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22 July 2023

The Khmunu Manuscript


by Marc Masurovsky
Part of the Khmunu Manuscript

One of HARP’s goals is to break down the research silos that separate Holocaust researchers from cultural heritage protection specialists and experts on “indigenous” and “colonial” objects. For that reason, we endeavor periodically to showcase items which do not fit into the “Nazi-era paradigm” and see what we can learn from their fragmentary and oh so incomplete histories. Can the methods used to tease out ownership details from items displaced during the Nazi era help us with fleshing out the fragmented stories surrounding archaeological, indigenous and colonial objects?

Every object with cultural, artistic, and/or religious value and significance, has a history as it travels through space and time with human assistance. Ownership trails are difficult to reconstruct in the absence of written documents. Yet, where there’s a will, there’s a way. Strategies developed in the course of several decades to elicit the troubled past of countless objects displaced during the Nazi era are readily applicable to other objects displaced under different circumstances but nevertheless suffer the same fate as they become commodified and monetized on the international art market.

In the case of papyri, ancient handwritten scrolls produced thousands of years in ancient Egypt. If we scratch the surface of the international papyrus trade, we note similarities with the trade in Old Masters and similar art objects.

Let’s now take a look at one such manuscript, referred to as the “Khmunu Manuscript” while scholars have described it as a “Handbook of Ritual Power.”

The “Khmunu Manuscript” or “codex” consists of love spells and other incantations. It was published in its deciphered and annotated form in 2014 as the “Handbook of Ritual Power," the first volume in a series entitled “The Macquarie Papyri” released by Macquarie University in Sydney (Australia). In 2018, another researcher who worked on a papyrus fragment at Macquarie University discovered that it too was a love spell. He wondered whether this fragment could have also come from the “Handbook of Ritual Power.”

The manuscript’s author(s) is (are) unknown. It is estimated to be approximately 1300 years old and handwritten in ancient Coptic script. The use of language traces its origins back to Upper Egypt, possibly near Hermopolis Magna, modern-day Al-Ashmūnayn.

One blogger alleges that the manuscript was discovered during the German Expedition of 1929-1939 (Black dates its discovery to 1929) while exploring around the temple of Thoth at Hermopolis Magna (“Khmunu”, the City of Eight). If so, how and when did the manuscript reach Europe? If the manuscript was discovered during the German Expedition, how and when did it reach Anton Fackelmann and his nephew Michael in Vienna (Austria)?

 
A view of Hermopolis Magna


There is no indication of the date of exportation of the manuscript from Egypt. Neither is there any evidence as to when the manuscript crossed into Austria and reached the Viennese market.

It suffices to say that the provenance record for this and many other papyri is sadly lacking. In the case of the Khmunu Manuscript, we can establish for certain that the manuscript was in the hands of Michael Fackelmann (Vienna) as late as 1981. He may have come into possession of it in the 1970s.

In late 1981, the Museum of Ancient Cultures at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, acquired the manuscript from Michael Fackelmann. The relationship between Macquarie University and the Fackelmann family dates back to the 1960s and 1970s during which time the University acquired many papyri.

By Anton Fackelman’s own admission, he dealt directly with “mummy looters” in Cairo and perhaps elsewhere in Egypt. This fact alone has raised eyebrows about the ethics of Fackelmann’s collecting habits and whether it is safe to acquire any papyri from the Fackelmann family. If “mummy looters” represent one of the few ways by which to acquire papyri in Egypt, then the bulk of the international papyrus trade should be questioned as a hotbed of illicit activity.

One of the Fackelmann family’s strongest critics is Dr. Michael A. Freeman, who describes himself as a “Greek historian and manuscript researcher” working at Duke University. [link to Freeman’s page at Duke] Freeman reports how, in January 1969, Anton Fackelmann acquired papyri from a “mummy looter.”

