Samson’s Lamp
A Hanukkah Lamp once owned by the Wertheimer Family

An exhibition in the Study Area at the Jewish Museum Munich

Around 1715, the famous Austrian Court Jew, Samson Wertheimer, acquired a silver Hanukkah lamp in Frankfurt am Main. Almost 300 years later, this lamp resurfaced at a New York auctioneers, was recognized as looted art, and restituted to the heirs of the owner who had fled Germany during the Shoah.

The exhibition in the Study Area traces the history of this lamp, which is also connected to that of Munich. Around the middle of the 18th century it was owned by Samson Wertheimer’s son, Simon Wolf Wertheimer, a moneylender to the Bavarian Court living in Munich. In 1929, art collector Michael Berolzheimer from near Garmisch-Partenkirchen and art historian Theodor Harburger from Munich researched the history of the lamp, which at that time had passed to descendants living in Hanover. Their research made it possible for the lamp to be returned later to the rightful heirs.