61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

His art collection and art library were put up for compulsory sale by auction
five times, arranged by the Berlin auctioneer Paul Graupe in 1935/36. A
smaller remnant of the collection remained in Silberberg’s possession until
1940; it was then «Aryanised» by the Breslau Museum of Fine Arts (Museum
der bildenden Künste) in collaboration with the financial authorities. In 1942,
Max Silberberg and his wife were sent to the transit camp at Kloster Grüssau,
from where they were deported on 3 May 1942, probably to Terezín (Theresienstadt),
and later murdered. According to auction reports, Swiss art dealers
attended Paul Graupe’s first auction in March 1935. It is likely that Fritz
Nathan was also present. He was interested in the only work by a Swiss artist
at the auction, the painting «Stockhorn Chain by Lake Thun» («Stockhornkette
am Thuner See») by Ferdinand Hodler. This painting must have been
deposited with Fritz Nathan for some time; a painting bearing the same title
was listed by Nathan in 1946 as being in his storerooms. 26
This purchase of «Stockhornkette am Thuner See» from the Silberberg collection
illustrates how easy it is to be misled as to provenance by relying on apparently
unobjectionable credentials. Although Hodler painted various views of
Lake Thun, this version is fairly easy to identify, as it shows the lake with
clouds painted with broad horizontal strokes. Painted between 1910 and
1912, the picture was sold by Hodler in 1913 to the Galerie Wolfsberg in
Zurich. In 1921, it reappeared at the Galerie Wolfsberg and was sold in 1923
to the A. Sutter collection in Oberhofen. In 1985, the painting turned up
again at an auction arranged by the Galerie Kornfeld in Bern. 27 There, the
most recent provenance was cited as being the Sutter collection, thus
implying that the painting had been held in private ownership in Bern ever
since. The Swiss Institute for Art (Schweizer Institut für Kunstwissenschaft, SIK)
in Zurich, which constantly monitors the movements of Hodler’s works,
accepted the information supplied by the Galerie Kornfeld. In fact, the
painting had been sold to Max Silberberg in Breslau in the 1920s and sent
to auction when his collection was broken up in 1935. As there was a great
demand for Swiss works of art in Switzerland, this painting returned to
Switzerland through art trade.
A further work from Max Silberberg’s collection was Max Liebermann’s
«Sewing School – The Workroom of the Amsterdam Orphanage» («Nähschule-Arbeitssaal
im Amsterdamer Waisenhaus») (1876), which was on display
until recently in the Bündner Kunstmuseum in Chur. Until 1923, the
painting had been part of the collection owned by Privy Counsillor Robert
Friedberg and is documented as being part of the Silberberg collection from
1927 at the latest. This painting was not offered on auction, but was sold by
Silberberg in 1934, via middleman Bruno Cassirer, to Adolf Jöhr. It was
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