Zwischen europäischer Avantgarde und Leipziger Grußkarte

Die Grafiksammlung Lieber im Landesmuseum Oldenburg

Abstract

In June 1964, the Oldenburg State Museum of Art and Cultural History acquired the multifaceted graphic collection of the Leipzig couple Gertrud and Friedrich Lieber, which comprised around 1.200 prints, drawings and autographs of varying quality and importance. In addition to various small prints, German prints from the 18th and 19th centuries and graphic works from Leipzig and other parts of Saxony, the collection included works by renowned representatives of classical modernism such as Lovis Corinth, Lyonel Feininger, Käthe Kollwitz, Max Liebermann and Edvard Munch. Despite the considerable size of the collection and the quality of many of the works, little was known about the genesis of the collection and the biography of the collector couple: Friedrich Lieber, a senior teacher, taught art education, published art history literature for young people and conducted his own art historical research; Gertrud Lieber worked for the “Deutsche Bildkunst-Hilfe” in Leipzig. After the death of her husband in 1963, Gertrud Lieber moved from Leipzig to Oldenburg with her collection, where the couple’s son Wolfgang lived as an actor. The Lieber graphic collection has been the subject of provenance research at the Landesmuseum Oldenburg for several years. The aim is to investigate the provenance of each individual graphic work and the question of whether all the prints and drawings acquired by the Liebers from 1933 onwards entered the collection legitimately or whether any Nazi-looted art can be traced. Despite a number of suspected cases, no graphic work from the Lieber collection has yet been identified as Nazi-looted art.