Max Liebermann was a German painter and printmaker, and one of the leading proponents of Impressionism in Germany and continental Europe.
87 Facts About Max Liebermann
2.
The son of a Jewish banker, Liebermann studied art in Weimar, Paris, and the Netherlands.
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Max Liebermann later chose scenes of the bourgeoisie, as well as aspects of his garden near Lake Wannsee, as motifs for his paintings.
4.
Max Liebermann was honored on his 50th birthday with a solo exhibition at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin, and the following year he was elected to the academy.
5.
On his 80th birthday, in 1927, Max Liebermann was celebrated with a large exhibition, declared an honorary citizen of Berlin and hailed in a cover story in Berlin's leading illustrated magazine.
6.
Max Liebermann was a son of a wealthy Jewish fabric manufacturer turned banker, Louis Liebermann, and his wife Philippine.
7.
Max Liebermann had five siblings, including the older brother Georg Liebermann, who later became an entrepreneur, and the younger brother, the historian Felix Liebermann.
8.
Max Liebermann passed the time more and more by drawing, which his parents cautiously encouraged.
9.
When Max was ten years old, his father Louis bought the imposing Palais Liebermann, at Pariser Platz 7, directly to the north of the Brandenburg Gate.
10.
When Louis Liebermann commissioned his wife to paint an oil painting in 1859, Max Liebermann accompanied his mother to the painter Antonie Volkmar.
11.
Max Liebermann's parents were not enthusiastic about painting, but at least in this case their son did not refuse to attend schools.
12.
On his afternoons off school, Max Liebermann received private painting lessons from Eduard Holbein and Carl Steffeck.
13.
Max Liebermann's parents showed him affection and support, but he was aware of their greater regard for his older, more "sensible" brother Georg.
14.
In 1862,15-year-old Max Liebermann attended an event by the young socialist Ferdinand Lassalle, whose passionate ideas fascinated the millionaire's son.
15.
Max Liebermann later claimed to have been a bad student and had difficulty with getting through the exams: in truth, he was not one of the better students in mathematics, but his participation in the higher grades was considered "decent and well-mannered".
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Max Liebermann chose chemistry, in which his cousin Carl Liebermann had been successful.
17.
Max Liebermann studied law and philosophy at the University of Berlin, which exmatriculated Liebermann on 22 January 1868 because of "study failure".
18.
Max Liebermann volunteered for the Johannitern because a badly healed broken arm prevented him from regular military service, and served as a medic during the siege of Metz.
19.
From Whitsun 1871, Max Liebermann stayed in Dusseldorf, where the influence of French art was stronger than in Berlin.
20.
When Max Liebermann took part in the Hamburg art exhibition with the picture in 1872, his unusual subject aroused disgust and shock.
21.
Max Liebermann had found his first style: realistic and unsentimental depiction of working people, without condescending pity or romanticism.
22.
In 1873 Max Liebermann saw farmers harvesting beets at the gates of Weimar.
23.
Max Liebermann decided to capture this motif in oil, but when Karl Gussow cynically advised him not to paint the picture, Liebermann scratched it from the canvas.
24.
Max Liebermann decided to visit the famous history and salon painter Hans Makart in Vienna, where he stayed for only two days.
25.
In December 1873 Max Liebermann moved to Paris and set up a studio in Montmartre.
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Max Liebermann first spent the summer of 1874 in Barbizon, near the Forest of Fontainebleau.
27.
In 1875 Max Liebermann spent three months in Zandvoort in Holland.
28.
Under the pressure of being accountable to his parents and himself, Max Liebermann fell into deep depression in Paris, and was often close to despair.
29.
In 1878 Max Liebermann went on a trip to Italy for the first time.
30.
In December 1878 Max Liebermann began work on The 12-Year-Old Jesus in the Temple With the Scholars.
31.
Max Liebermann had already made the first sketches for this work in the synagogues of Amsterdam and Venice.
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Max Liebermann immersed the subject in an almost mystical light, which seems to emanate from the baby Jesus as the shining center.
33.
Max Liebermann's painting of a Semitic-looking boy Jesus conferring with Jewish scholars sparked a wave of indignation.
34.
From that time on, Max Liebermann was a famous artist, but his painterly advances came to a standstill during his stay in Holland in 1879: The light in a view of a rural village street that was created at that time appears pale and unnatural.
35.
Max Liebermann did not find the mood shown in the surroundings of Munich, which was heated up by anti-Semitic hostility, but tried to absorb it in his annual stays in the Netherlands.
36.
Max Liebermann glanced into the garden of the Catholic old man's house, where elderly men in black were sitting on benches in the sunlight.
37.
About this moment, Max Liebermann later said: "It was as if someone were walking on a level path and suddenly stepped on a spiral spring that sprang up".
38.
Max Liebermann began to paint the motif, and for the first time used the effect of the light filtered through a canopy, the later so-called "Liebermann's sunspots", that is, the selective representation of self-colored light to create an atmospheric atmosphere.
39.
In 1884 Max Liebermann decided to return to his hometown Berlin, although he was aware that this would lead to inevitable conflicts.
40.
Max Liebermann produced studies everywhere and collected ideas that largely filled him up in the years that followed.
41.
Max Liebermann painted little during this time, as he devoted himself entirely to the role of father.
42.
At his exceptionally cultivated neighbors, Max Liebermann saw paintings by Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas, which accompanied him throughout his subsequent life.
43.
Max Liebermann returned to Laren, where flax was made from raw linen in peasant cottages.
