Hermann Rupf and Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler met around 1900 during their time as trainees in Frankfurt. In Paris, they discovered their mutual love of art during the leisure time they shared. While Rupf joined his brother-in-law’s haberdashery business in Bern as a partner in 1905, Kahnweiler opened a small art gallery in Paris in 1907. Rupf became his first client.

Kahnweiler nicknamed Rupf “Mane,” while Rupf addressed his friend in Paris as “Heini.” At Mane’s invitation, Heini spent the duration of World War I, from 1914 to 1920, in exile in Bern. After Kahnweiler had returned to Paris, Rupf bought his friend a house in Paris-Boulogne to help him get started. Kahnweiler paid off the interest with works of art over many years.

Rupf and Kahnweiler remained close for life.

In 1907, Kahnweiler opened his “store” – as he called the sixteen-square-meter gallery at 28 Rue Vignon in Paris. At first, he followed the conventions of the Parisian art market by organizing individual exhibitions and producing catalogues. He soon changed his strategy, limiting himself to displaying his stock. At the same time, he began successfully to focus, above all, on an international audience.

Kahnweiler’s position as an advocate of avant-garde Cubism (Picasso, Braque, Derain, Léger, and Gris) made his gallery an address that was mentioned in the same breath as the most important galleries in the French capital.

During World War I, Kahnweiler’s holdings were confiscated by the French as “enemy property.” In 1920, he had to rebuild his business in Paris practically from scratch. Kahnweiler’s gallery now became known as Galerie Simon.

The global economic crisis after 1929 once again posed a threat to the art market. Kahnweiler at times even considered closing the gallery. It was thanks to his international contacts that he was able to, more or less, survive the crisis. But his friend Rupf also helped him out as much as he could.

In 1940, following the occupation of Paris by the German military, the gallery was threatened with “Aryanization” and liquidation in 1941. When Kahnweiler’s stepdaughter Louise Leiris took over the gallery under her own name, the business was able to continue, more or less, until the end of the war in 1945.

After 1945, Kahnweiler continued to run the gallery together with Louise Leiris under her name, once again becoming one of the most important art dealers and promoters of art of his time.

In the 1930s, Rupf increasingly acted as a lender, with Kahnweiler sometimes functioning as intermediary. Kahnweiler wrote to Rupf in a letter that loans were “of great value for the reputation of the collection.” In 1933, Rupf loaned important works to the Braque exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel, and in the same year to the Gris and Léger exhibitions at Kunsthaus Zürich. In 1936, Braque’s painting Maisons à l'Estaque (Houses at l'Estaque, 1908) was one of the key loans for the epochal exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

In the fall of 1940, after the war had already begun, Rupf was able, despite the prevailing uncertainty, to finally present his collection at Kunsthalle Basel.

Michel and Louise Leiris, a married couple, played an important role in Kahnweiler’s life. Louise – known within the family as Zette – was the daughter of Kahnweiler’s wife Lucie Godon and, as a result, Kahnweiler’s stepdaughter. She provided indispensable support to him at Galerie Simon.

She met her husband Michel, a writer and ethnologist, at the legendary “Dimanches de Boulogne,” the social gatherings of avant-garde artists and intellectuals at Kahnweiler’s house in Boulogne.

In 1941, the “Jewish” gallery was threatened with “Aryanization,” that is, expropriation and liquidation. By negotiating skillfully, Louise Leiris managed to take over the gallery as managing director under her “Aryan” name, Louise Leiris. She was able to successfully lead the gallery through the chaos of war, as she wrote to Rupf on February 16, 1945: “Michel and I have remained in Paris since 1940. I was able to keep the gallery open, as you well know. I have showed all our painters, including Klee, throughout the entire occupation.”

Louise and Michel Leiris played an important role in liaising with Kahnweiler and his wife Lucie during their period of exile, who – sometimes at a risk to their own lives – brought information and documents from Paris to Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat.

