Katinka Fischer: Sea Buckthorn Juice for Schmidt-Rottluff
… Marian Stein-Steinfeld … grew up in the Hofheim “Blue House” … and also manages the estate. She had direct access to an obviously immense fund of photographs, letters, guest books and similar documents, which she meticulously evaluated and of which numerous examples now also illustrate the book. …
Frankfurter Allgemeine, 5.9.2018 (excerpts)
Stein-Steinfeld does not, of course, report solely “from a personal point of view” on an unusually modern and sovereign woman who sheltered ostracized artists during the National Socialist era, secretly exhibited their works in her Berlin studio apartment, and from 1947 on also contributed to the art history of the 20th century in her Frankfurt art cabinet. The private memoirs are limited to only the first 20 pages. From an almost scientific distance, the more than 350 following pages turn up Hanna Bekker vom Rath’s life and work. …
Stein-Steinfeld’s minutious description, divided into ten chapters, makes Bekker vom Rath’s determination, her upright attitude and also a pronounced political consciousness appear as a logical development. The necessary self-confidence and the urge for a freedom – also always granted to her environment – was inherent in her. …
The biography is equivalent to a dissertation, especially in view of the extensive material published for the first time. It contains essential insights into a personality who is significant not only in the Rhine-Main region, but also for recent art history.
Dorothea Baer-Bogeschütz, Profound Biography of the Painter Hanna Bekker vom Rath
The unconventional woman who lived emancipation and the promotion of artists, campaigned for equal rights, and showed “exhibitions of the ostracized” in Berlin during the war, was a German Peggy Guggenheim in that she followed only her artistic intuition, defying conventions. Bekker vom Rath sometimes climbed on a table to make herself heard. She did “two dangerous things,” she announced in 1932, driving a car and smoking. …
Wiesbadener Kurier, 17.9.2018 (excerpts)
Her gallery, the Frankfurt Kunstkabinett named after her, existed until two years ago. “Come in, you don’t have to buy anything, look,” the exceptional gallery owner enticed. After the remarks of her granddaughter one may dare to say: Buy the biography “Hanna Bekker vom Rath, Handelnde für Kunst und Künstler”, it will not let you go.
Sarah Plass: Hanna Bekker vom Rath – How civil courage saves lives
With a cigarette in the corner of her mouth and the Who’s Who of the German art scene of the early 20th century gathered around her – that’s how Hanna Bekker could be described … Marian Stein-Steinfeld has now written a biography about the life of her unconventional grandmother. She has used hundreds of documents and personal letters from her estate. Among them are photos of this unusual woman. … She was certainly very unconventional. Someone once said she was a rebel with a good childhood,” Stein-Steinfeld recalls.
Hauptsache Kultur, 1.11.2018, HR-Fernsehen, © hr-fernsehen
Barbara Schmidt: Marian Stein-Steinfeld has written a book about the life of her grandmother Hanna Bekker vom Rath
There is a new work about the collector and patron of the arts Hanna Bekker vom Rath, who housed in the Blue House famous artists who were ostracized by the Nazis, which in part had to be a picture book, as the author finds. …
Frankfurter Neue Presse, 29.12.2018 (excerpt)
A wonderful book it has become. “A two-year project,” she thought when she started in 2010, she reveals with a smile. Much more material than first thought had to be tackled. “The more you find, the more you then have to go into depth,” Stein-Steinfeld says. The biography has become correspondingly extensive. In it, the 64-year-old neatly separates what she can still tell from her own experience from what her years of research have revealed. The chapter “From a Personal Perspective” precedes the actual biography – and it leads right into the middle of this special life in the Blue House, which Marian Stein-Steinfeld did not think was so special as a child. She knew nothing else, she says.
Stefanie Blumenbecker: Marian Stein-Steinfeld, “For my grandmother Hanna Bekker, every art-making person was important and to be supported.”
Marian Stein-Steinfeld is the granddaughter of Hanna Bekker vom Rath and experienced her as an essential part of her family until she was 30 years old. Stein-Steinfeld studied art history and is considered the most profound expert on the life and work of Hanna Bekker vom Rath.
Published 10.05.2019 at 19:54 Uhr, source: © hr2
Hanna Bekker vom Rath is one of the central figures of the German art scene of the 20th century. In 1893 she was born into one of Frankfurt’s best families. Her first steps towards painting were drawing lessons and art studies. However, Bekker vom Rath found her calling not as an artist, but as an artist friend, collector and patron. Financially independent through a lavish inheritance, she began to build up her collection of expressionist art.
After the war, Bekker vom Rath opened her gallery in Frankfurt – the Kunstkabinett. As an ambassador of art, she organized exhibitions worldwide to show that Germans were not just ugly Nazis.