Death
On 9 August 1939, two months after his wedding, Mannheimer reportedly was in his Amsterdam office when he received a phone call from an unidentified party, left the office, boarded a train for France, and joined his wife at their house, where he died the same day. Contemporary observers quickly speculated on the manner of death, with many newspapers suggesting suicide, but Mannheimer's health had always been precarious, due, in part, to his excessive weight. In addition to the heart attack suffered on his wedding day, he reportedly nearly died after suffering another, while travelling in Egypt, in 1937. Shortly before his death, Mannheimer, who stood 172 centimetres (5 ft 8 in) tall, was described as being "half his normal weight" of 90 kg (200 lb).
Whatever the actual cause of death, The New York Times was just one of many leading world newspapers which reported that Mannheimer's demise took place under "circumstances attended by a measure of mystery." The day after his death, Mendelssohn & Co. in Amsterdam announced that it was insolvent and that Mannheimer's collections, which were valued at more than 13 million guilders (approximately $100,000,000 today), had been largely funded on unlimited bank credit. Housed at his homes in the Netherlands and France, Mannheimer's art (which included works by Chardin, Fragonard, Watteau, and Rubens, at least one fake Vermeer, gold reliquary busts, tapestries, Meissen porcelain, and Judaica, including a naturalistic circa-1800 Hanukkah lamp known as the "Oak Tree Menorah") and his collection of 18th-century furniture (much of it acquired for him by the American decorator Elsie de Wolfe and the Paris decorator Stéphane Boudin) were seized by the bank. As a history of Mendelssohn & Co. states, "the Amsterdam branch had to suspend its activities due to false speculations on the part of its director."
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