Utopian thoughts on a lazy, snowy Friday

by Marc Masurovsky

Museums
Acquisitions of objects are limited to those objects with no taint whatsoever on title. Under-provenanced objects with significant gaps and riddled with uncertainties as to past ownerships and locations must not enter a museum.

The museum’s research budget allows for a team of full-time researchers whose sole purpose is to keep the museum “honest.” 

Louvre, Paris

If problems emerge in the ownership history of objects in the permanent collection, all measures must be taken to clear title by submitting the object to a detailed, forensic analysis. If additional research reveals illicit activity that might have resulted in an illegal transfer of ownership, the museum will right the past wrong, seek out the heirs of the rightful owners and work out a proper solution to fix the historical wrong as long as it reflects the wishes of the aggrieved parties (those who suffered the loss of the objects).

As a matter of course, the museum will make available to the general public all information about the history of each object in its permanent collection without judgment or preconceived notions. That information will be freely and readily accessible.

When a museum possesses a large inventory of objects obtained from indigenous communities, former colonies, and conflict zones, it will:

Humboldt Forum, Berlin

         

1/ identify the rightful owners of these objects, whomever they may be;

2/ take the necessary steps to contact their representatives and consult them as to how to treat these objects;

3/ if repatriation is in order, the museum will abide by this decision and return the objects;

4/ if other solutions are envisioned, they too shall be respected and implemented as long as they reflect the wishes of the aggrieved parties (those who suffered the loss of the objects).

Auction houses

Recognizing the fact that there are thousands of auction houses worldwide, it is almost impossible to regulate their activities without imposing severe constraints on the global art market. Still, auction houses are the main purveyors of looted and otherwise stolen cultural property.

To stanch the in- and out-flows of stolen cultural goods, governments will establish oversight bodies whose sole purpose is to ensure that auction houses comply with rules and standards that will rid the market of unprovenanced, under-provenanced goods whose origin cannot be explained either by the consignor or the seller. If this is unreasonable, at the very least, auction houses will post “buyer beware” notices for un-and under-provenanced objects that they offer for sale. The goal is to inform consumers much like government agencies issuing product alerts. If art objects are commodities, they should be regulated in the same way that pharmaceutical, cosmetics, food and other products are.

Christie's

Hôtel Drouot

Collectors, dealers, and brokers

Private handlers of cultural goods are an important cog in the global machinery of recycling and dissipation of looted and otherwise stolen cultural objects around the world.

Without them, looters, plunderers and thieves find it challenging to “fence” their loot and to make quick money off of it, thus increasing their risk and disincentivizing the act of plunder and theft.

These handlers must be prohibited from offering any object which is un-or under-provenanced or whose past history shows clear signs of dislocation and illicit transfers of title. If they do, criminal penalties must be imposed on them and their accomplices.

Can privateers be deterred from acquiring objects with dubious provenance information that casts a cloud on title? They will, no matter what any government says or does. Realistically, their activity cannot be completely deterred but their quest to sell these objects on the open market must be interdicted.

Does this open the door to the creation of a parallel art market which operates under the radar? That market already exists and probably always will. Wars, conflicts, crises, laissez-faire governments and regimes enable its existence an allow it to thrive under their very noses and, to some extent, with their complicit assent. The fact that national and international elites sustain its existence complicates the task of any regulator to restrict its expanse and depth. Any attempt to clamp down on the parallel market is politically dangerous for those in positions of power and influence.

Good faith defense

Civil law and common law countries will rethink how good faith serves as an almost-impenetrable defense against relinquishing looted objects to claimants. One possibility is to create exceptions to the good faith defense which remove that protection from those who acquire and sell stolen or plundered goods, even if they were unaware of the true origin of the objects which they acquired. This measure will allow restitution claims to proceed without claimants worrying that the current possessor will resort to good faith as a reason not to restitute their property.  Ignorance is not a defense. Those who dabble in the art market must exercise proper due diligence before acquiring, selling, displaying, donating, loaning cultural goods. Failure to do so must have legal consequences.

Ethical collecting

Can people build an ethical collection of art objects, viz., a collection of objects whose history is not tainted by ambiguous claims to ownership as a result of civil unrest, war, and genocide?

They can and they do. The thrill of seeking out beautiful objects whose acquisition becomes controversial because of the circumstanced surrounding the object (coercion, illegal extraction, outright theft, etc.) is the ultimate drug that fuels thrill-based acquisitions. If you’re skeptical, read about Thomas Hoving, Douglas Latchford, and many others in the museum and art worlds who took pride in their reckless manners and methods to secure “beautiful and unique” objects.



