Nazi era persecution and emigration
When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, they enacted discriminatory racial laws targeted Jews. Helbing withdrew from the business in 1934, and Kauffmann became the sole owner of the Hugo Helbing auction house.[3] Kauffmann published 51 auction catalogs before 1937. He also worked as a teacher and school councilor at the Philanthropin and as a volunteer at the Frankfurt Jewish Museum.
The gallery's license was not to be renewed in Frankfurt in 1935. After a protest from the local business community over the importance to tourism of the art auctions held at Helbing, Kauffmann was able to continue operating on a limited basis until 1938. In 1938, the owner of the property, Maximilian von Goldschmidt-Rothschild, was forced to sell, and after a renovation by the city of Frankfurt, the traveling exhibition Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) made a stop there in the summer of 1939. [4]
Kauffmann and his family emigrated to Great Britain in 1938.[5] Hugo Helbing died in 1938 from injuries inflicted during the November pogroms of 1938.
Kauffmann opened a gallery in London's West End in 1939. He received British citizenship in 1947. After the war, he worked as a consultant for private art collectors, advised the Swiss collector Emil Georg Bührle[6][7] selling him many objects between 1951 and 1956.[8] After Bührle's death in 1956, helped establish the E. G. Bührle Collection Foundation.[9] [10] He donated the side panels of a tryptych from the workshop of Hieronymus Bosch to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1956. Kauffmann was a member of the British Antique Dealers' Association and the Oriental Ceramic Society. As an art dealer he supplied artworks to numerous museums.[11]
