The girl's cap shimmers red.

She wears pearl jewelry and a dress.

Her head emerges from the darkness, illuminated by a glimmer of light.

Your gaze is decisive.

The picture shows Katia Pringsheim, the future wife of Thomas Mann, at the age of eight.

In 1892 it was painted by Franz von Lenbach.

"A lovely head," Katia's mother Hedwig later commented on the portrait in her diary.

Kevin Hanschke

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Now the painting is to be donated to the Thomas Mann House in Pacific Palisades: the former Californian residence of the Nobel Prize winner in literature, which has been a residence of the Federal Republic of Germany since 2018, and whose guests deepen German-American exchange.

But the small-format oil painting by the Munich painter prince Lenbach has a complicated history of provenance, which caused discussions when it was handed over last Friday in the Munich Literature House.

The picture belonged to the estate of a woman from Munich, who had inherited it from her nephew who lived in the United States.

His grandparents had bought the painting on February 7, 1940 as a "portrait of a girl" from the art dealer Fritz Hanold "from a private collection in Munich" for three thousand marks without specifying its origin.

The original receipt has been preserved.

But the imprecise title already concealed the provenance.

After that, traces of the painting were lost for decades.

How the picture reappeared

In August 2018, the heir delivered the portrait of the girl to the Neumeister auction house in Munich.

As a result, Dirk Heiserer, head of the Thomas Mann Forum there, became aware of it.

He informed the auction house that the girl portrayed must be Katia Mann, "also because a different version of the picture was printed in her biography from 1974," says Katrin Stoll, Managing Director of Neumeister.

The Thomas Mann Archives in Zurich hold this second version of the picture, which belonged to the Mann family, showing young Katia with a larger cap and a more tomboyish haircut.

Shortly before the auction, the newly discovered portrait was withdrawn in order to clarify its provenance.

Katia Pringsheim was born in 1883;

she and Thomas Mann married in 1904. Her father, Alfred, came from a Jewish family of entrepreneurs, and her mother, Hedwig, an actress, collected art all their lives;

Franz von Lenbach painted several times for the Pringsheims.

In 1939 the couple left Munich for Switzerland.

It was only able to save a few works from its famous art and majolica collection into exile.

Many objects were confiscated by the National Socialists and taken to Munich museums.

It is not known whether the portrait of a child was part of it.

“I have only gotten a scrap of pictures,” Hedwig Pringsheim noted in her diary.

The family had already had to sell their sophisticated neo-Gothic city palace in 1935.

A short time later it was demolished and an administration building was put in its place.

After the war, the American “Central Art Collecting Point” was located here.

But the picture never appeared in his files either.

No trace of provenance other than a photograph

Its frame in particular turned out to be significant for the study.

The image can be recognized by it in a photograph of Alfred Pringsheim's study.

For Alfred Grimm, the former Bavarian representative for provenance research, this is an indication of the origin of the painting.

But apart from this photograph, there are no traces of the painting: "The picture is like a phantom," says Grimm.

Dirk Heiserer would like the portrait to be exhibited in Munich to honor the Pringsheims' life's work.

However, after four years of dispute, it was not categorized as Nazi-looted art, but as "NS-escape property", which makes an important legal difference: According to the provenance researchers, the last owner could assume that his grandparents had acquired the painting "in good faith". had.

He then decided, also because of the many uncertainties, to hand over the picture to the Thomas Mann House "to show it in a symbolically important place until the provenance is completely clarified one day".

"We then contacted the descendants of the Mann family and asked them whether this donation was in their interest," says Heike Mertens, Managing Director of the Thomas Mann House: "Most family members have spoken out in favor of the donation, but there are also others Vote for the portrait to remain in Munich.” 26 parties are represented in the community of heirs scattered around the world.

Thomas Mann's grandson Frido Mann now struck a conciliatory note: "I am delighted that the portrait of my grandmother will once again hang in Thomas Mann's study where the second version hung." And Tamara Marwitz, a Pringsheim descendant, says : "Perhaps we've finally come full circle here." The picture is also to be shown in Lübeck's Buddenbrook House, and there are also talks with Munich museums.