“Dr. Anton Fackelmann claims, for example, that he extracted P.Duk.inv. 34 and 16 other pieces of early Ptolemiac papyri from the chest of a mummy purchased from a mummy looter in Faiyum, Egypt in January 1969. Among these papyri are five documents verifiably dateable to the early Ptolemaic period, ca. 256 BCE (P.Duk.inv. 23, 24, 25, 26, 28). If one takes Fackelmann at his word—that is, that his papyri were all extracted from the same Ptolemaic mummy—this would date all 17 pieces of the cartonnage archive to the mid-third century BCE.” Freeman’s critique is largely based on the dating methods Fackelmann used to prove that some of the papyri were from the early Ptolemaic period, which would increase their value. As Freeman states, “Early Ptolemaic papyri were exceptionally rare and difficult to acquire in the 1960s-70s.”

A closer look at the ownership histories (provenance) of papyri acquired by Duke University reveals that from the 1960s on many papyri either came directly from the Fackelmann family or one of the Fackelmanns appears in the fragmentary chains of custody either in first or second position. More often than not, Anton Fackelmann appears after an “unknown source”. These provenance gaps (missing information in the chain of custody) beg questions like:

Anton Fackelmann studying a papyrus


- Where, when and from whom did Anton Fackelmann acquire these items?

- Were there no other intermediaries between the Fackelmann family and the “mummy looters”?

- Have any documents been produced which detail the exportation from Egypt and importation into Austria of these papyri?

In a more general way, Prof. Roberta Mazza (University of Bologna, Italy) points out the due diligence failures inherent to the global papyrology market and wonders how thousands of papyri were removed from Egypt in the 1960s and 1970s without any questions being asked about their provenance and origin by Egyptian officials and Western experts, collectors and, most notably, the museums that acquire and house them. Prof. Mazza describes how mummy cartonnage has been exploited as a source of papyri that eventually wend their way through looters’ hands into the clutches of Western collections. The papyri extraction process destroys the mummy cartonnage and, thus, a valuable piece of Egyptian cultural heritage. What is the value of mummy cartonnage when weighed against that of a potentially priceless fragment of papyrus? Who makes that decision? Is it in the interest of science or the interest of the individual collector or museum to acquire this fragment?

Prof. Mazza charges these papyri collectors and experts with indulging in “colonial” behavior at a heavy cost to Egyptian cultural heritage: “Western papyrologists, scholars and pseudo-scholars are destroying mummy masks and panels” much like Christian evangelical collectors like the Green Family of Hobby Lobby fame whose “search for papyri from mummy cartonnage is dictated by the wish to retrieve biblical manuscripts, and through them the word of God…” a specious reason if there ever was one.

Whatever the motives behind this scholarly and pseudo-scholarly obsession with papyri, Western behavior has all the hallmarks of predation for the sake of acquisition and scholarship. How does this apply to papyri constantly appearing on the international art market? Buyer beware, chances are that they were looted.

In sum, the most reliable pieces of information in the history of the Khmunu Manuscript are:

Ancient Egypt (maybe Hermopolis Magna)
Michael Fackelmann, Vienna (Austria)
Macquarie University, Sydney (Australia)

The location of the manuscript in or near Hermopolis can be reasonably deduced based on the contextual information surrounding the papyrus.

Less reliable is the information regarding its actual find and how it came into the hands of the Fackelmann family.

Additional research requires doing a deep dive into the Fackelmann archives in order to sort out the transfer of the Khmunu Manuscript from Egypt to Austria. More generally, the international papyrus trade needs to be thoroughly investigated in order to ascertain how severe the problem is when it comes to the extraction and acquisition of papyri. A word of caution to those who have acquired papyri from the likes of Fackelmann. The absence of provenance is not a good sign and points to possible theft by  “mummy looters.”

Caveat emptor.

Sources for images:

- Khmunu Manuscript pages were taken by Dr. Malcolm Choat, Macquarie University
- Hermopolis Magna photo courtesy of Wikipedia
- Anton Fackelmann photo courtesy of Claremont College Digital Library.




