Hitler's Art Thief

by Susan Ronald

  28. BAB, R8 XIV/12, fol. 2. These are the foreign exchange applications by Hermsen. See also Iselt, Der Sonderbeauftragter für Linz, 288–89.

  29. ANF, AJ 40/573 and AJ40/574, Hermsen file, export application 33019, October 1943.

  30. My analysis takes into consideration all the details of the 129 applications made by either Hermsen or Gurlitt in AJ40/574 and AJ40/573 and is based entirely on the statistical evidence.

  31. Lynn H. Nicholas, The Rape of Europa (London: Macmillan, 1997), 157.

  32. Petropoulos, Art as Politics, 141–42.

  33. ANF, AJ 40/573 and AJ40/574, export applications. I reviewed all export applications between 1941 and 1944. These were filed by the exporter name and application number. Each application had its own file. They are kept in two large archival boxes at the ANF. The Gurlitt/Hermsen file alone is too large for a single box.

  34. ANF, AJ 40/574, export application no. 18089.

  35. ANF, AJ 40/573 and AJ40/574, all 33 rejected applications and a number of accepted ones of the 129 in total.

  36. ANF, AJ 40/574, export application nos. 7577, 7578, 8091.

  37. BAK, B323/134, fol. 66, no. 356; fol. 64, no. 351; fol. 62, nos. 341, 337 (on Gurlitt French export licenses); fol. 49, no. 262 for example.

  25. Quick, the Allies Are Coming!

    1. NARA, RG 239, roll 0050, 6. On the following page (7) the valid remark is made that Buchholz could never have opened up his bookshop/gallery in Lisbon without the prior approval of the German government.

    2. Georg Wacha, Jahrbuch des OÖ Musealvereins 149/1 (Linz: Gesellschaft für Landeskunde, Festschrift Gerhard Winkler, 2005). “Der Kunsthistoriker Dr. Justus Schmidt,” 644–45.

    3. Lynn H. Nicholas, The Rape of Europa (London: Macmillan, 1997), 218; Robert Edsel, Monuments Men (London: Preface Publishing, 2009), 52–53.

    4. NA, www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/records/looted-art-in-depth-intro.pdf, 3.

    5. BAK, B323/134, fol. 53, no. 285.

    6. BAK, 323/182 is solely dedicated to this.

    7. James Rorimer, Survival (New York: Abelard Press, 1950), 153.

    8. BAK, B323/134, fol. 49, no. 259.

    9. It is possible that more details could be gleaned by proper forensic financial analysis of the Gurlitt papers held by the German government.

  10. ANF, AJ 40/574, applications 28558–28564 are good examples.

  11. Ibid., application 27864, July 3, 1944.

  12. BAK, B323/134, fol. 49, no. 262.

  13. Ibid., fol. 47, no. 250.

  14. Ibid., fols. 47, 46, 30 for example.

  15. Ibid., fol. 42, 43.

  26. Surrendered … or Captured?

    1. Victor Klemperer, To The Bitter End (London: Phoenix, Kindle edition, 2013).

    2. Joseph W. Angell, Historical Analysis of the Dresden Bombing February 13–14, USAF Historical Division Research Studies Institute, HQ, US Military, Air University, 1953, conclusion [pages not numbered]. The Nazis claimed that some 200,000 people were killed. In 2010, a German commission confirmed a figure of up to 25,000.

    3. Frederick Taylor, Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945 (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 278, 279.

    4. Henny Brenner, The Song Is Over (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2010), 53. This is a short, simple and heartrending eyewitness account of a Jewish girl surviving in Dresden.

    5. Ibid., 59.

    6. SKD, Vorakten, Nr. 54/7, 14–15, 67.

    7. Ibid., Vorakten, Nr. 52/3, 283–285; Nr 54/11–13.

    8. NARA, CIR no. 4: 51. Gurlitt claimed that Hermsen had died in Paris at the end of 1944. Despite extensive searches in Paris, there is no proof that he did. Gurlitt also claimed that he was introduced to Hermsen by Herbert Engel in Paris, which would make the presence of his next-door neighbor being a Dutchman called Hermsen an extraordinary coincidence beyond reason.

    9. Brenner, The Song Is Over, 62–65.

  10. Ibid., 60.

  11. NARA, M1944, RG 239, roll 0006, 12.

  12. In a foreword written for an unpublished exhibition catalogue in Düsseldorf’s archives, Gurlitt claimed in November 1955, “It was only later, after a communist village mayor had confiscated them, that I was able to secure their release with a bit of cunning and, thanks to a good Russian who was delighted with two bottles of schnapps on a rainy night, slip them through the Iron Curtain.” Gurlitt withdrew this foreword, stating that it should not be published “for all kinds of reasons.” See Der Spiegel, November 18, 2013 article.

