Alfred Flechtheim

Alfred Flechtheim was one of the most dedicated and successful German art dealers promoting the German and French avant-gardes between the two World Wars.

As a businessman in Düsseldorf, he started collecting contemporary art around 1906. Beginning in 1910, the year of his marriage to Betti Goldschmidt, he traveled frequently to Paris to acquire paintings. Wilhelm Uhde, a Prussian collector who was living in the French capital, introduced Flechtheim to key figures of the Paris art world, most notably the German dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Subsequently, Flechtheim became one of Kahnweiler’s most loyal clients and one of the foremost collectors of Pablo Picasso before World War I.

After about a decade working as a grain merchant at the helm of his family’s business, in 1913 Flechtheim faced bankruptcy—a harrowing but providential event that launched his career as a dealer. While contemplating the thought of selling his artworks to salvage the business, Flechtheim itemized his collection, which included paintings by Pierre Bonnard, Georges Braque, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Edvard Munch, Henri Rousseau, Picasso, Georges Seurat, and Vincent Van Gogh. With dealer Paul Cassirer’s support, Flechtheim soon turned his passion into a profitable business, opening his first gallery on December 21, 1913, at Alleestrasse 7 in Düsseldorf with an associate named Hans Fehr. Flechtheim was banking on his solid art-world connections and a close partnership with Kahnweiler, however this venture was brought to an end by the start of World War I. Flechtheim and Fehr enlisted and the latter was soon killed. Flechtheim was forced to sell his stock on June 5, 1917, through the auction house Paul Cassirer & Hugo Helbing in Berlin.

In April 1919 Flechtheim took advantage of the post-war boom and reopened his gallery in Düsseldorf at Königsallee 34. This was the first of five galleries the dealer would open in short succession. In doing so, he rekindled his pre-war contacts in France, most significantly with Kahnweiler, who returned to Paris after six years of exile and opened the Galerie Simon in 1920. In 1919 Flechtheim also opened a gallery in Berlin, which was first located in two rooms lent by Galerie Cassirer at Viktoriastrasse 35 and later relocated on October 1, 1921, to Lützowufer 13. Initially, the Berlin gallery was run by Kahnweiler’s brother, Gustav, until Flechtheim opened a third gallery in Frankfurt-am-Main on November 12, 1922. From then on and until its closing, Gustav led the Frankfurt branch, known as Galerie Flechtheim und Kahnweiler, located at Schillerstrasse 15. Alex Vömel and Curt Valentin became directors of the Düsseldorf and Berlin galleries, respectively, after a period of training at Galerie Simon. In December 1922, Flechtheim opened a fourth gallery at Schildergasse 69–73 in Cologne, led successively by Wilhem Graf von Kilmannsegg, Dr. Otto Erich Jaffé, and Andreas Becker. By October 1923 Flechtheim had extended his business all the way to Vienna through a partnership with the gallery Würthle & Sohn, at Weihburggasse 9, led by Lea Bondi-Jaray.

On December 3, 1923, the dealer and his wife Betti moved from Düsseldorf to Berlin. During the 1920s, Flechtheim was a key figure in the European art world with a flamboyant, charismatic personality and an impressive network to match his boundless energy. By the mid-1920s, however, his prospects dwindled with the financial collapse of Germany. In 1925 the severe devaluation of the Reichsmark forced Flechtheim to close his Frankfurt and Cologne branches, and in 1931, the Great Depression ended all activities at the Vienna branch. The Düsseldorf and Berlin galleries also encountered serious financial difficulties and bankruptcy loomed until Flechtheim closed the two remaining gallery spaces in 1933. Vömel, who had worked for Flechtheim since 1923, took over the Düsseldorf location on March 30. When Flechtheim ceased his activities at the Berlin branch in November 1933, Valentin went on to work for dealer Karl Buchholz.

Flechtheim’s challenging situation was compounded by the fact that under the new Nazi regime, he was denigrated both as a Jew and a champion of modern art. In the fall of 1933 he left Germany, hoping to establish himself as an art dealer elsewhere, while his wife stayed in Berlin. Soon after, his niece Rosi Hulisch and financial advisor Alfred Schulte oversaw the closing of the German business at the dealer’s behest. Flechtheim meanwhile prospected in Basel, then Paris, and finally London where, in early 1934, he started to work at the Mayor Gallery. At the time, the Mayor Gallery’s directors, Douglas Cooper and J. F. Duthie, worked closely with Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler at Galerie Simon. Flechtheim traveled regularly between London, Paris, and Berlin, and successfully moved part of his collection to England, France, and Holland. The dealer was very productive during this time, organizing exhibitions at the Mayor Gallery, Leicester Galleries, and New Burlington Galleries that included such artists as Edgar Degas, André Derain, Paul Klee, Fernand Léger, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

In early 1937, complications from diabetes put Flechtheim in the hospital. When his condition worsened, Betti traveled from Nazi Germany to London and was at his side at St Pancras Hospital when he died from septicemia on March 9. That same year, Flechtheim was vilified in anti-Semitic propaganda advertising the Nazi-organized traveling exhibition of so-called “degenerate” art, featuring modern artworks removed from Germany’s state-owned museums. Flechtheim’s archives were lost during the war.