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.

Schleiertanz (Veil Dance) 1920, by Paul Klee

Schleiertanz, 1920, Paul Klee

by Marc Masurovsky 

Paul Klee produced the watercolor known as “Schleiertanz”, the Veil Dance, in 1920. It was exhibited in Munich at the Neue Kunst Hans Goltz until June 1920. Thereafter, Harry Fuld, Sr., a Jewish businessman from Frankfurt am Main, acquired the Klee watercolor and kept it in the family until his death in 1932. His eleven-year old son, Peter “Harry” Fuld, Jr., and his non-Jewish mother, Ida, inherited the Klee together with the rest of Harry’s considerable art collection, businesses and real property. Peter became a millionaire. However, Hitler’s ascent to power in late January 1933 changed all of that. Due to Nazi persecutions, Peter “Harry” Fuld, Jr. left for England shortly before the outbreak of WWII. Before his departure, the Klee was placed in storage with the shipping firm of Gustav Knauer in 1937 as well as other objects and property belonging to the Fuld family. In 1941, the Reich overrode Fuld’s ownership of items stored at Knauer’s and any real, financial and commercial property still owned by the Fulds in Germany since Harry—his father--was a Jew, Peter, although a “half-Jew”—his mother was not Jewish—was still treated as though he were Jewish. All Jews living in Germany who had “abandoned” their property to go into self-imposed exile, lost whatever assets they still held to the Reich, an act that the victorious Allied powers deemed illegal after their victory over the Third Reich in May 1945.

Some of the objects in the Fuld crates left with Knauer were placed in museums in Frankfurt, where Fuld’s family came from. It could be that all the crates packed by the Fuld family had been deposited with Knauer in Frankfurt instead of Berlin, which some researchers believe to be the case. At some point, perhaps in 1943 or 1944, the ERR, the Nazi plundering agency, designated “Schleiertanz” as a Neuwied item, an indication that it might have been stored at a customs warehouse in Neuwied which served as a central repository for items seized from Jews in Belgium and Holland.

Schloss Kogl

The absence of a “Neuwied number” for “Schleiertanz” makes it more likely that the Klee was sent to ERR headquarters at Bellevuestrasse in Berlin, a way station for confiscated "modern" works of art, from which it was transferred in a crate with other “Neuwied” items to the ERR depot of Kogl in Austria, a main recipient of loot from Western Europe, including items whose owners were “unknown”, like those marked Neuwied. It could be that the Klee was reclassified as a Neuwied item then. In 1945, the Americans found it in a crate stamped “Neuwied" and so designated it as well.
 
In 1940, the British authorities interned the young Peter Fuld as an “enemy alien” and shipped him to Canada where he remained until the end of WWII. He was released in 1941 and went to school at the University of Toronto where he sought both a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor in Law. He took Canadian citizenship in 1946 at the time of his graduation from the University of Toronto. Fuld had also fallen in love with Ivy Lawrence, a “woman of color” from Trinidad and a fellow student who was a year ahead of him.  Their unorthodox interracial romance shook things up on the Toronto campus. 

Ivy Lawrence and Peter "Harry" Fuld in Canada

Although the Nazis would have treated Peter a “mischling” or “halbjude,” still, in Canada, he had a difficult time fitting in anywhere not being born of a Jewish mother, being a native of Germany, and involved romantically with a woman from Trinidad. Ironic that he suffered similar discrimination thousands of miles away from Nazi Germany, free of racial persecution, but not free of discrimination.

In the spring of 1945, American troops liberated Schloss Kogl, one of the ERR’s depots in the Attergau in Austria, and carted off everything it contained including the Klee to the Munich Central Collecting Point (MCCP) in Munich, the administrative center of the US zone of occupation of Germany, where it arrived in 1946. Three years later, in 1949, the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization (JRSO) received Fuld’s Klee as heirless property from the American repatriation authorities in Munich as well as hundreds of other cultural and artistic items. Together with all other heirless properties it had gathered in the Allied occupation zones in Germany and Austria, the JRSO ceded these cultural assets to the Bezalel National Museum in the newly minted State of Israel. Bezalel preceded the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. “Schleiertanz” was transferred in 1950 and incorporated into the permanent collection of the Israel Museum until its restitution in September 2010.

After WWII ended, Fuld returned to England before eventually settling in Germany. He sought out his mother, Ida, with whom he had lost touch upon going into exile as a young man and initiated proceedings to obtain restitution of his family’s lost assets which the Nazis had misappropriated. Ivy joined him in London but , once found, his mother threatened to commit suicide should he ever marry Ivy. That threat caused the breakup between Peter Fuld and Ivy and resulted in tremendous emotional harm to Peter. He required regular care at the hands of a psychiatrist. After returning to Germany, Peter died of brain cancer in March 1962. At his death, Fuld had somehow complicated matters with his estate since he had left a will to which were attached four codicils which resulted in a number of legal proceedings challenging one or more of the codicils. Some had been drafted in England, others in Germany. The messiness of inheritance especially as it affects looted and misappropriated property, cultural, financial, and immovable, was fueled by his bitter mother and the psychiatrist who had cared for Peter through his erratic emotional upheavals.
According to an article that appeared in the magazine “Ebony”, the trial over Peter Fuld’s estate produced transcripts totaling 3 million words and kept Ivy in the witness box for days. 18 million dollars (1962 value) were at stake as well as his looted assets which he had labored to recover from Germany. One third of the “residuary estate” went to Fuld’s aging mother. Another part of the estate went to Ivy with a proviso that she use 10 per cent of it for educational betterment in the West Indies. The rest went to Gita Gisela Martin, his housekeeper.

