The disappearance of Raphael's Portrait of a Young Man

Portrait of a Young Man

by Marc Masurovsky

What happened to Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man which belongs to the world-renown collection of the Krakow-based Czartoryski family? The now-iconic painting (the poster child for WWII plundered “treasures”) pulled off a world-class vanishing act in the early days of May 1945 as US troops closed in on the South Bavarian compound of Hans Frank, Governor-General of German-occupied Poland.

The Czartoryski family, one of the flowers of Polish nobility, owned palatial residences and estates in Krakow, Goluchów and Sieniawa (Poland). Since 1893, the Goluchów Castle served as a Museum of the Czartoryski collection. Many of the family’s artistic possessions were stored and displayed there. They included close to 5000 art objects and antiquities as well as several hundred Old Master paintings. The bulk of the collection was transferred to Sieniawa for protection. Soon after the Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939, German troops reached the Czartoryski estates and seized their contents. To make matters worse, a local mason had betrayed the location of the hidden Czartoryski “treasury.”

 

Hans Frank

In October 1939, Kajetan Mühlmann, who had played a major role in the plunder of cultural treasures in German-occupied Poland, brought to Berlin choice pieces from the confiscated Czartoryski collection—works by Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt. In late November, at Martin Bormann’s urging, Hans Posse, the director of Hitler’s Linz museum project, requested the transfer of the best pieces from the Czartoryski collection to the Linz museum. It fell on deaf ears. The paintings returned to Krakow only to be shipped back to Berlin in 1942, this time on orders from Field Marshal Hermann Goering. However, the Nazis, fearing for the safety of the works due to Allied bombardments, opted to send the works back to Krakow, where they were stored at the Wawel Castle. 

Wawel Castle, Krakow

From August 1944 to January 1945, in the face of an imminent offensive by the Soviet Red Army, a gradual evacuation began of Hans Frank’s Krakow HQ and the many plundered art objects and paintings under his control. The main evacuation point was the estate of Count Manfred von Richtofen in Seichau (Sichów), Silesia, which the Auswärtiges Amt [German Foreign Office] had requisitioned for use by Hans Frank, his staff and the German Army. At the outset, a small number of Frank’s aides had appeared at Seichau (Sichów). It was not until the surrender of Krakow that the largest contingents overtook von Richtofen’s castle. He confirmed that Frank and his top aides had remained in the main house for only a few days until their “sudden” departure on 23 January 1945. In other words, Frank did not reach Seichau (Sichów) until mid-January 1945. 

Seichau Castle, Silesia

A German official by the name of Gross indicated that in the months following the requisition of von Richtofen’s estate, there was a continual movement of “lorries” which carried ‘objets d’art’ as well as“foodstuffs and large quantities of alcohol.” He noted that, after the departure of the Frank party on 23 January 1945, the rooms that they had occupied at Seichau (Sichów) were in “complete chaos,” a statement confirmed by Fraulein Liselotte Freund of Seichau Castle. (Gross and Liselotte Freund supplied separate statements to an SS investigative officer on 2 February 1945).

Frau von Wietersheim’s Muhrau estate, 14 km from Seichau, served as a secondary evacuation point. Wilhelm Ernst von Palézieux, Hans Frank’s chief of the ‘Referat für Kunst’ (Art Section) and Eduard Kneisel, an Austrian-born restorer, were responsible for ensuring the safety of the plundered treasures from the Czartoryski and other noble Polish collections. They watched over the thousands of art works and objects in their custody at both estates.

It took the greater part of a month for the various convoys carrying Hans Frank and his many staff members to reach Neuhaus am Schliersee in southern Bavaria where Hans Frank had an estate. Neuhaus am Schliersee became the final destination for the Polish looted cultural treasures under Frank’s control, including those that belonged to the Czartoryskis. On 17 February 1945, Hans Frank informed Dr. Lammers, chief of the Reich Chancellery, that the last convoys had reached Neuhaus.

According to London-based Count Zamoyski, one of the heirs to the Czartoryski estate, the Portrait of a Young Man by Raphael was stored at a villa serving as a residence for Wilhelm Ernst von Palézieux in the immediate vicinity of Hans Frank’s compound. Eduard Kneisel confirmed this fact in subsequent years and testified that he had not conducted any restoration work on the painting but that it had been removed from its massive crate.

The “vanishing”

In the first week of May 1945, American military units converged on the Bavarian compound of Hans Frank at Neuhaus am Schliersee. They searched Frank’s office in the “Bergfrieden” chalet, which was near the “Schoberhof”, his main residence. According to an American miliary investigative report, the troops conducted only a superficial search of the “Schoberhof.” The MFAA took nearly a year to file a report on the circumstances surrounding Hans Frank’s capture and the disappearance of the Raphael. The report acknowledged that US troops had not conducted an extensive search of the “Schoberhof.”

