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Hitler'S Wristwatch: A Nazi Legacy Hidden In German Museums

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  • Hitler'S Wristwatch: A Nazi Legacy Hidden In German Museums

    HITLER'S WRISTWATCH: A NAZI LEGACY HIDDEN IN GERMAN MUSEUMS

    01/30/2013 06:35 PM

    By Steffen Winter

    Getty Images
    Adolf Hitler and his Nazi henchmen amassed huge amounts of valuable
    art, jewelry and other collectibles prior to and during World War II.

    It is a poisonous legacy which German museums and governments have
    failed to properly address. The moral disaster continues to the
    present day.

    For decades, item number 471/96 has only seen the light of day in
    exceptional cases. On those rare occasions, fingers encased in clean,
    white cotton gloves carefully lift the platinum watch out of its
    velvet-lined case. Diamonds encircle the round face, refracting the
    ambient light into a glittering cascade.

    The watch, made in the southwestern German city of Pforzheim by
    Eszeha, was kept in a plain cardboard box after the war. It isn't
    difficult to discover whose wrist it once adorned. The following
    inscription, along with a handwritten signature, appears on the back
    of the casing: "On February 6, 1939. With all my heart. A. Hitler."

    That February day was the 27th birthday of Eva Braun. The Reich
    Chancellor had dedicated the diamond-studded watch with a chain clasp
    to his mistress, 22 years his junior. The precious watch survived the
    turmoil of the ensuing violence virtually unharmed.

    Today the watch is kept in storage at the Pinakothek der Moderne, a
    modern art museum in Munich, where it is registered as "Estate of Eva
    Hitler, nee Eva Braun" -- in a cabinet that contains a large number of
    other devotional objects from the darkest period of German history.

    The collection includes a 41-piece set of silverware engraved with
    Hitler's initials. There is also a diamond-studded gold cigarette case
    that belonged to Field Marshall Hermann Goring (inventory number
    466/96), with an inscription from 1940 on the inside cover: "Filled
    with happiness and pride, we congratulate you on your appointment as
    'Field Marshall.' With our deepest love, Emmy and Edda" -- Goring's
    wife and daughter.

    For decades, the Pinakothek has had in its custody an entire case of
    blood diamonds that Hitler's paladin once called his own: a tiara with
    32 carats of diamonds, a platinum tie ring with emeralds, gold
    cufflinks with rubies, a diamond ring and a large amethyst -- just the
    sorts of things a worldly fiend needs.

    Out of Sight, Out of Mind

    It's the kind of legacy that is inconvenient in the extreme for a
    fledgling democracy. What should a newly emerging political system do
    with such valuable refuse, the true origins of which are unknown? What
    was to be done with the gaudy ornaments of a regime that no one wants
    to exhibit? The answer proved simple. They were placed into storage
    and locked away, never to be seen again. Out of sight, out of mind.

    Even today, this remains Germany's preferred way of dealing with the
    treasures that Hitler, Goring and all the other Nazi leaders snatched
    up and stole from others during 12 years of tyranny. The items being
    kept in a Munich museum's storage rooms are merely a tiny portion of
    the Nazi legacy that fell into the lap of postwar Germany. Almost
    seven decades later, the German state continues to hold paintings,
    rugs, furniture, graphics, sculptures, silver vessels, tapestries,
    books and precious stones appropriated by the Nazi clique. The German
    government owns about 20,000 items, including paintings, sculptures,
    furniture, books and coins. According to a 2004 estimate, the 2,300
    paintings alone have an insurance value of ~@60 million ($81 million).

    Hundreds more are in the storage rooms of museums in the country.

    No one likes to talk about this enormous cache of Nazi treasure,
    partly because of a feeling of guilt for possessing assets that are
    often of unclear provenance: Art objects acquired from Jewish
    collections that were sold off in a panic after 1933, or that were
    simply taken from their rightful owners before they disappeared into
    concentration camps.

    Not all of this art is being kept from the public. A number of works
    are distributed throughout Germany in public museums, private
    collections, at the office of the German president, at the Chancellery
    in Berlin, in government guesthouses and in German embassies around
    the globe.

    The treatment of the gigantic art collections of Hitler, Goring,
    Chancellery head and Hitler confidant Martin Bormann and other Nazi
    top brass counts as a particularly macabre chapter in Germany's
    efforts to come to terms with its Third Reich past. For almost 68
    years now, those in charge of the art -- no matter their political
    persuasion -- have done little to investigate the provenance of the
    valuable pieces that make up this poisonous legacy and return them to
    their rightful owners.

