The Rape of Europa

by Lynn H. Nicholas

  When entry to the United States proved difficult many dealers opened branches in Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and Havana. American and British Intelligence and Treasury intercepts show reams of correspondence from Europe and the United States to South America and the Caribbean on the subject of art sales. These were only the tip of the iceberg, and before long the Allies, fearing the establishment of Nazi power bases in the Americas, would begin to try to monitor the flow of assets to the region.

  After the entry of the United States into the war this trade became increasingly lively and complicated. An American professor in Panama City reported that “shipments from Germany via Spain reached Colombia quite easily. Lots of stuff was stopped by the English, but much got through.”25 One of the escaped Katz family, now ensconced in New York, sent his relation in Curaçao a number of Dutch paintings to sell there with the comment “there are so many buyers, that nobody needs to know how much you paid for these paintings.”26 There were plenty of buyers in New York too. American art periodicals in the summer of 1941 reported that the buying activities of exiles from Europe had had a “galvanizing” effect on the market. Dealers reported selling hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of paintings per month and Parke-Bernet announced the best season in twelve years, up 54 percent over the year before, adding that “the news is that a minority of the buyers were Americans.”27

  So Byzantine were these international trading arrangements that even the normally unflappable agents of the U.S. Treasury, who had presumably been privy to more than one convoluted deal, were sometimes at a loss to explain them, and in their reports resorted to such descriptive phrases as “a long letter filled with confused accounts of business deals, shares of profits, ownerships, disputes, etc…. and various juggling of citizenships as occasions suggest.”28 This was in reference to the intricate proposed dealings between a German dealer named Paul Graupe who lived in New York; Arthur Goldschmidt, his onetime partner, whom we last saw in contact with Haberstock and Wildenstein in the south of France, and who eventually escaped to Cuba; Theodore Fischer, he of the Lucerne “degenerate” art auction; Hans Wendland, a German lawyer, possibly Jewish, who was a Swiss resident; Haberstock himself; and a whole series of French dealers—a combination, according to the Treasury, “lending itself to any trickery.”

  Graupe had arrived in New York in early 1941. In April he received a letter from Hans Wendland suggesting a scheme very much like the one Haberstock had suggested to Wildenstein, with the remarkable difference that Wendland mentioned that dealers in Paris would buy “out of the Louvre” and not in the private sector, and ship the pictures to Switzerland, where Wildenstein or someone else would repurchase them. From there they could easily be shipped to America on neutral Swiss boats from Genoa. All this would be financed with the knowledge and help of the Germans. Graupe replied that his reception in New York had been “overpowering” and that he could use such material, but in the end he turned down Wendland’s proposal.

  There was no question that enormous profits could be made in this way, but the wartime censorship made negotiations very difficult. Indeed, the whole reason for the Treasury investigation had been the voluminous correspondence they had intercepted concerning the disputed ownership of a van Gogh entitled The Man Is at Sea, which had not left France in a normal way. Accusations, denunciations, and threats flew from dealers in Lisbon to New York, and vice versa, all being read by Allied censors and Treasury officials trying to decide what monies they should or should not block and tax. Such sharing of ownership led to numerous other inquiries, some more justified than others; but nowhere does the fact that life and death were sometimes involved enter into the reports. In the light of what was happening in Europe, the investigation of the Perls Gallery for “turning over without compensation or license an oil painting called Rabbi in Flight by Marc Chagall, a French national,” to the owner, the same Marc Chagall, who had escaped from France and arrived in New York in July 1942, now seems quite unnecessary.29

  As hopes for the transatlantic exploitation of modern and Impressionist pictures dimmed, a trade in these “degenerate” objects was developed in Europe by Goering himself. The confiscated collections which had gone to the Jeu de Paume, great though they were, had never been “purified.” Along with the Vermeers and the Rembrandts had come stacks of Cézannes, van Goghs, Matisses, Renoirs, and, even worse, Légers and Picassos. These were all stored in a special area of the museum, well away from the Old Masters. Their importation into the Reich was technically forbidden. This was all very well for those whose ideology was pure, but to Goering, who had been exploiting these assets from the beginning, it seemed rather a waste to just let them sit in the Jeu de Paume. Accordingly, a number of top “degenerate” works had quietly been taken to Germany for his future use in the very earliest shipments from Paris.

