The top 10 plundered art articles

by Marc Masurovsky

The plundered art blog was born without anyone noticing it in May 2010.  As so many of these ventures go, nothing much was done in the first six months until December 23, 2010, when two brief pieces appeared which summarized the birth of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project (HARP) and events leading up to its establishment in September 1997.  On Christmas Eve 2010, perhaps on a lark, I wrote a review of “The Night of The Generals”, a campy film about anti-Hitler stirrings amongst the German general staff. My way of dipping my pinky toe in the murky waters of blogging.

2011 is when the juices began to flow and HARPs’ blog, plundered art, started to take shape.  For those of you who operate blogs on your own time, ad-free, with no staff other than yourselves, you know how much emotional and physical energy is required to keep such an adventure from becoming cybernetic driftwood and another digital artifact floating across the Internet ether.

Fast forward to October 29, 2017.

Time to take stock of the past six years, 307 articles later, all devoted in some fashion or form, directly, indirectly, to the broad topic of cultural plunder in the context of genocide, the challenges implicit in the identification and recovery of looted objects found in public and private collections on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.  Many articles were written out of spite, despair, impatience, irritation, annoyance, and also out of a genuine desire to inform and to share some knowledge about events that transpired more than 75 years ago and continue to haunt us today, should you ever be paying attention to them.

Politics permeate the way that we view art, and in particular art with problematic histories. This is where provenance enters into the discussion; a word that I never paid attention to until the Schiele scandalof late 1997, early 1998, grabbed headlines in New York and Vienna, shaking the art world because New York city policemen dared enter the temple of art and money that is the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), to remove from it two paintings executed by the bad boy of Vienna, Egon Schiele, that were suspected of having been plundered in the aftermath of the March 1938 Anschluss from two Jewish owners, victimized by the Nazis.

Politics inform the stories underlying countless numbers of works and objects of art, because history has a nasty way of interfering with their peregrinations through time and space, from the moment they exit the artist’s studio to the moment that they adorn the wall of a living room, dining room, bedroom or languish as ripening investments in freeport bunkers located in “neutral” territories like Switzerland, Singapore, and god knows where else, out of reach, out of mind, lost to the world.

Enough of this rhetoric.

It is my pleasure to present to you the top 10 articles which have graced the virtual pages of the “plundered art” blog. In honor of David Letterman, we will count them down in reverse order from 10 to 1.

[drum roll]

10.

Deconstructing Aphrodite, published on January 28, 2012

9.

The five Schiele drawing of Karl Maylander, published on June 16, 2011

8.

ERR database-Georges Bernheim, published on April 2011

7.

Franz Marc's "The large blue horses," published on January 5, 2012

6.

Van Gogh’s 1889 depiction of his mutilated ear smoking apipe, published  on June 5, 2011

5.

Nazi plunderer Bruno Lohse gets a posthumous rewrite, published on July 29, 2011

4.

The US Department of State is structurally unable to perform appropriate provenance research, published on December 5 2016

Interestingly enough, the three top articles published by plundered art each pertain to a work of art, produced by Franz Marc, Jacopo Zucchi, and Paul Klee.

Let's hear it for.....

3.

“The red horses”, by Franz Marc, published on January 3, 2012

2.

Jacopo Zucchi, “the bath of Bathsheba”, published on August 2, 2011

And the all-time winner which has outpaced its rivals in no uncertain terms like a steed racing across the finish line at a race track of your choosing...

[extra drum rolls]

1.

Angelus Novus, Angel of History, by Paul Klee, published on February 26, 2013

Last thoughts before calling it a day:

It gives me hope, in these times of grave uncertainties where the word “ethics” appears to have been gutted of any meaning, where it apparently is still ok to steal thy neighbor’s property because you are likely not to get caught—plunder, once again, is the only crime against humanity that pays for itself— that a savant blend of art, history, politics, war, justice, and ethics, still arouses interest and even passion amongst you out there, yes, you who are spread out across the seven seas and every continent, encompassing more than 60 countries—yes, that is the breadth of our readership, however impossible it is to verify whether you are mere digital echoes resulting from spam assaults or unsuccessful hacks (as in the Russian case), or men and women of all ages (yes, we do have readers who are in high school) who have expressed an interest in the fate of art objects misappropriated during acts of mass conflict and genocide, and which the art market and privately owned as well as government-run museums refuse to return to their rightful owners for a variety of inexplicable reasons. It is for you, the reader, that this blog exists.

