Max Emden
German Jewish merchant and art collector, persecuted by Nazis because Jewish (1874-1940)
Max James Emden (28 October 1874 – 26 June 1940) was a German-born Swiss businessman, art collector, heir and bon vivant. He was the owner of the Brissago Islands on Lake Maggiore from 1926 until his death.
Emden primarily collected 19th century of Old Masters as well as French and German painters such as Canaletto, Böcklin, Feuerbach, Liebermann, Courbet, Degas, Gauguin, van Gogh and Monet. Some of Emden's properties, including valuable paintings, have been the object of Nazi-era restitution claims. How his legacy has been handled has sparked a debate in Germany about the erasure of information concerning the Nazi era and inspired films about his life.
Early life and education
Emden was born 28 October 1874 in Hamburg, German Empire, the older of two children, of Jakob "Giacomo" Emden (1843–1916), a wealthy merchant and owner of department stores, and Mathilde Emden (née Kann; 1841–1910). He had an older sister, Alice Stéphanie Aboucaya (née Emden; 1873–1968).
The Emden family was a well established Jewish merchant family (named after the city of Emden) which has been settled in Hamburg since the 17th century and were active in the textile industry which would later turn into the department store giant M.J. Emden Söhne (M.J. Emden Sons). His mother hailed from a wealthy banking family from Frankfurt am Main.
Emden graduated from Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Hamburg on 7 September 1893.
The public source identifies “Max Emden” as german Jewish merchant and art collector, persecuted by Nazis because Jewish (1874-1940). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Emden, German and Jewish.
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This entry incorporates text from “Max Emden” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.