In their apartment in Paris, Louise and Michel Leiris gave shelter to people who were being politically persecuted. It was through such contacts that they learned in 1943 that Kahnweiler’s arrest and deportation were imminent. They warned him and provided him with fake identity cards, bringing them to Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat, in the south, meanwhile also occupied by the Germans. Michel Leiris organized a hiding place that enabled the Kahnweilers to go underground from September 1943 onwards.

After 1945, Kahnweiler’s close collaboration with Louise continued. The business name remained “Galerie Louise Leiris,” becoming a favored destination for those involved in the international art market.

The gallery still exists today, even if it has not been active for some years.

Kahnweiler’s stepson-in-law Michel Leiris was a member of the “Dakar-Djibouti Mission.” The expedition, financed by the French parliament, was tasked with completing the collection of the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadero in Paris (nowadays Musée de l'Homme). The colonial pillaging by the scholars was intended to enable a new, comprehensive exhibition of the cultures of the conquered territories.

The mission lasted from May 31, 1931, to January 30, 1933, travelling from West Africa to the East. The scholars ultimately brought more than 3,500 objects back to France. The haul also included 6,000 photographs, 1,600 meters of film material, and 1,500 pages of manuscripts.

Kahnweiler wrote to Rupf on March 7, 1933: “Michel is back: healthy and happy. Now comes the literary work. He wants to devote himself entirely to ethnography. His ‘journal,’ which he wrote daily, is splendid: only it is so ‘scandaleux,’ so frank, that it will harm his ethnographic career.”

On July 3, 1933, a postscript followed: “The new magazine Minotaure is devoting its second issue to the “Dakar-Djibouti Mission.” Zette [Louise Leiris] will send it to you, as Michel has a few copies.”

It can be assumed that the magazine Minotaure was also in the Rupf library, as was the Michel Leiris travel diary, which appeared in 1934 under the title L’Afrique fantôme (Phantom Africa). In it, Leiris ruthlessly criticized the coercive colonial methods used by the mission’s ethnographers.

The fact that objects from such colonial plundering also found their way into European art collections and that they became art objects in purely formal aesthetic terms in relation to Cubist as well as other formal avant-garde languages ​​is demonstrated by the mask that was once part of the Rupf collection.

The legendary Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne opened in Paris on May 25, 1937, attracting 34 million visitors by November 25. The Rupfs visited it in September.

In the Spanish pavilion, Picasso showed the monumental painting Guernica for the first time, a commissioned work for the Spanish Republican government, which was fighting against the fascist troops of General Franco. The painting denounced the terror attack by German aircraft on the Basque town of Guernica, showing the civilian victims and human suffering during the Spanish Civil War, which had long since become a battleground for international interests – a brutal foreshadowing of World War II.

Kahnweiler briefly reported to Rupf on July 17, 1937: “First and foremost, the enormous, moving painting by Picasso in the Pavillon d’Espagne, as well as sculptures by Picasso. The painting (approx. 10 meters wide), although absolutely not anecdotal, is in the spirit of Guernica, etc."

In May 1936 the Front populaire won the elections in France. On June 5, Léon Blum formed the new government as the country’s first socialist prime minister. Its political program included the introduction of the 40-hour working week, statutory holiday entitlement, recognition of trade unions, establishment of works councils, and the right to strike.

Kahnweiler wrote to Rupf on June 16, 1936: “As far as the political situation here is concerned, it is extremely difficult to predict the future. Everything went very peacefully, without any incidents. What the consequences will be, we cannot know. Perhaps Blum’s ‘New Deal’ will succeed. The danger is, of course, that rising prices will soon deprive the workers of the advantages they have gained today, and that new strikes will break out, etc. In any case, if Blum’s experiment fails, it will be the last legitimate government in France. After that comes communism or fascism...”

Kahnweiler’s lines express a great deal of sympathy for the Blum government’s social democratic program. It is to be assumed that Rupf also partially agreed with all this. The successful businessman had been a member of the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland, Bern-Länggasse section, since 1905/06 and wrote, from 1909 to 1931, about fine art and music for the social democratic daily newspaper Berner Tagwacht. Comrade Rupf remained a loyal member of the SPS until his death in 1962.

