A Chirico imbroglio

Helly Nahmad Gallery, NY

"Zwei Griechinnen", 1941

Sotheby's 1990

By Marc Masurovsky 

When it comes to confiscated Jewish cultural assets, we are certainly not responsible for errors committed by Nazi agents at the time that they inventoried their confiscations. Those German bureaucrats, many of whom hailed from German cultural institutions, were known for their efficient plundering of Jewish assets which they dutifully catalogued, inventoried, sorted, packed, unpacked, repacked, and shipped to other repositories only to be unpacked again, catalogued, inventoried, etc… When the Allies discovered many of these looted objects, they transferred them to their own repositories where they unpacked these recovered objects, catalogued, inventoried, carded and repacked them, before repatriating them to the countries from which they were stolen in the first place. The years-long cycle of plunder, recovery, repatriation. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. 

Record of seizure at Arnold's home, 1941

In the case of a painting by Giorgio de Chirico, referred to as “Two Greek Muses” (“Zwei Griechinnen”), painted either in 1926 or 1927, as part of a series of similar vertical works, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) removed “The Two Muses” from a Parisian residence and transferred the painting to the Jeu de Paume in central Paris in early March 1941. At that point, two confiscated Jewish collections entered the Jeu de Paume—Hans Arnhold’s largely Old Master collection on 7 March 1941 and the modernist collection of Michel Georges-Michel which arrived on 10 March 1941. And that’s where our little problem begins: at the registration process. 

The staff responsible for processing confiscated objects were ill-equipped to process thousands of objects diligently. A mountain of looted works had to be described, measured, assigned labels, and in some cases photographed, before being stored while deciding their ultimate fate—go to Germany or Austria, or be handed over to local dealers, or…. The ERR bureaucrats in charge of sorting confiscated works and objects upon arrival labeled the “Two Muses” as “ARN 2” and belonging to Hans Arnhold. The painting actually belonged to Michel Georges-Michel (M.G.M.). This imbroglio continued through to the end of the war and…until 2015. 

ARN 2, as recorded at Jeu de Paume, March 1941

Consistent with Nazi cultural policy, the Two Muses (now titled “Zwei Griechinnen”) were marginalized as a “degenerate” work. Like many similar works—by Dali, Ernst, Masson, Picasso, Braque, Chagall, and countless others—which the ERR did not know what to do with, it was segregated in a remote part of the Jeu de Paume, then crated in early July 1944 and loaded onto the last train commandeered by the ERR from Paris on 1 August 1944 and whose final destination was a Moravian castle at Nikolsburg (present-day Mikulov). Had the train reached Nikolsburg, the Two Muses would have likely been incinerated during a week-long confrontation between last-ditch German defenders and the Soviet Red Army and Air Force in late April 1945. 

Rose Valland's inventory of recovered works, 1944

The Nikolsburg train broke down outside of Aulnay-sous-bois east of Paris (and was later immortalized in an entertaining film with Burt Lancaster called “The Train.”) The “Two Muses” and hundreds of other modern works were spared from oblivion and returned to Paris where they should have been restituted to their respective owners. “Two Muses” was restituted to Michel Georges-Michel in 19467. However, solely based on the ERR catalogue, it would be difficult for a researcher today to know that it had actually belonged to Georges-Michel and so it was recorded as an unrestituted Arnhold painting. The work never appeared in Hans Arnhold’s restitution records which signaled a definite problem with the records. Furthermore, the Chirico painting stood out like a sore thumb in Arnhold’s conservative collection of fine Old Master paintings. A dissonant esthetic anachronism. 

The pieces finally come together 

In late fall 2015, the Helly Nahmad Gallery on Madison Avenue, NY, staged an exhibit with Phoenix Art Galleries that highlighted the Muse of Memory, Mnemosyne, partly through Giorgio de Chirico’s works on muses, juxtaposed with Greek antiquities supplied by Phoenix. A New York-based art historian spotted de Chirico’s Two Muses at the Nahmad Gallery and rang the alarm bells. It definitely looked and felt like the one documented as ARN 2. 

In early 2016, a separate on-site visit confirmed the match with the confiscated work. Upon inquiring about the provenance of the work, a gallery employee came out empty-handed. At that point, it still was not clear whether the painting had been restituted since it had been erroneously assigned to Hans Arnhold by the Nazi plunderers. Still thinking that the painting had not been restituted, a frantic month ensued with specialists in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the US, scouring archives and art historical sources only to confirm what the gallery had refused to share: the painting had belonged to Michel Georges-Michel, an interwar art critic and artist in his own right. And, most importantly, it had been restituted. Thanks to the cooperation of French cultural officials, German art historians, and restitution specialists on both sides of the Atlantic, a silly imbroglio produced by sloppy and overworked plunderers had not degenerated into a full-blown a transatlantic feud between the heirs of two Jewish victims of Nazi plunder. 

Lessons? 

1/ Thieves make mistakes. Be prepared to correct them when you realize, based on fresh evidence, that your data are wrong. It’s not you, it’s them. But it’s your duty to fix these mistakes and to inform your public of what you did in an explanatory note, to the extent that you can. 

2/ international collegiality and collaboration prevent unnecessary bad blood and complex legal entanglements while promoting higher ethical standards and due diligence in the global art market and among scholars and museum personnel. The search for historical truth is paramount in establishing the bona fides of cultural objects and ascertaining their legal status. 