  This left plenty with the ERR; the question was how to utilize them. A German-American with the peculiar name of Mom proposed that they be sold in Portugal and that the proceeds be invested in industrial diamonds. Von Behr and the ERR were enthusiastic, but Goering’s representative at the ERR, Bruno Lohse, who saw possible commissions evaporating, managed to block this proposal. Instead, a barter system advantageous to many was conceived. Between March 1941 and November 1943 eighteen exchanges of these “degenerate” pictures for more suitable works were arranged for Goering, and another ten or so for Hitler, von Ribbentrop, and Bormann. The fanatics at the upper levels of the ERR heartily approved the plan, which would enable them to “acquire for the German Reich … important paintings without spending foreign currency.” The man behind this scheme was the same Hans Wendland who had already approached Graupe, and who with the total cooperation of Hofer and Goering encouraged this trade. Haberstock, so widely known to be operating for Linz, was outmaneuvered at the ERR and never had a chance to profit from the exchanges, which were controlled by Lohse, Hofer, and Wendland.

  The catalyst for the first exchange was a Portrait of a Bearded Man billed as a Titian. It was offered by another German dealer, Gustav Rochlitz, who had lived in Paris since 1933 and was a close friend of Bruno Lohse. Goering usually found his prices too high, but the “Titian” caught his eye, and Rochlitz was summoned to the Jeu de Paume on March 3, 1941, to choose what he wanted from a group of modern works assembled by Lohse and other staff members. History does not record what his expectations were, but he could not have been too disappointed at being allowed to take eleven paintings, carefully vetted by Goering, which included Degas’s Madame Camus at the Piano and Cézanne’s early Douleur (both from the Alphonse Kann collection), two Matisses, two Picassos, and one each by Renoir, Sisley, Corot, and Braque from the collections of Paul Rosenberg, Alfred Lindon, and Georges Bernheim.

  The special room for “degenerate” art at the Jeu de Paume

  The ERR pictures were carefully valued by the agency’s captive French expert so that the total worth of the exchange would match the asking price of the Titian. But things were not simple; shares of the “Titian” and a Jan Weenix thrown in with it were owned, oddly enough, by Hans Wendland, to whom Rochlitz gave six of the eleven traded paintings.

  This deal triggered an avalanche. Exchanges with Rochlitz followed almost weekly throughout the spring and early summer. Some were less lopsided, but another sixteenth-century portrait, supposedly of Titian’s daughter Lavinia, brought forth eighteen more Impressionists and moderns. In all Rochlitz received eighty-two top-notch confiscated paintings. Of these, after the six given to Wendland, he sold twenty-five to four other Paris dealers: Mssrs Rosner, Petrides, Klein, and a Mile Levy. The other fifty-one he salted away for the future.30

  The exchange process was not limited to France. It was used, as we have seen, to obtain desired works from the Kröller-Müller Museum in Holland. Hofer took nine more to trade for eleven paintings and objects from the dealer Ventura in Florence. But Switzerland would offer many more options. In April 1941 Hofer offered the Galerie Fischer in Lucerne twenty-five Impressi
onists from those Goering had secretly sent to Germany, in exchange for four Cranachs and two other German works. Fischer was invited to Berlin to choose what he wanted from a group of canvases (mostly from the Levy de Benzion and Alphonse Kann collections) which had been brought there especially for him from their storage at Neuschwanstein.

  Soon after this, Wendland too got from Goering, in trade for a Rembrandt and two tapestries, twenty-five pictures, all from the Paul Rosenberg collection except for a van Gogh Small Landscape that had been owned by Miriam de Rothschild. These were shipped to Berlin for Wendland, who declared them inadequate compensation for the Rembrandt, and managed to convince Goering to pay him an extra SFr 250,000.31

  From these nice profits Wendland and Fischer would pay Hofer an equally nice commission. It was all easily arranged. Hofer would quote an inflated price to Goering, and receive the difference from Wendland in cash or pictures.32 When Goering hesitated, Hofer, like Posse, would suggest that others were ready to buy. Haberstock was a favorite threat. Encouraging one of these trades which involved four of Goering’s favorite Cranachs, Hofer wrote that “Haberstock will happily pay … much higher prices for them if you do not buy. I know Haberstock would do anything to get these things from Fischer.”33 Goering bought.