    Ridiculously Low

    None of Germany's chancellors, be it Konrad Adenauer, who was
    persecuted by the Nazis, or former Nazi Party member Kurt Georg
    Kiesinger, emigrant Willy Brandt, former Wehrmacht officer Helmut
    Schmidt, Helmut Kohl, or those born near the end or after the war,
    Gerhard Schroder and Angela Merkel, showed an interest in going beyond
    the unctuous speeches that are traditionally given on Nov. 9 to
    commemorate Kristallnacht ("Night of the Broken Glass") and take the
    last step of doing everything possible to return the Nazi loot.

    SPIEGEL embarked on a search for the legacy of the Third Reich and, in
    doing so, stumbled upon long transfer lists of the assets of former
    Nazi officials, as well as tax officers who were somewhat reluctant to
    remember the valuable legacy. Museum officials seemed embarrassed as
    they shamefacedly opened their vaults. The search led to contemporary
    documents that attest to how the Federal Republic of Germany and the
    State of Bavaria, in the 1960s and 70s, threw works from the Hitler
    and Goring collections onto the art market at bargain basement prices,
    but neglected to turn over the proceeds to the possible previous
    owners or to Jewish victim organizations.

    Documents turned up that show how Bavarian lakeside real estate seized
    by the Nazis changed hands for ridiculously low prices, even though
    the proceeds from the sales were initially supposed to be paid into a
    special fund for victims of the Nazi regime. Hundreds of drawings were
    found that had been hidden in steel cabinets for decades, partly to
    avoid having to face the heirs of Jewish collectors. It is also
    possible now to reconstruct how Hitler's personal photographer,
    Heinrich Hoffmann, quietly and secretly withheld more than 100
    paintings that are now part of a collection, probably worth millions,
    from the Bavarian government.

    The effort led to an unmistakable conclusion: The handling of this
    Nazi legacy is a moral disaster that began in the 1950s and continues
    to the present day.

    To its credit, five years ago the federal government created the
    "Working Group for the Research and Study of Provenance," which
    receives ~@2 million a year in government funding. But the group, which
    has four employees, has not been able to launch more than 84 research
    projects in museums and libraries since it was established -- 84
    projects in 6,300 German museums. At this rate, it will take decades
    more before German cultural institutions have searched through their
    inventories for possible Nazi loot.

    'A Lot to Be Done'

    It's clear that without additional funding and without political will,
    what is currently the last chapter of reparations by postwar Germany
    will not come to a dignified end. Restitution is actually the
    reestablishment of an earlier legal state. As far as the return of the
    artworks is concerned, the Jewish Claims Conference (JCC) laments that
    there is "still a lot to be done" in Germany. The organization says
    that the funds made available by the federal government cover "only a
    small portion of the necessary measures." Instead, the JCC argues,
    "the heirs are forced to do their own research and, in case of doubt,
    fight for their family legacy and go to court."

    Munich is the best place to begin tracking down the Nazi legacy. In
    1945, when Germany was in ruins, up to five million works of art were
    gathering dust in mines and castle basements, monasteries and 1,500
    other warehouse facilities of the defeated German Reich. Hitler had
    had his officials buy, steal or simply confiscate paintings and other
    precious items throughout Europe. The Allies were so well informed
    about this that they developed a plan to deal with the sensitive loot
    long before the end of the war. They chose a collecting point in a
    historic location: two adjacent, monumental structures, faced with
    pale Danube limestone, in downtown Munich. Hitler had used one of the
    buildings to receive state guests, while the other housed the Nazi
    Party headquarters.

    The Central Collecting Point, or CCP, was formed in this gruesome
    reminder of the Nazi past, complete with balconies, marble staircases
    and an elaborate bunker system. Beginning in the summer of 1945, the
    artworks that had been secured in the three Western occupation zones
    began to accumulate at the CCP. They included Hitler's treasures, more
    than 4,700 objects that had been intended for the Fuhrer Museum
    planned for the Austrian city of Linz, the 4,200 objects in Goring's
    collection, most of which he had kept at Carinhall, his country estate
    near Berlin, as well as the smaller collections of Joseph Goebbels,
    Joachim von Ribbentrop, Heinrich Himmler, Baldur von Schirach, Albert
    Speer, Martin Bormann and Hans Frank.

    A Train Full of Art

    Not everyone in Hitler's entourage had a passion for art. But because
    Hitler, a former postcard painter, collected art, they all collected
    art. In this absurd way, says US historian Jonathan Petropoulos, the
    party luminaries complied with the so-called Fuhrerprinzip (leader
    principle), which held that they were to treat the interests of the
    Fuhrer as their own.

    At the CCP, the Americans examined and registered everything that the
    Nazi leaders had collected. If the provenance was easy to determine
    (and when soldiers or civilian employees had not already sold the loot
    on the booming black market), the works were quickly returned to their
    original owners. Petropoulous estimates that, using this approach, the
    Americans and the British had returned some 2.5 million cultural
    assets -- including 468,000 paintings, drawings and sculptures -- to
    their rightful owners by 1950.