  13. One of the greatest treasures looted was the Amber Chamber from the opulent Czar’s Catherine Palace at Tsarskoe Selo. In January 1945, Albert Speer evacuated it from Königsberg along with other highly valuable works. See minute 31 of the documentary The Amber Room—Lost in Time (Part I), Yutaka Shigenobou, producer (2006).

  14. BAK, 323/134, fol. 45, no. 237.

  15. All twenty-four banks in Dresden were destroyed—along with their bank vaults—in the British firebombing of the city. Gurlitt would later claim that he had more than RM 250,000 in cash in his account there.

  16. Telephone conversation with Stephan Holzinger, February 24, 2014.

  27. House Arrest

    1. Shirer (in 1960) and Bullock (originally published in 1952) wrote that Bormann disappeared in the Battle of Berlin. Antony Beevor, in Berlin (London: Penguin, 2003), relates Axmann’s story. Axmann, head of the Hitler Youth, claimed that on May 1, 1945, he fled the bunker with Bormann and Hitler’s surgeon, Ludwig Stumpfegger, at the helm of the last faithful followers. German tanks led them from the city toward the south. After the lead tank exploded, slightly wounding the trio, Axmann turned west. Bormann and Stumpfegger decided to head east, to follow the rail tracks out of the city. When Axmann found them again, they were lying on their backs where the Invalidenstrasse crosses the railway tracks, presumably shot in the back. Axmann continued on, escaping from Berlin. Six months later he was captured. The rumors about Paraguay began as early as June 1945, when Bormann’s longtime chauffeur was certain he’d seen Bormann in Munich shortly after May 1.

    2. www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/women.html, entry for Gerda Bormann.

    3. Others were Wiesbaden (Voss’s former collecting point under the Nazis), Schönebeck, Goslar. When Neuschwanstein and Altaussee were discovered, these acted as temporary collecting points, too.

    4. McKay died in 1998. After interviewing Gurlitt, he acted as one of the lawyers at Nuremberg. Obituary www.articles.chicagotribune.com/1993-02-08/news/9303176747_1_associate-judge-house-arrest-single-murder-case.

    5. NARA, www.fold3.com, M1946, RG260/roll 0134, “Interrogation of Art Dealers—Hildebrand Gurlitt,” 94.

    6. Ibid.

    7. Ibid. Bauer, as a persecuted Jew, joined the US Army in 1941 and was coopted by the Third Army as a translator. Other examples exist, such as Howard Triest, who translated for the psychiatrists at Nuremberg (see Helen Fry, Inside Nuremberg Prison, Kindle edition, 2011).

    8. Ibid., Life History, 83.

    9. See Der Spiegel article, November 18, 2013 containing the foreword to the exhibition catalogue written by Hildebrand Gurlitt in 1955.

  10. NARA, www.fold3.com, M1946, RG260/roll 0134, 83.

  11. Ibid.

  12. www.photo.dresden.de/de/03/nachrichten/2008/c_82.php?lastpage=zur%20Ergebnisliste.

  13. NARA, www.fold3.com, M1946, RG260/roll 0134, 84.

  14. Ibid., 84. I could find no such book on Käthe Kollwitz published under the name of Hildebrand Gurlitt.

  15. NARA, CIR no. 4: 51. It was McKay’s initial interview that discovered these facts.

  16. Spk BA, Land G251, 48.

  17. NARA, www.fold3.com, M1946, RG260/roll 0134, 87.

  18. This figure comes from the sum of the e
xport application transactions carried out by Gurlitt as represented in AJ40/573 and AJ40/574.

  19. NARA, www.fold3.com, M1946, RG260/roll 0134, 84.

  20. Ibid.

  21. Ibid., 85.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Ibid. Italics are mine.

  24. Ibid. Organization Todt was a major projects engineering division of the Nazi army, infamous for its slave labor.

  25. Ibid., 86.

  26. www.dictionaryofarthistorians.org/Voss.

  27. NARA, M1946, RG260/roll 0134, 84.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Ibid., 86–89.

  30. Lynn H. Nicholas, The Rape of Europa (London: Macmillan, 1997), 121; cf. NA RG 260/411, Keitel to CIC France, September 17, 1940.

