Note: In this post, I briefly consider the philosophical question whether the chance discovery of family photographs of my father’s first cousin Fedor Löwenstein found in a Paris flea market was fated or coincidental. The circumstances under which the event occurred was so improbable that a small part of me wonders if it was not predestined.
Related Posts:
POST 21: MY AUNT SUSANNE MÜLLER, NÉE BRUCK, & HER HUSBAND DR. FRANZ MÜLLER, THE FIESOLE YEARS
POST 35: FATE OF SOME JEWISH GUESTS WHO STAYED AT THE VILLA PRIMAVERA (FIESOLE, ITALY), 1937-1938
POST 105: FEDOR LÖWENSTEIN ‘S NAZI-CONFISCATED ART: RESTITUTION DENIED
In several earlier posts, I’ve mentioned my friend Ms. Madeleine Isenberg (Figure 1) who volunteers at the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles assisting members doing ancestral research. Madeleine once wrote an article for a periodical entitled “Avotaynu” detailing one of her research endeavors. She quoted her English uncle who claimed there is no such thing as coincidence, it’s all “beshert,” a Hebrew word for predestination or fate. My father Dr. Otto Bruck would have agreed with him.
While I claim no adherence to this notion, I’ve come across several instances while doing ancestral research that make me think there may be an element of fate at work. Or, could it be as Branch Rickey, the brainy former General Manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, once said that “Luck is the residue of design?” That’s to say, by planning and knowing where opportunities lurk, perhaps one is more apt to find oneself in a place where a coincidental find may be made. I don’t pretend to know the answer.
Buried in Post 21, published in February 2018, I recounted the story of a similar coincidental or fated event related to my family. Before moving to the subject of this post, I’ll review that earlier incident as it may have been overlooked by readers. Interestingly, it involves two elements of chance.
I estimate my uncle Dr. Franz Müller and aunt Susanne Müller, née Bruck, arrived in Florence, Italy in the early part of 1936, following their emigration from Germany to escape Nazi authoritarianism. Thanks to a friend my uncle knew in the Tuscan hill town of Fiesole, above Florence [Italian: Firenze] by the name of Dr. Gino Frascani, he and my aunt leased one of his villas, the Villa Primavera. (Figure 2) Eventually, in collaboration with an Austrian Jewish woman, Ms. Lucia von Jacobi (Figure 3), who’d also emigrated from Austria via Germany, my aunt Susanne and Lucia turned the Villa Primavera into a bed-and-breakfast. In Post 35, I discussed some of the guests who stayed there between 1937 and 1938 and their eventual fates.
In connection with my ancestral research, my wife Ann and I visited Fiesole and Florence in 2014, 2015, and 2016. Prior to our initial visit in 2014, I contacted the then-town archivist, Ms. Lucia Nadetti (Figure 4), at the “Archivio Storico Comunale,” the “Municipal Historic Archive,” and arranged to review pertinent documents. I’ve detailed the results of those archival investigations in Post 21, so refer readers to that post.
Curious whether my uncle and aunt had purchased the Villa Primavera when they arrived in Fiesole, Ms. Nadetti directed us to the “Conservatoria Dei Registri Immobiliari” in nearby Firenze (Florence) to check ownership records. Here, we learned the descendants of the former obstetrician/gynecologist Dr. Gino Frascani currently own two houses along Via Del Salviatino, the street where the Villa Primavera is located. However, the family no longer owns the villa though my uncle never purchased it.
The visit to the “Conservatoria,” however, resulted in the first of the two chance events mentioned above. In 2014, my wife and I were staying at a bed-and-breakfast on the outskirts of Fiesole, but rather than deal with Florence’s traffic to get to the Conservatoria, we took the bus. While trying to ascertain where to catch the return bus at the end of the day, an English-speaking Italian woman, Ms. Giuditta Melli (Figure 5), noticed our confusion and confirmed we were in the right place. Giuditta was headed on the same bus, so we exchanged pleasantries on the ride, and she invited us to visit the ceramic shop near the Conservatoria where she teaches. Two days later we dropped by and mentioned our reason for visiting Fiesole. Giuditta was literally moved to tears because she’d recently learned that her great-uncle was Jewish and had been deported to Buchenwald from Firenze by the Italian Fascists and murdered there; the house where Giuditta currently lives was once owned by this great-uncle. It should be noted that Giuditta is very familiar with the Villa Primavera as it’s located a stone’s throw from her home. Regardless, as we prepared to leave, we exchanged emails and promised to stay in touch. This has turned into an exceptionally warm and productive friendship, one that led to the discovery of the second chance event.
Following our visit to Fiesole in 2015, my wife and I had not anticipated returning in 2016. However, Giuditta made a surprising discovery while doing a casual online search of Lucia von Jacobi, the Austrian lady with whom my aunt ran the Pension Villa Primavera. As a result our plans changed. She learned of a professor, Dr. Irene Below (Figure 6), from Werther, Germany, who’d written a full-length book about Ms. Jacobi. Giuditta immediately contacted her, explained her interest in Lucia, told her of my aunt and uncle, and mentioned she was in touch and assisting me. Dr. Below was surprised to learn of Giuditta’s interest in people she’d studied and knew about, including my aunt and uncle. Consequently, Giuditta invited Irene and my wife and me for a get-together at her home in 2016.
