Career
Paul Cassirer started out as a student of art history, and then became a writer in 1890s Munich, where he worked for the weekly magazine Simplicissimus and published two novels. The cousins came from a prominent family, whose members included the neurologist Richard Cassirer and the philosopher Ernst Cassirer. Paul was born into a Jewish family.
His father, Louis, was an engineer and businessman, whose company — Kabelwerke Doctor Cassirer & Company
— manufactured telegraphic cables, and was eventually taken over by Siemens. In 1901 Cassirer visited Julien Leclercq"s retrospective of Van Gogh"s work, and later that year he organized the inclusion of five Van Gogh canvases in the May show of the Berlin Secession.
On 21 May 1904, Cassirer and Lucie were divorced. He excused himself and walked into another room, where he shot himself.
Like that of Van Gogh, the artist he had done so much to promote, Cassirer"s suicide was not immediately successful.
He died from the injury a few hours later.