    In the initial postwar years, the Germans were largely uninvolved
    spectators in the Munich art market. But starting in the summer of
    1948, the US entrusted the remaining inventory to the care of then
    Bavarian Governor Hans Ehard, who later turned it over to the Foreign
    Ministry in Bonn. There, a specially formed restitution committee
    conferred for almost three years, ultimately setting the objective
    that the restitution issue was to be resolved by the 1960s.

    This, of course, was much easier said than done, because in many cases
    it proved enormously difficult to ascertain the rightful owners.

    Nevertheless, in 1996 German parliament decided that suitable works of
    art were to be lent to museums, as well as to top-level and
    upper-level federal government agencies. This resulted in something of
    a roadshow for Nazi art. At CCP headquarters in Munich, as well as at
    the Baroque Schleissheim Palace and the Bavarian National Museum,
    curators from all over Germany were invited to pick out works that
    might fit well into their museums. The event was closed to the general
    public.

    'Painful Matter'

    Treasury Minister Werner Dollinger announced the results to the world
    press in 1966. Almost 2,000 works went to 112 German museums and 660
    paintings to 18 federal government offices at home and abroad. As a
    result:

    There is a Sultanabad rug from the Goring collection at the Chancellery today;
    a painting once owned by Goring hangs in the federal government's
    guesthouse near Bonn;
    a three-drawer cherry secretary from the collection of Hans Posse, one
    of Hitler's top art thieves, stands in the Office of the Federal
    President;
    a copy of a painting by Giovanni Canaletto, "Canal Grande with Punta
    della Salute and Doge's Palace," acquired by Hitler, can be viewed at
    the German Parliamentary Society.

    At the time, the government led citizens to believe that the subject
    of restitution had been resolved. According to Minister Dollinger, a
    "painful matter" had been brought to a close. SPIEGEL at the time also
    praised the government's efforts, noting that the works of art were no
    longer burdened with the "taint of unlawful acquisition."

    But, as it turned out, we and others were mistaken. In fact, the
    provenance of the works had not been thoroughly investigated by any
    means. It remains unclear today in some cases, such as the painting in
    Bonn, the desk at the president's office and the Canaletto copy at the
    Parliamentary Society.

    To understand why Germany never truly cleared up the biggest art theft
    of the last century, it's worth taking a look back at the
    perpetrators' obsession with collecting.

    The White Leather Tuxedo

    In May 1945, the Allies found two trains in Berchtesgaden, a town in
    the Bavarian Alps, that had apparently been used by Field Marshall
    Goring. The cars were filled with art from around the world. Goring
    had engaged in a true rivalry with Hitler to acquire the most
    significant works in the European market. In his Carinhall estate,
    some paintings were hanging on the ceiling because there was no room
    left on the walls.

    It is unclear how the heavyset Wehrmacht officer developed an
    appreciation for art. Although he was from a wealthy family and had
    lived in castles as a child, unlike Hitler, Goring had never shown a
    passion for art. He had finished high school at a cadet school and
    taken an officer's exam, a test which likely didn't address Rubens and
    Rembrandt.

    The art collection that the Americans uncovered in Berchtesgaden had
    an estimated value of 600 million reichsmarks. His other assets
    included Veldenstein Castle, a bombed-out villa at the Obersalzberg
    mountainside retreat, a hunting cabin near the town of Bayrischzell,
    an account with the Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft bank in Munich worth
    1.1 million reichsmarks, as well as curiosities like a collection of
    antlers, a white leather tuxedo and a French blanket from 1730.

    Under an agreement with the Allies, the top Nazis' private assets went
    to the state in which they had been found after the end of the war.

    This meant that Bavaria benefited more than most other states. In
    addition to Goring, with his homes in the foothills of the Alps, many
    other key players in the Nazi system, like Rudolf Hess, Heinrich
    Himmler and Julius Streicher, had moved their possessions to secret
    hiding places in the south as the Allies advanced into Germany. The
    Munich State Archive has a list, compiled in 1949, of the confiscated
    assets of former Nazi Party leaders in Bavaria. The value of their
    real estate and bank accounts alone was estimated at 51.4 million
    deutschmarks at the time.

    What happened to the Nazi properties is a particularly disturbing
    chapter in Bavarian postwar history, as documented in a 1971 report by
    the Bavarian Supreme Audit Court -- a document which was long kept
    secret and later forgotten. The auditors had scrutinized the State of
    Bavaria's real estate transactions between 1952 and 1967, including
    the sales of confiscated Nazi villas.