20 July 2023

The Auerbach Case: Part Four-Other views of Dr. Philipp Auerbach

by Marc Masurovsky

Benjamin Ferencz at the IMT, Nurnberg

Benjamin Ferencz, former prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal of Nürnberg:

“One flamboyant German official, Philip Auerbach, in charge of compensation claims in Bavaria, was quite a bizarre figure. It was rumored that he had been interned by the Nazis because he was tainted by Jewish blood. It was known that he paid little attention to formalities. I always considered him neurotic. On several occasions he sought me out for a donation from the JRSO for some strange scheme he concocted. I always refused. I recall a detailed plan he had for shipping Hitler’s stolen art works to the United States for exhibitions in museums that would pay well for the privilege. The money would then go back to the compensation fund. He had the name of the ship, the museums, and the amounts payable. I was not really surprised when, after I checked it out, I learned that it was all a figment of his imagination. When he and the head of a local Jewish community announced that they were establishing a Jewish Restitution Bank to receive deposits from concentration camp victims, I immediately cabled Jewish organizations throughout the world to beware. Exactly one year later, the police closed down the so-called bank; the finances of the Auerbach office were under investigation, and he committed suicide. It was a crazy time with crazy people doing crazy things.”

Le Monde, 19 August 1952, “Suicide of a former Bavarian commissioner on refugee matters provokes general consternation. »

Since Bavaria refused for a long time to elevate the Compensation and Restitution Office and its Director to a legally recognized status, Auerbach was not under any parliamentary oversight and did not benefit from a regular budget. He had to find another way to raise compensation funds using shortcuts and indirect pathways. “He reveled in using expedients, he had a predilection for shady and complex dealings, which allowed him to assert his authority and to engage in opaque and interwoven financial arrangements which would get him into a heap of trouble. No one contests these facts.”

Conclusion:

Was Dr. Philipp Auerbach a victim or a criminal? Did he concoct his outlandish scheme to sell off confiscated Jewish paintings acquired for Hitler and Goering for the purpose of enriching himself? Or was it more of a case of using whatever means necessary to ensure that Holocaust survivors would receive their due, regardless of the legality and reasonableness of his tactics. As Benjamin Ferencz said, “it was a crazy time with crazy people doing crazy things.”

One thing is certain: the Auerbach scandal exposed many of the fault lines that have since haunted the international debate over what to do with unclaimed Jewish cultural assets. Since Auerbach’s death in 1952, Jewish groups have never ceased to look at “unclaimed Jewish cultural assets” as fodder to be sold and monetized for the benefit of Holocaust victims’ heirs. It still remains that nothing is unclaimed unless you declare it to be so. And, if you do, under whose authority and on what grounds?

Sources for Part One-Part Four

Primary sources

National Archives, College Park, MD

Indemnisation des victimes du nazime, 14 mars 1949, RG 59, Lot 62D4, Box 26, NARA

Eric Gration, secrétaire du bureau du Haut Commissariat américain en Allemagne, à George Eric Rosden, 21 janvier 1950, Confidential, 007 Fine Arts, USACA, NARA; [Faison à Hanfstaengl, 11 juin 1951, RG 59 Lot 62D 4, Box 17, NARA

S. Lane Faison, Jr., HICOG, Prop. Div. OEA, Collecting Point Munich to Dr. Eberhard Hanfstaengl, general manager, Arcisstrasse 10, Munich, 11 June 1951, Ardelia Hall Collection, RG 59 Lot 62D4 Box 17, NARA.

Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères et Européennes (AMAE), La Courneuve, France

Doubinsky to Colonel Bonet-Madry, head of the French restitution mission, Frankfurt, 25 May 1949, RA 237, AMAE 
Doubinsky to Valland, 28 October 1949, RV 237, AMAE
Rose Valland to Munsing, 10 november 1949, Berlin, RV 237, AMAE
Munsing to Valland, 13 February 1950, RV 237, AMAE

Other archives

Auerbach's rich correspondence and other personal material from the years 1946 to 1951, which are stored in Bavaria's Hauptstamtsarchiv, are now open to researchers. The Staatsarchiv in Munich holds the complete court records of the April 1952 trial.