On June 30, 1939, Galerie Fischer in Lucerne organized the auction Gemälde und Plastiken Moderner Meister (Paintings and Sculptures by Modern Masters) on behalf of the German Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, comprising 125 works of “degenerate” art that had all been confiscated from German museums.

Kahnweiler and Rupf were unsure whether they should participate in the auction at all. Kahnweiler decided to go anyway, “to prevent the prices from rising.” Rupf wanted to boycott the auction, “so that the gangsters only have expenses and no sales. That would be wonderful.”

Despite his reluctance, Rupf eventually acquired two works, albeit from the post-auction sale:
- No. 80, August Macke, Gartenrestaurant (Garden Restaurant), for 900 francs 
- No. 81, Ewald Mataré, Liegende Kuh (Lying Cow), for 480 francs

"We are living through decisive hours. The fate of our civilization, our world, all of us are at stake. I remain fully confident."

This is what Kahnweiler wrote to Rupf on May 27, 1940 – after the German military had invaded Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands during the “Western Offensive” on May 10 and then rapidly advanced towards Paris in France.

On June 13, the French government declared the capital an “open city” that would not be defended under the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. The government sought safety in Bordeaux.

On June 14, 1940, German troops marched into Paris.

A few days earlier, Kahnweiler and his wife Lucie had been able to find temporary safety in the south in Limousin.

On June 16, Maréchal Pétain was appointed head of government of the French Republic and requested a truce with the German military, which was signed on June 22.

France was divided into a German occupation zone in the north – including Paris – and a “free zone,” where Pétain established the authoritarian “État français,” which was compelled but also sought to collaborate closely with the “Third Reich.”

After the Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942, the “free” southern zone was likewise occupied by the German military.

In August 1943, the various resistance groups joined forces and intensified the fight against the occupying forces.

On June 6, 1944, the Allied troops landed in northern France and on August 15 in southern France. On August 25, Paris was liberated.

Kahnweiler and his seriously ill wife Lucie returned to Paris from their hiding place in October.

On June 22, 1940, 84-year-old Maréchal Philippe Pétain signed the truce between France and the German Reich, which divided France.

In the “free zone” in the south (40 percent of France) – this rump of France, the “État français” with the spa town of Vichy as its capital – Pétain became the authoritarian “Chef de l’État.” The “Révolution nationale” was proclaimed, breaking radically with France’s republican traditions, including a liberal right to asylum, and instead of “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” it relied on the motto “Travail, Patrie, Famille” (Work, Homeland, Family) – in essence a quasi-fascist state was installed that collaborated closely with the German occupying forces.

Article 19 of the truce agreement stipulated that France must extradite all German citizens so designated by the German Reich who remained in French territory.

Vichy France also issued 64 anti-Semitic decrees that increasingly deprived Jewish people living in the “free” south of their rights.

While Pétain was negotiating a truce with Germany, General Charles de Gaulle delivered a radio address to the French people from his exile in London on June 18, 1940, which was broadcast by the BBC.

A few days after the armistice was concluded, de Gaulle assembled the remaining 110,000 French soldiers in England to form the Free French Forces, siding with Great Britain and later the Allied forces in their continuation of the war.

Kahnweiler regarded himself as German – and French. Until 1933, it was unimportant to him that he came from an assimilated Jewish family that had lived in Rockenhausen (Palatinate) since the 17^th century.

Although he had long been at home in Paris, he closely followed political events in Germany after 1933, not least because his family, as well as many German friends and acquaintances who were Jewish and/or anti-fascists, were directly affected by the discrimination, disenfranchisement, and persecution of the Hitler regime.

As early as March 7, 1933, Kahnweiler was writing to Rupf: “What can I say about Germany? It is a disgrace and a shame. I believed that we lived in a world in which I, born a German, could remain a German. But that is over now. What else can I do but become a Frenchman? This people, despite everything, is a thousand times more mine than Hitler’s people.”

