Le Mur Rose
Encyclopedia
Le Mur Rose is a painting by Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...

 from 1898.

It was bought in Paris by Jewish entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...

 Harry Fuld, who founded Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...

, Germany based H. Fuld & Co. Telefon und Telegraphenwerke AG, which made telephone
Telephone
The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...

s. After Fuld died on a business trip to Switzerland in 1932, his art collection passed to his son, Harry Fuld, Jr.

After the ascent of the Nazi party to power, Fuld fled to safety in Switzerland in 1937, packing the collection into crates. But the collection never left Germany and, after confiscation by the SS, it somehow became the property of SS
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...

 officer Kurt Gerstein
Kurt Gerstein
Kurt Gerstein was a German SS officer and member of the Institute for Hygiene of the Waffen-SS. He witnessed mass murders in the Nazi extermination camps Belzec and Treblinka...

. A pre-war expert in decontamination techniques, Gerstein was assigned to the Hygiene Institute of the SS, becoming responsible for delivering Zyklon B
Zyklon B
Zyklon B was the trade name of a cyanide-based pesticide infamous for its use by Nazi Germany to kill human beings in gas chambers of extermination camps during the Holocaust. The "B" designation indicates one of two types of Zyklon...

 poison used in the final solution
Final Solution
The Final Solution was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust...

 gas chambers
Gas Chambers
Gas Chambers is a fast, hollow and shallow point break type of wave. Being that it is a high performance wave it is well suited for the average to pro level surfer. Gas Chambers is located on the North Shore of Oahu about a 1/4 of a mile north of Ehukai Beach Park and 1/2 a mile west of Sunset...

, including Auschwitz concentration camp.

At the end of World War II, on 22 April 1945, Gerstein surrendered to the French commandant of the occupied town of Reutlingen
Reutlingen
Reutlingen is a city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is the capital of the eponymous district of Reutlingen. As of April 2008, it has a population of 109,828....

. He received a sympathetic reception and was transferred to a residence in a hotel in Rottweil
Rottweil
Rottweil is a town in the south west of Germany and is the oldest town in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg.Located between the Black Forest and the Swabian Alb hills, Rottweil has about 25,000 inhabitants...

, there writing out the Gerstein Report
Gerstein Report
The Gerstein Report was written by Kurt Gerstein, an Obersturmführer of the Waffen-SS in 1945 who rose to become the Head of Technical Disinfection Services of the SS. In that capacity he witnessed in August 1942 the gassing of some 3,000 Jews in the extermination camp of Belzec...

. He was later transferred to the notorious Cherche-Midi
Cherche-Midi prison
The Cherche-Midi prison was a French military prison located in Paris, France. It housed military prisoners from 1851 until 1947.Construction on the prison began in 1847, when the former convent of the Daughters of the Good Shepherd was demolished on Rue du Cherche-Midi in Paris...

 military prison where he was apparently treated as a war criminal. On July 25, 1945 while awaiting trial he was found hanged
Hanging
Hanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain...

 dead in his cell, an alleged suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

. Continuing the investigation in to Gerstein's war crimes, French police recovered Le Mur Rose from a cache of stored art near Gerstein's home in Tübingen
Tübingen
Tübingen is a traditional university town in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, on a ridge between the Neckar and Ammer rivers.-Geography:...

, Germany.

Harry Fuld, Jr. died in Switzerland in 1963, and willed
Will (law)
A will or testament is a legal declaration by which a person, the testator, names one or more persons to manage his/her estate and provides for the transfer of his/her property at death...

 his entire estate to Gisela Martin. When she died in Switzerland in 1992, she in turn willed her estate to Magen David Adom UK
Magen David Adom
The Magen David Adom is Israel's national emergency medical, disaster, ambulance and blood bank service. The name means "Red Star of David"...

, the British-based branch of the Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i-based medical services charity, which provides ambulances and medical infrastructure in Israel.

Having hung in museum
Museum
A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...

s in Paris since 1949, latterly in the Musée National d'Art Moderne
Musée National d'Art Moderne
The Musée National d'Art Moderne is the national museum for modern art of France. It is located in Paris and is housed in the Centre Pompidou in the 4th arrondissement of the city. Created in 1947, it was then housed in the Palais de Tokyo and moved to its current location in 1977...

 at the Pompidou Centre; in November 2008 the painting was given by the French Culture Ministry
Minister of Culture (France)
The Minister of Culture is, in the Government of France, the cabinet member in charge of national museums and monuments; promoting and protecting the arts in France and abroad; and managing the national archives and regional "maisons de culture"...

 to Magen David Adom UK, at a ceremony in Paris.

In February 2010 the painting was acquired from the heirs, the Magen David Adom UK, for the Jewish Museum Frankfurt
Jewish Museum Frankfurt
The Jewish Museum of the City of Frankfurt am Main covers the history and culture of the Jewish communities in Frankfurt from the 12th to the 20th centuries. There is another branch of the museum, the Museum Judengasse, in a different part of town....

, Germany, with the financial help of various German foundations and private donors.

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