Books, journals and newspaper articles

Brady, Kate
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/06/26/schloss-elmau-castle-g7-germany/

Brenner, Michael and Kronenberg, Kenneth
https://www.scribd.com/book/392107133/A-History-of-Jews-in-Germany-Since-1945-Politics-Culture-and-Society

Ferencz, Benjamin B.
https://benferencz.org/stories/1948-1956/implementing-compensation-agreements/

Klare, Hans Hermann
https://www.jmberlin.de/en/reading-auerbach

Ludi, Regula
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/reparations-for-nazi-victims-in-postwar-europe/germany/667D60BE8D2B06D1D50BC2B50D94D7CF biblio

Ludyga, Hannes
https://buchhandlung-buchner.buchkatalog.at/philipp-auerbach-1906-1952-9783830510963

Sabin, Stefana
https://faustkultur.de/literatur-buchkritik/opfer-und-taeter/


Other links
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Subsequent_Nuremberg_trials
https://www.jta.org/archive/philip-auerbach-commits-suicide-act-due-to-verdict-of-german-court
https://nataliereardon.weebly.com/victims.html
https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1952/08/19/le-suicide-de-l-ancien-commissaire-bavarois-aux-refugies-provoque-une-grande-emotion-en-allemagne_1999225_1819218.html
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/philipp-auerbach
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1952/08/17/110062774.html?pageNumber=1

The Auerbach Case: Part Three-The Auerbach plan

by Marc Masurovsky

At a March 1949 meeting at the State Department with Ardelia Hall, Dr. Auerbach laid out his ambitious plan to compensate Holocaust survivors with the proceeds of a sale in the United States of 6000-8000 works of art still stored at the MCCP, including works set aside for Goering and Hitler. The sale of these paintings, in his estimate, could top 200 million dollars. The sales should take place incrementally so as not to “dump” the works on the art market. The Bavarian ministries of education and finance were on board with his plan. Jewish organizations active in Bavaria were on board with the project. He indicated that Bavaria was willing to set aside 20% of the proceeds of the sales to compensate residents outside their borders. The remainder would be assigned to residents inside Bavaria. Auerbach hinted that “private groups in the United States were anxious to invest in industrial projects in Bavaria”, a mini-Marshall Plan recycling the proceeds of unclaimed Jewish assets into the Bavarian economy. Ardelia Hall told Auerbach that his project required an official position emanating from Washington as well as the US military occupation government in Germany. Heinz Berggruen and Georges Wildenstein were some of the dealers interested in negotiating such arrangements.

On 23 May 1949, Auerbach visited the MCCP in his role as Bavarian minister in charge of a commission comprised of Jewish organizations, including one from the US. The purpose of the commission was to draw up a list of unclaimed art objects at the CCP of proven Jewish origin which are not likely to be claimed by formerly plundered nations.” 800 paintings had already been identified and transferred to the Wiesbaden CCP for further disposition. On 28 October 1949 Rose Valland received word from her deputy, Mr. Doubinsky, that Auerbach had requested a list of all unidentifiable works of art handed over to the Minister President of Bavaria during the summer of 1949. “He wanted to obtain approval to sell them for the benefit of the Jews.”

In January 1951, Auerbach became a member of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. After five years of hectic leadership, Auerbach’s unconventional methods and personal ambitions finally caught up with him. In March 1951, the Bavarian minister of Justice, Joseph Muller, former liaison between the Vatican and domestic resistance during the Nazi years, launched a formal inquest against Philipp Auerbach with the tacit support of the US High Commissioner, John J McCloy. One month later, Auerbach was accused of financial misconduct and forgery in regard to reparations payments. His supporters insisted that he never personally benefited from the alleged fraud, and that he gave all the money to the victims. Some billed the campaign against Auerbach as a “monstrous defamation” campaign. It is widely believed by present-day historians that antisemitism contributed to Auerbach’s demise. After his arrest, a trial ensued starting in April 1952 which lasted five months.

