Nazi Art Plunderers

by Chris Sabian⁽⁴¹⁾
Kute Fine Art

If you have ever watched the Indiana Jones films then you will know that by and large in his quest for antiquities and artifacts his usual protaganists were the Nazis. Remember his famous quip? - "I hate Nazis." And snakes, as I believe.

From 1933 through to the end of World War II, the Nazi regime maintained a policy of looting art for sale or for removal to museums in the Third Reich from European countries by agents acting on behalf of the ruling Nazi Party of Germany.

The art of the Third Reich, the officially approved art produced in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945, was characterized by a style of Romantic realism based on classical models. While banning modern styles as degenerate, the Nazis promoted paintings and sculptures that were narrowly traditional in manner and that exalted the "blood and soil" values of racial purity, militarism, and obedience.

Degenerate art is the English translation of the German entartete Kunst, a term adopted by the Nazis to describe virtually all modern art. Such art was banned on the grounds that it was un-German or Jewish Bolshevist in nature, and those identified as degenerate artists were subjected to sanctions. These included being dismissed from teaching positions, being forbidden to exhibit or to sell their art, and in some cases being forbidden to produce art entirely.

Degenerate Art was also the title of an exhibition, mounted by the Nazis in Munich in 1937, consisting of modernist artworks chaotically hung and accompanied by text labels deriding the art. Designed to inflame public opinion against modernism, the exhibition subsequently travelled to several other cities in Germany and Austria.

Nazi art bears a close similarity to the Soviet propaganda art style known as Socialist Realism. The term heroic realism has sometimes been used to describe both styles. Among the well known artists endorsed by the Nazis were the sculptors Josef Thorak and Arno Breker, and painters Werner Peiner, Adolph Wissel and Conrad Hommel.

The early twentieth century was characterized by startling changes in artistic styles. In the visual arts, such innovations as cubism, Dada and surrealism, following hot on the heels of Symbolism, post-Impressionism and Fauvism, were not universally appreciated. The majority of people in Germany, as elsewhere, did not care for the new art which many resented as elitist, morally suspect and too often incomprehensible.

The Nazis viewed the culture of the Weimar period with disgust. Their response stemmed partly from conservative aesthetics and partly from their determination to use culture as propaganda. Upon becoming dictator in 1933, Hitler gave his personal artistic preference the force of law to a degree rarely known before. Only in Stalin's Soviet Union, where Socialist Realism had become the mandatory style, had a state shown such concern with regulation of the arts. In the case of Germany, the model was to be classical Greek and Roman art, seen by Hitler as an art whose exterior form embodied an inner racial ideal. It was, furthermore, to be comprehensible to the average man. This art was to be both heroic and romantic.

Adolf Hitler was an unsuccessful artist who was denied admission to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. Nonetheless, he thought of himself as a connoisseur of the arts and he favoured classical portraits and landscapes by Old Masters, particularly those of Germanic origin. Modern art that did not match this was dubbed degenerate art by the Third Reich.

The main reason for this appears to be that Hitler "saw Greek and Roman art as uncontaminated by Jewish influences. Modern art was seen as an act of aesthetic violence by the Jews against the German spirit. The supposedly "Jewish" nature of art that was indecipherable, distorted, or that represented "depraved" subject matter was explained through the concept of degeneracy, which held that distorted and corrupted art was a symptom of an inferior race. By propagating the theory of degeneracy, the Nazis combined their anti-Semitism with their drive to control the culture, thus consolidating public support for both campaigns. You have to agree that the Nazi propaganda machine was a mighty powerful tool albeit totally wrong.

Their efforts in this regard were unquestionably aided by a popular hostility to Modernism that predated their movement. The view that such art had reflected Germany's condition and moral bankruptcy was widespread, and many artists acted in a manner to overtly undermine or challenge popular values and morality.

In September 1933 the reichskulturkammer (Reich Culture Chamber) was established, with Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Reichminister für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda (Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda) in charge. Membership groups consisting of “racially pure” artists supportive of the Party were created for each division of the individual arts. Goebbels made it clear: "In future only those who are members of a chamber are allowed to be productive in our cultural life. Membership is open only to those who full-fill the entrance condition. In this way all unwanted and damaging elements have been excluded." By 1935 the Reich Culture Chamber had 100,000 members.