Dr. Below explained how she came to write a book about Lucia von Jacobi. She arrived in Firenze in 1964 as a student intending to write about the history of art. While researching this topic, however, she happened upon magazines and diaries of an unknown person who turned out to be Ms. von Jacobi, a woman with very famous friends (e.g., Heinrich Mann and Thomas Mann, Gustaf Gründgens, etc.), and decided instead to write about her. Then, as fate would have it, in 1966, Dr. Below walked into an antiquarian shop in Firenze (Figure 7) and discovered the bulk of Ms. Jacobi’s personal papers, which she soon purchased with her parents’ financial assistance. For those unaware of events in Firenze in 1966, great floods along the Arno in November resulted in countless treasures being swept away and destroyed; if not for Dr. Below’s fortuitous discovery, the same would likely have happened to Ms. Jacobi’s papers.
Readers may rightly wonder how or why Lucia’s personal papers wound up in an antiquarian shop in Florence. A little bit of historical context is necessary to explain how this likely happened. In May 1938, Hitler paid his second visit to Italy since becoming Chancellor of Germany in 1933 and the first since the two countries signed the Axis agreement in 1936. Over the course of seven days, Hitler and his extensive entourage were treated to a massive display of fascist spectacle in three cities: Rome, Naples and Florence. Hitler’s tour of Florence took place on May 9, 1938.
Soon after on July 14, 1938, Mussolini embraced the “Manifesto of the Racial Scientists.” This Manifesto declared the Italian civilization to be of Aryan origin and claimed the existence of a “pure” Italian race to which Jews did not belong. Between September 2, 1938, and November 17, 1938, Italy enacted a series of racial laws, including one forbidding foreign Jews from settling in Italy. Ms. Jacobi had just returned to Firenze from Palestine, but after passage of the racial laws, she escaped in October 1938 to Switzerland, forced to leave all her possessions behind. As a related aside, this corresponds with the same time that my aunt and uncle emigrated from Italy to France. Dr. Below surmises that Lucia’s personal papers remained in the Villa Primavera until Dr. Frascani’s descendants sold the house, after which they were sold to an antique dealer.
As to belongings among Lucia’s personal papers that relate to my aunt and uncle, there were several relevant items. Dr. Below discovered a photograph of Ms. Jacobi with my Uncle Franz seated on the same chairs as a photo I possess showing my aunt and uncle. (Figures 8-9) Another picture shows my aunt and uncle in their Sunday best. (Figure 10) Irene also found a card written by my Aunt Susanne to Lucia on July 31, 1938, from Champoluc in the Aosta Valley of Italy, where my aunt and uncle had gone on vacation. Most interesting is the surviving second page of a letter my Aunt Susanne wrote to Lucia when Lucia traveled to Palestine for three months in the latter half of 1938.
Thus, a chance encounter with an Italian lady Giuditta Melli on the streets of Florence in 2014 led to learning about Dr. Below who in 1966 walked into an antiquarian shop in Florence where she happened upon Lucia von Jacobi’s personal papers, the Austrian lady with whom my Aunt Susanne co-managed the Pension Villa Primavera in Fiesole between 1936 and 1938. Dr. Below then wrote a book about Lucia von Jacobi that my dear friend Giuditta stumbled upon. Included in this stash of papers are several items related to my family. Is this coincidence or predestination? I’ll let readers decide.
This brings me to a discussion of another more recent chance discovery. This involves a cache of photographs portraying my father’s first cousin, Fedor Löwenstein (1901-1946), that were found in a Paris flea market by a man named Nicolas Neumann (Figure 11) from Somogy Éditions d’Art; this is a French art book publishing house founded in 1937. Readers will recall that Fedor Löwenstein is my father’s first cousin who was most recently discussed in Post 160 and is the subject of my restitution and repatriation claim involving the French Ministry of Culture. Readers are invited to peruse my earlier post. However, let me review a few salient facts.
As mentioned in Post 160, I originally filed my claim for restitution and repatriation of Fedor Löwenstein’s artworks in October 2014. This was filed with the French Ministry of Culture’s (Premier Ministre) Commission pour la restitution des biens et l’indemnisation des victims de spoliations antisemites (CIVS), Commission for the restitution of property and compensation for victims of anti-Semitic spoliation. In May 2015 I traveled to Paris to discuss my claim with the CIVS and met staff members Mme. Muriel de Bastier and her intern Mlle. Eleonore Claret. (Figure 12)
Several months later, Eleonore sent me photos of Fedor Löwenstein (Figure 13) from an exhibit on spoliated art that took place at the Centre national d’art et de culture Georges-Pompidou (“National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture”) in 2015. The origin of these photos was not explained so I sent an email to the Centre Pompidou requesting copies of the images and an explanation as to their source; I never heard back from them. I eventually ascertained the photos of Fedor Löwenstein that had been part of the 2015 museum exhibit at the Centre Pompidou originated from Nicolas Neumann’s find at the Paris flea market.
