The Collector Rosy Fischer

Valentina Bay
Assistant Curator at Brücke-Museum

Collector and art dealer Rosy Fischer (née Haas, b. 4 October 1869 in Frankfurt am Main) was the second of three daughters in a Jewish pharmacist’s family. At her sister’s wedding, she met her future husband Ludwig Fischer (1860‒1922), a mercantile businessman. The couple married in Breslau in 1892 and had two sons – Max (1893‒1954) and Ernst (1896‒1981). In the late 1890s, the family returned to Rosy Fischer’s native city, where they moved into an apartment in Frankfurt’s affluent Westend district.

The Fischer Collection

Rosy and Ludwig Fischer acquired their first artworks in 1905. However, the late Impressionist works of Munich Secession painters were soon replaced by modern art. At the latest, by 1916, the couple concentrated on Expressionist art and began to build up their collection systematically. Their son Ernst recalls that his parents always went to art galleries and dealers separately and afterwards told each other which works they liked best. Usually, they were the same. Following this approach until Ludwig’s death in 1922, they collected some 500 paintings, sculptures and works on paper, predominantly artworks by the Brücke artists, but also by other artists including Franz Marc, Otto Dix, Käthe Kollwitz, Max Beckmann, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Milly Steger and Oskar Kokoschka.1 The result was one of the most important private collections of modern art in Germany at the time.

The Brücke artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, in particular, garnered the couple’s admiration. The collectors first came into contact with the artist in 1916 at Ludwig Schames’ art salon ‒ the first venue to exhibit Kirchner’s works in Frankfurt. The gallerist’s enthusiasm for the artist rubbed off on the Fischers, and over the next six years nearly 80 works by the Brücke artist ‒ including 28 paintings ‒ found their way into their collection. Many walls in the Fischers’ spacious apartment were filled with the painter’s works, and the hanging was changed repeatedly to include other formats and motifs.

The Galerie Fischer

After her husband Ludwig died in 1922, Rosy Fischer made the collection accessible to the public. She opened an art gallery in her apartment under the name Galerie Fischer. Above all, Fischer showed artists who were considered to be part of the second generation of German Expressionism, for example, Werner Gothein, Conrad Felixmüller and Gustav Wolff, concentrating primarily on the graphic arts. If the space available on the walls was not enough, the bookshelves in the library were draped so that more images could be hung in front of them. While Rosy and her husband Ludwig had lived a relatively secluded life, her apartment now became a cultural meeting place known far beyond Frankfurt’s borders. Düsseldorf gallerist Alfred Flechtheim, Berlin art dealer Ferdinand Möller, Emil Nolde and Erna Schilling (Kirchner’s partner), were among the visitors to her gallery.

Rosy Fischer had the artist Gustav Wolff design a logo for the gallery inspired by her name. She used the woodcut of a small fisherman with his pole for advertisements. However, Fischer rarely sold anything. She refused to sell works to anyone she believed was not buying out of genuine enthusiasm for art but rather out of commercial interest. When inflation in Germany and the resulting monetary reform in 1923 obliterated her assets, she saw no alternative but to sell some of the collection. Even before Ludwig’s death, the Fischers had considered selling their works to an art museum. Rosy sold 24 paintings to the Museum für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe in Halle (Saale) in 1924. These included Kirchner’s paintings Im Cafégarten (In the Café Garden) and Sich Kämmender Akt (Nude Combing Her Hair), now at the Brücke-Museum. It was agreed that she should receive an annual pension for the works until 1944. However, Fischer died from fish poisoning two years later in Cairo in 1926 while on a trip to Egypt. She was 53. The unsold portion of her art collection was divided equally between her sons. 2

The Emigration of the Brothers Ernst and Max Fischer

The National Socialist rise to power in Germany in 1933, and the beginnings of the regime’s systematic persecution and ostracism of Jewish people represented a dramatic rupture for Max and Ernst Fischer. Ernst soon decided to leave Germany and emigrated with his family to the United States in 1934. This early departure date enabled him to take his entire share of his parents’ collection with him. Ernst Fischer’s family started over in Richmond, Virginia.

In contrast, Ernst’s older brother, Max Fischer, first fled to the United States in 1935 after coercive measures against the Jewish population had drastically intensified. Due to strict travel regulations, he could only take a few works with him. What happened to the rest of the artworks is still uncertain. Max may have sold some works before he emigrated. The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which took over responsibility for Ernst Fischer’s share of the collection in 2009, continues to investigate the whereabouts of the lost works.3

  • 1
    See the list of works from the Fischer Collection in the exh. cat., Expressionismus und Exil. Die Sammlung Ludwig und Rosy Fischer Frankfurt am Main, Georg Heuberger (ed.), Jüdisches Museum, Frankfurt am Main, 1990, Munich, 1990, pp. 157‒170. The catalogue offers extensive insights into Rosy and Ludwig Fischer’s collecting activities.
  • 2
    Andreas Hüneke, „Das konzentrierteste Museum. Halle (Saale) und die Museumsreformbewegung“, in: Ausst. Kat. Bauhaus Meister Moderne. Das Comeback, hg. v. Christian Philipsen, Kunstmuseum Moritzburg, Halle (Saale) 2019/2020, Leipzig 2019, S. 23-43.
  • 3
    We thank Dr Sarah Eckhardt, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, for numerous references to Rosy Fischer and her collection.