Rebuilding a Destroyed World: Rudolf Beres – A Jewish Art Collector in Interwar Kraków

Abstract

Interwar Krakow was a vibrant cultural center in newly independent Poland. Jewish intelligentsia played a significant part in preservation of Krakowian culture, but also endowed artist and cultural institutions. In a shadow of renowned Maurycy Gottlieb, there is his great collector and promoter of his artistic oeuvre, Rudolf Beres (1884-1964). The core of the collection was inherited from his father Emil. Rudolf, who arrived to Krakow to study law, brought these pictures with him, and with time extended the collection, not only with Maurycy Gottlieb’s artworks, but also other distinguished Polish artists. As a director of the Krakow Chamber of Commerce and Industry he played an influential role in the city and country scene. As a member of Solidarnośc – Krakow B’nai Brith chapter, he was active in the cultural events and ventures in the city. He was the main force behind the famous exhibition of Maurycy Gottlieb’s of 1932 in the National Museum in Krakow. Rudolf collected extensive information on Maurycy in order to commemorate his life and promote artistic oeuvre of the first Jewish artist of such significance. His home art gallery, mostly because of Gottlieb’s collection was visited by various Jewish activists; for example Hayim Nahman Bialik. Moreover, Rudolf planned to exhibit Maurycy’s work in Tel Aviv. With a group of B’nai B’rith members he traveled with his wife to visit Palestine. He was a close friend of Feliks Kopera, the director of the National Museum in Krakow, for which he extensively organized money collection for erecting a new galleries’ building. The paper presents forgotten and unpublished facts about a Jewish art collector of Krakow, a person whose art works he once possessed and cherished, are now in various museums and private collections as a result of WWII and communist regime. I bring the man back from obscurity of history’s selectiveness. The historical documents, family heirlooms and discovered war memoirs of Rudolf construct the past of the great Jewish citizen of Krakow without whom Maurycy Gottlieb could have been unknown as much as he is known now.