Herbert Bier was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1905 to an Orthodox Jewish family, and began his career at his uncle's antique shop. Expelled from the Reichskammer der bildenden Künste after the passing of the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws in 1935, he was unable to work as an art dealer in Germany and immigrated to London in 1936. After the Second World War, Bier became one of the main suppliers of artworks to leading museums in the USA, Australia and the UK, including the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, British Museum and Wallace Collection, London, where Bier's archive is now housed.
Art dealer Herbert Bier was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Frankfurt, Germany in 1905; the family moved to Berlin after the First World War. Bier's uncle Z. M. Hackenbroch (1887-1937), a leading art and antiques dealer in Frankfurt, encouraged his nephew's interest in fine art by employing him as a shop assistant. His assignments enabled Bier to travel extensively in Europe, visiting Paris, Florence and London, and he also held assistant positions at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin (1922-23) and at the Alte Pinakotek in Munich (1923-24). Hackenbroch bought a share in the Guelph Treasure ('Welfenschatz': a collection of northern European medieval ecclesiastical art) and Bier gained valuable experience as a porter during the public exhibition, becoming a junior partner in the business in 1929. Following the rise of Nazism in Germany and the passing of the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws in 1935 however, he was expelled from the Reichskammer der bildenden Künste (State Chamber of Fine Arts) and no longer permitted to work as an art dealer in Germany.
Bier emigrated to London in 1936, setting up a branch of his uncle's antique shop; following Hackenbroch's death in 1937, Bier continued running the business independently. He shared his new office in St James's with the Russian art dealer, Vitale Bloch (1900-1975); they became close associates though never business partners, and travelled together in the USA for two years from 1937 to cultivate and secure their connections in the international art market. At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Bier returned to London and applied to join the British Armed Forces; his application was declined and he was interned as an enemy alien on the Isle of Man under the policy of mass internment. He was released after stating on his application that he could 'boost exports as a picture dealer'. Bier subsequently joined the Pioneer Corps in 1942 and two years later served in the British Army, assisting with the interrogation of Prisoners of War in Berlin and, later, in London. Although his business languished during the conflict, Bier was able to successfully resurrect it with the help of his wife, Lieselotte Bock who worked as his secretary (they were married in 1946), and in 1956 he requested compensation for his uncle's confiscated art business from the German claims authorities. In the postwar period the international connections, which Bier had established previously, began to flourish, and he soon became one of the main suppliers to leading museums in the USA (such as the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and in Australia (via friendship with Mary Woodall, London representative of the National Gallery of Australia). Bier also formed relationships with several private art collectors, including Old Master drawings expert (and fellow émigré), Edmund Schilling (1888-1974), and with public institutions in the UK, including the British Museum, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and the Wallace Collection, where Bier's archive is now housed. (Bier was a close friend of Sir Francis Watson, director, 1963-1974). A former schoolmate, Richard Ettinghausen also invited Bier, together with émigré art historian, Otto Kurz, to select artefacts for the newly established Museum of Islamic Art in Jerusalem in the 1960s. Bier was also a keen walker and regularly published guides to his routes in the London Evening Standard under the by-line 'Fieldfare'.
Bier died in London, Englnad in 1981. His daughter is the award-winning fine art documentary photographer, Marion Davies (b. 1948). She presented a talk on Bier's legacy in February 2020 as part of the Insiders/Outsiders Festival celebrating the contribution of the Hitler émigrés to British visual culture, and Bier's contribution to the British art market was featured in a symposium held by the The International Art Market Studies Association (TIAMSA) in collaboration with the Courtauld Alumni Association in 2018. Bier is one of the subjects researched by PhD candidate, Helena Cuss, as part of a TECHNE doctoral collaboration between Ben Uri Gallery and Museum and Kingston University, investigating émigré art dealers in Britain after the Second World War. A complete archive of Bier's papers concerning purchases and sales of works of art, research on artists and works of art, exporting and importing of goods, sales at auctions, work-related trips, and his emigration from Germany, is held by the Wallace Collection. Throughout his career, Bier was a meticulous record keeper and his archive provides an invaluable resource for provenance research, as well as documenting in detail the racial discrimination he faced in Germany, and his new life in London.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Herbert Bier]
Publications related to [Herbert Bier] in the Ben Uri Library