    The 'Jovial Austrian'

    It's a shameful report that tellingly demonstrates how quickly the
    victims of Nazi rule were once again given short shrift when it came
    to government transactions in the reconstruction years.

    An unbelievable case occurred in the town of Kochel am See. It
    revolved around a 4,312-square-meter (about an acre) waterfront
    property with a wooden house on it. It was where Nazi youth leader
    Baldur von Schirach went to relax -- before he was sentenced in
    Nuremberg to a 20-year prison term for crimes against humanity. The
    property went to the State of Bavaria. In 1939, the idyllic site was
    already valued at a land price of 2.50 reichsmarks per square meter.

    But in 1955, Bavaria sold the property for 1.45 deutschmarks per
    square meter, which was well below its value, as the Audit Court later
    wrote in its critical but classified report.

    To add insult to injury, the property was then resold after only 10
    months, with the fortunate buyer managing to sell it at a 100 percent
    profit.

    The short-term owner was very familiar with the house. It was Von
    Schirach's wife Henriette, who was also the daughter of Hitler's
    personal photographer Heinrich Hoffmann and the Fuhrer's secretary for
    a time. As recently as the early 1980s, Henriette -- the grandmother
    of attorney and bestselling author Ferdinand von Schirach -- attracted
    attention with a book in which she had reinvented Hitler, turning him
    into a "jovial Austrian."

    An isolated case? Hardly. Heinrich Hoffmann owned an attractive,
    956-square-meter (about 10,000 square feet) villa in Munich's
    Bogenhausen neighborhood, worth millions today. In 1954, the State of
    Bavaria, which had been awarded the assets of the long-time Nazi (Nazi
    Party membership number 59), sold it for 52,000 deutschmarks. For the
    appraisal, the government's real estate agents had used a 1936
    construction index. The government chose not to sell the property at
    public auction.

    And the list goes on. Nazi Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, executed
    in 1946 as a major war criminal, owned a magnificent villa on 32,196
    square meters of land (8 acres) in Kempfenhausen on Lake Starnberg. In
    1959, a publisher bought the estate from the government. It was
    appraised at only 6 deutschmarks per square meter, even though the
    authorities themselves had described the property as a "luxury
    property" on "park-like grounds in an excellent lakeside location."

    According to the Audit Court, the price was too low, and it concluded:
    "Even in 1959, there was also considerable interest in large
    properties in such preferred locations."

    Selling Off the Hitler Collection

    By today's standards, the Bavarian lawmakers would be found guilty of
    breach of trust, toward both the state's taxpayers and the victims'
    rights organizations.

    A real estate deal concluded by Fritz Ruth, the president of the
    Munich regional tax office at the time, was also more than favorable
    to the buyer. In 1959, Ruth spent 7,000 deutschmarks to acquire the
    Schoberhof, a 5,311-square-meter property on Lake Schliersee that had
    been owned by Nazi war criminal Hans Frank, the "Butcher of Poland."

    Neither the lucky bargain hunters nor the government brokers had much
    to fear. The Audit Court did not submit its classified report until
    1971. And it had hardly been made public before a note was placed into
    the Finance Ministry files, to the effect that the public prosecutor's
    office was terminating its investigations because the statute of
    limitations had passed. The crime of breach of trust came under the
    statute of limitations after five years, and the last objectionable
    real estate sale had taken place eight years earlier.

    As the auditors concluded, "none of the properties from the
    confiscated assets was offered for sale by public auction."

    And why should they have been? The only people who could have had an
    interest in achieving the highest possible proceeds were the victims
    of the Nazi regime. Under the 1948 Bavarian law governing confiscation
    of property, the proceeds from these sales were to be paid to the
    Foundation for the Redress of Nazi Injustices and, following its
    dissolution, to the State Office of Restitution.

    The Auerbach case illustrates the Bavarian authorities' reluctance in
    an especially brazen way. Philipp Auerbach, president of the Bavarian
    State Office of Restitution, had survived the Auschwitz and Buchenwald
    concentration camps and, after the war, was a member of the Central
    Council of Jews in Germany. The bulky Hamburg native had a powerful
    voice and confidently represented, in Bavaria, the interests of those
    who had been persecuted for political and racist reasons. Auerbach
    rubbed people the wrong way and frequently received anti-Semitic mail
    -- until the government stopped him.

    On March 10, 1951, he was arrested while on a business trip and
    accused of fraud, embezzlement, neglect of official duties and
    wrongful disbursement of reparations money.

    'Victim of His Duties'

    A court riddled with old Nazi Party jurists sentenced the Holocaust
    survivor to two-and-a-half years in prison. Two days later, the
    45-year-old committed suicide with sleeping pills. An investigative
    committed in the state parliament rehabilitated Auerbach two years
    later, and little was left of the charges against him. Today the
    following words are inscribed on his tombstone: "Helper of the Poorest
    of the Poor, Victim of his Duties."