Here is a partial provenance history of “Two Muses” by Giorgio de Chirico, signed and dated 1926, 130 x 70,5 cm. Oil on canvas. 

Provenance

Galerie Léonce Rosenberg, acquired from the artist; 

Michel Georges-Michel Collection, acquired from Galerie Léonce Rosenberg, Paris.

Confiscated by ERR agents, Paris, in early March 1941; 

Transfer to Jeu de Paume, 10 March 1941 where it is recorded as ARN 2. 

Set aside by ERR staff to be sold or exchanged in 1942. 

Packed in crate “Modernes 34” on 6 July 1944 at Jeu de Paume (BARCH B323/303/27, Koblenz, Germany) 

Transferred to Nikolsburg as ARN 2, 1 August 1944. 

Recovered by French forces at Aulnay-sous-Bois in late August 1944 and catalogued by Rose Valland as ‘Arnold. Chirico. Deux statues antiques, 133 x70 cm.” 

Restituted as “Les deux muses” to Michel Georges-Michel in 1947. 

Present whereabouts unknown. 

Sales 

Rameau auction, Versailles, 15 March 1970 

Sotheby’s Monaco, 25 June 1984, Lot 3409, sold as “Les muses du foyer”. 

New York, Impressionist and Modern Paintings and Sculpture, Part I, Sotheby’s, 17 May 1990, Lot 60, not sold. 

Exhibitions 

London, Arthur Tooth & Sons. First exhibition in England of works by Giorgio di Chirico as “Les Muses du foyer” (1926), no. 4, 1928 

Maybe exhibit at Galerie Flechtheim, Düsseldorf/Berlin,1930, as Zwei Frauen 

Helly Nahmad Gallery, 970 Madison Avenue, NY, late 2015-January 2016.

Select sources:

Database of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paume, www.errproject.org

Bundesarchiv, Koblenz

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

A recapitulation of Jeu de Paume articles (2011-2020)

by Marc Masurovsky

The “plundered art” blog has given extensive coverage to different aspects of the so-called ERR database, or “Jeu de Paume” database, since its release to the public in October 2010. The database is still available for anyone to consult and conduct searches on looted objects, their owners and their displacement during and after WWII. The main reason for this is selfish: I designed this database and managed it for close to 15 years. It is the ideal case study with which to understand the inner workings of what we refer to as “cultural plunder.” Not the kind that is random and unorganized, but the kind that is premeditated, scientifically executed, methodically prepared and carried out in the context of a genocidal undertaking.

The second half of October 2024 will be devoted to a series of articles that drill deep inside the inner workings of the Jeu de Paume from its reconversion in the fall of 1940 as a processing center for confiscated Jewish cultural property to its closure in early August 1944, two weeks before the Paris insurrection led by French resistance elements on August 19, 1944. Hopefully, it will give me an opportunity to ask (or re-ask) some uncomfortable questions which require at some point answers from scholars and researchers.

At the end of this exercise, I hope that you, the reader, will realize that the people responsible for the management of the Jeu de Paume and the processing of tens of thousands of looted objects through its galleries and storage areas were rather ordinary, many of them well-educated, and if you met them today, you would not suspect in the least that they participated in a massive four-year long criminal enterprise. They are just like you and me, they do their job and go home. They may even enjoy what they do. Like well-trained museum employees, art historians and experts, cataloguers, craters, appraisers, they apply themselves to their tasks with the professionalism that is expected of them, despite the fact that their superiors were ideological architects of the plunder whose fruits they handled on a daily basis.

Here are the highlights of the 2011-2020 "plundered art" coverage of the Jeu de Paume's activities and operations between 1940-1944:

-the building of the ERR database, its inner workings and the process of building the ERR database

-case studies of collections like those of Georges Bernheim, Diane Esmond (mistakenly tagged by the ERR as her father’s, Edouard Esmond) and a follow-up look at the collection’s fate, Raoul Meyer, Alexandra Pregel also known as Avxente or Auxente, Robert Schuhmann, Jacques Seligmann and Co., Hugo Simon, Frederic Unger, Georges Voronoff,

-certain classifications of objects dictated by the ERR’s experts like MA-B (or Möbel-Aktion Bilder), UNB (Unbekannt)

-particular artists and their creations whose stories were compelling or raised larger questions about Nazi cultural policy:

Jean-Baptiste Corot’s “Mrs. Stumpf”, a dessus-de-porte by Marie Laurencin, a bronze casting by Aristide Maillol, Gabriel Metsu, Caspar Netscher’s “Lady with a Parrot”, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro’s “View of the Pont-Neuf from the Seine” , a self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh, Edouard Vuillard, Philip Wouwermans, “Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berri » 

the Nazi fascination with Netsuke objects, Valencia ceramics, MA-B 702, Schloss 91, a painting by Bartholomeus van der Helst and the various attempts to recover it. and a 13th dynasty Egyptian antiquity.

-certain depots managed by the ERR in various parts of occupied Europe to store and dispose of looted cultural objects like the Nikolsburg depot in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and the fate of its contents in 1945.

-the treatment of ideological issues through art like the “Jewish question”, race, “Degenerate Art” and its hypothetical destruction.

Future installments on the Jeu de Paume will focus on the photographing of confiscated works and objects, the implementation of Nazi cultural policy on the treatment of confiscated works and objects, the esthetic preferences of Jewish collectors and dealers whose collections were processed through the Jeu de Paume, and a reconstruction of the actual chronology of the confiscations of Jewish collections in the Paris region.