On 4-5 May 1945, American troops located and arrested Hans Frank as he tried to escape with members of this retinue. Frank made a failed attempt at suicide on 6 May 1945. US troops recovered most of Hans Frank’s loot. However, the Portrait of a Young Man by Raphael vanished into thin air either right before the arrival of American troops or under their very noses while they were overtaking Neuhaus. It’s anyone’s guess where the painting is currently stashed. 

Primary sources:

Document 3614-PS, Evacuation of Cracow, UConn Archives and Special Collections
https://collections.ctdigitalarchive.org/islandora/object/20002%3A1503#page/8/mode/2up]

Frank to Lammers, Document 3614-PS, Office of US Chief Counsel, IMT

undated letter from Count von Richtofen to an Ortsgruppenleiter of the NSV [National Socialist Welfare Organization]

"The loot from Poland," unsigned summary. RG 59, Lot 62D-4, Ardelia Hall Collection, Box 9, NARA.

Ardelia Hall to Count Zamoyski, 15 December 1960, Lot 62D-4 Ardelia Hall Collection, Box 13, NARA.

Walther Bader interrogation by Edgar Breitenbach and Dr. Roethel, 24 June 1947, RG 260 Prop. Div., Ardelia Hall, MCCP, Box 479, NARA.

www.Fold3.com

RG 239 M1944 Reel 127 NARA. 

Photo credits

Hans Frank
https://cdn.britannica.com/44/133344-050-54791C79/Hans-Frank-1939.jpg

Kajetan Mühlmann
https://www.lexikon-provenienzforschung.org/en/muhlmann-kajetan

Wawel castle
https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photos-old-style-photo-royal-wawel-castle-cracow-image14871673

Reviewed and edited by Saida S. Hasanagic

Myrtil Frank: An introduction

by Marc Masurovsky

1945 Holland

At the end of WWII, the Allied powers investigating crimes against humanity committed by Nazi agents and their supporters had to contend with the enormity of the human losses inflicted on the Jewish communities of Europe and the sheer scope of their material losses. A subset of these material losses consisted of millions of artistic and cultural objects forcibly taken from the Nazis’ preferred victims—namely Jewish owners—which were then set aside for private or public collections, sold at auction, displayed in galleries and recirculated through intricate networks branching throughout Europe and their overseas tendrils. Thus, the problem of locating plundered goods having once belonged to Jews persecuted by the Nazi regime, became global; Allied investigators and researchers were not equipped to apprehend its fullest measure.

 

The art market and its many players-- merchants, dealers, collectors, auctioneers—provided the Nazi occupiers with the networks needed to disperse confiscated Jewish property as long as there was a general willingness in the European art world to do their bidding—inside the Reich, in occupied territories, and even in and through the so-called “neutral” countries which opted not to side with the Allies or the Axis, instead did business with both, often favoring one over the other when it suited them to do so.

 

One persistent problem was to identify those men and women responsible for aiding and abetting the plunder of the Nazis’ victims. The Allies had to ascertain their degree of involvement with the Nazis as agents and participants.  

 

This is the context in which Myrtil Frank, a German-Jewish businessman turned art dealer, operated during the years of German occupation of Holland (1940-1945).   

 

Myrtil Frank’s case is peculiar because he is Jewish.  For the Allies, that seemed secondary since they were chiefly interested in understanding what his activities were during the German occupation of Holland and how he survived four years of brutal Nazi rule, what he did to achieve that result and emerge untouched with his family after war’s end.

 

It would be easy to succumb to 20-20 hindsight and call Myrtil Frank a collaborator of the Nazis. But we know better.  The reason why we chose to tell Frank’s story is because there were many like him who, because of their faith, had a target on their front and back. But they managed to survive those years of persecution, oppression and exploitation, highlighted by the betrayal of their neighbors and business associates, not knowing who to trust from one day to the next, while staying safe and ensuring the survival of one’s family.

 

Myrtil Frank was a secondary figure in the constellation of individuals who cast their lot with Nazi plundering agencies. For that reason, he has fallen under the radar of inquiry of most researchers and historians who have simply ignored him except when his name appears in the provenance of an object which may have been looted. Even the Dutch Restitution Committee was unaware of his importance in the machinery of plunder established in Holland by Nazi agents. 

 

Who was Myrtil Frank?

