In 1913 the clothing manufacturer and art collector Julius Stern [1867-1934] opened a gallery in Düsseldorf that later also acted as an auction house. His son Dr. Max Stern [1904-1987], who began working at the gallery in 1928, inherited it upon Julius’s death. In 1935 the Nazi Reich Chamber of Fine Arts (RKdbK) revoked Max Stern’s accreditation as a dealer and ordered him to sell the gallery. He appealed the order while trying to “Aryanize” the business by transferring ownership over to a friend. Upon the final rejection of his appeal in 1937, Stern was forced to liquidate the gallery’s stock at the auction house Lempertz in Cologne on 13 November 1937. A month later he emigrated from Germany, making his way first to London and then to Montreal, where he became director and then owner of the Dominion Gallery.