Max Liebermann

Gerhard Hauptmann, Agnetendorf,

his son, Benvenuto Hauptmann,

Anja Hauptmann, Munich;

private collection, Hessen;

sale, Berlin, Grisebach GmbH, 11 June 2004, lot 12

J. Chapiro, Gespräche mit Gerhart Hauptmann, Berlin 1932, p. 65;

Hartmut Pogge - von Strandmann (ed.), Walther Rathenau, Tagebuch 1907-1922, Düsseldorf 1967, p. 174 (under 26 October 1912);

H.D. Hellige (ed.), Walther Rathenau - Maximilian Harden, Briefwechsel 1897-1920, Munich/Heidelberg 1983, p. 181

Marbach am Neckar, Deutschesliteraturarchiv im Schiller-Nationalmuseum, Harry Graf Kessler, Tagebuch eines Weltmannes, 1988, cat. 18/1;

Berlin, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Walther Rathenau 1867-1922, 1993-4, cat. 2/4c

Conveniently, the dating of this elegant portrait of the German industrialist, writer and politician Walther Rathenau (1867-1922) can be deduced with some precision from his diaries, where we read, under 26 October 1912: ‘Jeden Mittag beim Zahnarzt. Dazwischen von Max Liebermann gezeichnet, für Hauptmann’ (‘Every lunchtime to the dentist. In between, drawn by Max Liebermann, for Hauptmann’). The drawing was made to be given as a present to the prominent writer Gerhart Hauptmann (1862-1946) on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday, on 15 November 1912. In this same year, Hauptmann won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Shortly after the lavish birthday festivities, Hauptmann wrote to Rathenau, thanking him warmly for his extremely thoughtful gift. 

Walther Rathenau was the son of the Jewish founder of the German electrical engineering firm, AEG, and assumed the chairmanship of the company in 1915, following his father’s death. Throughout the First World War, Rathenau played an important role in organising the German war economy, and having formed a new political party, the German Democratic Party, was politically prominent in the post-war Weimar Republic, holding the positions of Minister of Reconstruction and Foreign Minister. In this latter capacity, Rathenau negotiated the 1922 Treaty of Rapallo, which normalised relations and strengthened economic ties between Germany and Soviet Russia. Rathenau also insisted that Germany fulfil its obligations under the Treaty of Versailles, and soon came to be branded by right-wing nationalist groups (including the emerging Nazi Party) as part of a Jewish-Communist conspiracy.

Just two months after the signing of the Treaty of Rapallo, members of an ultra-nationalist paramilitary group called Organisation Consul assassinated Rathenau as he drove to work along Berlin’s Königsallee. The initial response to his death was widespread national mourning and demonstrations against counter-revolutionary terrorism, briefly strengthening the position of the Weimar Republic, but following the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Rathenau was swiftly ‘cancelled’, and any suggestion that he had been a democratic martyr became taboo.

Not surprisingly, given the prominence of the subject of this portrait, Liebermann seems to have made a reproduction of the drawing in lithograph or collotype, perhaps before handing it over to Rathenau. The combination of blue and black chalks that we see here is regularly found in Liebermann’s drawings relating to prints.

We are grateful to Drs. Margreet Nouwen for kindly confirming the attribution, on the basis of a digital image.