Maksymilian Goldstein

Collector, art historian, one of the initiators of the Jewish Museum in Lviv. The biography describes Goldstein's collecting activities.

Maksymilian Goldstein was born to Isaak Hersh Goldstein, a tailor, and Elka Fredli, née Baum, in Lviv in 1880. He worked as a bank clerk. He was fond of numismatics and served as a forensic expert in this field.

In 1910, Maksymilian Goldstein became interested in collecting Jewish cultural artefacts. He founded the Circle of Jewish Art Lovers and was also a member of the Circle of Ancient Culture Lovers (pol. Kółko starożytników), led by historian Franciszek Jaworski, which met daily in the Monopol coffee house and later in the Szkocka coffee house. At that time, no institutions were being created that could preserve Jewish heritage, but it is a very important period because it was then that Maksymilian Goldstein was building his network of contacts and becoming known in Lviv circles.

In 1910, Maksymilian Goldstein was one of the first to propose the idea of creating a museum of Jewish art. He published articles in various magazines describing his proposal to create a museum that would display the cultural and historical artefacts of Polish Jews, with a special focus on Galicia. He asked the Jewish community to find suitable premises and assured them that the community's library could form the basis of the future collection. Goldstein also offered to share some objects from his collection, including coins and medals.

However, despite declarations of support from Lviv's Jewish community, this particular idea was not implemented. Goldstein was outraged, and in 1911 he published articles in which he shared his version of the situation. He complained about the indifference of the community, whose words of support were only theoretical, and even mentioned that it could have been a deliberate attempt by the Zionists to stop the opening of the museum, since a Jewish museum in Lviv would have prevented the opening of such a museum in Palestine. Goldstein called for not attributing political significance to a purely cultural matter, considering Jewish heritage greatly threatened by the neglect of material cultural memorabilia and the lack of understanding of their value among the Jewish public.

When the First World War broke out, Maksymilian Goldstein left for Vienna, where he became engaged to Nouseya-Fanni Levenkron in 1915. The family arrived in Lviv in 1917, but soon left for Krakow and returned to Lviv only in 1920. While in Krakow, Goldstein created the first catalogue of his collection. In the Second Polish Republic, he received recognition from the state as the newly created Ministry of Culture and Art expressed its approval of his work.

Given the public significance of his work and the attention of cultural institutions, Goldstein allowed people to see the collection at his own home at ul. Nowy Świat 15. Advertisements were placed in Lviv guidebooks next to information about the Jewish Community Museum, even calling it the "Jewish Museum." It was common practice for private museums and collectors to not only allow the public to see their collections, but also to keep guest books and visitor records. Other private museums in Lviv included the villa of the collector Helena Dąbczańska, who collected old prints, clothing, and porcelain.

Goldstein kept a guest book for his "museum" as well; from it we can learn about visitors and their opinions about the collection. The book itself was also a work of art and was preserved in a special carved box. Visitors can be divided into different groups. One group comprised leaders of religious communities, such as Mojżesz Schorr, a rabbi from Warsaw; Yehezkel Lewin and Mojżesz Babad, rabbis from Lviv; and Jicchok Ziff, an Orthodox rabbi. Another group included academics, for instance Konstanty Chyliński, Leon Piniński and Edmund Bulanda, professors at the Jan Kazimierz University; Władysław Kozicki, an art historian; and Adam Fischer, an ethnologist. Professional opinions were expressed by those associated with other museums, such as Kazimierz Hartleb, director of the Museum of Artistic Crafts; Professor Ilarion Svientsitsky, director of the Ukrainian National Museum; Aleksander Czolowski, director of the Lviv archives and museums; Rudolf Kotula, director of the University Library and the Baworowski Library; Zbigniew Hornung, voivodeship conservator; Rudolf Mękicki, custodian of the National King Jan III Museum; Łucja Charewicz (Charewiczowa), custodian of the Historical Museum in Lviv; and Mieczysław Gębarowicz, custodian of the Lubomirski Museum. Among other collectors and researchers, Mieczysław Opałek, anthropologist Salomon Czortkower, art critic Artur Lauterbach, art historian Helena Blum, collector Julja Mękicka commented on the collection, as did many other historians, journalists, and gymnasium professors. Artists left their drawings, including cards by Eugen Bárkány, the founder of the Jewish Museum in Prešov; Helena Goldfiszerowa, a teacher at the Women's Craft School; Otto Hahn, an artist; Sviatoslav Hordynsky, a Ukrainian artist, who redrew the figure of a Jew from 17th-century Ukrainian woodcuts; Emanuel Mané-Katz; Oleksa Novakivsky; Artur Szyk, and others. These records allow us to see the intersections of different cultural milieus in Lviv, both Jewish and non-Jewish. In spite of the fact that the 1930s were a period of polarization and radicalization of national movements, artistic and scientific networks could remain open. Representatives of different national groups were interested in each other's culture. Later, during the Second World War, these ties could prove important for survival in the face of persecution, as we can see from the contacts between Maksymilian Goldstein and Ilarion Svientsitsky.

