[Editor’s note: This survey is based almost exclusively on Allied documents, reports, and investigations into the wartime art market in the Netherlands and the plunder of Jewish collections under the auspices of Dienststelle Mühlmann.]
After the Germans completed their occupation of Dutch territory, Myrtil Frank offered his assistance as well as paintings to the Dienststelle Mühlmann, based at Sophialaan 11 Den Haag. Headquartered in the Hague, its main figures were Eduard Plietzsch, the Dienststelle’s official representative or “fondé de pouvoir” and Dr. Franz Kieslinger, administrator of confiscated Jewish property who presumably brought Plietzsch into the organization as expert and purchasing agent in Holland, Belgium, France, for the Dienststelle Mühlmann. Plietzsch and Kieslinger were responsible for, among other things, targeting Jewish collections the Dienststelle wished to confiscate. The Dienststelle’s office manager was Dr. Joseph Ernst.
Although not a well-known art expert, Myrtil Frank proved himself to be a quick study enough so to “fulfill the desires of Eduard Plietzsch.” He thus became a “most important intermediary of the Dienststelle.”
Some of Frank’s contacts and collaborators at and close to the Dienststelle Mühlmann included:
-Adolf Weinmüller, a Munich-based art dealer and auctioneer of confiscated Jewish property, with close ties to Mühlmann’s operations in both Austria and the Netherlands,
-Dr. Herbst with whom Frank dealt from 1942-1944 during his brief tenure as an administrator of the Dienststelle;
-Dr. Schmidt, SD official responsible for travel permits [Ein-und Ausreisestelle] whom Frank had befriended and who allegedly gave him cover from anti-Jewish decrees in wartime Holland,
-Dr. Vitale Bloch whom Frank solicited in his capacity as a purchasing agent for Mühlmann.
-Karl Legat, Zeestraat 59, Den Haag, a German-born art dealer based in Holland, with whom Frank did extensive business during and after WWII,
-Jaguenau, art dealer
-J. Vermeulen, art dealer
-d’Autresch, art dealer active in the Noordeinde. Mühlmann interceded on his behalf to free his son partly in recognition for his services to secure works of art for the Dienststelle.
- Muelder, tied to Dr. Herbst and Weinmüller who did business with the Dienststelle Mühlmann through Myrtil Frank,
-Parry [Parri], who also cooperated with dealers Hoogendijk and Pieter de Boer.
Myrtil Frank acquired a number of works for the Dorotheum auction house in Vienna which were sold to Hitler’s Linz Museum project. Most of these transactions occurred in 1943. Dr. Herbst confirmed these transactions in April 1946.
How should we then view Myrtil Frank in wartime Holland? Somewhere between collaboration, duress and persecution?
Shortly after WWII ended, Dr. Alfred Stix, director of State Art Collections in Vienna, in a letter to the US occupying forces in Austria, described some of Mühlmann’s activities in Holland during WWII. He indicated that local Jewish art dealers were forced to act as agents to Mühlmann in order to help him procure paintings. Stix argued that “these Jews told a lot of things to buy their lives in that way.”
A scholarly assessment produced by Anita Hopmans of the RKD over the disputed ownership of paintings at the Boymans Museum buttressed Stix’s argument. It suggested that art dealers like Myrtil Frank had acted under duress. On the other end of the spectrum, Dr. Anna-Carolin Augustin echoed the Allied investigators’ suspicions when she described Myrtil Frank as a “Nazi collaborator” in an article published in 2011 in Medaon, an online journal. In its Provenance Research Database, the German Lost Art Foundation noted Myrtil Frank’s inclusion in a master list of art looting suspects drawn up by the Art Looting Investigation Unit (ALIU) in 1946.
Where do these contrasting views and events leave us with respect to Myrtil Frank? In some ways, we need to be very careful with how we record Myrtil Frank’s wartime activities and behavior. Simple, almost Manichean views where everything is either black/white, good/bad, ethical/unethical, may not render proper justice to Jewish art dealers like Frank who remained in the Netherlands after the Germans invaded. His actions proved that he did his utmost to protect his family (in that, he succeeded!), while he engaged in activities that favored the interests of the enemy.
In a broader context, we may need to revisit what duress really means in these instances where physical survival blended with the pursuit of commercial activities with the occupier. Did Frank go beyond the call of duty in his relationship with the “Dienststelle Mühlmann”? The answer to this question depends on how one defines “beyond the call of duty”, a notion closely tied to the threshold beyond which one’s wartime activities in territories occupied by the Nazis become acts of collaboration with the enemy. Similar debates in countries like France may shine a light on this discussion.
Primary sources:
Reports:
Vlug Report, 25 December 1945.
Art Looting Investigation Unit (ALIU), Final Report, Strategic Services Unit, May 1946.