Photos:

Christie's-courtesy of Artisera.com

Hôtel Drouot--courtesy of Drouot.

Anthony van Dyck and The Music Man

Portrait of Paulus Pontius,  Anthony van Dyck

by Marc Masurovsky

Adolphe Schloss spent the last thirty years of his life painstakingly assembling a collection of Old Master paintings—Dutch, Flemish, German, Italian, Spanish and French. When he died on New Year’s Eve of 1910-1911, Adolphe Schloss had collected more than 330 paintings. His widow and children took care of the collection until it was time to send it to safety at the approach of war in August 1939. Four years later, a commando of French and German agents stormed the site where the paintings were hidden at the Château de Chambon in Laguenne, Corrèze. They seized all the paintings and brought them to Paris for “processing.”

After they reached their destination on 10 August 1943, representatives of the Vichy government, senior officials from the Louvre, and German officials proceeded with the dismemberment of the confiscated collection. The Louvre snatched 49 paintings for its permanent collection while 262 paintings were sold manu militari to Hitler’s Linz Museum project, and 22 paintings served as a “finder’s fee” for the person who denounced the collection’s whereabouts, Jean-François Lefranc. The 262 paintings were shipped to Munich for storage at the Führerbau from which they were stolen between 29 April and 2 May 1945, under the very noses of American troops. One of those paintings was the Portrait of a gentleman-Paulus Pontius by Anthony van Dyck.

Before Adolphe Schloss acquired the work by 1896, Paulus Pontius had changed hands numerous times and travelled throughout Western Europe and the United Kingdom. Its earliest recorded owner was Cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga (1690-1756), who held the painting until his death in 1756. Then it conveyed to Cardinal Luigi Valenti Gonzaga (1725-1808), Rome, until 1763 when an art dealer, Hendrick de Leth (1703-1766) acquired it. From there, the painting crossed the Channel and ended up at Peper Harow in Surrey, England with the Midleton Family (we think). It remained in Surrey until 1851 after which time it migrated to London into the hands of Wynn Ellis (1790-1875). By 1896, London-based P. & D. Colnaghi sold Paulus Pontius to Charles Sedelmeyer in Paris (cat. 1896, no. 11, ill.). Sedelmeyer was one of Adolphe Schloss’ main art advisors. Naturally, Schloss snapped up the van Dyck portrait that same year and it remained with him and the Schloss family until its confiscation in 1943.

Munich 1945

MCCP card #46622

The massive unprecedented and largely unsolved art theft at the Führerbau (29 April-2 May 1945) netted over 1100 paintings. While American troops were completing the liberation of Munich and ridding the embattled city of its most fanatical armed Nazi resisters, Munich citizens were busily robbing Hitler’s administrative office building in search of food, alcohol, and anything fungible with which to survive in war-torn Munich.

Like most of the plundered paintings removed from the Führerbau, Paulus Pontius went quickly underground. It took three years for Americans to catch wind of its possible location. Until then, its whereabouts had remained unknown to American and French investigators connected with the Munich Central Collecting Point (MCCP), a central processing station for all objects recovered by Allied troops in Bavaria and processed for repatriation to their countries of origin.

Wolfgang von Dallwitz

The efforts to locate the missing painting took an unusual turn in February 1948 when Wolfgang von Dallwitz, of Biedersteinstrasse 21 (Munich) told Edgar Breitenbach that he had seen the painting in mid-November 1947 at “the apartment of a friend in Munich” together with two other paintings from the Schloss collection (a painting by Ludolf Backhuyzen /Schloss 3, a painting by Abraham van Beijeren /Schloss 8). A Dr. Irwin Sieger had allegedly shipped them from a railroad depot in Göttingen. [Breitenbach to Leonard, “Information concerning stolen Schloss paintings,” 25 February 1948, www.fold3.com], a fact he denied vigorously when questioned by Breitenbach.

Irwin (or Erwin) Sieger

Allied investigators were unsure of Sieger’s identity since they had received conflicting reports about the activities of a man bearing that name actively engaged in concealing and dispersing art looted during WWII and stolen from the Führerbau. Under questioning, Dr. Erwin Sieger lived at Olgastrasse 98 in Munich who was known as an “unscrupulous businessman” and a self-described “art amateur”, pledged to assist US authorities with their investigations into the whereabouts of the Schloss paintings and others. [Breitenbach to Leonard, “Information concerning stolen Schloss paintings,” 25 February 1948, www.fold3.com].

