CATALINA VON PANNWITZ
Catalina Roth (1876-1959), the daughter of a wealthy German-Argentine heiress, surrounded herself with an impressive and renowned art collection which included Rembrandt's Abraham and the Angels. In 1908 she married Walter von Pannwitz (1856-1920) a distinguished lawyer in Munich from a Silesian noble family. They had each independently assembled significant art collections with the advice of some of Germany’s most learned art historians, including Max Friedländer and Wilhelm von Bode (1845-1929). Their home from 1914 was a large mansion in Berlin known as Palais Pannwitz that was later transformed into a luxury hotel by Karl Lagerfeld.

Upon Walter’s death in 1920 Catalina moved with the collection to Hartekamp, a large country villa in the Northern Netherlands where she established a social hub for the European aristocracy, which included her close friend Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859-1941). In 1947 her collection, comprising mainly French decorative arts and old master paintings, was exhibited at the Rijksmuseum, where it was much admired and praised in the press.