Consolidated Interrogation Report #2, The Goering Collection, 15 September 1945, p. 79
Selected documents:
Dr. Alfred Stix note to Major Miller, USFA, Vienna, 9 April 1946, RG 260 M 1926 File R&R 51 Roll 150 NARA.
Secondary accounts:
Augustin, Anna-Carolin, “Nazi Looted Art in Israel: Kulturguttransfer nach 1945 und Restitution heute,” Medaon (2011), p. 9.
Hopmans, Anita “Disputed ownership. On the provenance of two works by Jan Toorop at the Boymans Museum…” pp. 13-14.
-Adolf Weinmüller, a Munich-based art dealer and auctioneer of confiscated Jewish property, with close ties to Mühlmann’s operations in both Austria and the Netherlands,
-Dr. Herbst with whom Frank dealt from 1942-1944 during his brief tenure as an administrator of the Dienststelle;
-Dr. Schmidt, SD official responsible for travel permits [Ein-und Ausreisestelle] whom Frank had befriended and who allegedly gave him cover from anti-Jewish decrees in wartime Holland,
-Dr. Vitale Bloch whom Frank solicited in his capacity as a purchasing agent for Mühlmann.
-Karl Legat, Zeestraat 59, Den Haag, a German-born art dealer based in Holland, with whom Frank did extensive business during and after WWII,
-Jaguenau, art dealer
-J. Vermeulen, art dealer
-d’Autresch, art dealer active in the Noordeinde. Mühlmann interceded on his behalf to free his son partly in recognition for his services to secure works of art for the Dienststelle.
- Muelder, tied to Dr. Herbst and Weinmüller who did business with the Dienststelle Mühlmann through Myrtil Frank,
-Parry [Parri], who also cooperated with dealers Hoogendijk and Pieter de Boer.
Myrtil Frank acquired a number of works for the Dorotheum auction house in Vienna which were sold to Hitler’s Linz Museum project. Most of these transactions occurred in 1943. Dr. Herbst confirmed these transactions in April 1946.
How should we then view Myrtil Frank in wartime Holland? Somewhere between collaboration, duress and persecution?
Shortly after WWII ended, Dr. Alfred Stix, director of State Art Collections in Vienna, in a letter to the US occupying forces in Austria, described some of Mühlmann’s activities in Holland during WWII. He indicated that local Jewish art dealers were forced to act as agents to Mühlmann in order to help him procure paintings. Stix argued that “these Jews told a lot of things to buy their lives in that way.”
A scholarly assessment produced by Anita Hopmans of the RKD over the disputed ownership of paintings at the Boymans Museum buttressed Stix’s argument. It suggested that art dealers like Myrtil Frank had acted under duress. On the other end of the spectrum, Dr. Anna-Carolin Augustin echoed the Allied investigators’ suspicions when she described Myrtil Frank as a “Nazi collaborator” in an article published in 2011 in Medaon, an online journal. In its Provenance Research Database, the German Lost Art Foundation noted Myrtil Frank’s inclusion in a master list of art looting suspects drawn up by the Art Looting Investigation Unit (ALIU) in 1946.
Where do these contrasting views and events leave us with respect to Myrtil Frank? In some ways, we need to be very careful with how we record Myrtil Frank’s wartime activities and behavior. Simple, almost Manichean views where everything is either black/white, good/bad, ethical/unethical, may not render proper justice to Jewish art dealers like Frank who remained in the Netherlands after the Germans invaded. His actions proved that he did his utmost to protect his family (in that, he succeeded!), while he engaged in activities that favored the interests of the enemy.
In a broader context, we may need to revisit what duress really means in these instances where physical survival blended with the pursuit of commercial activities with the occupier. Did Frank go beyond the call of duty in his relationship with the “Dienststelle Mühlmann”? The answer to this question depends on how one defines “beyond the call of duty”, a notion closely tied to the threshold beyond which one’s wartime activities in territories occupied by the Nazis become acts of collaboration with the enemy. Similar debates in countries like France may shine a light on this discussion.
Primary sources:
Reports:
Vlug Report, 25 December 1945.
Art Looting Investigation Unit (ALIU), Final Report, Strategic Services Unit, May 1946.
Consolidated Interrogation Report #2, The Goering Collection, 15 September 1945, p. 79
Selected documents:
Dr. Alfred Stix note to Major Miller, USFA, Vienna, 9 April 1946, RG 260 M 1926 File R&R 51 Roll 150 NARA.
Secondary accounts:
Augustin, Anna-Carolin, “Nazi Looted Art in Israel: Kulturguttransfer nach 1945 und Restitution heute,” Medaon (2011), p. 9.
Hopmans, Anita “Disputed ownership. On the provenance of two works by Jan Toorop at the Boymans Museum…” pp. 13-14.