Reports about Collector and Collection

Hanna Bekker vom Rath modestly bought individual works of art from painter friends, which she loved, and never thought of art ownership as a capital investment or speculative object. Basically, the true collectors are those who, following their hearts, surround themselves with things with which they wish to live as with beings of a more unconditional world.

Will Grohmann, preface, in: German Art from 1910 to the Present, exhibition catalog Saloniki, Athens, Beirut 1962/63

A comprehensive inventory of all that has been brought into this house in Hofheim in the course of a half-century, a full human life, and a chronicle of the gallery in Frankfurt testify to the wide-ranging and yet quite personally bound attitude toward the pictorial works.

Godo Remszhardt, German Expressionists of the Private Collection Hanna Bekker vom Rath, Hofheim 1968

… She has filled her house in the Taunus town of Hofheim with pictures and figures up to the roof – quite literally. In terms of its ideal and material value, this “Blue House” in the shade of tall trees resembles a museum. And yet it is far more: a generously equipped home for art and artists, where artwork has taken on the role of domestic gods and determines the exalted climate of spiritual relations. In an atmosphere of frequently intersecting fruitful tensions, not only top works but also lesser works grow into important links of the entire ensemble, which has gained international recognition with its reputation of being one of the most important German private collections. …
With representative oil paintings, watercolors, hand drawings and hundreds of printed sheets, her collection today documents the fundamental directions of German painting in the 20th century.
There are … gathered: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Otto Mueller, Max Pechstein and Emil Nolde, whose ecstatic “Mockery of Christ” must challenge the envy of any museum. There are important examples by … August Macke, Wassilij Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky, Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka, Lyonel Feininger, Oskar Schlemmer, Willi Baumeister, Carl Hofer, Käthe Kollwitz, by E. W. Nay, who had a studio in Hofheim for many years, and Heinz Battke. There are sculptures by Lehmbruck and Mataré, by Emy Roeder and Louise Stomps. And finally, there are the works of the younger and youngest generation, starting with HAP Grieshaber and Siegfried Klapper to Walter Stöhrer and Martin Schmied. …

Christa von Helmolt, According to Taste and Impulse. Collection Hanna Bekker vom Rath, Frankfurt 1968