Alfred Sommerguth (born September 23, 1859, in Magdeburg) was a prominent German art collector and businessman.
Director and co-owner of Loeser and Wolff, one of the largest tobacco factories in pre-WWII Germany, he became an official in the Ministry of the Interior in Berlin in 1920, overseeing town planning.
He and his wife, Gertrude Sommerguth, were well-known figures in Berlin society and amassed a diverse art collection, including Dutch and Italian Renaissance masterpieces and works by French Impressionists.
To pay the “flight tax” imposed by the Nazis on Jews, Sommerguth was forced to sell most of his art collection at the February 7, 1939 Hans W. Lange auction titled Eine Berline Privatsammlung.
[1] In 1941, to avoid deportation, the couple fled to Cuba, where Alfred was hospitalized for typhus before ultimately settling in New York.