on the floor and there were pictures.”
Bayerisches Nationalmuseum
Siegfried Neuland had himself been persecuted as a Jew under the National Socialist regime. After the war he initiated the reestablishment of the Israelite Religious Community in Munich and his daughter Charlotte Knobloch was to continue this legacy. Moreover, he campaigned for justice for his Jewish clients and endeavored to have the Davidsohns’ looted property returned to the rightful heirs. However, Munich Regional Court rejected his claims on the grounds that they had not been submitted in time. The artworks belonging to the Davidsohns were transferred to several Bavarian museums in 1955. The five paintings went to the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen (Bavarian State Painting Collections), the three French color engravings to the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung (State Graphic Arts Collection) and the ivory relief to the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum.
Difficult search for heirs
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When researching the museum holdings sixty years later, provenance researchers established that the owners of the five paintings had clearly lost them as a result of persecution. The artworks had to be returned. But to whom?
The Davidsohns had no children of their own and so Semaya Franziska’s cousins were eligible for the inheritance. However, as a result of fleeing the National Socialists, the family was scattered all over the world and it proved difficult to track down the heirs. Professional heir hunters took two years to trace descendants in Germany, England, the USA, Israel, and Zimbabwe.
Staatsministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst / Andreas Gebert
In 2019 it was finally possible to restitute the artworks. Hardy Langer, the representative of the joint heirs, received them on behalf of the other rightful heirs from the family. On this occasion, he recounted a very moving anecdote from his own family history. His grandmother Emma was Semaya Franziska Davidsohn’s cousin. She managed to survive the Nazi era in Germany with the precarious protection afforded by a “mixed marriage” (Mischehe) as her non-Jewish husband remained steadfastly by her side.
