August Liebmann Mayer was born October 27, 1885 in Darmstadt, son of the Jewish merchant Jonas Baruch Mayer and his wife Berta, née Liebmann. He studied art history in Munich and Berlin, came to Munich on April 22, 1904, and completed his doctoral thesis on the Spanish painter Jusepe de Ribera in 1907. After receiving his doctorate in 1908, he traveled through Europe. He spent several weeks in Spain. He was so fascinated by Toledo that he wrote a travel guide about the old imperial city and said of Toledo: „Every stone holds a memory… If the stones could talk, they would tell us that in not many cities love and hate have raged as much as here…“
On his return, he got a position at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. There he was later a curator and finally chief conservator. At the same time, August Liebmann Mayer worked as an associate professor at the University of Munich. As a recognized expert on Spanish painting, he has written numerous publications and art historical reports. He researched and published tirelessly. In 1913 alone, he published four books and twelve essays. For his services to Spanish art, he was twice honoured with medals in Spain.
In 1920, August Liebmann Mayer married the Catholic Aloisia Däuschinger, who was born April 11, 1891 in Rabenstein, Zwiesel district. On July 15, 1929, the family moved to the first floor of Martiusstrasse 8, where their daughter Angelika Berta Auguste was born February 21, 1930. Due to his financially successful work as an expert, he was targeted by envious colleagues, who in 1930 polemically accused him of enrichment, unscientific behaviour and corruption. The director of the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg, Ernst Zimmermann,e.g. wrote to the Bavarian Ministry of Culture of „Jewish doctors who are more dealers than art historians“. Exhausted by the anti-Semitic campaign, Liebmann Mayer asked for his dismissal from the civil service on January 30, 1931.
With the beginning of the Nazi regime, the situation became even more difficult. The resignation was not enough for his colleagues, their attacks continued and became blatantly anti-Semitic. The „Völkischer Beobachter“, the propaganda newspaper of the NSDAP, described Mayer as a „Jewish art parasite“ and ´forger of expertises´. March 1933, when the Nazis came to power, Mayer was taken into ‚protective custody´ by the Gestapo. He tried to take his own life in his cell. This deeply shocked his former superíor Friedrich Dörnhöffer, director of the Pinakotheken. He campaigned for his dismissal. Mayer was finally released in July 1933.
The family left the apartment at Martiusstrasse 8 in 1933, moved for a short time to the ground floor of Konradstrasse 6 (possibly a boarding house) and on September 29, 1933 to their house in Tutzing at Hauptstrasse 71.
Starting from April 6, 1933, the tax authorities started their prosecution. The tax office raised an additional tax claim of 115,000 Reichsmarks against Mayer. Since Mayer did not have this money, the tax office confiscated Mayer’s house in Tutzing. The National Socialists confiscated Mayer’s property, auctioned off his furniture and the valuable art collection. As a Jew, he was expelled from the Reich Chamber of Culture. Seeing the end of his professional and private existence, Mayer fled with his family to Paris at the end of 1935. Thanks to the support of friends, he was able to take his library and a few works of art with him.
They lived in a street parallel to the Rue de Rivoli and he worked there as a private scholar, author and reviewer. As a German, he was considered an undesirable foreigner by the French authorities with the beginning of the war, That is the reason why he, like many other emigrants, in 1940 was interned in a French camp as an „enemy alien“. He managed to get to Nice in 1941 and hoped that his family would follow him. But his wife Aloisia was seriously ill. She died in August 1941, when Angelika Mayer was only eleven years old. Friends of the family found a boarding school for her in Nice, the Institut Massenès, whose director was doing his best to save Jewish children. Hidden in Nice she survived the Holocaust.
The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) confiscated their apartment in Paris, including the private library and some art objects. The works of art were sent to Germany, some went directly to Hermann Göring, who was in the process of starting a private art collection.
August Liebmann Mayer, although constantly persecuted, tried to continue to earn his living as an art expert. He changed his place of residence frequently and worked under the pseudonym Henri Antoine. Finally, Mayer was betrayed by a French art dealer. On February 3, 1944, the Gestapo arrested him in Monte Carlo and took him to the Drancy detention camp.
Employees of the ERR tried to extort information from the detainee about the locations of the large private and partly Jewish hidden private collections in the initially unoccupied south of France, which he knew as an art expert. On March 7, 1944, he was deported from there to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Because of his advanced age, the SS murdered August Liebmann Mayer presumably immediately after the arrival of the transport on March 10, 1944.
At that time, Angelika Mayer was 14 years old. She was now an orphan and stateless. Thanks to the help of friends of her parents, she survived. In 1951 she moved to the USA, where she studied art history. From 1954 onwards, she initiated various compensation proceedings with West German authorities and in the 1950s received DM 50,000 for the loss of the library, with the condition that she never again would make claims against the Federal Republic. The real value of the library was significantly higher. During its provenance research, the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen came across four paintings from August Liebmann Mayer’s art collection based on research by Susanne Kienlechner and Christian Fuhrmeister from the Central Institute for Art History. In 2010, these paintings were given back to Mayer Liebmann´s then 80-year-old daughter Angelika Mayer.
Since 1918 the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen own a portrait bust of Liebmann Mayer. The sculptor Edwin Scharff, a friend of the art historian, created it. In 2015, the bust was taken out of storage and placed in front of the office of the general director in the Neue Pinakothek in Munich. In this way, the Bavarian State Painting Collections commemorate their persecuted and murdered colleague.
In 2025 his daughter Angelika Mayer lives in a retirement home in Los Angeles. She has no children. She professed the Christian faith and worked in California as a street worker to help Mexican immigrants for a long time. After Angelika Mayer’s lawyer had asked the Bavarian State Government for a clarifying, explicit rehabilitation of August Liebmann Mayer regarding the fictitious tax fraud allegations made against him by the National Socialists, the Bavarian State Ministry of Finance complied with this request in 2013.
Since October 2021, the city of Munich has been commemorating the fate of August Liebmann Mayer with a commemorative sign (wall plaque) at Martiusstrasse 8.