Maison Bulgari and the Nazis

Maison Bulgari, Rome

by Marc Masurovsky

Why would a high-end luxury goods business like Bulgari become a target of Allied investigations during WWII? That honor resulted from a convergence of seemingly isolated factors when, brought together, created a pattern of behavior extending internationally and involving businessmen, art agents, Nazi officials, and a possible Jewish victim of plunder. The end result was a suspicion that Bulgari would allow itself to be used as a conduit and enabler of Nazi attempts to secrete assets overseas in places where they could technically be invested in ventures meant to subvert the post-1945 world.

In 1941, US officials questioned Achille Colombo after his arrival in New York from Italy via Buenos Aires, Argentina. The circuitous journey lasted seven months from March to October 1940. Colombo had with him two platinum, diamond and ruby rings worth 47,000 dollars (1945 value). He told US officials that he had acquired them from Bulgari in Italy, several years prior. They were to be delivered to Henri Untermans, Bulgari’s representative in New York.

Henri Untermans

 

Colombo had a bank account at Banco de Provincia in Buenos Aires. They suspected Colombo of acting as a channel to sell assets “removed from Italy.” While Colombo was on his long and circuitous trek to New York, the Bulgari House opened its Lugano store from which it would transact in high-end and high-value objects. A financial investigation into Colombo’s business dealings revealed a three-way transaction involving the rings between Constantine G. Bulgari in Lugano, Banco de Provincia, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Chase National Bank in New York City. The transaction was worth 47,000 dollars, the exact value of the rings in Colombo’s possession.

Eberhard von Mackensen

Constantino-Giorgio Bulgari and his partner, Giorgio-Leonido Bulgari, both Greek-born, owned The House of Sotirio Bulgari. Based in Rome, the Bulgaris were able to avoid restrictive measures imposed by Fascist authorities on Greeks residing in Fascist Italy. They hobnobbed with Eberhardt von Mackensen, the German Ambassador in Rome, with whom they were often in daily contact. One of the Bulgaris even met in Zurich with the Baron Kurt von Behr, senior official of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) in German-occupied Paris. He acted as Hermann Goering’s emissary to explore possible ways of laundering plundered diamonds valued at 7 million Swiss francs, once the property of Louis Arscher, a Parisian jeweler.

To spice things up a bit, Giacomo Laurenti, Bulgari’s lawyer in Lugano and honorary Greek consul, was allegedly implicated in trafficking precious stones from across Europe. Some jewels and stones that he had shipped to the Americas were seized in Bermuda by British blockade officials. When US diplomats stationed in Switzerland questioned Laurenti about his work for Bulgari, he stated that he acted as a “mail drop” for them so that they could communicate with “persons outside Axis territory.” Laurenti was not alone: Benno Geiger, a Venetian art dealer of German ancestry, did Goering’s bidding as a go-between to acquire old silver and other luxury objects from Bulgari to the tune of nine million lira (1945 value).

Primary Sources:

Safehaven Report, Maison Sotirio Bulgari, Rome, Italy, Despatch No. 11823 from US Embassy in Berne, 1 June 1945, 850.3 series, RG 153 M 1933 Reel 2 NARA.

Looted Art in Occupied Territories, Neutral Countries and Latin America, Foreign Economic Admnistration revised report, August 1945, pp. 24-5., RG 239 M 1944 Reel 9, NARA.

Photo credits:

Bulgari, Rome

www.bulgari.com

Henri Untermans

c/o Sousa Mendes Foundation

http://sousamendesfoundation.org/recipients/U

Eberhard von Mackensen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eberhard_von_Mackensen#/media/File:VVon_Mackensen.jpg

Dangling participles

By Marc Masurovsky

There are so many mysteries and unresolved issues rooted in the twelve-year reign of the National Socialists (30 January 1933-9 May 1945) that we cannot keep up with them. The research is tedious and it involves searching for evidence in multiple archives on both sides of the Atlantic. Costs, time, resources often bring exciting research projects to a grinding halt. Maybe some enterprising and courageous historians and sleuths will resolve some of these open cases, sooner than later, so that we can close them for good for the sake of posterity and historical truth. 

Here are some of these “dangling participles” with a special focus on the Greater German Reich and the territories it occupied or annexed:

Generally speaking:

-where are the contents of the studios and residences of artists which were systematically ransacked and plundered across continental Europe? Who were they? Where did they live and work? It’s too easy to say that everything was destroyed or that they were unimportant. That’s the lame way of discouraging efforts to uncover their fate.

1940-1941

France

-where are the original inventories of objects looted in Paris from Jewish owners and then transferred to the Louvre and the Jeu de Paume? The earliest extant inventories begin in mid-1941. Their discovery will fill major gaps in our understanding of what was looted, where, when, by whom, and from whom in German-occupied France. One credible lead is that these inventories may be sitting in a London archive since British forces liberated Tanzenberg, the ERR depot that housed many libraries, archival materials, and administrative files produced by ERR officials in occupied countries. Inventories drawn up by the ERR in France were found at Tanzenberg.

1942

France

Jose Hessel, by Vuillard

-what happened to Jos Hessel’s collection? Although he and his wife died months apart between 1941 and 1942, there are no archival traces of the contents of the Hessel collection.