Modern artworks were purged from German museums. Over 5,000 works were initially seized, including 1,052 by Nolde, 759 by Heckel, 639 by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and 508 by Max Beckmann, as well as smaller numbers of works by such artists as Alexander Archipenko, Marc Chagall, James Ensor, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh. These became the material for a defamatory exhibit, Entartete Kunst ("Degenerate Art"), featuring over 650 paintings, sculptures, prints, and books from the collections of thirty two German museums, that premiered in Munich on July 19, 1937 and remained on view until November 30 before travelling to eleven other cities in Germany and Austria. In this exhibition, the artworks were deliberately presented in a disorderly manner, and accompanied by mocking labels. Coinciding with the Entartete Kunst exhibition, the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung (Great German art exhibition) made its premiere amid much pageantry. This exhibition, held at the palatial Haus der deutschen Kunst (House of German Art), displayed the work of officially approved artists such as Arno Breker and Adolf Wissel. At the end of four months Entartete Kunst had attracted over two million visitors, nearly three and a half times the number that visited the nearby Grosse deutsche Kunstausstellung.

Once purged of “degenerate art”, German art was one based on traditional genre painting. Titles were heavily significant, such as "Fruitful Land", "Liberated Land", "Standing Guard", "Through Wind and Weather", or "Blessing of Earth." While drawing on German Romanticism traditions, it was to be firmly based on real landscape, without religious moods. Peasants were also popular images, reflecting a simple life in harmony with nature. This art showed no sign of the mechanization of farm work. The farmer laboured by hand, with effort and struggle.

Nazi theory explicitly rejected "materialism", and therefore, despite the realistic treatment of images, "realism" was a seldom used term. A painter was to create an ideal picture, for eternity. The images of men, and still more of women, were heavily stereotyped, with physical perfection required for the nude paintings. Explicitly political paintings were more common but still very rare.

With the advent of war, war paintings became far more common. The images were heavily romanticized, depicting heroic sacrifice and victory. Still, landscapes still predominated, and among the painters exempted from war service, all were noted for landscapes or other pacific subjects. Even Hitler and Goebbels found the new paintings disappointing, although Goebbels tried to put a good face on it with the observation that they had cleared the field, and that these desperate times drew many talents into political life rather than cultural.

Plundering of not just paintings, ceramics, books and religious treasures but gold, silver and currency as well was in the main carried out by military units known as Kunstschutz. Kunstschutz (art protection) is the German term for the principal of preserving cultural heritage and artworks during armed conflict, especially during the First World War and Second World War, with the aim of protecting the enemy's art. It is associated with the image of the "art officer" (Kunstoffizier) or "art expert" (Kunstsachverständiger). Its probity was not questioned in Germany until the end of the 1980s, but was seen as looting or spoliation by countries such as Russia, Belgium, France and Italy whose artworks were 'saved'.

Hitler’s genocidal policies led to the extermination of millions of people and the eradication of long-established cultures in large areas of Europe. In addition, the Nazi policy of destruction of the enemy included the theft of the private and religious art collections and libraries of Jews, Freemasons, political opponents, and Gypsies in the German-occupied countries of Europe during World War II. To reach their goals, the Nazis used modern methods taken from industrial society: preliminary spying and research, renowned art historians and experts, and highly trained assistants, photographers, and administrative personnel. To safeguard their acquisitions, they employed double-entry accounting and coded inventories, and used land and air transport to carry off their stolen goods.

The well-planned Nazi theft, executed mostly under the guise of "legal confiscations," was also an integral part of the entire genocidal process known as the Final Solution and the Holocaust. From 1939 to 1945, Hitler and the Nazis, using a well-knit network of informers and collaborationist art dealers in Germany and the occupied countries, collected hundreds of thousands of works of art and millions of books confiscated or forcibly purchased from museums, private collections, libraries, and religious institutions. At a conservative estimate, the thefts in Western Europe reached an astounding total of about 300,000 artworks and antiques, and more than two million books and manuscripts confiscated by Hitler's looting staff. In Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the Nazi program of art theft was not as well-organized, but it was more destructive.

While the Nazis were in power, they plundered cultural property from every territory they occupied. This was conducted in a systematic manner with organizations specifically created to determine which public and private collections were most valuable to the Nazi Regime. Some of the objects were earmarked for Hitler's never realized Führermuseum, some objects went to other high ranking officials such as Hermann Göring, while other objects were traded to fund Nazi activities.

In 1940, an organization known as the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg für die Besetzten Gebiete (The Reichsleiter Rosenberg Institute for the Occupied Territories), or ERR, was formed. The first operating unit, the western branch for France, Belgium and the Netherlands, called the Dienststelle Westen, was located in Paris. The chief of this Dienststelle was Kurt von Behr. Its original purpose was to collect Jewish and Freemasonic books and documents, either for destruction, or for removal to Germany for further "study".