Lt. Hugoboom

The music man

In early 1947, while serving as a MFAA officer in Munich, Lt. Ray W. [Wayne] Hugoboom received Portrait of Paulus Pontius as “turned-in loot from the Führerbau” which Hugoboom characterized as a “gift” from the Oberbürgermeister (Lord Mayor) of Munich. However, instead of returning it to the MCCP as he should have, Hugoboom asked Franz Söker in Neu-Gilching if he could restore the damaged painting. It took him about two weeks. 

Once ready, Hugoboom hung the painting in his office. He even mentioned to his former secretary, Miss Koslowski, that he had bought it on the black market in Munich and not to tell his superior officer, Captain Rae of the MFAA. Lt. Hugoboom had a black crate made with metal sidings in which to house the painting, ostensibly for shipment. When confronted by Edgar Breitenbach, Lt. Hugoboom contradicted Koslowski’s assertion in a letter dated 3 June 1948. He delivered a contrite apology about his errant ways in the handling of the van Dyck. [Ray W. Hugoboom, School of Music, Indiana Unversity, Bloomington, IN, to Edgar Breitenbach, MFAA, OMGBavaria, 3 June 1948; Breitenbach to Hugoboom, 26 May 1948, www.fold3.com].

The recovery

On 6 April 1948, Edgar Breitenbach recovered Anthony van Dyck’s Portrait of Paulus Pontius at the studio of Alfred Koch on Holbeinstrasse 5 (or 43), Munich. According to Breitenbach, the van Dyck painting was the third most important painting from the Schloss collection. As part of his investigation into the circumstances surrounding the van Dyck painting, Breitenbach summoned for questioning Franz Söker to the MCCP on 14 April 1948. [Herbert Leonard, OMGB, to Franz Söker, 14 April 1948, RG 260 M 1946 Reel 137 NARA. www.fold3.com].

Ray Wayne Hugoboom’s defense

After Lt. Hugoboom left Munich in mid-1947 and returned to the United States, he received a promotion to become Assistant Professor of Choral Practice at the School of Music at Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. Hugoboom retold his saga with the van Dyck and declared that “the painting was located in an alley rapped [sic] up in old papers, thoroughly soaked and quite badly damaged.” He largely corroborated his official story—restoration, hanging in his room “for a short time before leaving” and leaving the painting with Alfred Koch “momentarily.” He was so busy with plans for his departure that he forgot to “arrange for [the] return” of the painting to the MCCP. [Wayne Hugoboom to Edgar Breitenbach, 10 May 1948, RG 260 M 1946 Reel 137 NARA].

Breitenbach sets the record straight

In his reply to “dear Hugoboom,” Breitenbach informed him that his letter of 10 May 1948 had caused “considerable embarrassment” at the MFAA. His recounting of the facts did not tally with the MFAA’s investigation.

Firstly, the mayor of Munich did not show him the van Dyck painting and three other paintings. It is Alfred Koch who advised him on the selection. Koch remembered the other paintings very well: two Breughel-like landscapes and a Dutch interior with woman and child. Koch did recall your hesitancy in accepting the gift but that you decided to take it, nevertheless, hoping to donate it “at a later date to some museum.”

Secondly, the story of the gift from the Mayor’s office may have been a hoax. Did Hugoboom partake in it? Unsure. But Alfred Koch and an accomplice by the name of Gillman were certainly in on it. Breitenbach noted that an apology to the Oberbürgermeister was in order. Gillman was also involved as a bit player in the mishandling of another painting from the Schloss collection, Portrait of a Lady, by Bartholomeus van der Helst.

The MFAA ultimately laid the responsibility for the van Dyck affair at Hugoboom’s feet and suggested that the only way to fix it was for him to “make a clean breast” to the MFAA staff. [Edgar Breitenbach to Hugoboom, 26 May 1948, RG 260 M 1946 Reel 137 NARA].  On 3 June 1948, Hugoboom formally apologized to “Mr. Breitenbach.” [Wayne Hugoboom to Mr. Breitenbach, 3 June 1948, RG 260 M 1946 Reel 137 NARA].

