"Portrait of Alfonso II d'Este and his secretary, Pistofilo," by Titian

Portrait of Alfonso II d'Este and his secretary, by Titian

by Marc Masurovsky

Josef Skvor was a Czech businessman born on 8 April 1888 in Chlistov (Czechoslovakia). On 10 January 1931, Skvor, who had an apartment in Paris on Boulevard Pereire, acquired a painting by Tiziano Vecello (Titian) under the title “Portrait of Alfonso I d’Este” from a Paris art dealer, Paul Jurschewitz. The painting had been in the collection of Marquis Franzoni until the latter sold it to a Mr. Bellini from whom Jurschewitz purchased it in 1930. At the outbreak of WWII in September 1939, Skvor was the director of Skoda Works in Prague. In 1940, he or his agents deposited the Titian in a safe #691 at a branch of the Crédit Lyonnais on Boulevard des Italiens in Paris. (In subsequent documents, the vault number is designated as #569 and #596). 

The German army began its occupation of France in June 1940 after roundly defeating the French army. In the months that followed, according to Skvor, German officials paid several visits to his bank ostensibly to view the contents of his safe since Czech citizens were considered to be enemies of the Reich. On 17 December 1940, Jurschewitz wrote to Skvor and his “authorized representative” Alexander Bagenoff to confirm the terms of the sale of the Titian which was finalized the following day, on 18 December 1940. According to Skvor, someone he called Mrs. Dittrich (Maria Almas-Dietrich of Munich) showed up at the Crédit Lyonnais in Paris flanked by two SS men and with a proxy which authorized a cash payment of 1,500,000 francs to Bagenoff, Skvor’s representative. The document in Almas-Dietrich’s hands bore the stamp of the Reichskanzlei in Berlin, whose boss was Martin Bormann, the “secretary” to Adolf Hitler. She then removed the painting. 

Maria Almas-Dietrich

Almas-Dietrich, a close friend of Adolf Hitler's, took the painting back to Munich where she lived and ran a thriving international art business. The painting was eventually transferred to Berchtesgaden, one of Hitler’s favorite residences. In 1945, Skvor petitioned the French Art Restitution Commission (CRA) for assistance in locating the painting. One year later, in November 1946, Almas-Dietrich delivered the receipt issued by the Reichskanzlei to the office of Capt. Edwin Rae, head of the MFA&A Section at OMG Bavaria in Munich. She denied that she had shown up at the Crédit Lyonnaiss with two SS men to seize the painting and that the transaction had been conducted “in orderly fashion.” She reiterated that the painting had already been offered numerous times on the art market before 1939. 

In December 1946, Hans Konrad Röthel (1909-1982), co-founder of the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte (ZIKG) in Munich and curator at the MCCP, echoed what Almas-Dietrich had told Capt. Rae regarding the Titian painting, namely that it had been available for sale on the market for quite some time. He also mentioned that Jurschewitz’s fiancée, Ms. Laesch, wondered if her husband-to-be may have had a financial interest in the Titian. Finally, he upheld the official American policy of repatriation of works back to their country of origin. In the Titian’s case, he felt that France should recover the painting, believing that it had been “legally sold… for 1.8 million francs (as opposed to 1.5 million francs, the oft-cited figure in this case.).

While the Americans supported the French claim on the painting, the Czech government stood by Jozef Skvor in his attempt to recover the Titian, arguing that he had been the victim of a “forced sale” to which he had not consented. His word against Maria Almas-Dietrich, a notorious Nazi art dealer, Dr. Hans Konrad Röthel of the ZIKG and the MCCP in Munich, Albert S. Henraux, president of the French Commission on Art Restitution (CRA), Elie Doubinsky, French representative to the MFA&A at the Munich Collecting Point and deputy to Rose Valland, chief restitution officer in the French Zone of Occupation. Paul Jurschewitz who had sold the Titian to Skvor and allegedly brokered the sale to Almas-Dietrich, was also the same individual who had advised the Germans on where to find famed art dealer Paul Rosenberg’s prized inventory after the latter had fled to New York. The postwar French authorities arrested Jurschewitz on suspicions of wartime trafficking in looted art.