However, late in 1940, Hermann Göring, who in fact controlled the ERR, issued an order that effectively changed the mission of the ERR, mandating it to seize "Jewish" art collections and other objects. The war loot had to be collected in a central place in Paris, the Museum Jeu de Paume. At this collection point art historians and other personnel inventoried the loot before sending it to Germany. Göring also commanded that the loot would first be divided between Hitler and himself. For this reason, from the end of 1940 to the end of 1942 he travelled twenty times to Paris. In the Museum Jeu de Paume, art dealer Bruno Lohse staged 20 expositions of the newly looted art objects, especially for Göring, from which Göring selected at least 594 pieces for his own collection. Göring made Lohse his liaison-officer and installed him in the ERR in March 1941 as the deputy leader of this unit.

Items which Hitler and Göring did not want were made available to other Nazi leaders. Under Rosenberg and Göring's leadership, the ERR seized 21,903 art objects from German-occupied countries. Other Nazi looting organizations included the Dienststelle Mühlmann, which Göring also controlled and operated primarily in the Netherlands, Belgium, and a Sonderkommando Kuensberg connected to the minister of foreign affairs Joachim von Ribbentrop, which operated first in France, then in Russia and North Africa.

Art collections from prominent Jewish families, including the Rothschilds, thRosenbergs and the Goudstikkers and the Schloss Family were targeted because of their significant value. By the end of the war, the Third Reich amassed hundreds of thousands of cultural objects.

To investigate and estimate Nazi plunder in the USSR during 1941 through 1945, the Soviet State Extraordinary Commission for Ascertaining and Investigating the Crimes Committed by the German-Fascist Invaders and Their Accomplices was formed on 2 November 1942. During the Great Patriotic War and afterwards, until 1991, the Commission collected materials on Nazi crimes in the USSR, including incidents of plunder. Immediately following the war, the Commission outlined damage in detail to sixty-four of the most valuable Soviet museums, out of 427 damaged ones. In the Russian SFSR, 173 museums were found to have been plundered by the Nazis, with looted items numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

After the dissolution of the USSR, the Government of the Russian Federation formed the State Commission for the Restitution of Cultural Valuables to replace the Soviet Commission. Experts from this Russian institution originally consulted the work of the Soviet Commission and continued to catalogue artworks lost during the war museum by museum. As of 2008, lost artworks of 14 museums and the libraries of Voronezh Oblast, Kursk Oblast, Pskov Oblast, Rostov Oblast, Smolensk Oblast, Northern Caucasus, Gatchina, Peterhof Palace, Tsarskoye Selo (Pushkin), Novgorod and Novgorod Oblast, as well as the bodies of the Russian State Archives and CPSU Archives, were catalogued in 15 volumes, all of which were made available online. They contain detailed information on 1,148,908 items of lost artworks. The total number of lost items is unknown so far, because cataloguing work for other damaged Russian museums is ongoing.

Alfred Rosenberg commanded the so-called Einsatzstab Reichleiter Rosenberg [ERR] für die Besetzten Gebiete, which was responsible for collecting art, books, and cultural objects from invaded countries, and also transferring their captured library collections back to Berlin during the retreat from Russia. “In their search for ‘research materials’ ERR teams and the Wehrmacht visited 375 archival institutions, 402 museums, 531 institutes, and 957 libraries in Eastern Europe alone”. The ERR also operated in the early days of the blitzkrieg of the Low Countries. These ERR teams were very effective. One account estimates that from the Soviet Union alone: “one hundred thousand geographical maps were taken on ideological grounds, for academic research, as a means for political, geographical and economic information on Soviet cities and regions, or as collector’s items”.

After the occupation of Poland by German and Soviet forces in September 1939, the Nazi and Stalinist regimes attempted to exterminate its population as well as culture. The establishment of the General Government, by the Nazis, which eventually included all Soviet occupied areas, as a means to eventually convert Poland into a German province aided in this process.

Thousands of art objects were looted, as the Nazis systematically carried out a plan of looting prepared even before the start of hostilities. 25 museums and many other facilities were destroyed. The total cost of Nazi theft and destruction of Polish art is estimated at 20 billion dollars, or an estimated 43% of Polish cultural heritage; over 516,000 individual art pieces were looted, including 2,800 paintings by European painters; 11,000 paintings by Polish painters; 1,400 sculptures; 75,000 manuscripts; 25,000 maps; 90,000 books, including over 20,000 printed before 1800; and hundreds of thousands of other items of artistic and historical value. Germany still has much Polish material looted during World War II. For decades there have been mostly futile negotiations between Poland and Germany concerning the return of the looted property.

