Max Stern

Early Life and Family

Max Stern was born in the German Rhineland in 1904 to Julius Stern and Selma Heilbron. Julius Stern was a significant German-Jewish art collector and gallery owner. He owned one of the most important galleries in Düsseldorf. Max was the couple’s youngest child and had two older sisters: Gerda and Hedi.

Max Stern studied art history in several European cities, including Berlin and Vienna. He completed his doctoral studies at the University of Bonn in 1928. That same year, he began working at his father’s art gallery, the Galerie Julius Stern. He inherited his father’s business following his death in 1934. By that time, it was becoming unsustainable as a result of Nazi Germany’s anti-Semitic laws.

Persecution Under Nazi Rule

About 10 months after Julius Stern died, Max received a letter indicating that he had lost his accreditation as an art dealer. He was given just four weeks to sell the gallery’s assets. Stern tried to fight the matter in court and then tried to find someone to whom he could transfer his assets. He managed to set up a gallery in London, England, in 1936 with a friend and his sister but stayed behind in Düsseldorf to sell off the property. In 1937, he auctioned off his collection. He hoped that the proceeds of the sale would help him restart in London, but it was not to be. After leaving Germany for good in 1937, his assets were frozen. A year later, he was forced to turn those assets back to the Nazis to secure an exit visa for his mother.

Canadian Internment Camps

In May of 1940, Stern was interned on the Isle of Man as an enemy alien. He later received permission to emigrate to Canada, where his internment continued for two more years, first in New Brunswick and then in Quebec. (See also Prisoner of War Camps in Canada.) At the camp in New Brunswick, Stern was paid 20 cents a day to cut down trees. He also gave art history lessons to fellow refugees.

Stern was released from internment thanks to the intervention of William Birks, a descendent of the Birks family of jewellers. (See Henry Birks.) Birks was highly critical of Canada’s anti-Semitic immigration and refugee policies. (See also None Is Too Many; MS St. Louis.)

Selling Canadian Artists to Canadians

Stern then relocated to Montreal. He initially hoped to find work in the wartime aviation industry but instead focused on what he knew best: selling art. Stern had a unique idea: to sell work by Canadian artists to Canadians, something that was unusual at the time. Rose Millman, who had opened the Dominion Gallery of Fine Art on Montreal’s Saint Catherine Street in December 1941, accepted Stern’s vision and offered him a job.

Max Stern became the Dominion Gallery’s managing director in October 1942. In 1944, he became Rose Millman’s business partner. The gallery’s inaugural exhibition, held in 1943, featured the work of Goodridge Roberts. It became the first in a series of exhibitions that focused exclusively on Canadian artists.

In 1944, the gallery hosted exhibitions on the Group of Seven and the then largely unknown Emily Carr. Stern had visited Carr in Victoria in 1944 and was amazed by her talent. He chose 60 paintings from across her career and brought them to Montreal. Carr did not believe Stern would sell any of them, but the exhibition was a huge success. Upon receiving the cheque from Dominion Gallery, Carr is said to have remarked that she had never seen so much money in her life. Carr died the following year, leaving Stern as her estate’s agent.

Stern not only sold Canadian art, he also supported Canadian artists directly. The Dominion Gallery was the first in Canada to provide artists with guaranteed incomes so they could devote themselves to their art.

In 1946, Stern married Iris Westerberg, to whom he had been introduced by William Birks. The following year, Stern and Westerberg purchased the Dominion Gallery from Millman. In 1950, they moved the gallery to a greystone townhouse on Sherbrooke Street, near the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. It remained there until it closed in 2000.

Max Stern Art Restitution Project

Stern had the executors of his estate keep the Dominion Gallery open after his death in 1987 before beginning the process of liquidating its assets. During this time, it became widely known that Nazi Germany had stolen massive quantities of goods and material culture from Jews throughout Europe. Much of the fine art that had been stolen had since been sold and resold several times over. Holocaust survivors were seeking the artworks that had been stolen from them and their families five or six decades earlier.

Because of this context, the provenance of Max Stern’s European collection was carefully analyzed, beginning in 1999. At the time, it was not known that Max Stern was the son of Julius Stern, nor that he had once managed Düsseldorf’s Galerie Stern. Investigators discovered that Stern had been in contact with none other than Lester B. Pearson after the war. Stern had attempted to retrieve 22 paintings from his collection when he was alive. He likely did not believe he could retrieve the larger collection that he was forced to auction in 1937. Indeed, despite growing international interest in retrieving stolen, confiscated or forcibly sold artworks, the legal aspect of restitution remained murky.

Since 2002, the Max Stern Art Restitution Project has attempted to locate the artworks previously held by the Galerie Stern in Düsseldorf, which Max Stern was forced to auction by the Nazis. The project is supported by Concordia University, McGill University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Stern had attempted to recover these works after the Second World War with only limited success. The restitution project seeks to use the proceeds of its venture to reinvest in the restitution of more artworks. So far, more than 200 paintings have been identified as missing from the collection, and over 30 have been recovered.

Honours and Legacy

For many years, Max Stern was reportedly the only art gallery director in Canada to hold a PhD in art history. In addition to tirelessly promoting Canadian art and artists, he also helped to further popularize the sculptures of Henry Moore and Auguste Rodin. At one point, Stern held the largest collection of Rodin’s work outside the Musée Rodin in Paris. Since he had no children, he left much of his collection to Canadian institutions.

Stern was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 1984. In 1985, he received an honorary degree from Concordia University.