  31. NARA, M1946, RG260/roll 0134, 86.

  32. Ibid.

  33. Nicholas, Rape of Europa, 122. According to Gurlitt, at the time this was purchased by a “foreign buyer” for $40.

  34. In 1950 it was agreed that the Gurlitt collection could return to the owner.

  35. Joint Chiefs of Staff JCS 1067 remained secret until October 17, 1945. The Allied Control Council formed from US, British, French, and Russian occupying forces officially ran Germany from the signing of the Potsdam Agreement, on August 2, 1945, until 1955. Directive no. 9, dealing with war criminals, became law on August 30, 1945.

  36. AAA, interview with Robert F. Brown, October 27 and December 14, 1981, for the AAA/Smithsonian Institution. A transcript of the interview can be found in the S. Lane Faison Papers at the AAA.

  37. www.monumentsmenfoundation.org/the-heroes/the-monuments-men/faison-lt.-cdr.-s.-lane-jr.

  38. NARA, M1941, RG 260/roll 0031, 64.

  39. Ibid., 59.

  40. I thank Jonathan Petropoulos for sharing this information with me, which helped to explain some of the deficits in the reporting which I would have otherwise expected to see.

  41. I am deeply indebted to Jonathan Searle for having taken such pains to write his thorough report, dated January 14, 2014. The citation is from page 1.

  42. Ibid., 3.

  43. Ibid.

  44. NARA, CIR no. 4 Supplement, December 15, 1945, 1.

  45. Outside Germany, art looters were punished. For example, Hermann Bunjes of the ERR was imprisoned in France, where he committed suicide. Wendland and Stocklin, too, were jailed. Von Behr and his wife also committed suicide when France was liberated. Ambassador Abetz was murdered in 1956.

  28. Under the Microscope

    1. NARA, Safehaven Papers, M1934, RG 226, Project Safehaven, 1942–1946, WASH-SPDF-INT I, roll 0001, 3.

    2. Ibid., 8.

    3. NARA, M1944, RG 239, roll 0051, 83.

    4. Ibid., 101–2.

    5. NARA, Safehaven Papers, M1934, RG 226, roll 0001, 12.

    6. GETTY, 86061, Douglas Cooper Papers, Box 39, Report on Looted Art in Switzerland.

    7. Ibid., 1–3.

    8. Ibid., 3.

    9. Ibid., 4–19.

  10. Ibid., 14.

  11. Ibid.

  12. NARA, Safehaven Papers, M1934, RG 226, roll 0001, 19.

  13. Ibid., 1–29.

  14. Ibid., 29.

  15. GETTY, 86061, Douglas Cooper Papers, Box 39, October 24, 1945 letter.

  16. NARA, M1944, RG 239, roll 0092, 66.

  17. Ibid., 67.

  18. Ibid., 60.

  19. Ibid., 60–61.

  20. There were also several concentration-camp trials before the subsequent Nuremberg Military Tribunals. The twelve trials are: the Doctors Trial (December 1946–August 1947), the Milch Trial (January–April 1947), the Judges Trial (March–December 1947), the Pohl Trial (April–November 1947), the Flick Trial (April–December 1947), the IG Farben Trial (August 1947–July 1948), the Hostages Trial (July 1947–February 1948), the RuSHA Trial (October 1947–March 1948), the Einsatzgruppen Trial (September 1947–April 1948), the Krupp Trial (December 1947–July 1948), the Ministries Trial (January 1948–April 1949), and the High Command Trial (December 1947–October 1948).

  21. See Peter Grose’s monumental Allen Dulles, Spymaster, book 2, “Cold Sunrise” chapter for the first incident of the Cold War.

  22. www.law.harvard.edu/library/digital/court-of-restitution-appeals-reports.html.

  23. NARA, Vlug Report, M1944, RG 239, roll 0008, 1.

  24. Ibid., 6.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Ibid., 6–8, 30, 33, 56, 59.

  27. NARA, M1926, RG 260, roll 0035, 14.

  28. NARA, M1944, RG 239, roll 0081, 8.

  29. Spk BA, Land G251, 6,7,9,11–15.

  30. NARA, DIR no. 12: 18–19.

  31. Ibid., 24.

  32. ANDE, Carton 195 côte A 169, letter dated February 10, 1946 from Gurlitt to Valland.

  33. Ibid.

  34. Ibid.

  35. NARA, RG 239, roll 0006, report of Lieutenant Col. Manuel, May 5, 1945.

  36. Ibid., 86

  37. Declaration No 01 345 cover page.

  29. Düsseldorf

    1. The Steiner/Waldorf schools aim to enhance children’s imaginations, and cultivate independent thinking that can be tested scientifically.