  The great problem for Wendland and Fischer was how to get pictures bought in Berlin and Paris into Switzerland, which had extremely strict customs laws.34 Germany itself required considerable paperwork for the exportation of works of art, “degenerate” though they might be. The French-Swiss border was out of the question. Wendland therefore suggested that Goering send his next exchange through the diplomatic bag. He was particularly interested in this untraceable method, as Hofer had done him the favor of shipping to Germany, along with the ERR items, the six pictures he had acquired from Rochlitz, plus the four bought by Emil Bührle from Dequoy in Paris. Wendland, unlike Fischer, was not a Swiss citizen, had no license to deal there, and would have trouble extracting the paintings from Swiss Customs. Goering agreed to use the diplomatic bag. All the pictures were sent to the German embassy in Bern, where Hofer picked them up and then took them to Wendland in Lucerne. But two of Bührle’s pictures, a Renoir Nude—The Spring and a Greuze Portrait of Laurent Pecheux, mysteriously stayed behind at Carinhall. A memo from Hofer to Goering’s secretary notes only that “the Reichsmarschall will decide later about these pictures.” They were not returned to Bührde until August 1944.

  The pictures thus brought into Switzerland were marketed through the Fischer firm, as Wendland could not legally sell there. He could bring in customers, however, and foremost among these was Bührle, whom he apparently convinced that there would be no repercussions. Bührle bought more than a dozen confiscated works, among them Miriam de Rothschild’s van Gogh; the Kann Degas, Madame Camus at the Piano; and a number of pictures belonging to the Levy de Benzions and Paul Rosenberg.

  To assuage guilt feelings, Hofer and Wendland spread the rumor that Rosenberg had died in the United States. Other major collectors were sorely tempted by their wares. Oskar Reinhardt’s dealer saw at once that these were remarkable works, but when he showed a selection of photographs to Walter Feilchenfeldt for an opinion, Feilchenfeldt immediately recognized them as Rosenberg pictures. Reinhardt refused to touch them. Bührle, when advised that he might have to return the pictures, reputedly simply replied that he would buy them again if necessary. The purchase was not a secret in Switzerland. The exiled collector Robert von Hirsch wrote to a friend in New York that “only Bührle is earning really big money … and he … seems to be buying a good many Impressionists which the Germans have stolen from Paris.”35

  By the spring of 1943 the “purists” at the ERR had wrested control of the operation from von Behr and the other Goering loyalists. Even though the Reichsmarschall had traded away a large number of unsuitable modern French works, many remained in the crowded rooms of the Jeu de Paume and overflowed into spaces in the main Louvre building where works of art produced by the M-Aktion were still being processed. The depots in Germany were full too. The home office was anxious to finish with this operation so that they could concentrate their efforts on Russia.

  On April 16, 1943, Rosenberg sent Hitler a report on the ERR, accompanied by a “Happy Birthday” letter and thirty-nine albums containing photographs of the gems of the agency’s takings, which Rosenberg hoped “will send a ray of beauty and joy into your revered life.” As for the “hundreds of modern French paintings … which from the German point of view are without value as far as the National Socialistic art perception is concerned,” they would “continue to trade them whenever a chance presents itself,” adding that “At the completion of the action, a proposal as to the disposition of the modern and degenerate French paintings will be presented.”36

  For a time indecision on the handling of the remaining modern works seemed to reign. Rose Valland noticed that the unfortunate pictures were packed and unpacked several times. In early July 1943 at a meeting in Berlin, ERR officials were authorized to classify the nonconforming collection. On the nineteenth a commission headed by Scholz divided it into three categories. The first, with works by Courbet, Monet, Degas, Manet, and the like, was kept for trading. These had apparently been approved by the Führer. The second and third categories, which included works by Bonnard, Vuillard, Matisse, Braque, and Dufy, though not similarly approved, were retained for possible sale. These three groups were moved into a special area of the Jeu de Paume.