The Germans trawled the museums and private collections of Europe for suitably "Aryan" art to be acquired to fill a bombastic new gallery in Hitler's home town of Linz. Hitler hired architects to work from his own designs to build several galleries and museums, which would collectively be known as the Führermuseum. Hitler wanted to fill his museum with the greatest art treasures in the world, and believed that most of the world’s finest art belonged to Germany after having been looted during the Napoleonic and First World wars.

The plans for the Linz complex designed by Albert Speer and other architects included a monumental theatre, an opera house and an Adolf Hitler Hotel, all surrounded by huge boulevards and a parade ground. A library would house at least 250,000 books; the museum itself would have a colonnaded facade about 500 feet (150 meters) long, in the design paralleling that of the Haus der Deutsche Kunst already erected in Munich. It would stand on the site of the Linz railroad station, which was to be moved four kilometers to the south.

On 21 June 1939, Hitler set up the Sonderauftrag Linz (Special Commission: Linz) in Dresden and appointed Dr Hans Posse, director of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Dresden picture gallery), as special envoy. The Sonderauftrag collected art for the Führermuseum and for other museums in the German Reich, especially in the eastern territories. The artworks would have been distributed to these museums after the war.

The Sonderauftrag was located in Dresden and consisted of art historians in service of the Dresden Gallery of Paintings, e.g. Robert Oertel and Gottfried Reimer. Posse died in December 1942 of cancer. In March 1943, Hermann Voss, an art historian and director of the Wiesbaden Gallery took over the Sonderauftrag Linz.

The acquisitions were mostly stored in the Führerbau (Hitler's office building) in Munich; the confiscated artworks were stored in deposits in Upper Austria. From February 1944, the art works were moved to the salt mines of Altaussee to protect them from increased bombing. These mines and caves offered the appropriate humidity and temperature conditions for artworks. Detailed records of the collection were kept at Dresden and moved to Schloß Weesenstein at the end of the war, where they were confiscated by the Russians.

As the Allied troops approached the salt mine, August Eigruber, Gauleiter of Upper Austria, gave orders to blow it up; Hitler countermanded the order, but after the "Führer's" death Eigruber ignored this. Nevertheless his order was not carried out. Most of the collection was recovered, but some was not. Some argue that stolen artwork is hanging in museums and collections around the world.

In 2008, the German Historic Museum of Berlin published a database with paintings collected for the Führermuseum and for other museums in the German Reich. But the most important historical and visual sources relating to the gallery of the "Führermuseum" are photo albums, which were created by the Sonderauftrag between autumn 1940 and autumn 1944. They were presented to Hitler every Christmas and on his birthday, 20 April. Originally thirty-one volumes existed, but only nineteen have been preserved. The albums are documents of the intended gallery holdings, the first 20 volumes show the gallery in a provisional state finished.

There is some debate about whether art for the Führermuseum was stolen or purchased. Hanns Christian Löhr argues in "The Brown House of Art" that only a small portion of the collection – possibly 12 percent – came from seizures or expropriation. Moreover, another 2.5% was derived from forced sales. However, Jonathan Petropoulos, a historian at Loyola College in Baltimore and an expert in wartime looting, argues that most of the purchases were not arms' length in nature. Gerard Aalders, a Dutch historian, said those sales amounted to technical looting, since the Netherlands and other occupied countries were forced to accept German reichsmarks that ultimately proved worthless. Aalders argues that "If Hitler's or Goering's art agent stood on your doorstep and offered $10,000 for the painting instead of the $100,000 it was really worth, it was pretty hard to refuse". Aalders adds that Nazis who encountered reluctant sellers threatened to confiscate the art or arrest the owner.

The Hermann Göring Collection, a personal collection of Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, was another large collection that included confiscated property. The collection consisted of approximately 50 percent of works of art confiscated from the enemies of the Reich. It was in the main assembled by art dealer Bruno Lohse, Göring's adviser and ERR representative in Paris, and in 1945 the collection included over 2,000 individual pieces including more than 300 paintings. The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration's Consolidated Interrogation Report No. 2 states that Göring “never crudely looted”. Instead he always managed "to find a way of giving at least the appearance of honesty, by a token payment or promise thereof to the confiscation authorities. Although he and his agents never had an official connection with the German confiscation organizations, they nevertheless used them to the fullest extent possible."

