Irene Redlich Hellmann (November 3, 1882 - March 6, 1944) was a Viennese Jewish art collector who was murdered in the Holocaust.[1]
Early life edit
Born into a Jewish bourgeois family on November 3, 1882 in Hodonín, she married Paul Hellmann (note, there is a German Wikipedia page for the couple, not sure how to proceed...)
Anschluss with Nazi Germany and Aryanization edit
When Austria merged with Nazi Germany in the Anscluss of 1938, the Hellmanns were persecuted by the Nazis because of their Jewish heritage. Paul Hellmann died in 1938 shortly after the "Anschluss". The Hellmanns' vacation home in Altaussee was "aryanized".
Irene Hellmann emigrated to the Netherlands to join her son. However after Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands and antiJewish racial laws were adopted their, she had to go into hiding from the summer of 1940, changing addresses frequently. From rapidly changing addresses, Irene Hellmann wrote several letters to family members describing the life of the Jewish undesirables.
In the spring of 1943, son Bernhard Hellmann was betrayed and taken to the Nazi camp of Sobibor, where he was killed on April 2, 1943 at the age of 39. Irene Hellmann was deported to Auschwitz on May 6, 1944 and murdered on the same day.[2]
Legacy and commemoration edit
Like other Viennese upper-class families of Jewish origin, the Hellmanns disappeared from collective memory after the Nazis came to power. In 2021, the Jewish Museum Vienna presented the exhibition "Jedermanns Juden. 100 Years of the Salzburg Festival", which was also dedicated to the Hellmann couple.
In 2023, a Klimt painting that Hellmann had owned was auctioned at Sothebys. The sale of Insel im Attersee revived interest in the fate of the Hellmann's art collection, and Sothebys was criticized for initially omitting any information about Hellmann's murder by Nazis and then for including speculations about who might have owned the painting between Hellmann and the art dealer Otto Kallir, as the versions published by the auction house changed numerous times in the weeks preceding the sale.[3]
See also edit
Sothebys
Gustav Klimt
References edit
- ^ "Irene Rosa Hellmann". geni_family_tree. 1882-11-03. Retrieved 2023-11-12.
- ^ "Irene Hellmann-Redlich". Joods Monument. 1882-11-03. Retrieved 2023-11-12.
- ^ Sotheby's. "Wayback Machine PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT NEW YORK COLLECTION Gustav Klimt Insel im Attersee (Island in the Attersee)". web.archive.org. Retrieved 2023-11-12.