1943

France

Jeu de Paume, Paris

-how many “degenerate” works of art survived the purge at the Jeu de Paume in summer of 1943? We counted 676. None survived according to Rose Valland, although about 20 have been restituted since the end of WWII. Where are the others?

1944

France

Chateau de Rastignac, Dordogne, France

-were any works “rescued” from the Castle of Rastignac, country home of the Bernheim-Jeune family near Bordeaux before SS troops set the castle ablaze on 30 March 1944?

April-May 1945

Nikolsburg/Mikulov

Present-day castle of Nikolsburg/Mikulov

-how many looted objects were brought to the castle of Nikolsburg (now Mikulov) in north-central Czechoslovakia) between fall of 1943 and early 1945? How many survived the blaze of April 1945 triggered by severe fighting between Soviet and German troops? Of these, how many remained in postwar Czechoslovakia? How many went to the Soviet Union?




Munich

Inside the Führerbau, Munich

-where are the 1000+ looted paintings stored at the Führerbau in Munich which were stolen by unknown parties in the closing hours of April 1945 while American troops were liberating the city?

Berlin

Flakturm, Berlin

-did any items survive the fires at the Flakturm (Berlin zoo) in the early hours of May 1945? Did the Soviets take them?


Neuhaus am Schliersee (Southern Bavaria)

Hans Frank residence, Schoberhof, Neuhaus

-what exactly happened at the Hans Frank compound in early May 1945 at Neustadt south of Munich? We know that unknown parties spirited away the “Portrait of a Young Man” by Raphael and, since then, it was never to be seen again.

Austria

--what happened to the Judaica stored inside the so-called “Hungarian Gold Train” after US forces intercepted it in May 1945? The only credible lead is that the Judaica may have been transferred “erroneously” to Vienna.

Yugoslavia

Ante Topic Mimara

-is there a detailed inventory of the works and objects purloined by Ante Topic Mimara? where did these end up?

Soviet Union

-where are the inventories for the so-called “Trophy Art” removed by Soviet troops from the territories that they freed of Nazi/Fascist forces? Will the Russians ever share them? Will we ever see these objects? Or are they rotting away in dank cellars, mine shafts, monasteries, barracks and other improvised storage areas scattered across the former Soviet Union?

France

-what happened to the more than 4000 works of art abandoned by the Nazis at the Jeu de Paume shortly before Paris was liberated? Did the French authorities inventory them? How many of these works were produced by Jewish artists?

Review: Pauline Baer de Pérignon: The Vanished Collection

by Ori Z. Soltes 

Every time one might be inclined to suppose that the last page has been turned on the vast narrative of the Holocaust—and certainly of that chapter that deals with the Nazi plunder of cultural property—another book, and not merely another page, appears that adds another nuance or issue. 

One of the truisms of the multi-aspected genocide engineered by the Nazis is its complexity and its internal paradoxes, which magnified the characteristic of paradox that is endemic to humanity. The Nazis offered inherent contradictions between the mud-and-excrement chaos of the pre-death world that they prepared for their victims and both the carefully ordered manner in which that world operated and the spit-polish cleanliness that obsessed Hitler and his inner circle who shaped and governed it. 

One paradox resonates from the manner in which the population designated for extermination was defined—from whom property and particularly cultural artifacts were confiscated directly (for they had ceased to possess the right to own anything, according to the laws articulated in and beyond Nuremberg in 1935) or indirectly (by forced sales of art and other possessions at a fraction of their value). The same Alfred Rosenberg who would be put in charge of defining racial categories and their features (eyes, hair, nose, lips, intellect, emotion, and the like) in order to decided who would suffer which particular fate, when, and why, was subsequently charged with organizing an effective and far-reaching system of art plunder. Among the racial determinants for Jews was the clear conclusion that having a single Jewish grandparent was sufficient for one’s polluted bloodline to yield a one-way ticket to Auschwitz. 

Yet apparently—paradoxically—the Fuehrer might make exceptions if it served his needs: so the most successful art plunderer on Hitler’s behalf, Hildebrandt Gurlitt, in spite of his paternal grandmother’s having been Jewish, flourished. Hitler also gave a survival pass to his Jewish barber (who never took the opportunities he must have had to slit his master’s throat). And on the other hand, while the most concerted Nazi efforts directed toward cultural appropriation were aimed at Jews and Slavic states, survivors or their offspring and descendants (some of whom become claimants of cultural property) are sometimes not Jewish.

Pauline Baer de Perignon grew up in France as a Catholic. The engrossing book authored by this journalist, film-script writer and writing instructor began by happenstance: a passing comment from a cousin engaged in the art world, whom she hadn’t seen in years, followed by a piece of paper on which he had written down the names of a handful of works by great masters that had once belonged to her great-grandfather, and which—her cousin rather casually noted—had probably been stolen from him.

The narrative that unfolds interweaves two main issues. One is the story itself that begins to take shape: yet another case of a French collector—in this case, Jules Strauss was particularly well-known for his generous contributions to the Louvre of exquisite and suitable frames for a good number of its masterpieces—dispossessed of his cultural property; and how easily and conveniently that datum and its accompanying details were obliterated from the communal memory of the French art and culture world in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust.

The other is the process through which, inch by inch, the author scaled the double territory of trying to understand what had happened to her great-grandfather’s collections—how to begin and deepen and broaden her research—and came to a deeper understanding of her own family identity and heritage.