The collection structure is known due to press reviews of the catalogue:

I. Fundamentals of cult and folk tradition. Items for Shabbat, Passover, Sukkot, Hanukkah. Everyday items: clothing, jewellery, signet rings and stones, embroidery, coins, medals, tokens, insignia, and miscellanea

II. Manuscripts and printed materials. Pictures of synagogues, temples, cemeteries, matzevot. Illustrations from the Bible, pictures of biblical characters, pictures from the ghetto, i.e. Jewish quarters, images from everyday life, drawings of Jewish types. Family documents related to community history, family history documents, divorce and marriage documents, divorce letters, astronomy, calendars, autographs, diplomas, manuscript fragments, calligraphic letters of congratulations on various occasions.

III. Printed materials.  Prayer books for everyday and holidays, mizrahs, greetings, amulets, posters, notice boards, business cards, invitations, greeting cards, postage stamps.

IV. Books. Printed works, illustrated books, bindings, title pages, bookplates.

V. Art. Paintings, posters, portraits.

VI. Humour. Caricatures, humorous drawings, jokes.

In 1933, some of the items from Goldstein's collection were exhibited at the Museum of Arts and Crafts, at an exhibition of Jewish art. It was a project of the Society of the Jewish Museum Friends. Guidebooks noted that one of the collection's advantages was a collection of faience from Lubycza Królewska, the largest one in Poland. The local factory produced blue faience, but was also known for the fact that most of its workers were Jewish.

In 1935, Maksymilian Goldstein, together with Dr Karol Dresdner (1908-1943), a translator and literary historian, composed a book entitled The Culture and Art of the Jewish People in the Polish Lands (pol. Kultura i sztuka ludu żydowskiego na ziemiach polskich). Dr Henryk Biegelaisen, an ethnologist, also contributed to the work, Professor Majer Bałaban wrote the foreword, and historians Dr Jakob Schall and Stanisław Machniewicz contributed notes on Goldstein. The book described various objects from Goldstein's collection and explained their use. The material culture presented in the book is very diverse, ranging from jewellery to ephemera such as bingo cards or entrance tickets. In her review for the newspaper Opinia, ethnologist Giza Frenkel called this work a «book-museum.»

Maksymilian Goldstein actively published articles on numismatics in the press, as well as his ideas for a Jewish museum and reviews of exhibitions, including those of Maurycy Gottlieb and Leopold Gottlieb, and the opening of the Ukrainian National Museum (pol. Ukraińskie Muzeum Narodowe). In his articles, he tried to emphasize the problems of the Jewish heritage preservation, in particular the poor condition of Jewish cemeteries in Galicia. He also organized exhibitions and drew attention to contemporary artists, including Ephraim Lilien, a graphic artist, whose exhibition was held in Lviv in 1914. Maksymilian Goldstein was not only interested in Jewish art; he also collected Japanese woodcuts, which were exhibited in the Modern Art Salon at ul. Legionów 7 in Lviv in the early 1920s.

After the Soviet occupation of Lviv in 1939, there was an attempt to evict Maksymilian Goldstein from his apartment. He managed to stay in his home, where his collection was located, through the mediation of Yaroslav Pasternak, director of the Ethnographic Museum of the Shevchenko Scientific Society. In November 1939, he was appointed director of the Jewish Museum in Lviv. However, it was decided to merge the museum with the Craft Museum, and Goldstein began to work on the museum's collection.

During the Nazi occupation of Lviv, Maksymilian Goldstein and his family managed to survive for some time thanks to the collection. In 1941, he signed an agreement to deposit his collection with the Craft Museum. At the same time, it was to remain in his apartment, and he was to be its custodian. An order from Ilarion Svientsitsky, the commissioner for museum affairs in Lviv, has been preserved instructing Goldstein and his daughter Irena Goldstein to make an inventory of the collection. This was probably an attempt to save the collector from a concentration camp and deportation. However, in December 1941, Maksymilian Goldstein's family was forced to move to the ghetto.

In 1942, the museum wrote a petition to the Commissioner of the Department of Science and Education of the District of Galicia, A. Regge, asking him to exempt Maksymilian Goldstein from eviction as an employee needed to inventory the museum's collections. His daughter Irena Goldstein was also included as a laboratory assistant at the Museum.

None of the Goldstein family members survived the Holocaust. Maksymilian Goldstein, his wife Nusia Fanni and his daughter Irena died in the Janowska concentration camp in 1942. His daughter Lilia was in Krakow in 1939, and the circumstances of her death are unknown.

Goldstein’s art collection was divided among various museums in Lviv. The Museum of Ethnography and Art Crafts, which holds the largest part of the collection, organized an exhibition at the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv in 1994. During the exhibition, Maksymilian Goldstein's family filed a lawsuit trying to keep it in Israel, but two years later the court ruled that it had no jurisdiction over the case, and the exhibits were returned to Ukraine. In 2018, the Museum of Ethnography and Arts and Crafts in Lviv hosted an exhibition entitled Relics of the Jewish World of Galicia, which featured a significant portion of Goldstein's collection. The exhibition was curated by Liudmyla Bulhakova, a Museum staff member, while the main co-organizer was Professor Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern (Northwestern University, Chicago).