Werner Merzbacher

Merzbacher's father, a World War I veteran and recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Friedrich Order, was initially allowed to continue his medical practice before it was shut down by the Nazis.

[4] At the end of 1937, the father was sentenced to two months in jail in Heilbronn, and Rolf and Werner were placed with their grandparents Ida and Jakob Haymann in Konstanz.

[5] The parents gave up their medical practice in Öhringen and moved to Konstanz, where Julius Merzbacher was arrested after the Nazis Kristallnacht Pogrom against the Jews in 1938 and held for a month in the Dachau concentration camp.

In 1940 after conquering Alsace-Lorraine and the Reichsgau Baden, the Nazis deported the Jews living there to the Camp de Gurs in southern France in the Wagner-Bürckel action on October 22, 1940.

Werner Merzbacher was allowed to enter Switzerland with a group of Jewish children on February 16, 1939, and was given a Christian upbringing by two ladies in Zurich.

In the economic upswing of the post-war years, Mayer & Cie. advanced to become one of the leading names in the international fur business, largely thanks to the efforts of Werner Merzbacher.

Merzbacher was also active on an honorary basis in the Collections Commission of the Kunsthaus Zürich and on the board of the Association of Zurich Friends of Art.

[10] Since the opening of the Kunsthaus Zürich extension, 65 paintings from the collection have been shown there for twenty years.The Werner and Gabrielle Merzbacher Collection contains far more than 100 works, including works by Max Beckmann, Umberto Boccioni, Georges Braque, Alexander Calder, Paul Cezanne, Sonja Delaunay-Terk, André Derain, Alexandra Exter, Sam Francis, Vincent van Gogh, Natalia Gontscharowa, Alexej von Jawlensky, Wassily Kandinsky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee, František Kupka, Fernand Léger, Kasimir Malewitsch, Henri Matisse, Gabriele Münter, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Pablo Picasso, Emil Nolde, Ljubow Popova, Olga Rozanova, Maurice de Vlaminck.