Jules Strauss, we learn, while he directed pointed if quantitatively modest efforts to building his own art collection, devoted unique amounts of energy to providing the Louvre with frames more consistent with the paintings hung within them than had previously been the case: he innovated both the very idea of taking the framing of a painting seriously and directing serious efforts to providing the right one for a given work, subtly enhancing its appearance. Yet (to repeat) Strauss also possessed some interesting and valuable works of art—such as a small drawing by Tiepolo that ended up in the collections of the Louvre and an intriguing painting by Largillière, a Portrait of a Lady as Pomona, which ended up in the Dresden Gemaeldegalerie Alte Meister (Old Masters Picture Gallery) in former East Germany.

These works emerge in Baer de Pérignon’s narrative as a focus within what also evolves: a realization that they had not made the journey from Jules Strauss’s walls to the storage facilities of these museums along a legitimate path, but as part of the often obscure and unstraightforward process of cultural-artifact depradations in which the Nazis were so particularly skilled. Among the ironic—or galling—aspects of the Jules Strauss story was that his home, 60 Avenue Foch, also confiscated by the regime, was requisitioned by senior members of the SS specialized in black market operations and the seizure of Jewish property.

Pauline Baer de Pérignon’s own journey includes a number of interesting turns and twists as she also evolves, to become a knowledgeable and comfortable denizen of the archives in which she would eventually uncover the documentary proof that these works did not leave her great-grandfather’s possession simply because—as the director of the Dresden museum would cynically ask her during the first round of her attempts to regain that piece of her family patrimony—“perhaps Herr Strauss was happy to have sold his painting for a decent price?”

Differently—but equally important in stature and intangibility to her quest to reclaim these tangible connections to Jules and her family past—is her arrival to a point of wondering how, exactly, and why, precisely, her father and two of his first cousins converted, in 1940, to Catholicism. A whole other aspect of the world of Nazi confiscations emerged for her, regarding layered and interwoven aspects of her family—and her own—religious identity.

This last extended detail is ultimately shaped around the peculiar and willful amnesia of which, she comes to recognize, her family has been suffering during the two generations since the Holocaust had come, uprooted and destroyed so much, and gone, like a devastating typhoon. That amnesia set in, more specifically, after Jules’ widow, Pauline de Baer Pérignon’s great-grandmother, had filed several claims with her government—the French government—regarding the works of art that that government and its museum bureaucracy refused to acknowledge as having come into their possession along the illegitimate path of Nazi spoliation.

The amnesia that set in for the family, which involves its own heritage, both cultural and spiritual, and the amnesia of the French government and museum world, are part of the larger amnesia from which those who struggle in the trenches of art restitution are trying to help the Western world recover, as the decades since the Holocaust spread out and we continue, as a species, to repeat the sorts of actions that bought such grief to so many in such a range of different ways over 75 years ago. That is why this book—aside from its flowing style, compelling storyline and intriguing twists and turns—adds such an important chapter to the Holocaust narrative and its culture-centered subset. Its ultimate theme is really about restituting memory—that most significant of characteristics that makes humans human. 

What happened to the collection of Edouard Esmond?

by Marc Masurovsky

[This is the fourth in a series of articles on the fate of Jewish-owned collections confiscated by the ERR in France and their treatment at the Jeu de Paume/Louvre complex up to July 1943.]

Edouard Esmond was married to Valentine Deutsch de laMeurthe, closely linked to the Rothschild family. A British-born dandy and socialite living in Paris, Esmond was better known as a breeder of thoroughbred horses, and a golf enthusiast who founded the EsmondCup which he named after himself and his three daughters, also golf pros in their own right. As a matter of fact, Diane Esmond, one of his three daughters, won the Girls’ Golf Championship in 1926 at the age of 16!

The Esmonds lived at 54, avenue d’Iéna, in Paris, one of the most exclusive avenues on the right bank of Paris which feeds into the Place de l’Etoile where stands the “Arc de Triomphe.” Their immediate neighbor (52, avenue d’Iéna) was a colorful man by the name of Calouste Gulbenkian, Armenian-born oil tycoon and consummate art collector, who made his bed with the Germans in the early years of the German occupation of France before fleeing south due to his anglophile tendencies; he ended up in Portugal in late 1942 with the thousands of objects he collected that he was able to spirit out of German-occupied France.

Diane Esmond was born in 1910. Her passion, aside from golf,was art. While in Paris, she trained as a painter with Edouard MacAvoy and at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. MacAvoy’s father was a banker and his mother descended from Huguenot nobility. Esmond developed a small following, worked closely with creative artists in the performing arts, and designed stage sets among other things. Pending further research, there are no indications that Esmond’s works were exhibited in galleries in Paris, either in group or solo shows.

Diane Esmond, n.d.
dianeesmond.com

In 1940, the Esmonds fled Paris like so many others. Edouard Esmond died in 1945 and Diane returned to France in 1952. She enjoyed a resurgence as an artist and exhibited in a number of well-known venues in Paris and New York through the 50s and 60s. She died in France in 1981.

The Esmonds had the misfortune of living in a building—54, avenue d’Iéna—which the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) requisitioned to house its French headquartes. All residents of the building-mostly Jewish-had their apartments seized and emptied.

