Le Mur Rose (full title:Paysage, le mur rose;Landscape, the Pink Wall), is a painting byHenri Matisse from 1898.
It was bought in Paris at the sale of La Peau de l'Ours on 2 March 1914 byJewishentrepreneurHarry Fuld, who foundedFrankfurt, Germany based H. Fuld & Co. Telefon und Telegraphenwerke AG, which madetelephones. After Fuld died on a business trip to Switzerland in 1932, his art collection passed to his son, Harry Fuld, Jr.[1]
After the ascent of theNazi party to power, Fuld fled to safety in Switzerland in 1937, packing the collection into crates. But the collection never left Germany and, after confiscation by theSS, it somehow became the property ofSS officerKurt Gerstein. A pre-war expert in decontamination techniques, Gerstein was assigned to the Hygiene Institute of the SS, becoming responsible for deliveringZyklon B poison used in thefinal solutiongas chambers, includingAuschwitzconcentration camp.
At the end of World War II, on 22 April 1945, Gerstein surrendered to the French commandant of the occupied town ofReutlingen. He received a sympathetic reception and was transferred to a residence in a hotel inRottweil, there writing out theGerstein Report. He was later transferred to the notoriousCherche-Midi military prison where he was apparently treated as a war criminal. On July 25, 1945, while awaiting trial he was foundhanged dead in his cell, an allegedsuicide.[2] Continuing the investigation into Gerstein's war crimes, French police recoveredLe Mur Rose from a cache of stored art near Gerstein's home inTübingen, Germany.
Harry Fuld, Jr. died in Switzerland in 1963, andwilled his entire estate to Gisela Martin. When she died in Switzerland in 1992, she in turn willed her estate toMagen David Adom UK, the British-based branch of theIsraeli-based medical services charity, which provides ambulances and medical infrastructure in Israel.
Having hung inmuseums in Paris since 1949, latterly in theMusée National d'Art Moderne at thePompidou Centre; in November 2008 the painting was given by theFrench Culture Ministry to Magen David Adom UK, at a ceremony in Paris.[3]
In February 2010 the painting was acquired from the heirs, the Magen David Adom UK, for theJewish Museum Frankfurt, Germany, with the financial help of various German foundations and private donors.[4]