    A complaint by the "Association of Jewish Invalids in Bavaria" also
    documents the climate in the early 1950s. The State of Bavaria, the
    letter to American occupation forces reads, was deliberately delaying
    restitution payments, even as it was spending billions on the
    non-Jewish population. Furthermore, the Christian Social Union, the
    conservative political party that held sway in the state (as it still
    does), was accused of neglecting the interests of Nazi victims for
    political reasons. The population, still living in want itself, also
    had little sympathy for the victims of Nazi dictatorship. Many felt
    that the government should first attend to the needs of Germany's war
    widows.

    A similar mentality prevailed in Munich government offices, where a
    fair number of collaborators and accessories from the Nazi days
    worked. For instance, the general director of the Bavarian State
    Painting Collections from 1953 to 1957 was the same man who served in
    the position before 1945: Ernst Buchner. US historian Petropoulos
    describes him as "part of Hitler's kleptocracy." According to
    Petropoulos, Buchner played an important role in the seizure of Jewish
    collections and the Aryanization of Jewish art galleries. After the
    Night of the Long Knives pogrom, it was Buchner who opened the
    National Museum to the Gestapo so that it could store Aryanized Jewish
    collections there. He also advised Himmler and Hitler on the appraisal
    of their looted art.

    And he wasn't the only one. There were "experts" in key positions
    throughout the art business in the postwar era who assisted in various
    capacities in the biggest art theft of the 20th century. The artworks
    they had looted now fell into their hands a second time. Not
    surprisingly, they had little interest in tracking down Jewish owners.

    The lack of attention Germans paid to the origins of their art
    treasures did not go unnoticed by the Americans. They considered
    selling what was left of the sensitive collections overseas. Perhaps
    it would have been the only morally correct approach to putting an end
    to Hitler's mad looting expedition. But the opportunity was missed.

    Deliberate Cover Ups

    In the mid-1960s, Germany began selling off portions of the Hitler
    collection. In doing so, it resorted to traditional channels. Two of
    the art dealers involved in the selloff, Kunsthaus Lempertz in Cologne
    and Kunsthandlung Weinmuller in Munich, had also served as art
    suppliers to Hitler until 1945.

    According to the federal government, some 243 paintings, 47 works of
    graphic art, 10 sculpture and 24 articles of furniture from Nazi
    estates were sold at the time "to explore marketability." Because the
    market was still sluggish, the proceeds amounted to only about 1
    million deutschmarks. Once again, the money was not paid to victims'
    rights groups but ended up in the federal budget instead, even though
    the provenance of the artworks that had been sold off had by no means
    been adequately investigated.

    On the contrary, in some cases the origins were deliberately covered
    up, as a number of sales by the State of Bavaria show.

    An example from a December 1966 Weinmuller auction catalogue: Lot
    number 1374, Vincent Sellaer, "Leda and the Swan." Regarding the
    painting's provenance, the buyer is referred to the Thieme-Becker
    Artists' Encyclopedia, Volume 30. On page 478, the encyclopedia lists
    the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Valenciennes, France as the last owner.

    The truth, however, can still today be found on the CCP file cards in
    the German Federal Archives: "Property of Dr. R. Ley." Robert Ley, a
    major war criminal, was head of organization for the Nazi Party and
    head of the German Labor Front. The Allies found the painting --
    clearly looted art -- in his possession in 1945. It was then
    transferred to the State of Bavaria

    By the time the rightful owners began searching for the painting, it
    had long since been sold off. The new owner had no idea about its true
    origins. In the end, the rightful owners were paid the paltry 2,200
    deutschmarks that the painting had fetched at auction.

    Hitler's Photographer

    Under the leadership of then Governor Alfons Goppel, a former member
    of the SA, the State of Bavaria sold 106 paintings in this dubious
    manner. Most were hawked at up to 40 percent below their appraised
    value.

    And the proceeds? They were invested in new artworks, specifically
    those with untainted provenance. Munich's Pinakothek der Moderne
    acquired Georges Braque's "Woman with Mandolin" in this fashion. In
    1967, the Bavarian state parliament had approved the purchase of the
    work, valued at 1.25 million deutschmarks, for the State Paintings
    Collections. The public was given a vague account of how the purchase
    was to be financed: with a contribution from the state, a contribution
    from the Association of Friends of the Collections and "sales from the
    property of the state gallery." The latter referred specifically to
    the proceeds from the scandalous sale of Nazi art.