From June 14, 1940, the German “racial laws” came into force in the German-occupied zone of France. Businesses owned by Jews had to be labeled as “Jewish,” which also applied to Kahnweiler’s Galerie Simon in Paris.

From 1941 onwards, Kahnweiler was subject to the registration requirement for “Israelites.” His French citizenship was revoked.

In the summer of 1941, Kahnweiler’s stepdaughter Louise Leiris saved the gallery from the threat of “Aryanization.”

On March 27, 1942, the first train carrying deported Jews left France for the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. 73 more trains had followed by the summer of 1944. Of the 330,000 Jews living in France, 76,000 were deported, with only 2,500 of those surviving until 1945.

In September 1943, Kahnweiler narrowly escaped arrest by the Gestapo.

Escape and refuge – On June 14, 1940, the day the German military occupied Paris, Kahnweiler wrote to Rupf from Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat: “We left Paris last Tuesday morning, by car, and arrived here in the evening without any incident [...] So, voilà... What unforeseeable events, unheard of, unbelievable! So, we are here in Le Repaire, together with the Lascaux’. When and how will we see our house in Boulogne again, and when the gallery?”

Daniel-Henry and Lucie Kahnweiler would stay in their refuge in Limousin, in the “unoccupied zone,” until September 1943. The Lascaux’ were always nearby, Elie, a painter and illustrator, and Béro, Lucie Kahnweiler’s sister.

Rural life – “But,” Kahnweiler wrote to Rupf on April 14, 1941 about the previous winter, “we were always able to warm ourselves more or less with wood. For the first time in my life I had frostbite – on my ears and on my left hand. Material life here, in the country, is still quite possible, but in the cities it is very difficult."

Juan Gris – During the years of refuge, he worked intensely on his, on the book about Juan Gris. On November 30, 1940, he wrote to Rupf: “I miss you! I would have liked to give you my notes to read, and your opinion would have helped and encouraged me, as always! In any case, the work helps me to forget the horror and sadness of the times, and time always passes more quickly for me.”

Jeopardy – Kahnweiler followed closely how many of his artist friends emigrated in the face of German occupation and repression – including that of the Vichy regime. On February 28, 1941, he wrote to Rupf: “One thing often worries and depresses me: the exodus of some of the French intelligentsia to the United States. Will this Parisian milieu ever regain its splendor? I find it horrifying for Europe that after Germany, Austria, Italy, and Czechoslovakia, France is also getting rid of its valuable people.”

Going Underground – Warned and already provided with fake papers, the Kahnweilers narrowly escaped arrest by the Gestapo in early September 1943. They said goodbye to the mayor of Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat and he covered for their departure.

Via Limoges they reached the small village of Lagupie in the southern department of Lot-et-Garonne. They were able to live there undetected – under the false name of Monsieur et Madame Henri-Georges Kersaint – until their return to a liberated Paris in October 1944.

Looking back in 1958, Kahnweiler paradoxically and pointedly described this period of refuge in Le Repaire as a “paradise in the shadow of the crematoria.” He was, purely by chance, lucky enough to escape being murdered in a concentration camp. And despite the fear and deprivation, he spent the years in Limousin productively.

From 1940 onwards, the Rupfs had sent food to the Kahnweilers on several occasions. The situation – especially with regard to the supply of food in Paris – deteriorated dramatically. On February 23, 1943, Kahnweiler wrote a few urgent lines to Rupf: “Zette [Louise Leiris] asks you for the following. There is, of course, no milk at all in Paris. However, she knows people who get powdered milk from their family in Switzerland. Would it be possible for you to send some? You would be doing the Leiris’ a great service and they would be very grateful, but of course I don’t know if this is possible or if they have to be Swiss citizens to receive such deliveries. It would be a thousandfold kindness if you were able to inquire about this matter. Be assured of our gratitude. The delivery can be sent to Zette’s office.”

The war raged on, and the whole of France was occupied by the German military during 1943, which Hermann and Margrit Rupf were aware of from the news. From mid-August 1943, no letter, no sign of life from France reached the Rupfs in Bern. They did not know where Kahnweiler was, whether he was still alive, or what was happening to all their other friends. They were extremely worried.

