John Hilary’s beautifully illustrated and superbly researched book “tells the story of a group of German Jews who arrived in Britain during the 19th century, established themselves in high society by means of their wealth and philanthropic dealings, and left their mark on the art world of the Edwardian era”. They made an extraordinary contribution to cultural life in Britain in the first half of the 20th century and yet became curiously forgotten. Magnates & Masterpieces is a superb piece of reclamation and is one of the outstanding books of the year.
These super-rich art collectors were all Jews but interestingly they did not consider themselves defined by their Jewish faith. Half of them married non-Jewish women and only five of the 15 collectors at the heart of this book were buried in Jewish cemeteries. Above all, they were a very distinct group, quite separate from the established families of Anglo-Jewry or the new immigrants from Eastern Europe.
Many were ‘Randlords’, men who made their fortunes through diamonds and gold in South Africa or from banking. But what is striking is what they spent their money on: huge properties in the grandest parts of London, acts of philanthropy and, above all, by building up extraordinary art collections, many of which were later bequeathed to the nation. In this sense, they are very different from their American counterparts whose collections were housed in famous museums named after them like the Frick in New York, The Huntington in LA and The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. According to Hilary, this perhaps explains why these German Jewish collectors have faded from history. They gave their collections to already existing art museums rather than founding their own. There is another reason, he argues. Two World Wars with Germany led to tremendous anti-German feeling.
The book consists of two parts. The opening chapters put this generation of collectors in context. First, they represented “new money”: capital not land. Second, they left Germany as young men and found that “England in those days … threw her doors wide open to all comers”. Third, it was the heyday of the British imperial project and a new world of international finance. Crucially, their wealth helped them to enter high society. If you had the money, Britain was a more open society than the Kaiserreich, still ruled by antisemitic Junkers and generals.