    Much of what went wrong in the restitution debate, that is, what
    should have happened or what shouldn't have been allowed to happen, is
    reflected in the case of one individual: Heinrich Hoffmann, born in
    1885, Adolf Hitler's personal photographer since 1923.

    Hoffmann, who Werner Friedmann, founder of the Munich Abendzeitung
    newspaper, described as one of "the greediest parasites of the Hitler
    plague," was one of the main profiteers of the Nazi state. The
    publisher and photojournalist, as a member of the "Commission for the
    Exploitation of Confiscated Works of Degenerate Art," advised the
    buyers for the Fuhrer Museum in Linz and was named a professor of art
    by Hitler himself. In 1943, his personal fortune was valued at almost
    6 million reichsmarks. Four years later, the Americans listed 278
    works of art that Hoffmann claimed, untruthfully, to have acquired
    legally.

    Hoffmann spent five years in prison after the war. In 1947, the Allies
    classified him as a "Major Offender," which meant that his assets were
    to be fully confiscated, a penalty he fought until 1956. Ultimately,
    he was permitted to retain 20 percent of his assets. In October 1956,
    the Bavarian Finance Ministry ordered "that all art objects (belonging
    to Hoffmann) under administration of the Bavarian State Paintings
    Collections" were to be "turned over to Mr. Heinrich Hoffmann, Nazi
    Party photographer."

    Receiving Honecker on Goring's Carpet

    The paintings were apparently seen as a way to reinstate that portion
    of his assets which the denazification ruling had granted him. The
    estimated amount was 350,000 deutschmarks.

    The act of mercy, largely unknown to this day, was the apparent result
    of settlement negotiations between the photographer and the finance
    minister. And Hoffmann was clever enough to keep the settlement quiet,
    and to not accept cash. The files suggest that no one was interested
    in wasting any further thought on the provenance of Hoffmann's
    paintings.

    The consequences became apparent just two years later when the
    Austrian government lodged a complaint with Bavaria. According to
    correspondence in the archives of the Bavarian Paintings Collections,
    Austria demanded the return of two paintings from the Hoffmann
    collection: works by Ferdinand Georg Waldmuller, the most important
    painter of the Viennese Biedermaier movement. The Munich officials
    replied somewhat sheepishly that they had already turned over the
    paintings to Hitler's former confidant in 1954.

    Even before reaching his settlement with the state government,
    Hoffmann had repeatedly managed to reclaim individual paintings from
    the state government's custody. A popular technique was to have
    associates tell the state authorities that they had received a
    painting from Hoffmann's collection as a gift during the war.

    Hoffmann's physical therapist was one of them. On July 22, 1955, he
    was handed "The Angler," a painting by Carl Spitzweg, at the Bavarian
    Paintings Collections. He had claimed that the photographer had given
    him the picture during the Hitler era as a token of his gratitude.

    Conveniently, the art-loving physical therapist brought along his
    personal art historian, who scrawled his signature on the handover
    document: "Dr. Kai Muhlmann."

    It was the same Muhlmann whom Goring had once named his special envoy
    for art in the occupied eastern territories -- an SS man who had
    verifiably seized Jewish collections and supplied them to Hoffmann.

    Missing the Dignified Route

    In the roughly seven decades since the end of World War II, there was
    one moment in which Germany could have, and should have, succeeded in
    embarking down a more dignified path. In December 1998, 44 countries
    met at the Washington Conference, where they agreed to track down art
    confiscated during the Nazi era and identify the original owners. A
    "just and fair solution" for the return of the works or compensation
    was to be found with the heirs. For the first time in decades, it was
    once again possible to file restitution claims.

    State Minister for Culture Michael Naumann, a member of the
    center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), enthusiastically supported
    the implementation of the Washington Declaration and, by virtue of his
    office, expanded the definition of looted art: If Jews had sold
    paintings to support themselves while fleeing the Nazis, they or their
    heirs could also file claims for compensation. Naumann wrote to all
    leading German museums and urged them to address provenance research.

    But, as he recalls today, he received a response from only one
    institution, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.

    To this day, provenance research has remained a stepchild of
    accounting for Germany's Nazi past -- lacking in financial means and
    human resources, but replete with accusations that heirs care more for
    money than art. At least the federal government has now examined most
    of the paintings it holds, and German museums are gradually following
    suit.

    The only specialist currently addressing the provenance of thousands
    of works in the Bavarian Paintings Collections is art historian Andrea
    Bambi. She likens her work to a police investigation. More than 10
    years ago, her employer launched a research project to examine the
    provenance of 126 pictures from the Goring collection, 72 of which are
    still in the museum's hands. Bambi's job is to examine the rest of the
    massive Nazi legacy.