In desperation, Rupf turned to the Red Cross in Geneva. On December 5, 1943, he sent a request to the Agence centrale des prisonniers de guerre, the international service for tracing prisoners of war.

On December 21, the agency confirmed receipt of the letter and asked for the nationality of the two people being sought to be disclosed in order to further the investigation. Soon after, on December 25, Rupf wrote to the agency and explained that he had received messages from his friends in the meantime. In order not to endanger them, Rupf asked them not to carry out any further investigations.

The complicated route by which the message reached Bern is unknown.

Rupf received a letter from Kahnweiler a year later, on December 16, 1944. Kahnweiler reported very briefly that they had arrived safely back in liberated Paris.

The index of the Agence centrale des prisonniers de guerre, founded in 1939, contained 25 to 36 million index cards by the end of the war. The agency forwarded 120 million personal messages.

Back in Paris, Lucie and Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler lived with Louise and Michel Leiris on Rue des Grands Augustins.

The battle for Berlin took place from April 16 to May 2, 1945 – the last major battle of World War II in Europe. On May 8, 1945, the German Reich surrendered.

Only a few days later, on May 14, Lucie Kahnweiler died after a long, serious illness. On May 23, Kahnweiler wrote to Rupf: “I have lost a part of myself. We were so united that we became one. The years in Le Repaire, the years of loneliness – for the two of us, believe me, were years of happiness, despite the danger. I feel like I have been amputated.”

Zette and Michel Leiris brought the last works of art remaining in Limousin back to Paris in a truck.

In December, the first exhibition after the war took place in the Louise Leiris Gallery: André Masson: œuvres raportées d'Amérique, 1941—1945.

Kahnweiler presented Rupf with the Masson lithograph Portrait de Henry Kahnweiler – the first addition to the Rupf collection after the long years of war.

The archive of the Hermann and Margrit Rupf Foundation contains a previously undiscovered treasure, a unique testimony to contemporary and art history: the correspondence between the Parisian dealer and promoter of art Daniel Henry Kahnweiler and the Bern businessman and art collector Hermann Rupf. The correspondence is a very personal document of a lifelong friendship that began in 1901.

Unfortunately, the correspondence before 1928 has not been preserved. The letters therefore begin in 1929 and continue until 1962, the year of Hermann Rupf’s death. The letters from January 1933, the beginning of the Nazi dictatorship, to May 1945, the month peace began in Europe – and that of the death of Kahnweiler’s wife Lucie – are being published here for the first time.

169 letters from Kahnweiler to Rupf dating from this period have been preserved in the archive, including those from the years after Kahnweiler’s escape from Paris in June 1940. Only 25 letters from Rupf still exist – they are carbon copies that Rupf made for himself, for whatever reasons.

Further letters from Rupf to Kahnweiler are probably still in the archives of Galerie Louise Leiris in Paris, but have not been made accessible.

Particular features

• Kahnweiler’s letters, up to the letter of May 27, 1940 are all typescripts produced on a typewriter

• Kahnweiler’s letters after fleeing Paris in June 1940 are all written by hand with a fountain pen.

• Rupf’s letters are all carbon copy typescripts, without a letterhead or signature.

• Until the German military invaded Poland on September 3, 1939, both Kahnweiler’s and Rupf’s letters were written in German. After that, both changed to French – so that Kahnweiler (a French citizen since 1937) would not be suspected of being an “enemy alien.”

• The majority of the letters are dated, but postmarks are missing because the envelopes were not kept; the exception are those letters where the letter and envelope are one unit.

• Traces of the rigorous censorship (stamps, blacked-out passages) of the Vichy regime’s authorities are not found in the letters after June 1940.

• There were no letters between August 16, 1943 and December 16, 1944. Kahnweiler fled from the Gestapo on September 5, 1943 and went into hiding. Only after the liberation of Paris on August 25, 1944, did Kahnweiler and his wife Lucie return to Paris from the southwest French underground in October.