A gift in 1939
The story of Marie Waldeck-Reiss
World of beauty
In a letter to the director of the Rijksmuseum, Frederik Schmidt-Degener, in 1939, Marie Waldeck-Reiss wrote, ‘It would give me great pleasure, by way of this gift, to express my gratitude to our beloved Netherlands, and in particular for the enjoyment of the world of beauty under your stewardship.’ She gifted to the museum a parasol from the estate of her mother, which she had brought to the Netherlands from Germany, as well as a number of objects she had made herself. Maria Charlotte Waldeck-Reiss (1870-1942) was a Jewish widow, originally of Frankfurt. She had been living in Amsterdam since 1930 with her son Hans and his wife Clara.
Anti-Semitism
Following Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, many thousands of Jewish people fled Germany for the Netherlands due to the increasingly open anti-Semitic violence and anti-Jewish actions. One such action was the Nazi government’s demand for one billion Reichsmarks from the Jewish community as ‘conciliation’ for what it described as ‘[the] hostile attitude of Jewry towards the German people’. Waldeck-Reiss was one of the victims of this ‘Jewish wealth tax’.
‘Our beloved Netherlands’
In her letter, Waldeck-Reiss wrote that her gift was an expression of her gratitude to ‘our beloved Netherlands’. Just days after giving it she applied for Dutch citizenship. It is possible that she hoped her gift would add weight to her request for naturalisation, but we cannot be sure. What is certain is that several weeks later her application was rejected.
Deportation
Fearing the growing threat of war, in November 1939 Waldeck-Reiss's daughter-in-law Clara fled by boat to Portugal with her baby Tom and toddler Paul. Two years later they obtained visas to the United States and survived the war there. Hans visited them in Porto, but returned to be with his elderly and sick mother in Amsterdam – on what turned out to be the day before the German invasion.
Hans and a colleague tried to escape back to Portugal via Spain in the summer of 1942, but on 27 July Hans was arrested while travelling on the express train from Brussels to Paris. He was taken to the Dossin barracks transit camp in Mechelen, Belgium. On 1 September 1942 he was put on transport to Auschwitz, where he was murdered in October that year. On 5 August 1942, nine days after her son's arrest, Marie Waldeck-Reiss committed suicide in Amsterdam.
No refuge in the Netherlands
Jews fleeing Germany were not safe in the Netherlands either, and they were certainly not welcomed with open arms. Many of them faced bureaucratic obstacles, anti-Semitism, humiliation, and psychological and physical violence. From 1940, when the Nazis occupied the Netherlands, the lives of Jews in this country were in as much danger as they had been Germany. In desperation, some of them chose to end their lives.
Hidden stories
Provenance research brings to light the stories of people whose very existence the Nazis tried to erase. The traces of origin we discover offer glimpses into the lives of people such as Marie Waldeck-Reiss – into their knowledge and their love for the objects now found in museums. These traces also confront us with the injustice done to people who in many cases did not survive.
Photocredits
- Letter Waldeck-Reiss: Noord-Hollands Archive, Archive 476 Rijksmuseum and predecessors, inventory number 1200, scan 33
- Photo police reports Amsterdam: Amsterdam City Archives, Police Archive 5225, inventory number 6650, scan 390
- Photo Hans Waldeck: Tom Waldeck
- Wedding photo Hans and Clara Waldeck: Tom Waldeck