Final destination

Portrait of Paulus Pontius, Israel Museum, Jerusalem

The van Dyck painting was repatriated to Paris on 3 June 1948 and restituted to the family of Adolphe Schloss on 6 July 1948. It was sold at Galerie Charpentier on 25 May 1949 (lot no. 17). Madeleine and Joseph R. Nash, an Australian couple living in Paris, acquired the painting. They died on 15 August 1977. Two years later, in keeping with their history of donations to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the painting was bequeathed anonymously to the Israel Museum.

Sources

RG 260 M 1947 Reel 137 NARA through www.fold3.com

ERR database

www.errproject.org

The Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project (JDCRP) Pilot Project

https://pilot-demo.jdcrp.org/

The Monuments Men and Women Foundation

https://www.monumentsmenandwomenfnd.org/hugoboom-lt-r-wayne

Reviewed and edited by Saida S. Hasanagic

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.

Restitution and ‘restitution’: Some thoughts on the MNR problem in France

by Marc Masurovsky
edited and updated on 5 July 2025

Restitution involves the act of returning a stolen object to the owner who was the victim of the theft.

However, if a gallery sells a painting to a citizen of the German Reich who then takes it home across the Rhine, does that constitute theft, especially if the object itself is proven not to have been stolen in the first place?

When the French claims agency, the Office des Biens et Intérêts Privés (OBIP) transferred a painting to the Selection Committee (Commission de choix) of the Louvre in December 1951, it implied that the Selection Committee and/or the Louvre had lost the painting in the first place and justice was being served by incorporating the painting into French State collections. In this particular instance, the painting, Vénus, Bacchus, Cérès, amours et saphirs, by Frans Floris, had been sold in 1941 to a leading German agent—Karl Haberstock--through a gallery owned by Hugo Engel in German-occupied France. Although the item had not been stolen prior to sale, the postwar French government nevertheless treated the work as a stolen object. One year after the liberation of North Africa by Anglo-American troops and contingents of the French Resistance in November 1942, the French National Liberation Committee had declared that all transactions on French territory since June 1940 were deemed null and void, an act which paved the way for a complex and lopsided campaign of restitution and compensation in the years following the Liberation of France in the second half of 1944. For all intents and purposes, the act of declaring a transaction null and void conferred on the transacted object the taint of illegality.

Let’s pretend for a second that France had not been invaded by Nazi Germany. Hugo Engel still would have offered the Fioris painting to Karl Haberstock, a Nazi cultural agent, who then returned to the Reich with it, acting on behalf of his superiors in the Nazi hierarchy. The French government would not have objected to the sale and departure of this object from French territory. But all of that changed with the German invasion of France and the subsequent wholesale requisitions, acts of plunder and spoliation that befell those living within its now truncated borders. The Floris painting was no longer just another painting being offered for sale in a Paris gallery. It was now treated as if it belonged to France, in other words, its acquisition and transfer to Reich territory was tantamount to a forcible removal of the painting from the bosom of that organic national entity known as France. In sum, a war of aggression and conquest against France waged by Nazi Germany had transformed the privately-owned Fioris painting into a State-controlled object that earned it the full protection and consideration of the French State. A curious turn of alchemy which afforded France to lay claims in the postwar to a significant haul of art that had emanated from its private art market and been acquired by individuals who had transported their cultural purchases outside its borders into the Reich.

The Allies countenanced this conversion of private commercial transactions under Nazi rule into illicit acts of property transfers, thus equating them with actual acts of plunder and misappropriation. Regardless of how one judges this policy, it has produced, among other things, an awkward category of objects known as the MNRs—Musées Nationaux Récupération. Many of the MNRs fall into the category of the Fioris painting—acquired in the open private art market during the German occupation and removed from French territory by the purchaser. There is no evidence that the Floris painting was, in fact, incorporated into the MNR category since it is absent from the French government's website devoted to those objects.

The question now becomes: should the MNR’s even exist since they are as close to war booty as one can get, save for those which are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, plundered objects? The maintenance of this ambiguity forces us to consider that all objects acquired in France—fair and square—during the period of Vichy rule and German occupation—from June 1940 to the fall of 1944—should be considered as illicit transfers of property until otherwise stated. One can’t have one’s cake and eat it too, but it appears that, for the past eighty years, that is precisely what has occurred, thus casting an inexorable taint of wartime theft and illegality on an unimaginable number of cultural objects that have since made it into countless collections on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Update on 5 July 2025

Since this article was written in 2011, the French government has changed its tune regarding the so-called MNR works and objects of which they are the custodians until the rightful owner(s) state their claims for their restitution, historical evidence in hand. Close to 50 objects have been returned since 2011, a small number but a significant leap forward when compared to the prior 60 years since the MNRs became a "thing."