The Allies created special commissions, such as the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives (MFAA) organization to help protect famous European monuments from destruction, and after the war, to travel to once-Nazi-occupied territories to find Nazi art repositories. They recovered thousands of objects that were pillaged by the Nazis.

The allies found these plundered artworks in over 1,050 repositories in Germany and Austria at the end of World War II. In summer 1945, Capt. Walter Farmer became the collecting point's first director. The first shipment of artworks arriving at Wiesbaden Collection Point included cases of antiquities, Egyptian art, Islamic artifacts, and paintings from the Kaiser Friedrich Museum. The collecting point also received materials from the Reichsbank and Nazi-looted, Polish, liturgical collections. At its height, Wiesbaden stored, identified, and restituted approximately 700,000 individual objects including paintings and sculptures, mainly to keep them away from the Soviet Army and wartime reparations.

The Allies collected the plundered artworks and stored them in a Central Collection Point in Munich until they could be returned. The identifiable works of art were returned to the countries from which they were taken, and the governments of each nation would then return the objects to the proper owners. When the Munich collection point was closed, the owners of many of the objects had not been found. Nations were also unable to find all of the owners or to verify that they were dead.

Although many of these items were recovered by the Allies immediately following the war, many more are still missing. Currently, there is an international effort underway to identify Nazi plunder that still remains unaccounted for, with the aim of ultimately returning the items to the families of their rightful owners.

Art dealers, galleries and museums world-wide have been compelled to research their collection's provenance in order to investigate claims that some of the work was acquired after it had been stolen from its original owners.

In 1985, years before American museums recognized the issue and before the international conference on Nazi-looted assets of Holocaust victims, European countries released inventory lists of works of art, coins and medals "that were confiscated from Jews by the Nazis during World War II, and announced the details of a process for returning the works to their owners and rightful heirs." In 1998 an Austrian advisory panel recommended the return of 6,292 objets d'art to their legal owners (most of whom are Jews), under the terms of a 1998 restitution law.

Stuart Eizenstat, the undersecretary of state and head of the U.S. delegation sponsoring the 1998 International conference on Nazi-looted assets of Holocaust victims in Washington conference stated that "From now on, the sale, purchase, exchange and display of art from this period will be addressed with greater sensitivity and a higher international standard of responsibility."

After the conference the Association of Art Museum Directors developed guidelines which require museums to review the provenance or history of their collections, focusing especially on art looted by the Nazis. The National Gallery of Art in Washington identified more than 400 European paintings with gaps in their provenance during World War II era. One particular piece of art, "Still Life with Fruit and Game" by the 16th century Flemish painter Frans Snyders, was sold by Karl Haberstock, whom the World Jewish Congress describes as "one of the most notorious Nazi art dealers." In 2000 the New York City's Museum of Modern Art still told Congress that "[they] are not aware of a single Nazi-tainted work of art in our collection, of the more than 100,000 [they] hold".

Members of the families of the original owners of these artworks have, in many cases, persisted in claiming title to their pre-war property. In 2006, after a protracted court battle in the United States and Austria (see Republic of Austria v. Altmann), five paintings by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt were returned by Austria to Maria Altmann, the niece of pre-war owner, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer. Two of the paintings were portraits of Altmann's aunt, Adele. The more famous of the two, the gold Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, was sold in 2006 by Altmann and her co-heirs to philanthropist Ronald Lauder for $135 million. At the time of the sale, it was the highest known price ever paid for a painting. The remaining four restituted paintings were later sold at Christie’s auction house in New York for over $190 million.

The looting of cultural property was one of the main indictments introduced against Nazi dignitaries at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. One of the primary ideological goals of genocidal regimes is to change the course of history; and the Nazis, in this sense, were no exception. By stealing—illegitimately transferring ownership—or destroying the art of their enemies, they tried to impose a homogeneous and restrictive cultural view of the world. Recent investigative work had brought to the fore of international public opinion the presence of thousands of Nazi-looted artworks in museums, auction houses, art galleries, and private collections in Europe, the United States, and Canada. Even though an important segment of the art world and art market has set numerous legal and administrative obstacles, in a few years' time, thousands of looted artworks have been returned to their rightful owners and heirs, stirring a world-wide ethical and juridical debate on the subject of the selling, acquisition, and possession of art stolen by the Nazis.

Chris Sabian is an artist with http://www.kutefineart.com/ and co-owner of http://www.paragonprints.co.uk/

Article submitted Tuesday, May 24, 2011 & read 100 times.

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