Recent Acquisitions     
In June 2005 two letters from Max Beckmann to Günther Franke were acquired at auction along with the correspondence between I. B. Neumann and Günther Franke (some 130 items).

In November of that year three photographs of Max Beckmann taken in 1938 by Helga Franke (née Fietz) were likewise acquired at auction.

The Archive’s holdings were further expanded in 2005 by the acquisition from private owners of letters and postcards written by Max Beckmann or members of his immediate circle. In addition, Dr. Christiane Zeiller and Dr. Angelika Lenz gave the Archive several postcards with views of places that figured in Beckmann’s life during the First World War.

In July 2006 more Stephan Lackner documents were acquired, some purchased, some received as gifts. In 2006 the Archive received two precious gifts. In August Ina Beckmann-Deventer of Freiburg im Breisgau donated two photographs, one of Max Beckmann’s sister Grete Zech, the other of the house in Leipzig where the artist was born. The second gift consisted of the original plan of Beckmann’s house in Hermsdorf.

In December 2006 a copy of Hans Moeller’s photograph Double Portrait of Max Beckmann and Reinhard Piper (1922) by was acquired at auction from the collection of Reinhard Piper.

In June 2008 the Max Beckmann Archive acquired an important series of letters from the correspondence of Waldemar and Oda Rösler. They include seven previously unpublished items from Max Beckmann, along with Waldemar and Oda Rösler’s correspondence with such artists and writers as Ernst Barlach, Gottfried Benn, Walter Gropius, Käthe Kollwitz and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff.

In July and August 2008 the Max Beckmann Archive benefited from a number of significant donations. They included nine letters written to various recipients by Wolfgang Frommel, one of Beckmann’s most important contacts in Amsterdam, an announcement of Frommel’s death, and a late portrait photograph of the writer by his nephew Melchior Frommel. All these documents were donated by the heirs of Gerhard Frommel.

From Professor Peter Selz the Max Beckmann Archive received six photographs by Dímitri Hadzi (1921-2007) of Professor Selz and Peter Beckmann, together with documents relating to the Beckmann exhibition mounted by the donor in 1964 and to Documenta III.

Also in July, the writer Durs Grünbein donated an autograph copy of his poem “Was ich bin (In memoriam Max Beckmann)” (What I am: In memoriam Max Beckmann).

In August Mrs. Jeanette Scholz presented the Archive with an important series of letters from Max Beckmann to Lilly von Schnitzler, eleven of them unpublished, together with several letters from Lilly von Schnitzler to various recipients and eleven photographs of Max Beckmann taken by Helga Fietz in Amsterdam in 1938.

The heirs of Stephan Lackner, members of the Society to whom we already owe a great deal of material, have donated four of the writer’s manuscripts: Paar im Sturm/Matthias und Marina (Couple in a Tempest/Matthias and Marina), 1961; Das verzauberte Echo (The Enchanted Echo), 1955; Das Naturwunder (The Miracle of Nature), 1955; and Asche (Professor Virrus) (Ash [Professor Virus]), 1955.