On August 14, 1952, Auerbach was found guilty of a host of crimes ranging from fraud and embezzlement, using false university credentials, “irregularities in office, bribe-taking in connection with funds allotted to Jewish victims, to passive corruption. A court of five judges, three of whom were ex-Nazis, sentenced Auerbach to two and a half years in prison. Although Auerbach accepted the verdict, he denounced the trial and compared it to what happens in the “Russian area.” His supporters filed an appeal in vain. John J. McCloy, the US High commissioner for Germany, rejected it outright. At 2 :30am on August 16, 1952, Auerbach swallowed a massive amount of sleeping pills and died at the age of 45. Four years later Dr. Philipp Auerbach was posthumously cleared of all charges.

Looking backwards, historians have argued that Philipp Auerbach’s trial and suicide had a chilling effect on public German Jewish life from the 1950s on. According to historian Dan Diner, many retreated into the private sphere.

                                                                                                                   to be continued...

The Auerbach Case: Part Two-Cabal of art dealers

by Marc Masurovsky
Rose Valland, c/o Ministère de la Culture

On 10 November 1949, Rose Valland, France’s point person on repatriation and restitution issues, wrote to Stefan Munsing, then Chief of the CCCP, to inform him on the activities of a recently naturalized American citizen of Jewish extraction living in Paris. His name was Heinz Berggruen. “He flaunts his privileged access to American museums. However, the US Embassy in Paris does not like him. Our suspicions about him grew when we compared his project with the one promoted by Auerbach and Wildenstein.” According to Valland, Berggruen was organizing a sale of paintings in Bavaria in which Georges Wildenstein held an interest. The works being sold had been consigned by Berlin dealers who knew that American clients would be congregating in Munich for that purpose. One of the dealers, a Mr. Buren, apparently consigned two French paintings, one by Corneille de Lyon and the other by Nattier. Valland notified Munsing that France reserved the right to assert its jurisdiction over those paintings and any others offered on the art market. She asked him to take the necessary measures to warn American museums not to deal with these “gangsters” whose behavior is unacceptable. 

Munsing’s investigations into Berggruen produced meager results. Berggruen was mostly dealing in rare books on his frequent visits to Bavaria. He also flaunted his contacts in high French circles as well as his familiarity with French customs who “never opened my bags.”

 
Theodore Heinrich

On 13 February 1951, Theodore Heinrich wrote to one of his former MFAA colleagues, Lane Faison. He warned him about his concerns regarding notables (Jewish and non-Jewish) of the art market who might be involved in postwar shady transactions. He was once the director of the Wiesbaden Central Collecting Point in the US zone of occupation in Germany, while serving with the Monuments Fine Arts and Archives (MFAA) administration. The MFAA had established the Munich Central Collecting Point (MCCP) in central Munich in May 1945 in order to process and dispose of cultural assets stolen from Nazi victims across Europe. In application of international law, their mission was to identify the place where these assets had been stolen and return them to those countries from which they would then be restituted to the rightful owners. At least in theory… Heinrich suspected that something ominous was brewing in the postwar art market with respect to the fate of “undistributed holdings at MCCP.”

The cast of characters included:

Karl Haberstock

- Karl Haberstock, Nazi art historian and art dealer who carried out the plans of Nazi dignitaries to acquire thousands of works of art for Hitler’s Linzmuseum project and, in so doing, partook in the spoliation of Jewish collections across Western and Central Europe.

Georges Wildenstein
- Georges Wildenstein, a legendary art dealer based in Paris, London and New York who was in a business partnership with Karl Haberstock before and—some allege-during WWII. His relationship with Haberstock apparently survived the war years.
                                                                                                                                                            
- Heinz Berggruen, a German Jewish refugee who settled in San Francisco in the 1930s, returned to Europe with the US Army and established what became one of the most famous art businesses of the postwar era, starting in liberated Paris.

Heinz Berggruen

- Dr. Philip Auerbach, a Bavarian official who worked closely with Jewish organizations on the question of unclaimed Jewish cultural assets located in the US zone of Occupation of Germany where he worked.