MCCP card #8836 (front)

MCCP card #8836 (back)

The Titian painting sat at the Munich Central Collecting Point from 11 October 1945 to 21 January 1948. While awaiting its repatriation to France which Elie Doubinsky was pressing his American colleagues in Munich to hasten, pursuant to repatriation policies issued by the Four-Power Committee in Berlin, some MFA&A members were still under the impression in 1947 that the painting would eventually be returned to Czechoslovakia once the French and the Czechs had a chance to sit at a table and discuss the salient issues surrounding its ownership and the circumstances of its wartime sale. For their part, the French were unequivocal: since the painting was taken from France, it had to be returned to the country from which it was removed. Henraux insisted on the matter, betraying his excitement at the prospect of France acquiring a first-rate painting by a master such as Titian. Furthermore, their view was that the financial transaction of December 1940 canceled Skvor’s claims to ownership. The new MFA&A chief at OMG Bavaria, Richard Howard, backed the French position and reminded the Czechs of the Four-Power decision on repatriation.

Edwin Rae, MFA&A, and his staff

Amidst the brouhaha surrounding the legitimacy of the transaction between Maria Almas-Dietrich and Skvor’s representative, Mr. Alexander Bagenoff, neither the French nor the Americans gave any consideration to Skvor’s allegations that he had been subjected to a forced sale. Maria Almas-Dietrich who had “removed” from occupied France countless works of art for Hitler, Goering, Heinrich Hoffmann and herself, was more believable in their eyes than the purported Czech victim. There is no indication either as to the true nature of the relationship between Skvor and Bagenoff. Did the latter sell him out? Did the Germans pressure him? We will never know because he died during the war. Did Skvor actually collect the money as the French gratuitously asserted? No evidence suggests that he actually did.

Keep in mind also that the Cold War was in full swing while the fate of the Titian was under debate. From 1945 to 1948, relations between the US and Czechoslovakia deteriorated to a point of no-return due to Soviet aggression in that country which culminated in a hostile takeover of the country’s government in February 1948. The US had already frozen restitutions to “Soviet bloc” nations of Eastern Europe. These countries' claims for assets looted by the Germans and uncovered in the Western Zones of occupation in Germany and Austria were systematically rejected by the Western Powers. Could this state of affairs have influenced the MFA&A Section in its determination to deny the possibility of a restitution to Skvor which could only benefit America’s ally, France?

It's an odd story with colorations of early Cold War hysteria which benefited France’s museums desirous to enrich their cultural heritage at any cost. Sometimes, it’s not what you read that matters but what lies behind the curtain.

Technical specifications:

Author: Tiziano Vecello, known as Titian (1488/1490-1576)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Measurements: 102 x 116 cm
Titles given to the painting: Portrait of Alfonso d’Este; Portrait of Alfonso I d’Este; Double portrait of Alfonso I d’Este and his secretary; Portrait of Alfonso II d’Este and his secretary, Pistofilo

Sources:

Note from Paul Jurschewitz to Josef Skvor, 10 January 1932, RG 260 M1946 Roll 40 NARA.
Paul Jurschewitz to Skvor and Mr. Bagenoff, 17 December 1940, RG 260 M1949_Case C42 C6/36_Roll 11 NARA.
Skvor to the Director of the Commission de recuperation artistique, Paris, 5 November 1945. RG260 M1946 Roll 40 NARA
Josef Skvor undated application for the restitution of Czechoslovak Property # C6/2156 and 2157. [OMGUS number=C-42], RG260 M1949_Case C42 C6/36_Roll 11 NARA
Note from Edwin C. Rae, chief, MFA&A Section, Restitution Branch, OMG Bavaria, to Mr. Taper, OMGUS, Economics Division, Restitution Branch, 30 November 1946, RG 260 M1949_Case C42 C6/36_Roll 11 NARA.
Note from Dr. Hans Konrad Röthel to Samuel R. Rosenbaum regarding the “Portrait of Alfonso d’Este and his secretary”, 10 December 1946, RG260 M1949_Case C42 C6/36_Roll 11 NARA
Handwritten note, undated, Munich, Germany, ca. 1947 RG260 M1949_Case C42 C6/36_Roll 11 NARA
Richard Howard to OMGUS, 2 juin 1947, RG 260, M1946, Roll 40, NARA
Note from Richard Howard, Chief MFA&A Section, OMG Bavaria, to MFA& A Section, Restitution Branch, Economics Division, OMG Bavaria 20 June 1947, RG260 M1949_Case C42 C6/36_Roll 11 NARA
Captain Elie Doubinsky, French representative, MCCP, to Herbert Leonard, Chief MFA&A Section, Munich, 7 October 1947 RG 260 M1946 Roll 40 NARA.

Photos

Portrait of Alfonso II d'Este and his secretary, Pistofilo, courtesy of www.dhm.de
Edwin Rae with his staff courtesy of: https://www.artmagazin.hu/articles/archivum/1c6f0bb5a07c9f9ad66e8809213416c3

Maria Almas-Dietrich courtesy of https://agorha.inha.fr/detail/25

Theft at Dillingen an der Donau

by Marc Masurovsky

Map of Dillingen an der Donau

The final Allied military push against Nazi Germany unfolded in March 1945 when American troops crossed the Rhine river, which acts as a natural border with France and Belgium, pushing towards Berlin in a mad race to reach the German capital. Likewise, the British forces broke through further up north and the Soviets entered Germany from the East. The race was on to reach Berlin at all cost.

On Sunday 22 April 1945, an American Sanitary Unit reached Dillingen an der Donau and set up its quarters at the Lamm Brewery, owned by Mr. Probst. The brewery’s cellar contained 14 crates from the Historic Museum of Dillingen which had been left there for safekeeping against aerial bombings. The crates stored objects that had been extracted from an ancient Alemanic cemetery nearby. 

Seal of the Lamm Brewery in Dillingen

After the Americans left, Mr. Probst, the brewery’s owner, resumed control of his business and, upon inspection of the cellars, noticed that 6-8 crates from the Historic Museum had been broken into and their contents scattered about the cellar floor. He repacked the crates not knowing if anything had gone missing from them.

On 20 May 1946, Robert Roeren, a Bavarian official responsible for the protection of cultural monuments, went to Dillingen to survey the former cemetery of Schreitsheim [Schretzheim]. He observed the absence of numerous items and concluded that these items had been stolen. Furthermore, the looting of the Museum in Dillingen had threatened the integrity of archaeological digs which involved 640 graves at Schreitsheim [Schretzheim] and some 400 “Alemanic” burial sites uncovered near Dillingen an der Donau. Among the stolen objects were bronze pieces from the Roman era and precious incised silver objects. These losses included “valuable gold and silver objects” which had been extracted from 11 graves explored during archaeological expeditions in and around Dillingen for the benefit of the Historic Museum of Dillingen.

In June 1946, Mr. Probst recounted the incident in the cellar to a local high school headmaster named Menz. The headmaster recruited some of his students to inspect the crates, draw up an inventory and return them to the Historic Museum. Later in the summer, Mr. Roeren conducted his own audit of the losses to assess the damage inflicted to the cultural heritage of the area.

The only hope for recovering these items rested with the US army. But because of the massive departure of American military personnel returning to the United States who had participated in the March 1945 campaign against Germany, it was unlikely that any investigation into looting by American soldiers and officers would produce any tangible results.

 

Inventory of missing items

Sources:

Memo from OMGB Capt. Edwin Rae, Chief of MFA&A Section, Restitution Branch, 30 July 1946, RG 260 M1921 Roll 14, NARA (National Archives, College Park, MD, USA).