Franz Marc’s “The Large Blue Horses”

Die grossen blauen Pferden, Franz Mac
Source: Walker Art Center

Franz Marc’s “The Large Blue Horses” [Die grossen blauen Pferden], which he painted in 1911, have adorned the walls of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN, since late 1941 when Mrs. Gilbert Walker acquired the painting from the Karl Nierendorf Gallery in New York.

This German Expressionist work had been touring a select number of museums across the United States as part of a group of works dubbed “Twentieth Century Banned German Art”, itself a sub-set of a major exhibit of nearly 150 works of art banned by the Nazi Party that had taken place in London in 1938. That exhibit, a direct rebuke to the notorious July 1937 “Entartete Kunst” exhibit in Munich, Germany, was labeled as “Twentieth Century Banned German Art”, organized by the New Burlington Galleries.

The 1938 London Exhibit was organized by an unusual assemblage of individuals, including, but not limited to, Herbert Read, a noted British poet and art historian, and Edouard Léon Théodore Mesens, an idiosyncratic Belgian art critic, gallerist, dealer, and remnant of a splinter group within the Dadaist movement, living in Brussels. While Read was the titular chair of the Organizing Committee for the Exhibit, Mesens was one of its logistical and operational cogs. In addition to Mesens, there were two Swiss modern artists, Irmgard Burchard and Richard Paul Lohse, briefly married to one another, who contributed to the organization of the  London Exhbit of "banned German art" which ran from July 8, 1938, to August 27, 1938.

Meanwhile, where was Franz Marc’s painting before the 1938 London Exhibit? According to the Walker Art Center’s fairly careful research, there were two to three owners before the Walker acquired "The Large Blue Horses": two Swiss men from Zurich, J.E. Wolfensberger and F.J. Weck; and possibly, one German owner based in Berlin, Curt Glaser. Glaser appears as a likely owner because of circumstantial evidence that he might have been the person who sold the Marc painting to Wolfensberger before the First World War. In any event, Weck was the proud owner of “The Blue Horses” by 1919. The Walker’s research points out that Weck owned the painting at least through 1925. However, it assumes that he was the one who lent it to the 1938 London Exhibit. Although that is a plausible theory, it is not necessarily convincing. There was a vibrant market before and after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 which affected German Expressionist artists. There is always a likelihood that the Marc painting might have returned to Germany into the hands of another owner.

That is not to say that anything reprehensible took place which affects the past ownership of this particular painting. But the thirteen year gap in the provenance, when viewed within the context of the period—a dynamic effervescence in the dissemination and collecting of German Expressionist works, the growing internationalization of the market for such works, the dramatic shifts in ownership and control over such works resulting from the change in government in Germany, the ensuing exodus of these unwanted, condemned works to foreign countries—one has to be careful not to assume that Weck had continual possession of the painting “at least up to the time it is known to have left Switzerland in 1938.” By the same token, the Walker research acknowledges that Karl Nierendorf had a gallery in Berlin, before opening his new outpost in New York in 1936. More work needs to be done on this painting for the period between 1925 and 1938.

In a tidbit of trivial history, the Walker research mentions Blanche A. Byerley as the organizer of the 1939-1940 American tour of “Twentieth Century Banned German Art”. It indicates that “little is known” about her. After poking around a bit, the following can now be said about Blanche:

She hailed from Westport, Connecticut. At some point before the mid-1930s, she married a well-connected naval officer by the name of Charles Felton Pousland, who held the rank of Lieutenant-Commander in the US Navy. Pousland had been a graduate of Harvard University and of the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. His father, Charles, a banker and investment broker, had died in 1917. His older sister, Elizabeth Cutting, was a graduate of Radcliffe College. Although Blanche became Mrs. Pousland, she maintained her maiden name when she opened a Lecture Bureau in New York City, the “Blanche A. Byerley Lecture Bureau” which, among other activities, specialized in tours of art exhibits. She apparently left that career behind in 1941 when she and her husband moved to a tony suburb in Wilton, CT. Blanche Byerley Pousland definitely had a yen for modern European art as well as for African-American women artists since she was responsible for organizing exhibits featuring the works of American women artists of color such as Lois Mailou Jones, Selma Burke, Laura Warine, and Katherine Gardner. Finally, Blanche raised money in 1942 for the Russian War Relief, a true believer in the Allied war effort.