  The modern works left, as well as Jewish family portraits and works by Jewish artists, were, according to Rose Valland, kicked in or slashed out of their frames with knives by SS men, trucked to the garden of the Jeu de Paume, and burned along with other trash on July 27.37 The ERR inventories were carefully brought up to date—a little line was drawn through each eliminated entry, and “vernichtet” (destroyed) written next to it. The large (196 by 130 centimeters) Judenporträt-Dame of a Mme Swob-d’Héricourt “in evening dress … before a stone staircase with two leaping horses” was so marked along with works by Picasso, Picabia, La Fresnaye, Klee, Miró, Ernst, Arp, Dali, Masson, and Léger.38

  The pardoned works were extremely tempting to the Paris dealers who had heard of the methodology of the earlier exchanges. Hoping to cash in on this trend, Dequoy and Fabiani, in cahoots with Lohse, offered a large Boucher/Robert entitled Figures in a Landscape with Ruins, four Guardis, and two Panninis, worth a total of FFr 2 million, to Linz, for which they hoped to receive some sixty carefully chosen items from Categories I and II with a total resale value of FFr 20 million. Scholz, who had never approved of Lohse, refused to authorize this exchange on the correct, if somewhat overly moralistic, grounds that the ERR was being cheated. The Boucher/Robert was later sold to auctioneer Hans Lange and thence to Linz for RM 250,000, and several of the others went to Frau Dietrich, who also passed them on.

  The entrance of the Germans into the Unoccupied Zone in 1942 had opened the way for the seizure of the French Jewish collections and collectors who had taken refuge there. The Vichy government had not, by late 1942, agreed to confiscation of the personal property of French Jews who had remained in the country, whom they still considered citizens. But the new, fanatically anti-Semitic Commissioner of Jewish Affairs, Darquier de Pellepoix, appointed by Laval in May of that year, was more than ready to bring the Unoccupied Zone into line with the Reich. This would soon allow the Nazi art gatherers to bring in a few things that they had missed, but not forgotten.

  Just as this new area of possibilities opened up, Hans Posse died of cancer of the mouth, having worked at a devastating pace until only a few weeks before his death. For a time his assistant, Dr. Riemer, carried on as usual, supporting Haberstock, whose purchases for Linz continued to be funded by the Reichschancellery. But the devious dealer’s days of preeminence were numbered, for in March 1943 Hitler named a most unlikely replacement for Posse: the director of the Wiesbaden Museum, Hermann Voss, a known anti-Nazi, who had been passed over for the more prestig
ious directorship of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum “for cosmopolitan and democratic tendencies, and friendship with many Jewish colleagues.” Indeed, in 1940 Voss’s antiwar feelings were so strong that he even wrote a poem in perfect French deploring the German invasion of Paris, in which he went so far as to say, rather prophetically:

  Hélas je les ai vus, ces battalions de Boches

  Dévaliser la France au profit de leurs poches

  and to call upon the “god of mercy” to deliver “unfortunate France from the Teutons.”

  No one in the German art world could understand this appointment, which seems to have been the deathbed wish of Hans Posse. Voss’s first interview was with Goebbels, who offered him the directorship of Dresden, next to the Kaiser Friedrich the greatest plum in Germany. When Voss stated that he was not a Party member, Goebbels reassured him that the only requirement was technical expertise. Voss accepted. A few days later he was taken by train to see Hitler at his Eastern Front headquarters. The Führer received him late in the evening, and talked for an hour “on the importance of such old princely galleries as that in Dresden, and subsequently explained his intentions with regard to the Linz Gallery.” Voss was to concentrate on nineteenth-century German and Old Master paintings from other countries.39 No one mentioned during this session that Kharkov, equal in Hitler’s mind to Stalingrad in importance, had fallen to Soviet troops that day.

  Voss’s appointment was formally announced on March 15. One of his first acts was to cut off further funds to Haberstock, whose voracious greed, Bormann told him, had even irritated Hitler. Voss would now channel his purchase funds, which would surpass those spent by Posse, through his own trusted agents, principal among whom was Hildebrand Gurlitt, who like Voss had been fired as director of his museum (Hamburg) earlier in the Nazi era. This was a blow to Haberstock, who was deeply embroiled in a four-way competition for a French Jewish collection which had so far escaped confiscation in Vichy France—that of Adolphe Schloss.