Letter from Max Beckmann to Judge Ernst Levi in Frankfurt am Main, June 1933
Letter from Max Beckmann to Judge Ernst Levi in Frankfurt am Main, June 1933
The judge Dr Ernst Levi had a collection of modern art. Stephan Lackner spoke of works by the expressionist painter Erich Heckel, Carl Hofer and Max Beckmann that he had seen in Levi's house.
After being detained temporarily by the Nazis, Ernst Levi fled to the US with his wife in 1940 and died in New York the next year. Their two children Bernhard and Margaret took the first part of their mother's maiden name, Heiden. Margaret Heiden (later Sterne through marriage) worked as a historian with the German-American art historian William R. Valentiner at the Detroit Art Institute.
One point of contact to Beckmann is the extensive connections between the Levi and Morgenroth families: Ernst Morgenroth, who later went by the name Stephan Lackner, may be regarded as one of the most important collectors and supporters of Max Beckmann and had been introduced to him back in his student days at the Levis' home in Frankfurt. Ernst Levi shared the good news of Stephan Lackner's first purchase of one of his paintings, the painting Adam and Eve from 1932, which he had arranged.
In the letter shown here, Beckmann mentions the exhibition in the Anermuseum in Erfurt that was cancelled by the authorities shortly before it was to open. Nevertheless, Beckmann's works were kept in storage at the museum, where Stephan Lackner could view them.
Gallery