Back to the 1938 London exhibit. Most of the 150 or so works on display at the New Burlington Galleries "Banned German Art" exhibit were lent without the consent of the artists or the owners. Most, if not all, of the works were shown to be sold, which raised the specter of sales proceeds being sent back to Germany and, thereby, voiding the anti-Nazi mission of the exhibit in the first place. If not to Germany, then where and to whom, especially if the works had been exhibited without prior consent? There has never been a proper accounting of these “banned” works, those that were returned unsold to the sources which lent them, those works which were then shipped to the United States or other destinations, like the Franz Marc painting which Nierendorf’s New York gallery received to be sold on behalf of the owner. Which one, though?

"The Red Horses" by Franz Marc

The saga continues pertaining to the so-called “degenerate” works of art de-accessioned from German State collections. Unless otherwise stated, the subject preoccupies us until there is a resolution reached on the status of works and objects of art illegally de-accessioned, sold and bartered during the Third Reich.

On June 30, 1939, an auction—now infamous—of “works from German Museums” took place at the Theodor Fischer Gallery in Lucerne/Luzern, Switzerland. The auction was well-attended. The bidders and curious onlookers who wished to attend this one-of-a-kind sale of the cream of the “degenerate” cultural crop constituted an odd mix of National Socialist officials, as well as industrialists, financiers, brokers, middlemen, agents, gallery owners and dealers, and museum officials from the United States and Europe.

We chose at random one painting, “Grazing Horses IV,” also known as “The Red Horses,” painted by Franz Marc in 1911, to serve as an example of the fate of these choice items illegally culled from the cultural temples of Germany. A closer examination of its history helps us in our understanding of how historical information is conveyed about these and similar works which carry forever a genuinely controversial pedigree.

"Grazing Horses IV" aka. "The Red Horses", Franz Marc, 1911
Source: Wikipaintings

This exceptionally vibrant and dreamy painting had once been the pride and joy of the Folkwang Museum in Essen, Germany, from which it was de-accessioned together with hundreds of other works in 1937. It is presently on long-term loan to Harvard University’s Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, MA. Previously, it had been featured in a landmark exhibit of Franz Marc’s “Horses” in the fall of 2000 at the Busch-Reisinger Museum, which is also part of Harvard University.

The current owner of the painting is Gabriele Brougier Esselborn Geier. She was born Gabriele Brougier on April 2, 1918, in Vienna, Austria. In 1939, she married Wilhelm zu Solms-Roedelheim und Assenheim, a local psychoanalyst who turned out to be the bearer of an impressive aristocratic pedigree linking him to Prussian nobility and the House of Hessen. He was also politically hostile to the National Socialists and became active in the Austrian political resistance to Hitler throughout the Second World War. The pair divorced in 1947.

We still do not know whether Gabriele is the one who took an interest in the Luzern sale or if her husband did. Judging by postwar information on the ownership of the Red Horses, we surmise that Gabriele, rather than Wilhelm, was the instigator of the purchase of the Marc painting as well as of another work, Portrait of the Duchess of Montesquiou, by Oskar Kokoschka, which had also been offered up for sale at the Fischer Gallery as a reject from German State collections.

August Busch Hall (Busch-Reisinger Museum) at Harvard University
Source: Wikipedia