Dr. Wunder, a senior official of the ERR, the main Nazi plundering agency, stationed in Paris through 1943, led a raid on the Esmond residence and removed a large part of the Esmond art collection on June 5, 1941. At some point after their arrival, 13 of the 43 works were registered on ERR cards, 1 of which ended up on the “condemned”/vernichtet list. There is no explanation for why the rest of the Esmond items were not carded. Fifteen months later, on September 7, 1942, Dr. Tomforde, one of the ERR’s art specialists at the Jeu de Paume/Louvre complex, inventoried 43 objects from the Esmond collection. Based on the Esmond family’s postwar restitution claim, we know that 12 paintings by 18th and 19th century artists were also removed from the family apartment. They included works by Oudry and Sir Alfred Munnings. The question is: who took them and where did they go? They definitely did not get processed at the Jeu de Paume. 

A page from the ESM inventory,
 Bundesarchiv, B323/270, Koblenz

All told, 55 works and objects of art were removed from the Esmond residence during the war. 47 were paintings (43 by Diane Esmond). 30 werecondemned—declared “vernichtet”—all of them works by Diane Esmond. 14 of the 43 paintings were photographed after their arrival at the Jeu de Paume/Louvre complex, 7 of which ended up being stamped “vernichtet.” This gives us an opportunity to compare the works which were spared and those which were condemned in an attempt to understand the Nazi cultural standards used to select or condemn works of art confiscated from Jewish owners. The photographs were most likely taken shortly after their arrival at the Jeu de Paume/Louvre complex.

Let’s now try to divine the esthetic choices made by Dr. Tomforde.

The following works by Diane Esmond for which we have photographs were marked “vernichtet”. All of the photographs show the works on an easel, no effort being made to conceal the presence of the easel’s stand from the visual field:


ESM 5: Profile of a woman wearing a hat and a flower 

ESM 6: A still life with grapes. The photo of this painting features the easel on which it was placed.

ESM 19: A painter and his palette at work on a canvas.

ESM 20: Portrait of a “negro child”.

ESM 23: A woman wearing a white blouse. Painting on an easel..

ESM 26: A green landscape—perhaps leaning towards abstraction? The painting is on an easel.

ESM 27: A cabaret scene. Painting on easel



The following seven paintings by Esmond were spared and for which we have photographs. These photos have been cropped to conceal the presence of the easel:

ESM 18: Full-length portrait of a naked woman seen from behind.

ESM 24: A woman playing cards.

ESM 25: A woman with a monkey—however we can’t see the monkey; she is seated inside a well-appointed but cluttered living room staring into space.

ESM 28: A clown, seated on the ground, looking forlorn.


ESM 29: Men at a bar

ESM 30: A scene at the ballet

ESM 31: A clothed man viewed from behind.

What were the underlying Nazi cultural and esthetic standards that drove this apparently capricious selection? What explains the purge of Diane Esmond’s works?

Are we to assume that the selection [Selektion] which took place at the Jeu de Paume was an exercise in curatorial abuse? The only hint of Nazi ideology at work—in the form of racist tropes-could refer to ESM 5, ESM 20 and ESM 23, which portray individuals with “non-European” facial characteristics. In Nazi terms, they were not “Aryan.” However, it’s impossible to understand why a still life with grapes, a painting at work in his studio and a landscape could be assigned the “vernichtet” label while a scene of a woman playing cards, men at a bar, and a clown could be spared from destruction.

Your guess is as good as mine, but I would venture that the selection had little or nothing to do with Nazi cultural dogma, with the possible exception of the three works mentioned above.

Sources: the photographs come from Bundesarchiv, B323/853, in Koblenz, Germany.

The Destruction of works of art in wartime Paris-Part Two

by Marc Masurovsky

[Continuation of “The Destruction of works of art in wartime Paris-Part One”]

Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) staff members at the Jeu de Paume/Louvre complex inventoried from July 1942 to March 1943 625 paintings, 48 works on paper, 2 sculptures and one object of unknown media which they deemed objectionable, in that they did not comply with the new standards of Nazi cultural policy, esthetically and thematically, defined by the unholy ideological trinity of the Third Reich—Adolf Hitler, Alfred Rosenberg and Joseph Goebbels. 

Inventories of these “objectionable” works were drawn up in four different periods: 

July 17-30, 1942, 

September 7-14, 1942, 

November 9-17, 1942, 

February-March 12, 1943. 

After the inventories were drawn up, the 676 “condemned” objects were re-crated and transferred to the Louvre storage area (Séquestre du Louvre) to await their fate. On July 21, 1943, they were allegedly lacerated and/or burned to a crisp in a day-long bonfire.

Two ERR staff members were in charge of this reclassification process: Ms. Helga Eggemann and Dr. Tomforde. It is not clear whether they also were charged with attributing the “vernichtet” [to be destroyed] label to these works or if that decision was made at a higher echelon of the ERR administration. Still, the two never saw eye to eye and were bitter rivals. The former was closely aligned with Bruno Lohse, deputy commander of the ERR at the Jeu de Paume/Louvre complex, while Dr. Tomforde had thrown her lot with her married lover, Dr. von Ingram, chief of operations at the Jeu de Paume who eventually left his first wife to marry Ms. Tomforde, which earned him a quick transfer to the Bavarian ERR depot of Füssen.

As a general reminder, 21 (8.17%) out of 257 Jewish collections officially “processed” by the ERR at the Jeu de Paume/Louvre complex contained one or more objects deemed objectionable by ERR staff. Those collections most severely affected by Nazi cultural prohibitions were those of four Jewish artists: 

Fedor Loewenstein (100%), 

Alexandra Pregel (83%), 

Michel Georges-Michel (76.5%), 

Diana Esmond-ESM (55%).

