Historical Museum Frankfurt am Main / Horst Ziegenfusz
In happier times
A family in the garden. In the center is the mother in a pale-colored summer dress, with her hair up. The father stands casually alongside her. Their two sons seem unsure of what to make of having to sit still for hours to be painted. The sun shimmers through the green foliage. A glorious summer’s day in Frankfurt am Main in 1904.
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 🔍 Hover over image to enlarge
A meeting point for art enthusiasts
The lady in the pale-colored dress is Florence Mary Flersheim, née Livingstone, an American from San Francisco. She was married to the Frankfurt entrepreneur Martin Flersheim and the couple had two sons – Herbert and Fritz. The Jewish artist Jakob Nussbaum, who painted the family portrait, was a family friend. Alfred Wolters, director of the Städtische Galerie (Municipal Gallery) in Frankfurt, recalled: “I saw Nussbaum on many occasions while he was still in Frankfurt, for example at the Sunday evening get-togethers at the home of Martin Flersheim, who loved art and was an avid art collector and patron. Anyone from Frankfurt with a passion for art and the art world would gather at Martin Flersheim’s beautiful home with its ostentatious extension built to accommodate his gallery.”
Frankfurt - city of art
Federal Archives, picture 146-2009-0145
As a bourgeois city-republic, Frankfurt is notable for its public spirit. It was not the aristocracy who built the museums here. Instead, the art and culture scene was funded by the liberal bourgeoisie, including many Jewish citizens.
Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main 🔍 Hover over image to enlarge
Martin Flersheim is also actively involved in the community and supports artists, cultural institutions, and museums. The Städel Museum in Frankfurt still has a number of paintings donated by Flersheim on display.
The Flersheims: a family of entrepreneurs from Frankfurt
The brothers Martin and Ernst Flersheim run a successful import business. Together with their wives they amass extensive and important art collections, participated actively in cultural life in Frankfurt, and cultivated friendships with artists.
Ernst Flersheim recalled: “We started our art collection soon after we got married […]. Our preference was for works by contemporary German painters, some of whom we knew personally, for example Steinhausen and Trübner. We were particularly friendly with the Frankfurt painter Jakob Nussbaum. We also regularly had the opportunity to meet artists at one of the many get-togethers held at the home of my brother Martin, who had an important art collection.”
Ernst Flersheim remembers his visit to Rodin. Ernst Flersheim: Memoirs, p. 20, Leo Baeck Institute Archives, New York.
In the international art world
The Flersheim are also at home at the international art world. They are friends with the Spanish painter Ignacio Zuloaga, and while in Paris, go and visit the sculptor Auguste Rodin.
Friendship with the artist Jan Toorop
Toorop Collection, Royal Library, The Hague
Zhe Dutch painter Jan Toorop was also among Ernst and Gertrud Flersheim’s circle of friends. They probably got to know each other in 1905 when Toorop had an exhibition in Frankfurt. The Flersheims visited the artist in the Dutch coastal resort of Domburg on a number of occasions. Ernst Flersheim described the painter as follows in his memoir: “He was an incredibly kind and deeply religious man; he was very musical and often improvised on the piano. I’ll never forget our frequent evening strolls together, when he would talk about the way he saw the world and open our eyes to the beauty of nature.”
Heidelberg University Library, https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.7005#0344
The Flersheims purchase a number of Toorop’s works, including Godsvertrowen (Trust in God).
Death in Bergen-Belsen
“In January 1933 Hitler came to power – it is clear what that meant for Jews in Germany,” writes Ernst Flersheim. He flees to Amsterdam with his wife in 1937. They assume that the Netherlands would be a safe haven, but the German Wehrmacht occupies the country in 1940. In February 1944 the Flersheims are deported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they were murdered.
Joods Cultureel Kwartier Amsterdam
Michael Eberstadt
From England to the USA
Edita Flersheim, the daughter of Gertrud and Ernst, marries the banker Georg Eberstadt in 1920. They emigrate to England in the summer of 1936 with their children Brigitte and Walter.
Michael Eberstadt
Walter studies in Oxford, but after a year joins the British Army and fights in Normandy. After the war he returns to Germany with the army to serve in the British zone of occupation. As he knows German and is familiar with the country, the Allies commission him to establish the station Radio Hamburg (later Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk, NWDR) to provide information to the local population. He emigrates to the USA in the early 1950s.
Efforts at restitution
Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen
Walter Eberstadt becomes a successful banker. In 2002 he publishes his family’s history under the title "Whence We Came, Where we Went". The book also describes his efforts to get back the artworks that had once belonged to his murdered grandparents Ernst and Gertrud Flersheim.
Bayerischer Rundfunk
One of these was the drawing Godsvertrowen (Faith in God) by Jan Toorop. It had been in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam since 1943. In 2001 the museum returned it to the Eberstadt family.
Today the drawing is on the living-room wall at the Manhattan home of Ernst and Gertrud Flersheim’s great grandson, Michael Eberstadt.
Film
Florence Flersheim’s escape to Amsterdam
Amsterdam City Archive Collection
Ernst Flersheim’s brother Martin dies after long illness in 1935. His wife Florence flees with their son Fritz to Amsterdam, where they live for a number of months at Hotel Doelen.
City Archive Dannenberg an der Elbe, Archive ID 18696
The discriminatory legislation introduced by the Nazi regime means that Florence Flersheim is forced to sell or leave behind a substantial proportion of her assets and valuables.
However, she manages to take a part of her household inventory and the art collection with her and stores them in two large wooden shipping crates in the free port of Amsterdam.
Liebermann's painting "Boys Bathing"
Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen
The painting Badende Jungen (Boys Bathing) by Max Liebermann is in one of the crates. The Flersheims had purchased it from the artist directly
Wikimedia Commons, public domain
In summer 1944 the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (Reichsleiter Rosenberg Task Force, ERR) loots the free port of Amsterdam, seizing Florence Flersheim’s stored possessions in the process. For a long time, it was thought that the Badende Jungen was among the goods seized and that this was therefore a looted artwork that had to be restituted.
Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen 🔍Hover over the image to enlarge
However, the Liebermann painting escaped the ERR’s clutches: Florence Flersheim managed to give it to the Amsterdam branch of the Cassierer art dealership for sale on commission. In 2022 decisive evidence of this safe custody was discovered in the Cassirer archive. The Flersheims’ son Fritz had the Badende Knaben auctioned in 1954. In 1981 the purchaser donated the painting to the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen (Bavarian State Paintings Collections).