    It's a role that is both unique in Germany and rather peculiar. In the
    spirit of the Washington agreement, she has an obligation to the
    victims of the Nazi reign of terror. On the other hand, she is paid by
    the museum and has lifetime tenure there. Her job is a balancing act,
    because she has to satisfy both sides. Heirs, such as those of Jewish
    art dealer Alfred Flechtheim, accuse the Collections of taking a
    restrictive approach.

    A Chaotic Collection

    In most of the cases, the art detective's job is a difficult one.

    Bambi walks out of her office, takes a sharp right around the corner
    and enters a dimly lit library, where there is a beige folder on a
    table. It contains parts of 3,500 document pages that Bambi has to
    comb through to ascertain the origins of the Munich paintings. It's a
    collection of loose sheets of paper, unsorted, with carbon copies on
    parchment paper, and with poorly legible notes made by long-retired
    colleagues. Estimated prices for sculptures are noted in red pencil on
    the back of a calendar sheet from February 1 of some year. It's a
    chaotic collection of documents.

    Bambi says that she could use three staff members: an archivist, a
    historian and an art historian. The estimated personnel costs would be
    about ~@230,000 a year. The Bavarian finance minister, who holds both
    the rights to Hitler's book "Mein Kampf" and the entire legacy of the
    Fuhrer, has refused to commit any funds to the project so far.

    There is clearly a need for the federal government to step in. If the
    collections of the three Munich Pinakothek museums, the Schack
    collection and the 12 satellite galleries are combined, a total of
    4,400 paintings and 770 sculptures that have accumulated in the
    Collections since 1933 will have to be examined.

    The legacy is so extensive that not even Bavaria's senior-most
    politicians are unaware of the former Nazi property they use on a
    daily basis. The Bavarian State Chancellery, for instance, used a
    building on Prinzregentenstrasse for representational purposes for
    many years. Former Bavarian Governor and CSU Chairman Franz Josef
    Strauss used the great hall for cabinet meetings, as well as to
    receive state guests, like East German leader Erich Honecker.

    A giant carpet was laid out on the floor of the room: 15.18 meters by
    7.27 meters. The motif was Persian, but the carpet had been made in
    India. It still has the number 6498 on the bottom, which the Americans
    gave it at the CCP. The carpet also has a file card in the Federal
    Archives, where it is referred to as a "giant carpet" that was found
    in Berchtesgaden. It was on the Goring train.

    Stuck Between Wooden Pallets

    Very few people know what a significant role the carpet played in
    German history. It allegedly was once laid out at Goring's Carinhall
    estate, in the hallway to the library. And then there are photos of
    East Germany's anti-fascist leader Honecker's 1987 visit to
    Prinzregentenstrasse, with Strauss, Edmund Stoiber and a number of
    other prominent Bavarian politicians. And it all happened on Goring's
    rug.

    Today the carpet is rolled up in a hallway at the Schack collection,
    where it illustrates the size of the dilemma the Nazi legacy poses. No
    one can use it anymore, and yet no one dares sell a carpet that is so
    steeped in history. A potential buyer from the US turned up a few
    years ago, but left empty-handed. Now the carpet lies, forgotten and
    wrapped in plastic, between old wooden pallets.

    Of course, forgetting is also sometimes part of a strategy. The State
    Graphic Collection in Munich has 601 drawings and watercolors by the
    painter Rudolf von Alt (1812 to 1905), once owned by the Nazi Party.

    Hitler confidant Martin Bormann had procured the pictures for Hitler's
    Obersalzberg retreat, the Fuhrer buildings in Berlin and Munich and
    the planned Fuhrer museum in Linz. Drawings by the painter were also
    on the list of artworks returned to Hitler's personal photographer,
    Heinrich Hoffmann.

    For decades, the Munich museum officials knew that, until the 1930s,
    the works were primarily the property of Jewish business people from
    Vienna. But what happened to them?

    Since 1959, they were kept in two steel cabinets in the former Nazi
    Party administration building, which is now home to the State Graphic
    Collection. The status quo was only disturbed two years ago, when the
    London-based Commission for Looted Art in Europe came calling and
    filed claims for a watercolor. It demanded the return of the work "The
    Old North Train Station in Vienna," which had belonged to a Jewish
    woman from Brno, in the present-day Czech Republic, until 1938. The
    Commission announced its intention to pursue other claims as well,
    enough to finally push the State Graphic Collection to embark on a
    provenance project.

    Breathtakingly Absurd

    There are references to Jewish collectors like Eissler, Goldmann,
    Mautner and Zuckerkandl. The museum managers have promised to examine
    their collection "as thoroughly as possible." And they regret, of
    course, not having approached possible heirs directly.