- Grace Morley, a native of Berkeley (CA) and a UNESCO official who headed its Museums division (innocent bystander)
Grace Morley


It is unclear when and how Theodore Heinrich discovered the “sub-rosa” relationship between Karl Haberstock and Georges Wildenstein. He nevertheless accused Berggruen (Paris), of acting as a go-between between Wildenstein (New York), and Haberstock (Bavaria).

Lane Faison (director of the Munich CCP) was aware of the fact that « many dealers had come to Munich in fall and winter (1950-1) to meet with Auerbach and other officials about Goering’s assets. These dealers believed that some of the Goering treasure would be made available to the art market. Faison condemned this behavior saying that it was antithetical to the spirit of restitution. He made it known that the US would never tolerate such a strategy.

                                                                                                                                    to be continued...

The Auerbach Case: Part One-Incongruous relationships

by Marc Masurovsky


Dr. Philipp Auerbach

[Editor's note: This is the first of a four-part series on Dr. Philipp Auerbach and his efforts to resolve the problem of unclaimed Jewish cultural assets using controversial methods which ultimately caused his demise. Some recent published monographs were not available for consultation. Therefore the views expressed herein are guided by available primary and secondary sources.]

As the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) rose from the ashes of the Third Reich in 1949, there remained thousands of cultural objects including paintings, works on paper, furniture and decorative objects for which the US authorities which oversaw the Munich CCP could not establish an accurate point of origin. Since 1946, Jewish organizations had been designated as legitimate “successors” and were entitled to receive unclaimed objects from the Allied authorities and dispose of them as they saw fit in order to support the rehabilitation and relocation of Holocaust survivors stranded in refugee and displaced persons camps.

Munich was the nerve center of this activity as Jewish groups tangled with local authorities and Allied military and civilian officials to gain control of these unclaimed assets for the benefit of Jewish survivors.

Once word filtered out beyond Germany’s borders and reached the ears of American art dealers and collectors, the opportunity to gain access to these assets and sell them on the US market was too good to pass. American dealers became frequent visitors to Munich where they sought to strike some kind of arrangement by which they could gain access to these assets, convince the US authorities with the assistance of Jewish organizations and sell them on the US market, in New York mostly.

An unusual alliance took shape between Bavarian officials, representatives of Jewish successor and relief organizations and art dealers from the US, France and Germany, some with close ties to American museums. The goal of this alliance was to monetize unclaimed works of art as quickly as possible.

Dealers needed allies on the ground. Dr. Philipp Auerbach (1906-1952) proved to be the main ally of the art market, as the Bavarian official responsible for restitutions and compensation to Holocaust survivors. Auerbach was a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. He had lost most of his relatives in the Holocaust.

In 1946, Auerbach was appointed head of the Bavarian Office for reparations and restitution for persecuted people. In that capacity, Auerbach was responsible for overseeing this process on behalf of the Bavarian Finance Department. Hence, Auerbach found himself playing a central role in deciding the fate of unclaimed assets.

Auerbach, with a new sense of power, began to wield it. In one instance, he went to court to impose denazification proceedings against Johannes Müller, a philosopher and theologian with an ambiguous attitude towards Hitler, whom he had accused of glorifying Nazism. Müller owned a castle, Schloss Elmau, which had been used as a Nazi military vacation camp then as a military field hospital. In a show of petulance, Auerbach used his official position to take control of the castle without obtaining legal title to it. He then converted it into a sanatorium for Holocaust survivors and displaced people which operated from 1947 to 1951. Eventually, Auerbach lost control of the castle due to his brash and unorthodox business practices.

Auerbach’s cozy relationship with Jewish organizations involved in relief and rehabilitation in Munich laid the framework for a possible solution to the question of what to do with hundreds of millions of dollars of unclaimed cultural Jewish assets. Since Auerbach was the point man in the Bavarian administration for anything having to do with restitution matters, he wielded enormous influence on local administrative and judicial decisions affecting the status and disposition of these assets.
                                                                    
                                                                                                                                to be continued...