In 1949, Gabriele married Paul Esselborn Geier, referred to as Paul E. Geier. There is a strong possibility that the two met in Vienna. Geier, born on November 19, 1914 hailed from Cincinnati, Ohio, where his father, Frederick Geier, Sr., was an important local manufacturer of machine parts. His father divorced his mother, Juliet Esselborn, to marry another woman, Amanda Mayer. Paul E. Geier studied at Harvard University from which he graduated in 1936. There, he wrote a pamphlet entitled “Studies of Modern German Antisemitism” which Harvard published in 1936. From there, he went to Harvard Law School from which he graduated in 1939. Geier returned to Cincinnati where he joined his father’s company. On February 9, 1940, he was admitted to the Ohio Bar. Later on, he represented the British Purchasing Commission before joining the Foreign Service. His duties as an American diplomat took him to Tangiers in March 1941, Jidda in November 1943 before becoming part of the staff of the US Political Advisor (USPOLAD) on Austrian Affairs, in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations (MEDTO) in 1945. Those duties took him to Vienna where he served as vice consul in 1946 and as consul in 1947. Geier then was transferred to Casablanca in mid-1948 before joining the US Embassy in Rome in 1949 where he served until 1953. At some point, Geier became very close to the art historian Bernard Berenson whom he regularly visited at his estate, Villa I Tatti, which Berenson had acquired in 1905. I Tatti later became part of the Harvard University Empire as a leading international center for research and scholarship in art history.

The Geiers made their home in Rome, although Gabriele also maintained a presence in her native Vienna. Thereafter, they moved back to Cincinnati in the mid-1950s where Paul and Gabriele became major philanthropic figures in the arts and higher education.

The Geiers loaned “The Red Horses” alternately to the Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM) and the Busch-Reisinger Museum in Cambridge, MA, in a shared arrangement. In 1996 Gabriele Geier received an unsolicited pledge reminder card from the CAM which took her over the edge, having just written a fat check to the Cincinnati Museum. Piqued, she withdrew the painting from CAM, stopped all future donations to CAM and established the Busch-Reisinger as the only worthy recipient of the painting and her cultural largesse. “The Red Horses” have since moved to the Fogg Art Museum.

Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University
Source: Wikipedia

Paul E. Geier died on October 23, 1981. A library wing of Villa I Tatti was created to honor his memory. Gabriele Geier moved back to Rome where she has been living ever since. In a stinging rebuke to the Cincinnati Art Museum, she hinted that she had other works at her house in Rome which she would donate to the Fogg.

The extant literature on “The Red Horses” is a bit mixed up about who bought the painting in Lucerne. Never do we see the name of Fritz Steinmeyer, who was Julius Bohler’s former art gallery partner before striking out on his own. It is Steinmeyer who allegedly acquires the painting. This attribution is correctly mentioned by German art historian Uwe Fleckner in his opus “Angriff auf die Avantgarde: Kunst und Kunstpolitik im Nationalsozialismus’. He states that lot 87 was sold to Mr. Steinmeyer, Luzern for Paul E. Geier, in Cincinnati. The reference to Paul Geier is an exercise in elliptical thinking, which is also repeated by provenance researcher Laurie Stein in a biting report that she wrote for the Swiss government on German-Swiss trafficking in “degenerate” works where she indicates that Paul Geier attended the sale and acquired several works including “The Red Horses.” It turns out that Paul was busy graduating from Harvard Law School while the Lucerne sale was well under way and that he had no knowledge of his future wife, Gabriele, nor of her interest in “degenerate” works of art. These types of mistakes, small as they may seem, are of a kind that raise our antennae about the accuracy of other information pertaining to the Lucerne auction and similar events.

Furthermore, numerous art sites on the Internet ascribe “The Red Horses” to a private collection or to an anonymous loan, when a bit of effort in research would have pointed out the identity of Gabriele as the owner of the work in question since 1939 and with her husband, Paul, since 1949. The Frick Museum’s online Art Reference Library (FRESCO) is the only source that gets it almost entirely right, naming Gabriele Geier as the owner since Lucerne.

Regardless of the above, several points come to mind:

1. How did Gabriele Brougier zu Solms-Rodelheim und Assenheim know about the Lucerne sale and which pieces to acquire there? How did she feel about acquiring de-accessioned works because of their “degenerate” character, knowing that the funds would revert back to the German State?
    
2. What was her relationship with Fritz Steinmeyer? Or did Steinmeyer acquire the works before contacting Gabriele Brougier to interest her in the Marc painting and in the Kokoschka as well?
    
3. As with the other de-accessioned pieces sold at the Fischer Gallery in Lucern on June 30, 1939, our position is firm: the sale was illegal, the works were illegally removed from German State collections and, therefore, their ownership history will be forever tainted.

Last but not least, there is a file at the Central Intelligence Agency on Paul Esselborn Geier.