A bed in which Marie-Antoinette might have slept

In the early days of November 1952, a man walked into the showrooms of Seligmann & Cie., located at 23, Place Vendôme, in Paris. His name was Mr. Veil-Picard, heir to a very substantial collection of decorative objects and other cultural assets left behind by his father and which had been looted from their Paris apartment in spring of 1944 by elements of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR). As luck would have it, most of the crates containing Veil-Picard property (marked “WP”) were located in Germany and Austria and returned to France to be restituted to the Veil-Picard family.

WP 2003
Source: ERR Project via Bundesarchiv

One of the recovered items was a bed frame, the so-called “Marie-Antoinette” bed frame. It is one of those historical oddities that is more likely to turn into a conversation piece. Legend has it that this bed frame was one of many designed to accommodate the royal body of the “Austrian Queen” wherever she might end up—castle, manor, stately apartments. No matter, as long as there was a bed specifically designed to suit her particular tastes.

According to the ERR scholars of the Jeu de Paume, the bed frame, labeled WP 2003, actually hailed from the “Palais de Versailles” and was the masterful handiwork of Georges Jacob (1739-1814). However, the description on Veil-Picard’s own inventory is humbler; it simply refers to a Louis XVI bed with designs by Philippe de la Salle. Like many stolen cultural items from across Europe, the bed ended up at Lager Peter (Alt-Aussee), the main cultural plunder depot lodged in the Austrian mountains, and returned directly to France without going through Munich.

WP 2003
Source: ERR Project via NARA

WP 2003
Source: ERR Project via NARA

Veil-Picard recovered the item on April 16, 1946.

Six years later, Veil-Picard offered the ornately-decorated bed frame for sale to François-Gérard Seligmann, general manager of Seligmann & Cie. in Paris, whose own firm, co-owned in a very complex arrangement by his brothers and cousins in Paris and New York, had been completely fleeced during the German occupation of France, some say as payback for the Seligmann family's alleged mishandling of Hermann Goering on one of his pre-invasion shopping sprees in Paris.

Seligmann estimated the bed frame to be worth around four million francs (not more than 20,000 US dollars, 1952 value).

Although he did not really believe that the bed had been slept in by or been designed for Marie-Antoinette, Seligmann realized, however, that, as is so often the case, it made for a good story which could only enhance the value of an item that would otherwise be hard to sell, no matter how you looked at it.

All this to say that many claimants who recovered their stolen property sold it in the years that followed their restitution, some because they needed the income, others because the items no longer interested them, and for most, it was a stark reminder of a period that they just as soon would want to forget. For those who firmly believe that venality is the prime motive underlying a claimant's desire to sell restituted property, think again. And, to be frank, once the rightful owner recovers his or her property, its ultimate fate should not be anyone's concern except the owner's.

The fate of the Nikolsburg hoard

Nikolsburg Castle
Source: Wikipedia

Nikolsburg, now Mikulov, lies in the south Moravian region of the Czech Republic. After the Munich Pact of September 30, 1938, the town was annexed to the Niederdonau Region of Lower Austria, itself part of Austria which had been absorbed in the Anschluss and renamed “Ostmark” by the Nazis.

From the fall of 1943 to the spring of 1945, the Castle at Nikolsburg was transformed into a depot of works of art and objets d’art stolen by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) mostly in France, and to a lesser extent in Belgium, and Holland. At least 5 trains filled with loot packed into hundreds of crates made their way from Paris to Nikolsburg where they were dutifully unloaded and placed in dozens of rooms throughout the Castle. As the Western Allies advanced across France, Belgium and Holland, many of the crates were transferred to Altaussee in the Salzkammergut section of Austria where the Reich authorities had created a central underground facility consisting of a network of salt mine galleries in which to store plundered art from across Europe. Not all the crates from Nikolsburg, however, made it to Altaussee. An unknown number remained at the Castle.

In the final days of the Second World War, a fierce battle raged in and around Nikolsburg opposing retreating German forces and advancing Red Army units. The town was not spared and the Castle took massive artillery hits. As Soviet troops closed in on the town, the occupants of the Castle removed many of the remaining objects to safer locations across town, including the local museum. A major fire produced by systematic shelling gutted the Castle. To this day, it is not clear how much of it burned down.

French restitution authorities including Rose Valland concluded that the Castle had burned to a crisp and its contents turned to ash. Curiously enough, however, two years after this hasty verdict was pronounced, the Czech government returned to France several hundred items from Nikolsburg/Mikulov which bore the identifying numbers assigned to them by the ERR in occupied Paris, at the Jeu de Paume, where they had been brought and sorted.

Some of these items belonged to Veil Picard (WP), David David-Weill (DW), Louis Louis-Dreyfus (DRF, DRD), the Hirsch family (HIR), the Oppenheimers (OPPE) and many others, including objects seized during Möbel-Aktion (MA-B).

Until a full accounting is produced of the items stored at Nikolsburg, a doubt will always linger whether more objects from the Nikolsburg hoard remain in the Czech Republic or in Slovakia or even perhaps in Austria. No one knows for sure.

ERR database—The Voronoff Case

Georges Voronoff was born on 7 April 1873, in Voronej/Voronezh, Russia. A doctor by training, he and his wife, Andree, lived in Paris, at 132, rue de Tocqueville. They also had a house called 'Villa Minorange,' in Mougins, Alpes-Maritimes. Georges Voronoff was arrested, sent to Drancy, and deported to Auschwitz on train number 60 of 7 October 1943. His wife, Andree, was last notified that he was alive at Auschwitz on 15 January 1945. Presuming that he was, Georges Voronoff was most likely evacuated from Auschwitz with thousands of other prisoners on 18 January 1945 who were marched towards camps inside the Reich. There are subtle hints in the records of the International Tracing Service, at Bad Arolsen, Germany, that Georges Voronoff might have been part of a group headed towards Buchenwald. Regardless, he did not survive the ordeal.

10 objects were removed from the former Voronoff residence at 132, rue de Tocqueville, in Paris, notwithstanding the significant book collection that they held. A number of gold items were seized at the villa in Mougins.

In March 1947, most items were returned by the French postwar restitution authorities to Georges Voronoff's widow, Mme. Andree Voronoff. There were, however, some notable exceptions, which leaves one perplexed:

VOR 6: This painting by an artist associated with Hyacinthe Rigaud never left the Jeu de Paume. Its fate is unknown. It was either removed by one of the members of the ERR staff for personal gain or handed over to a Paris dealer for resale as was frequently the case in those heady days of the wartime Paris art market.

VOR 8: A painting by Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietricy. It was found by Allied troops at the Nazi art depot in the Austrian mountains known as Alt-Aussee, to which the painting had been sent, most likely from Fussen, on 27 October 1944. The painting went to the Munich Central Collecting Point (MCCP) from which it was repatriated to France on 25 June 1946. After that, it's a total mystery as to why there is no record of its restitution by the French government to Voronoff's widow.