This particular phase of execution of Nazi cultural standards at the Jeu de Paume/Louvre complex affected as a whole the works of 74 artists distributed among four distinct groups (Gruppe(n)). Since there are no policy documents produced by the ERR staff to explain this desire to reclassify the works of “objectionable” artists, I will do my best to present it to you.

Gruppe I

Gruppe I was exclusively concerned with artists who worked in France throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries; none of their works were targeted for destruction. All told, 307 works produced by 87 artists ranging from Delacroix to Ziem and Cross, were consigned to Gruppe I. One third were confiscated during the massive sweeps through Jewish residences under the guise of M-Aktion starting in early 1942, half of which were eventually relegated to the Parisian art market. 60% of the Gruppe I works were shipped to the ERR depot of Nikolsburg in present-day Mikulov, Czech Republic. Only 30 returned to France after 1945.

Gruppe II
Gruppe II was sub-divided into four sub-groups: IIa, IIb, IIc, IId.

Gruppe IIa
470 objects were classified as “Gruppe IIa”. 20 were condemned which came out of the following collections: ESM [Esmond], MA-B, KAP (Kapferer), Loewell (Pierre Loewell), KA (Alphonse Kann), Unb (Unbekannt-Unknown owners) Ros Bern (Rosenberg-Bernstein-Bordeaux), R (Rothschild family). Artists in Gruppe IIa whose works were condemned included: R Dufy, De la Fresnaye, Foujita, Laprade, Larimov/Larionov, Marie Laurencin, Pablo Picasso, Suzanne Valadon, van Dongen.

Gruppe IIb
510 objects were classified as “Gruppe IIb.” 306 (60%) were condemned which came out of the following collections: MGM (Michel Georges-Michel), PE (Hugo Perls), Reichenbach (Bernard and François Reichenbach), ESM (Esmond), Rosenberg Paris (Paul Rosenberg-Paris), Loewell (Pierre Loewell), Spiro (Eugen Spiro), DW (David David-Weill). Artists in Gruppe IIb whose works were condemned included: Charbonnier, Sandi da Salo, Michel Georges-Michel, Girieud, Hummel, Levy, Loewell, Jacqueline Marval, Massis?, HM [maybe Henri Matisse], Mizerour/Mzerow, Hélène Perdriat, Francis Picabia, Retat.

Gruppe Iic
70 objects were classified as “Gruppe IIc.” Three were condemned which came out of the following collections: MA-B, Watson (Peter Watson), KAP (Kapferer). Artists in Gruppe IIc whose works were condemned included: André Masson, Philippe Pereire, Pablo Picasso.

Gruppe IId
70 objects were classified as “Gruppe IId.” 48 were condemned which came out of the following collections: KA (Alphonse Kann), Rosenberg Paris (Paul Rosenberg-Paris), R (Rothschild family), HS (Hugo Simon), Unb (Unbekannt-Unknown owners), Watson (Peter Watson). Artists in Gruppe IId was heavily slanted towards abstractionists and surrealists; it included: Hans Arp, Beaudin, Borès, Charlot, Dali, Derain, Emil?, Max Ernst, Brion Gysin, Paul Klee, Fernand Léger, André Masson, Juan Miro, Papazov, Pablo Picasso, E. Ronny, Yves Tanguy.

Gruppe III
36 objects were classified as “Gruppe III.” 18 were condemned which came out of the following collections: KA (Alphonse Kann), MA-B, HS (Hugo Simon), R (Rothschild family), Watson (Peter Watson). Artists in Gruppe III whose works were condemned belonged almost exclusively to a German expressionist club and included: Ernst Barlach, Willy Jaeckel, Erich Heckel, Paul Klee, Larimov/Larionov, Ludwig Meidner, Max Pechstein, Oscar Peters, Christian Rohlfs

Gruppe IV
29 objects were classified as “Gruppe IV.” All 29 were condemned which came out of the following collections: Loewell (Pierre Loewell), Lowenstein (Fedor Lowenstein), KA (Alphonse Kann), R (Rothschild family), Unb (Unbekannt-Unknown owners). Artists in Gruppe IV whose works were condemned consisted of Surrealists, Cubists, Symbolists and Jewish artists: Salvador Dali, J.M.Fenier, Gassier, Lehmann, Loewell, Fedor Lowenstein, Pruna, Prunière, Odilon Redon, Sem.

Several artists like Salvador Dali, André Masson, Pablo Picasso and others ended up in several groups, which might indicate that the ERR staff responsible for this classification system relied more on the content and esthetic mechanics of the works themselves than on the identity and label of the artist whose works were impugned. Put another way, Jewish identity was not enough to have your work “condemned.” Other factors were considered when deciding what to “destroy” and what to spare.

In Part three, I will address specific collections and try to grasp the logic behind the “purge.”

Sources: Bundesarchiv, B323 series at Koblenz; ERR Jeu de Paume database

The destruction of works of art in wartime Paris--Part One

by Marc Masurovsky

This is the first in a series of articles detailing the selective impact of Nazi cultural policy at the Jeu de Paume museum between September 1940 and July 1944. During that time period, the Jeu de Paume served as a central clearinghouse for artistic, cultural and religious objects confiscated from Jewish collectors in Paris and other parts of France.