 

Myrtil Frank was born on 27 December 1893 in Breitenheim, in the Rhineland-Palatinate region of Germany. After serving in the German Army during WWI he married Flora Marburger in Frankfurt in 1919  (Flora was also known as Flory and was born October 23, 1895, in Frankfurt am Main).  In those days, Frank sold equipment used in dentists’ offices. The Franks’ daughters, Dorrit and Sybil, were born respectively in 1920 and 1925. Myrtil Frank died in 1968 and his wife Flory in 1981.  According to Myrtil Frank’s grandson, Gordon Sander, he had been a wealthy grain merchant living in Berlin, Germany although a 1945 Allied report described him as “a German Jewish refugee who had made money in the Rheinland in the textile industry.”

 

It is unclear when Myrtil Frank’s interest in the art trade became more than just a hobby. By the time the Germans invaded Holland on May 10, 1940, Myrtil Frank seemed well-acquainted with art dealers and collectors in his midst. The Frank family first lived at Mechelsestraat 6 in Scheveningen, on the outskirts of Den Haag (The Hague).  They then moved to Frans Halslaan 18, in Hilversum.

According to Gordon Sander, the Franks were eventually forced to move to Amsterdam. Sander argues that Myrtil Frank saw the proverbial writing on the wall and made plans for him and his family to hide from Nazi persecutions and deportation to the East.  He contacted Anie van der Sluis, a Dutch teacher who had taught Dutch to the Frank family after their arrival in the Netherlands.  A July 1942 notice (more like a summons) for Frank’s daughters, Dorrit (22) and Sybil (17), to report to the transit camp of Westerbork, accelerated the process and the family went into hiding on or about 14 July 1942 (Pieter van den Zandenstraat 14). Was Myrtil with them?

 

Kajetan Mühlmann,
courtesy of europeana.eu

On 15-18 November 1945, a person named Myrthel Frank was questioned by Allied interrogators investigating the activities of the so-called “Dienststelle Muhlmann” which had overseen the plunder of Jewish assets and especially cultural and artistic objects in occupied Holland.  Frank was described as “one of the most important persons interrogated” aside from the innermost circle of the group’s founder, Kajetan Mühlmann.  Myrthel (Myrtil) Frank was under suspicion of having used his knowledge of the Dutch art trade to aid the Dienststelle Mühlmann until he lost its protection in 1944 and was forced to hide in order to avoid being arrested by the SD and deported “nach dem Osten.” 

 

Was Myrtil Frank forced to abet the Nazis’ search for art and Jewish art collections? Depending on what sources you consult, there are two scripts needing to be reconciled: Myrtil Frank, the Jewish victim of Nazi persecution desperately trying to stay one step ahead of his persecutors, and Myrtil Frank the dealer who made himself useful to the Nazi plunderers working side by side with Dutch art dealers who did consistent business with the Germans and their agents from 1940 to 1944.

 

Sources: 

2.05.303_71_Muhlmann, NIOD, Den Haag, Netherlands, 

Police report on Myrtel Frank, CABR inv.nr: 91578 file 32657, Central  Archives Special Justice, Den Haag

www.fold3.com: RG 239 M 1944 Roll 8 NARA; RG 260 M1946 Roll 121 NARA

https://www.gordonsander.com/the-frank-family-that-survived

 

Art historians and wartime plunder

An insightful commentary about Nazi looting of Polish collections by Dr. Robert Kudelsky of Warsaw serves as a stark reminder of the criminal role played by art historians in the wartime plunder of Europe. Most continued to ply their trade in the postwar era, unmolested by Allied authorities or by the governments of their own countries. In fact, the various Allied collecting points relied on art historians who had once served the Reich for help in identifying and locating looted works of art in the various occupation zones of Germany and Austria.

Kajetan Mühlmann
Source: Jüdisches Museum Berlin, Raub und Restitution

“Controversies concerning art restitution are an important factor in current European diplomacy. In some cases, Austrian authorities are still loath to reveal the shameful issues of their history and the activities of art historians who, during World War II, actively participated in the plunder of Polish treasures. This attitude resulted in the fact that many scholars and museum executives engaged in these pursuits remain anonymous. Most art historians who took part in the looting of European museums and private collections were not accused of robbery. Although Dr. Kajetan Mühlmann did spend several months in Allied prisons, his punishment was by no means commensurate with the damage he inflicted on the cultural heritage of Europe. After the war, almost all of the art historians who cooperated with the Nazis in the looting of art took up academic and scientific activities, advancing their careers without difficulty. Joseph Muhlmann as a director of one of the leading Austrian cultural institutions is the best example. The only way to achieve some progress in resolving this tragic legacy [of the Second World War] is strengthening international cooperation involving both government and private institutions, as well as leading experts in the field…”

Let’s not forget that the Muhlmann brothers also plied their trade in the heart of Paris at the rue Mayran from which they shipped hundreds of pieces appropriated through various means in and around Paris to their paymasters in Austria. Coincidentally, the Schenker shipping company was also located… in the rue Mayran.