    2. NARA, M1944, RG 239, roll 0054, 375 to the Roberts Commission in the Vaucher Draft List of Dealers dated 17-3-45 states, “VOEMEL, Galerie Alex, Düsseldorf, Reported Specialist in Dutch Painting.” He was then put on the list of “White Dealers” (meaning not “Black Listed”). See M1944, RG 239, roll 0055, 11. Vömel fared less well with the Germans. From a PC made available to me, there are a series of letters leading to legal action from Der Senator für Volksbildung from 1951 to 1952 concerning looted art in the case of Alice Victor against “Galerie Flechtheim.” Vömel was found not guilty of any charges, since he had faithfully served Hitler, as did the judge of the trial.

    3. Wolfgang Gurlitt always landed on his feet. His deal with the City of Linz Museum was a delightful way for him to launder his art. Always an impossible man to pin down in a deal, Wolfgang fell out with Linz, however, when they felt he was taking advantage of the museum by insisting on having his art gallery (to sell his additional looted art from) as part of the deal. Wolfgang left them with a questionable heritage—and several paintings of looted art, which have since been returned. Source: Author interview with Linz director Elisabeth Nowak-Thaller, May 24, 2014.

    4. NARA, DIR no. 12: 11–12. The Strasbourg trip that Wolfgang undertook was, contrary to what Voss and Wolfgang claimed, aimed at bringing back to Germany significant artworks held in the city by his longtime confidante, business partner, and lover, Lilli Agoston, who was originally from Strasbourg. After the war, Wolfgang claimed that he saved the part-Jewish Lilli by marrying her off to a Dane called Christiansen-Agoston. Lilli was brought to Altaussee to live with Wolfgang, his first wife, Julie Goeb, and his second wife, Käthe, as well as his two daughters in their small chalet.

    5. NARA, Outshipment 243 from Wiesbaden Collecting Point, December 15, 1950.

    6. AAA, Valentin Papers, letter from Dr. P. Beckmann to M. Beckmann, March 1, 1950.

    7. Ibid.

    8. Nonmonetary gold means gold rings, gold jewelry, and gold teeth.

    9. Telephone conversation with Stephan Holzinger dated February 24, 2014, revealed the extent of Cornelius’s talent as an artist.

  10. V&A exhibition catalogue German Watercolors, Drawings and Prints 1905–1955—A Mid-Century Review of German Art 1905–1955, loan exhibition sponsored by the Republic of Germany and circulated by American Federation of the Arts, introduction, 3.

  11. This is my analysis from the catalogue.

  12. www.lostart.de/gurlitt.

  13. Goepel applied for several positions, and nearly landed a job at the Bavarian State Paintings Collection; however, it was felt that his record during the war would not hold up to close scrutiny
. It is possible that since Voss was also living in Munich at the time he had been consulted in the decision. Given that we now know about Goepel working under Gurlitt’s direction in France, it is probable that Goepel resented his former associate. From 1948 Goepel worked as an editor at Prestel-Verlag until his death in 1966, and was cofounder of the Max Beckmann Society in 1953.

  14. NARA, M1949, RG 260, roll 26, 4.

  15. When I discussed this suspicion with art experts, they agreed that the date makes his death more than a mere coincidence and points to some Nazi motivation.

  30. Aftermath and Munich

    1. Lammers’s wife and only daughter committed suicide when Hitler ordered him to be shot. When Lammers died, in 1962, he was buried in the same plot as they were, in Berchtesgaden.

    2. This is no longer the case, leaving the Swiss feeling bloodied by the onslaught on their highly lucrative banking system, and wondering why other countries should have the right to penetrate it to gain access to funds from tax evaders and terrorists.

    3. NARA, M1949, RG 260, roll 26, 2.

    4. www.lootedart.com newsletter of February 7, 2014; cf. FAZ article.

    5. Ibid.

    6. LMD, Standesamt München II 1968/539.

    7. www.deutsche-biographie.de/sfz41057.html.

    8. Any evidence either way may well be in the Gurlitt papers in the German government’s possession.

    9. LMD, Standesamt München II 1968/539.

  10. www.spiegel.de/international/germany/spiegel-interview-with-cornelius-gurlitt-about-munich-art-find-a-933953.html.

  11. Author interview with the director of the LMD. I am especially grateful to Anton Löffelmeier for sharing this information with me.

  31. The Lion Tamer

    1. www.spiegel.de/international/germany/spiegel-interview-with-cornelius-gurlitt-about-munich-art-find-a-933953.html.

    2. Ibid.

    3. Ibid.

    4. www.lootedart.com newsletter, February 7, 2014.

    5. Author’s telephone conversation with Stephanie Barron, February 18, 2014.

    6. NARA, M1949, RG 260, roll 26, 2.

    7. Stuart E. Eizenstat, Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), 191.