    It is a late start. And the fact that it has taken so long probably
    has a lot to do with an earlier generation of curators and their
    reluctance to exhibit the magnificent collection, for fear that Jewish
    heirs could promptly file claims for the art.

    For years, a number of museum directors pursued a breathtakingly
    absurd line of reasoning. This attitude flared up as recently as 2006,
    when a painting by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, "Berlin Street Scene," worth
    about ~@30 million, was handed over to the granddaughter of a former
    Jewish owner, who lived in England. The incident prompted Michael
    Eissenhauer, president of the German Museums Association at the time,
    to sharply criticize the "big business" of restitution art. "It's
    worthwhile to embark on a hunt and take a look at which paintings
    could inject new blood into the art market."

    A "hunt"? By the victims? Former State Minister for Culture Naumann
    recalls a speech by Berlin art auctioneer Bernd Schultz, which was
    published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper, under the heading:
    "They Say Holocaust, But They Mean Money." That speech, says Naumann,
    "contained, without the man even noticing it -- which only made it
    worse -- a classic anti-Semitic sentiment. Shameless."

    People like Gunnar Schnabel, who represents the interests of the
    heirs, continue to run up against the limits of openness and
    cooperativeness among museums today. Since the Washington conference,
    the Berlin attorney has taken on 30 cases relating to valuable
    paintings. The work often escalates. "I begin by researching three
    paintings and end up with 50," says Schnabel. On behalf of Jewish
    heirs, Schnabel has wrested a painting by Carl Spitzweg ("Fiat
    Justitia") from the Office of the Federal President. He is not
    particularly conciliatory as he sums up his experiences: "Negotiations
    with the museums remain tough and incredibly expensive."

    No Evidence of Fairness

    The cost of research is especially staggering for the victims.

    Schnabel remembers the case of a colleague, in which a painting was
    sold for [email protected] million after restitution. The legal fees amounted to
    more than ~@2 million, all but eliminating the concept of compensation.

    Schnabel accuses museums of sometimes "fighting with everything they
    have, and stalling the negotiations." Even if they do examine their
    collections once in a while, says the attorney, he knows of no cases
    in which a museum has approached heirs directly.

    Monika Tatzkow agrees with his assessment. She too represents Jewish
    heirs, including her current clients, the heirs of Max Liebermann. A
    great-grandson has hired the Berlin provenance researcher to examine
    62 paintings, 51 drawings, 10 volumes of graphics and one watercolor.

    The list includes top artists like Manet and Monet, and the works
    could be in museums or private collections. "The evidentiary
    requirements are getting more and more stringent and exaggerated,"
    says Tatzkow. After 70 years, the heirs are still expected to furnish
    the "last sales receipt," to ensure that the restitution is completely
    watertight. The historian sees no evidence of fair and just
    agreements, as stipulated in Washington.

    Former State Minister for Culture Naumann wants the next federal
    government to pass a law that goes beyond the moral impetus of the
    Washington agreement. "Lawmakers have to outline more specific
    restitution claims." He also has an idea of where the money for more
    intensive provenance research should come from. There are currently
    plans for a museum dedicated to the Sudeten Germans, those ethnic
    Germans forced out of lands belonging to present-day Czech Republic.

    The federal government together with the state government of Bavaria
    is to provide ~@30 million for the facility. It would be the third or
    the fourth such museum dedicated to the expellees, says Naumann, and
    hardly anyone visits the ones that already exist. "Diverting ~@10
    million from this budget and putting it into provenance research is a
    possible approach." The states would also have to become more
    committed, says Naumann.

    Of course, there are countless cases in which clarification of the
    ownership issue will no longer be possible, and in which doubts will
    never be set aside. But does the rule have to be: When in doubt, rule
    in favor of the state? Or the museum?

    The Germans could learn from the Austrians. After the end of the war,
    8,422 works of art, most of Jewish origin, were stored in a monastery
    near Vienna. Only in 93 cases were heirs able to prove ownership.

    After 50 years and many agonizing debates, the Republic of Austria
    decided on a solution that was morally unassailable: An auction at
    Christie's, with the proceeds benefiting Nazi victims. The October
    1996 auction raised ~@11 million.

    Could this be a solution for Goring's diamonds and Eva Braun's
    platinum watch? Perhaps it would only reignite the trade in Nazi
    devotional objects, as critics fear. But the Internet is already
    filled with such objects today: Hitler's brass desk set, notes by
    concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele, letters and postcards written
    by Joseph Goebbels. A few rings and tiaras are hardly likely to make a
    difference.

    The idea at least merits a public debate. After all, the sale of the
    precious objects ought to raise enough money to pay for a few
    additional positions in provenance research.

    Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

    http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-s-unsatisfactory-approach-to-art-looted-by-the-nazis-a-880363.html

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