Mr. Neumann determined the documents he’d found probably belonged to Fedor’s onetime girlfriend, Doris Halphen. (Figure 14) Mr. Neumann loaned the documents and photos he had purchased for the 2015 exhibit to the Centre Pompidou. Nicolas is friends with the retired Director of the Kandinsky Library, M. Didier Schulmann, who convinced him to donate the materials in February 2017 to the Kandinsky Library which is part of the Centre Pompidou.
The eclectic body of documentation is referred to as the “Corposano Archive Fund-Doris Halphen.” The archival collection comprises three significant groups. The first, the most substantial, is composed of documentation from the Corposano dance studio; the second is about Fedor Löwenstein; and the last is made up of biographical photographs and family albums.
The Kandinsky Library provides the following description about Doris Halphen, the Studio Corposano, and Fedor Löwenstein:
“Doris Halphen was born in Prague and co-founded the Corposano studio with her Finnish collaborator Marianne Pontan in 1932 in Paris. They taught a very innovative dance method at the time: the Hallerau-Laxenberg method. (Figures 15-18) The documents in the collection, mostly photographs, are both portraits of dancers in the studio and advertising items. Press articles and dance magazines provide an overview of the context of dance in the 1930s and 1940s and an understanding of the Hallerau-Laxenberg method and its principles.
A second part of the collection consists of documentation on Fedor Löwenstein (1901-1946). Born in Munich on April 13, 1901, he studied at the School of Decorative Arts in Berlin, then at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden, where Oskar Kokoschka taught from 1919 to 1924. He joined France in 1923 and settled in Paris, attracted by the artistic influence of the capital. A lover of Doris Halphen, the painter’s Jewish and Czechoslovak condition forced him to leave Paris at the beginning of the war and take refuge in Mirmande in the Drôme. (Figure 19) The couple separated shortly afterwards, and Fedor Löwenstein lived a tumultuous passion with the artist Marcelle Rivier until October-November 1943.”
The collection includes unidentified biographical photographs of Doris Halphen that were probably taken at the beginning of the twentieth century in Prague. Additionally, there are two photographic albums that retrace the memories of two summers in Mirmande in the Drôme, including one from 1938. Fedor Löwenstein and Doris Halphen are the recurring characters.
My April 2024 visit to Paris to attend a CIVS committee meeting where my compensation claim was being discussed provided a perfect opportunity to visit the Kandinsky Library where the Doris Halphen collection is archived. Appointments must be scheduled in advance. With the grateful assistance of Mme. Florence Saragoza, who originally helped me file my claim in 2014, I was able to make last-minute arrangements to examine and photograph the collection.
Fortunately, Mme. Muriel de Bastier, whom I first met in 2015 and who still works at the CIVS, accompanied my wife and me to the Kandinsky Library; I say fortunately because the line to enter the Centre Pompidou extended for blocks, and I otherwise would never have been able to view the Doris Halphen Collection before the museum closed. Muriel graciously also arranged for us to meet M. Didier Schulmann, the former Director of the Kandinsky Library, who gave me an extremely useful orientation to the collection. (Figure 20)
During my all-too brief visit, I concentrated on photographing the album with pictures of Fedor Löwenstein and Doris Halphen. (Figure 21-23) Among the images unlikely to have been recognized by any other researcher were two of Fedor with his sister Jeanne “Hansi” Goff, née Löwenstein (1902-1986) that were taken in Mirmande. (Figures 24-25) Unlike Fedor who died in 1946 before I was born, I met Hansi in Nice, France on multiple occasions as a child.
An out-of-place picture I discovered in the collection was of the famous African American, Paul Robeson (1898-1976). He was an American bass-baritone concert artist, actor, professional football player, and activist who became famous both for his cultural accomplishments and for his political stances. Among the few pictures in Doris Halphen’s collection that is captioned it reads “Robeson at Wo-Chula.” (Figures 26a-b) I think this picture was taken in Chowula, Ghana, but the circumstances for its inclusion in Doris’ album is a complete mystery.
I’ve never met nor communicated with Nicolas Neumann so am in the dark regarding the precise circumstances under which he found Doris Halphen’s collection. Regardless, I imagine he’s one of the few people who would have realized the significance of what he’d found and had connections with the Kandinsky Library to ensure the materials wound up in an archive where they would be properly cared for. From a personal standpoint, what is gratifying is that I was able to track down a previously unknown to me cache of Fedor Löwenstein photographs. The more existential question is that Nicolas Neimann even found Doris Halphen’s surviving papers and photographs. Again, I ask whether this was fated or coincidental?
REFERENCES
Isenberg, Madeleine. (2012). The Rotter Relic. AVOTAYNU, Volume XXVIII (Issue 4, Winter 2012), pp. 27-31.
Studio Corposano – Doris Halphen. Circa 1900-1950, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Kandinsky Library – Documentation and Research Centre of the National Museum of Modern Art – Centre for Industrial Creation, Call number: COR 1 – 4.