A Firework of the Avant-garde

Hans grew up in a somewhat unconventional household. His parents’ home in Erfurt was a haunt for the artistic avant-garde of the time. The family’s guest book reads like a who’s who of expressionism. Max Pechstein, Otto Mueller, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Wassilij Kandinsky, and Christian Rohlfs – to name but a few – recorded their visits with sayings and sketches. Some guests wrote just a few words, while others dedicated themselves to creating little artworks. Paul Klee, for example, brought his sieves and spray-painting equipment specially to create the Kollidierende Vögel (Colliding Birds) in the guest book.

Erfurt is a very special city. As a major industrial location, it suffered from the global economic crisis and political unrest during the Weimar Republic. But at the same time, Erfurt is in close exchange with the nearby Bauhaus. It develops into a center of Expressionism. And that has a lot to do with the parents of Hans, Alfred and Tekla Hess.

Alfred Hess came from a family of shoe manufacturers. With four factories, “Maier & Louis Hess” was one of the main businesses in the city.

Hess shoes from Erfurt were sold throughout Europe.

The Hess Villa around 1920, and today.

Stadtarchiv Erfurt, Bestand 6-0/ 05 (neu), gemeinfrei – Bayerischer Rundfunk

The villa initially had a conventional interior, with Art Nouveau paintings alongside traditional living room furniture. However, then World War One broke out and Alfred served as a volunteer. His experiences on the front and the societal upheaval after 1918 changed him, his view of the world, and his aesthetic and political mindset.

“Like so many, he had been torn away from everything he had taken for granted and he had to ask himself new questions and find new answers”, recalled Hans. “His response was to live in the new era and to understand and assist the new developments in art.”

Tekla and Alfred adapted themselves to the new era. This was evident in their home furnishings. The living-room furniture and bourgeois ornamental wall art disappeared from the villa. “This is how the new paintings by the German expressionists and new friends came into the house”, recounted their son. The Hess family’s love of art sealed friendships with the artists who produced it.

Hans summed up the atmosphere at his parents’ house: “My mother’s hospitality and her delight at meeting new people enabled guests to feel at home rather than like ‘visitors’”. The villa was a hub for artists and their families. Among them were Lyonel and Julia Feininger and their three sons. This is how Hans obtained his special wooden toys.

One of the artist’s paintings, Regenklarheit (Rain Clarity) also hung in Hans’s bedroom. In each and every room, it was evident that the family lived and breathed art.

The Angermuseum in Erfurt also benefited from Hess’s passion for modern art. The businessman donated and loaned works to the museum.

However, the Weimar Republic was in a state of tension. Because they were Jewish, the Hess family were targeted by antisemites. Their support for the avant-garde made them even more hated. They were reviled as “Jewish-Bolshevist agents”. Moreover, business was bad as a result of the global economic crisis.

Fate then dealt the family a severe blow. Alfred Hess died in 1931 at the age of just 52 due to complications following surgery.

His widow Tekla and the couple’s 23-year-old son Hans managed to save the company from bankruptcy. However, they both left Erfurt. Hans now lived in Berlin and Tekla moved back to her home town of Lichtenfels in the southern German region of Franconia. She took the art collection with her.

After the exhibition the museum purchased four works including Rote Frau (Red Woman) by Franz Marc. The proceeds were very useful for the Hess family – Hans had just got married and was about to become a father. More importantly, Trevor Thomas offered him a post as curator. For Hans Hess this was the start of a career as an art historian. Moreover, Leicester Museum had laid the foundations for a significant collection of German Expressionist art.

However, the Hess family struggled with the loss of their once renowned collection. Again and again, Hans and Tekla had to sell artworks to support themselves. Additional works were lost in the chaos of war. What distressed them even more was that many of their relatives did not survive the Holocaust. The manufacturer Geor Hess, who was Alfred Hess’s uncle, was for example murdered in Sobibór extermination camp.

Tekla Hess died in 1968 and Hans Hess died in 1975. Three decades later Hans Hess’s daughter, Anita Halpin, contacted the Brücke-Museum in Berlin. She issued a claim for the restitution of the painting Berliner Straßenszene. The state of Berlin had purchased it in 1980. The restitution in 2006 was contested and the so-called Causa Kirchner (Kircher case) provoked heated debate. Today the Straßenszene is on display at the Neue Galerie art museum in New York.

The Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen (Bavarian State Painting Collections) also owns a work from the Hess collection – a still life by Jacoba van Heemskerck, which has the name Alfred Hess marked on the back of the canvas. Due to suspicion that the artwork had been looted, its provenance was investigated thoroughly. However, in this case the painting was not obtained as a result of persecution because Tekla Hess sold it in 1956 via an auction house in Stuttgart.

The Hess collection, a unique collection of Expressionist art, was broken up and the works scattered across many locations. Nonetheless, upon the publication of the Hess family’s guest book in 1957, Hans, the son of collectors Alfred and Tekla, stated: “If this book from the 1920s can appear in Germany today, with its colorful pages, its drawings and captions by many of those who once found their way to the house and whose names have gone down in cultural history, it is proof that the prevailing values of art survive the worst of times and do not relinquish their right to a place in history.”