The French government is still unwilling to admit that most of the works that fall under that label are not Jewish losses. They are simply works and objects that changed hands under the pseudo-legality established by the Vichy regime under German military occupation. Neighboring countries under the Nazi yoke also saw their art markets fructify and grow as if nothing untoward had happened. Another way of saying that the art market is impervious to the vagaries of history. As long as someone has something to sell, there will be a buyer willing to plunk down the requisite sum of money to acquire it in good faith.

Looking back, I speculate that the decision by the French Resistance to declare all transactions null and void may have been a principled, although ill-thought out declaration not realizing how potentially sweeping and destructive its literal enforcement would have been in the postwar years. It foreshadows to some extent Law 59 which was passed in the US Zone of Occupation in Germany in order to hold accountable current possessors of objects acquired during the Third Reich. There is nothing wrong with making the last owner/possessor accountable as an enforcement to establish the circumstances of an acquisition during the commission of an act of genocide.

ERR database—Georges Bernheim

Georges Bernheim was a noted gallery owner and international art expert in pre-1940 Paris. Working under the label of the ‘Galerie Georges Bernheim,’ he had exhibited works by Francis Picabia, Raoul Dufy, and many others. Don’t be fooled, though. The number of Bernheims in the Paris art world is impressive. Although they are not related to one another, people often make that mistake and think it’s one big happy family. We have Georges Bernheim, Marcel Bernheim whose galerie ‘Galerie Marcel Bernheim’ was owned by Levy-Hermannos. And let’s not forget Bernheim-Jeune. These fixtures of the bustling avant-garde pre-1940 Paris art scene all have one thing in common: their galleries, apartments, secondary homes, bank safes, storage facilities were targeted for plunder in the early months of the German occupation of France. The man behind their combined losses: Bruno Lohse, deputy chief of the ERR, whose main offices were at 54, avenue d’Iéna, in the tony section of Paris, not too far from the Arc de Triomphe.

From a forensic standpoint, the Georges Bernheim case is frustrating, to put it mildly. According to the carding system used by the ERR at the Jeu de Paume, only 5 items were processed by Lohse’s colleagues in December 1942. If we go by the three crates that contained the items belonging to Georges Bernheim (G. Bern), the number of items rises to 18 and includes furniture and early Renaissance objects. To confuse matters a bit more, Georges Bernheim’s belongings were seized two years earlier in December 1940 and placed in one of the rooms set aside at the Louvre in November 1940 to accommodate the first major incoming shipments of plunder transferred to the ERR by the German Embassy in Paris. In other words, three crates containing Georges Bernheim objects d’art sat around at the Louvre for two years before being ‘processed’ further down the road at the Jeu de Paume.

The story would not be that complex if it ended here. However, a closer look at Georges Bernheim’s inventory of stolen art which he submitted to French authorities in 1946 perplexes and daunts, providing an alarming look at the full breadth and scope of the plunder. Since the Germans had seized his gallery records, inventories, photographs, and reference books, Georges Bernheim was forced to remember what he had lost and describe each item to the best of his ability. He managed to provide detailed descriptions for about 20 paintings, including prices and measurements, no small feat. But for the vast majority, he could only identify the names of the artists and the number of works he owned for each of them and provide a generic idea of the format of the paintings.

As it turns out, the total number of works seized from Georges’ apartment and gallery exceeds 210! In other words, 18 items were inventoried at the Jeu de Paume and 200 others simply fell through the cracks. Where are they? What are they? One thing is certain: they were never returned. If Georges Bernheim’s heirs recovered anything from that ‘invisible’ lot, no one is aware of it.

Here is a list of some the artists whose works Georges Bernheim owned and were apparently not recovered:

Marc Chagall, André Derain, Jean Dufy, Raoul Dufy, Othon Friesz, Mané Katz, Per Krogh, , Adrian, Moïse Kisling, Albert Marquet Francis Picabia, Chaim Soutine.

One painting that he recovered in October 1948 was an iconic work by Giorgio de Chirico: “Two Horses”

Two Horses, Giorgio de Chirico
Source: NARA via ERR Project

(You'll note that Hermann Goering desired this painting, thanks to the H.G. marking in the top right corner)