One nagging question which has not received an adequate answer is the extent to which Nazi cultural policies, strictly enforced inside the Greater German Reich, were equally applied in the Netherlands, Belgium and France.

If Adolf Hitler’s views about art were to be followed to the letter, any artistic object produced after the 1850s (emergence of Impressionism) would be subjected to intense scrutiny by Nazi agents operating in occupied lands, leading inevitably to seizure and confiscation (which happened in any event), censorship (recurrent but not systematic), and/or destruction.

Let’s focus on German-occupied France. There, the machinery of cultural plunder operated as follows.

Jewish collections of objects of cultural, religious and artistic value and significance became the target of confiscations orchestrated by a number of Nazi agencies, most notably the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), the Kunstchutz (cultural arm of the German military administration) and assorted security agencies and police forces (Devisenschutzkommando, Gestapo, SD, etc).

Tens of thousands of objects seized in and around Paris, sometimes from as far as cities and towns in the French Southwest, were stored in a number of facilities and depots scattered about the French capital but mostly centered in its wealthier Western neighborhoods, the most important of which was the cluster comprised of the Jeu de Paume museum and three rooms provided by the Louvre Museum as a storage annex to the Jeu de Paume.

At least 20000 confiscated objects were transferred to the Jeu de Paume/Louvre complex beween 1940-1944. There, roughly 25 per cent of them were photographed, eh vast majority were inventoried, carded and assigned an ID number. ERR staff members decided which objects to transfer to the Reich, which ones should remain in occupied France and which ones should be sold and/or exchanged for “acceptable” works, namely Old Masters.

In order for the staff members of the ERR at the Louvre and the Jeu de Paume to implement Nazi cultural policies, they had to set aside those objects which did not conform to official esthetic and ideological dicta which distinguished between “acceptable” and “unacceptable” or “degenerate” art. Hitler even insisted that no French Impressionist works could enter the German Reich, irrespective of quality and value.

What happened to the objects that were set aside? Two scenarios were contemplated: either offer them for sale to local art dealers and perhaps even dealers in neighboring countries (Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain), or destroy them.

In July 1942, almost two years after the Germans invaded France, works of art not meeting Hitler’s strict esthetic and ideological considerations were inventoried separately, some of them having wallowed at the Jeu de Paume/Louvre complex since late 1940. They were subjected to a separate inventory, reassigned to new categories (Gruppe I, Gruppe II, Gruppe III, Gruppe IV), and crated separately while their fate was being decided. That process lasted until March 1943. At some point during or after this process, a decision was made to get rid of these objects after having gone through the tedium of inventorying and crating.

At least 625 paintings, 48 works on paper, two sculptures (one by Ernst Barlach and the other by Hans Arp) and one of uncertain medium (Friedrich Unger) were set aside and inventoried. Rose Valland, a French curator ordered by Louvre officials to remain at the Jeu de Paume to be the eyes and ears of the French museum administration inside the very museum where she had spent her days prior to June 1940, testified after the war that ERR staff members destroyed these objects by repeated laceration and cremated them with the help of German soldiers in a day-long bonfire on July 21, 1943. Although she witnessed some of the lacerations, she did not witness the bonfire.

The jury is still out about the bonfire having consumed hundreds of “unacceptable” works of art.

After having carefully examined the archival documentation that retraces in minute details the processing of these objects at the Jeu de Paume, we know the following:

-None of the works classified as Impressionist, Pointillist, or Fauvist, were condemned and “destroyed”.

-No work explicitly tagged as “Jude” [Jewish] by artists like Camille Pissarro and Marc Chagall was condemned and “destroyed”.

In other words, Nazi cultural policy somewhat fell apart at this moment and shifted gears, judging “unacceptable” works by their esthetic value and not by the origins of their creators.

Of the 257 collections which were carded and/or inventoried at the Jeu de Paume, 21 collections contained one or more objects which were deliberately set aside for “destruction” (vernichtet).

ERR ID                          Description of collection                                 Numbers “destroyed”

Aux                                   Auxente/Avxente/Alexandra Pregel                                  181
DW                                   David David-Weill                                                                 1
ESM                                  Edouard Esmond                                                                 30
HS                                     Hugo Simon                                                                         12
KA                                    Alphonse Kann                                                                     25
KAP                                  Mrs. Kapferer                                                                         6
L.H                                    Levi-Hermannos                                                                    1
Loewell                             Pierre Loewell                                                                        8
Loewenstein                      Fedor Loewenstein                                                               20
MA-B                                Möbel-Aktion Bilder                                                            13
MGM                                 Michel Georges-Michel                                                     298
PE                                      Hugo Perls                                                                              5
Reichenbach                      François Reichenbach                                                            1
Rosenberg Bernstein         Paul Rosenberg [Bordeaux area]                                            1
Rosenberg Paris                 Paul Rosenberg [Floirac/Paris]                                            14
R                                Members of the French branch of the Rothschild family               8
Spira                                   Mr. Spira                                                                                 1
Spiro                                   Eugen Spiro                                                                          18
U                                         Friedrich Unger                                                                      4
UNB                                   Unbekannt                                                                             18
Watson                               Peter Watson                                                                            9

In Part two, we wil begin the discussion of each collection and the artists who did not make the cut, so to speak.

Sources: 

ERR Jeu de Paume database

Records from the National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD, RG 260

Records of the Bundesarchiv, Koblenz, series B323