Major L. B. LaFarge, chief of MFA&A Section, OMGUS, to MFA&A Division of OMG Bavaria, 22 July 1946. RG 260, Educational Division, Box 236, 5347-1, NARA (National Archives, College Park, MD, USA).

Reports submitted by Captain Edwin C. Rae, chief, MFA&A Section of OMGB, regarding looting at Wittislingen, 30 July 1946 and 5 September 1946, RG 260, Educational Division, Box 236, 5347-1, NARA (National Archives, College Park, MD, USA).

Report by Dr. Friedrich Wagner, Munich, 3 août 1946, ‘Disappearance of items discovered during excavations of Alemanic graves in Schreitseim [Schretzheim], Dillingen district, owner: Historischer Verein Dillingen, RG 260, Educational Division, Box 236, 5347-1, NARA (National Archives, College Park, MD, USA).

RG 260 M1921 Roll 14, NARA (National Archives, College Park, MD, USA).

Photo of Lamm Brewery seal courtesy of https://www.ebay.com/itm/205638892105

Map courtesy of Google Maps.

Rose Valland mania

by Marc Masurovsky

Many books have been published about Rose Valland, the unsung French heroine of WWII in her quest to recover and protect France’s cultural heritage. One might ask if her idea of cultural heritage also included works produced on French territory by Jewish artists who elected to live and work in France before ending up in the crematoria and gas chambers of the Final Solution. The answer to that question lies in the copious notes she left behind.

Regardless of how she felt (the subject of another text), it might be instructive to give you a quick overview of the many volumes and visual productions that have created a "persona" for Rose Valland as a creature of the French museum world who rose above the fray to do the unimaginable in times of war—put her life on the line to document the plunder of art collections during the Nazi occupation of France (1940-1944). She was passionately devoted to a certain idea of the cultural heritage of her nation, ready to defend it at any cost, even if it meant sacrificing her own life. Truly admirable.

Here is a brief recap of monographs published in French and English since 1961 when the “Front de l’Art (Art Front)”, Rose Valland’s account of her wartime defense of French cultural heritage appeared in its original French edition at Editions Plon. There followed two updated French editions of the “Art Front” in 1997 and 2014. The first English-language edition of the “Art Front” came out in 2024.

Books

1961 

Le front de l’art, défense des collections françaises, 1939-1945 Rose Valland, Plon, 262 pages

1997 

 Le front de l’art, défense des collections françaises, 1939-1945 Rose Valland, RMN 262 pages

2008 

 Rose Valland : Résistante pour l’art, Frédéric Destremeau

2009 

Rose Valland, Capitaine Beaux Arts, Tome 1 Claire Bouilhac, Catel, Emmaneul Polack

2014 

 Le front de l’art, défense des collections françaises, 1939-1945 Rose Valland, RMN (update of the 1997 edition), 403 pages

2016 

Rose Valland, une résistante sauve des œuvres d’art, Mano Gentil

2019 

Rose Valland, une vie à l’œuvre, Ophélie Jouan

Les Carnets de Rose Valland: le pillage des collections privées d’œuvres d’art en France durant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, Collectif

2023 

Le livre de Rose, Emmanuelle Favier (Editions les Pérégrines)

2024 

 L’espionne à l’œuvre, Jennifer Lesieur

2024 

The Art Front : The Defense of French Collections, 1939-1945, Rose Valland

Rose Valland’s notebooks are translated and annotated in an English-language version, courtesy of the Monuments Men and Women Foundation. 

2025 

Michelle Young, The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland,  

Erin McGuire, The Spy in the Museum: How Rose Valland saved art from the Nazis

Films featuring Rose Valland

1964 

The Train, John Frankenheimer

2014

 “The Monuments Men” starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett (in the role of Rose Valland).

2015 

Rose Valland, l’espionne aux tableaux (the Art Spy) by Brigitte Chevet. Aired on May 4, 2015, as an episode of La case de l’oncle Doc

Rose Valland mania spread to the French educational sector.