44.
Max Liebermann stayed in Bad Kosen in the spring of the three emperor year.
45.
Max Liebermann wanted to be a free spirit, but he was unable to reject the Prussian traditions because of his character.
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Max Liebermann came up with the plan to present the first guard of German painting with Menzel, Leibl, Wilhelm Trubner and Fritz von Uhde.
47.
Max Liebermann only refused the accolade of the Legion of Honor out of consideration for the Prussian government.
48.
In 1889 Max Liebermann traveled to Katwijk, where he took leave of the social milieu as a subject with the painting Woman with Goats.
49.
In 1890 Max Liebermann received several commissions from Hamburg, all of which could be traced back to Alfred Lichtwark: In addition to a pastel in the Kirchenallee in St Georg, he got his first portrait commission from there.
50.
Max Liebermann found the naturalness of the representation in connection with the apparently casual official dignity bestowed by historicizing clothing repugnant.
51.
Max Liebermann had more success with his work Woman with Goats, for which he received the Great Gold Medal in the spring of 1891 at the exhibition of the Munich Art Association.
52.
Max Liebermann was the president of the Berlin Secession from its beginning in 1898.
53.
Max Liebermann's health deteriorated from the spring of 1909, and while he went to Karlsbad for a cure, a generational conflict broke out between Impressionists and Expressionists.
54.
In 1910, the Secession board under Max Liebermann rejected 27 Expressionist images, and the former rebel now seemed a conservative spokesman.
55.
The criticism of his leadership style grew louder until it finally came from within his own ranks: On 16 November 1911, Max Liebermann himself resigned as President of the Berlin Secession.
56.
In 1909, Max Liebermann bought property in Wannsee, a wealthy suburb of summer homes on the outskirts of Berlin.
57.
Max Liebermann felt comfortable there and particularly enjoyed his personal design.
58.
Max Liebermann particularly enjoyed the large garden, which he and Alfred Lichtwark designed.
59.
Max Liebermann again spent the summer of the year in Noordwijk.
60.
Max Liebermann understood the Emperor's words as a call to serve the national cause and at the same time to lower social barriers.
61.
Max Liebermann identified with the castle peace policy of the Reich Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, who tried to bridge internal contradictions in German society.
62.
Max Liebermann joined the German Society in 1914, in which public figures came together for political and private exchange under the chairmanship of the liberal-conservative politician Wilhelm Solf.
63.
Max Liebermann never left Berlin with the exception of two spa stays in Wiesbaden in 1915 and 1917.
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Max Liebermann's family did not suffer hardship, even if they used the flower beds of his country house to grow vegetables because of the insecurity of supplies.
65.
Julius Elias, whose wife Julie Elias dedicated her famous cookbook to Max Liebermann, called the honors for the painter "a coronation".
66.
Max Liebermann took a negative view of the political changes: although he advocated the introduction of equal suffrage in Prussia and democratic-parliamentary reforms at the imperial level, for him "a whole world, albeit a rotten one", collapsed.
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Max Liebermann had already regretted Bethmann Hollweg's departure in 1917 and saw republicanization as a missed opportunity for a parliamentary monarchy.
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Max Liebermann tried to unite the various currents under the umbrella of the academy, including expressionism.
69.
In view of the need to rebuild the collapsed imperial institution, Max Liebermann succeeded in providing it with a democratic structure, a free educational system and, at the same time, greater public attention.
70.
Max Liebermann painted a large number of self-portraits, as had been his habit since 1902.
71.
Max Liebermann was deeply disturbed by the murder of his relative and companion.
72.
Max Liebermann made lithographs for Heinrich Heine's "Rabbi von Bacharach" in addition to numerous paintings of his garden and drawings in memory of fallen Jewish soldiers at the front.
73.
In 1923 Max Liebermann was accepted into the order Pour le Merite.
74.
On 7 October 1924, his younger brother Felix Max Liebermann, who had been a friend of his life, died.
75.
Max Liebermann withdrew more and more into himself and his garden, and often appeared surly.
76.
Max Liebermann supported Otto Dix's painting Trench, which emotionally depicted the horror of the world war and which was accused of being a "tendentious work"; for Liebermann it was "one of the most important works of the post-war period".
77.
Max Liebermann supported the Jewish children's home "Ahawah" and the aid association of German Jews.
78.
In 1927 Max Liebermann came back into the public eye: the media and the art world celebrated him and his work on the occasion of his 80th birthday.
79.
Max Liebermann's work was part of the painting event in the art competition at the 1928 Summer Olympics.
80.
Max Liebermann was a popular subject for painters, photographers and caricaturists throughout his life.
81.
Max Liebermann withdrew from the public eye, while hardly any of his companions stood by him and remained loyal.
82.
Max Liebermann died on 8 February 1935 in his house on Pariser Platz.
83.
The Max Liebermann family has been trying to recover a portrait of Martha Max Liebermann that was on a Gestapo list of objects seized from her apartment for years.
84.
Max Silberberg, the famous Jewish art collector from Breslau who was murdered in Auschwitz had several artworks by Liebermann that were looted by the Nazis.
85.
On 30 April 2006, the Max Liebermann Society opened a permanent museum in the Liebermann family's villa in the Wannsee district of Berlin.
86.
The artist's wife, Martha Max Liebermann, was forced to sell the villa in 1940.
87.
Max Liebermann had loaned his painting to the Jewish Museum in Berlin in the 1930s.