Schools and institutes named after Rose Valland

Collège Rose Valland, Saint-Etienne-de-Saint-Geoirs

Ecole élémentaire publique Rose Valland, Le Mans

Ecole Rose Valland

Institutes

Even a research institute bears her name in Berlin, Germany.

Rose Valland Institut, Berlin

Parting thoughts

We cannot cry over spilled milk. Strong-willed women (Evelyn Tucker, cultural advisor to the US zone of occupation in Austria, and Ardelia Hall, cultural officer in the US Department of State (1944-1961), Rose Valland, cultural officer in charge of recoveries of French cultural treasures) fought an uphill battle to implement Allied restitution policies so as to provide some measure of justice to the victims of National Socialism. 

Life is what it is. Words are one thing. Deeds are quite another.  Something that these three outstanding women found out and fought through in order to assert a policy that was quickly reneged by the very people who shaped them. Alea jacta est.

We haven't forgotten them and we honor them. Role models. We need them now more than ever.

Sources

Photo courtesy of "The Collector."

https://www.thecollector.com/rose-valland-art-historian-spy-nazi/

Opinion: Arranged marriage between SNCF and AAMD against art restitution claims

by Marc Masurovsky

In a news item published by“Tablet” on 21 October 2025, the American museum association (AAMD) gained an unusual ally in its fight against renewal of the HEAR Act—the French parastatal company, SNCF (Société nationale des chemins de fer). It gained notoriety a decade ago for its role during WWII in assisting in the deportation of Jews from German-occupied France to death camps in Eastern Europe. The crime was worsened by evidence that the company had been paid for each Jewish man, woman, and child that its cattle cars contained on their journey to death. The end result was a "global settlement" that the SNCF signed in 2014 to satisfy claims for reparations filed by Holocaust survivors and their heirs.

Why on earth would SNCF support the AAMD in its fight against renewal of the HEAR Act which is exclusively about art restitution claims filed against American museums? The HEAR Act has nothing to do with the deportation of human beings. Hence, the two should not mix and even be in the same room. Odd to say the least. 

Nicole Wizman, author of the Tablet article, suggests that SNCF fears that if the HEAR Act is renewed, its emphasis on the elimination of legal technical defenses (laches, statutes of limitations, etc.) might make it more vulnerable to lawsuits from the heirs of Holocaust victims that its trains had ferried to their death for the German genocidal machine. It argues that the settlement it signed in 2014 would be breached by the renewal of the HEAR Act and expose it to more lawsuits in US courts. The argument is somewhat lame.

Let’s venture a thought or two here. The SNCF ferried not just Nazi victims to their deaths but also commodities requisitioned by the Germans or, worse, that they stole en masse from Jewish households. Trains conveyed these stolen goods for Vichy and the Nazis on a routine basis from fall of 1940 to summer of 1944. What if, what if those lobbying for the renewal of the HEAR Act are contemplating another round of class action suits aimed at France for all the wrongs that the Vichy government aided and abetted during its four years of collaboration with the Nazis? SNCF and other entities are perfect targets, much like the German Railroads and German companies for their complicity in the genocide machine. Joel Greenberg, founder of the Art Ashes foundation who is spearheading the lobbying campaign to renew the HEAR Act, warned that: “Institutions must stand clearly on the side of memory and restitution, not on the side of obstruction or indifference. France needs to face its treatment of the Jewish people honestly—not turn away from it.”

Jewish groups have largely spared France in their decades-long campaign for reparations stemming from the genocide of the Jews of Europe to which France’s Vichy regime participated with glee. Is France’s time up? And is Joel Greenberg the one holding the spear that will skewer its institutions for their past malevolence? As they say, be careful for what you wish for because it might all backfire. Meanwhile, the AAMD should not order champagne crates just yet. The battle over the HEAR Act has just begun. There's still one more year before a vote up or down will be held in an extremely polarized Congress.