The late German lawyer and restitution specialist, Dr. Jost von Trott zu Solz, garnered the historical evidence to prove that “Schleiertanz” had once rightfully belonged to the Fuld family which had lost it at the hands of the Nazis. In 2010, the Israel Museum’s leadership accepted the evidence and agreed to restitute the Klee to Gita Gisela Martin who donated it to the Magen David Adom UK, the Israeli equivalent to the Red Cross organization, to which she had donated other “holdings” from the Peter Fuld estate. 

In turn, Magen David sold the Klee in New York through Sotheby’s as Lot Nr. 342 on November 3, 2010. It garnered $326,500.

As usual, beware of mis-written provenances. The Sotheby’s provenance for “Schleiertanz” misinterprets the historical material regarding the Neuwied phase of the Klee’s travails and does not acknowledge the fact that the Israel Museum returned the Klee to the Fuld heir who then donated it to Magen David, the consignor! It’s all in the details.

Angelus Novus, Angel of History, by Paul Klee

by Marc Masurovsky

Paul Klee
Source: Wikipedia

Interesting destiny for the watercolor, “Angelus Novus”, a critical early work by Swiss artist Paul Klee.

Angelus Novus, Paul Klee, 1920
Source: Wikipedia

The “Angelus” is also known as the “Angel of History.” Klee painted it in 1920. The Jewish mystical writer, Gerschom Scholem, bought it shortly thereafter and hung it in his apartment in Munich, Germany. Scholem’s close friend, the cultural philosopher Walter Benjamin, viewed it in a major exhibit of Klee’s work at the Galerie Goltz in Munich and acquired it without hesitation. Goltz brokered the sale between the two close friends.

Walter Benjamin
Source: Wikipedia

Benjamin’s relationship to the Angelus Novus was nothing short of profound and deeply rooted in his own existential angst about civilization, the absence of happiness in society, his vision of a humanity bereft of humanity, and yet, in Klee’s angel, he might have gleaned his own angel, a metaphysical creature on whose wings History could be carried aloft. Hope springs eternal, doesn’t it?

Some have written that the Angel’s eyes bear witness to the horrors of history since the dawn of ages and into an unknown future. But they are compassionate and empathetic. For Benjamin, the “Angel” was his angel and Klee’s work took on proportions greater than life, overwhelming Benjamin’s psyche. It was as if this Angel was his redemption, his life buoy. In moments of despair, he would leave it in trust with his friends, including Scholem, and would pick it up again when passing through. Even when Benjamin was destitute to the point of not eating, he would hold back from selling his Angel of History. True, he tried several times. A year or so before his untimely death at Port Bou in the French Pyrenées, Benjamin considered selling the Angel to arts patron Ernest Morgenroth whose son, Ernest Gustav Morgenroth, he knew well—later he became known as Stephen Lackner, a well-known patron of the arts in the United States.

September 26, 1940: Walter Benjamin commits suicide at Port Bou, convinced that he will face impending arrest at the hands of the Vichy authorities who will then turn him over to the German authorities and ultimate doom. Before killing himself, Benjamin secured his papers, manuscripts and the Angel with the renown French writer, Georges Bataille, who then worked at the National Library (Bibliothèque Nationale) in Paris. Bataille hid Benjamin’s belongings in a corner of the Library where they remained throughout the entire period of German occupation. A miracle! Bataille left the National Library and hid Benjamin’s cultural treasures at his apartment. After the end of the Second World War, another friend of Benjamin’s, the author Pierre Bonasse, took over the burden of caring for Benjamin’s items and made every effort to find Benjamin’s sister, Dora, and the German philosopher Theodor W. Adorno, to whom he had entrusted the manuscripts and the Angelus. Adorno had since moved to the United States. It took another several years before the handover was successful, thanks in part to an employee of the US Embassy in Paris who acted as a courier for the “Benjamin estate.”

Gerschom Scholem
Source: Wikipedia

Available sources are not clear about the last detail, which is how the Angelus fell back into the hands of Gerschom Scholem. But it did, thanks to Adorno. Was this “gift” specified in Benjamin’s will? Did Benjamin have a written will? Safe to say, though, that Scholem, as first purchaser of the Angelus Novus, became again its owner, owing to the unfortunate premature demise of his best friend, Walter Benjamin. After Scholem’s death in 1982, the Angelus Novus was donated to the Israel Museum in 1987 by Scholem’s widow, Fania, with the help of the Herring Brothers, famed art dealers in New York, and Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Lauder.

One fact is puzzling, though: when reading the information about “Angelus Novus” on the Israel Museum website, it indicates that Scholem “inherited” it. What kind of inheritance can this be between two very close friends whose trust in one another was sealed in part by an “Angel of History”?

Sources: Kerber, Armin, “Lost Paradise: The Angel’s Gaze,” Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Switzerland, 2008; Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin, “The Complete Correspondence, 1928-1940,” Harvard University Press, 2001.

Teaching provenance research at the Free University of Berlin

Free University, Berlin
Source: Wikipedia

Last April, the Free University of Berlin announced that it had initiated the first academic program in Germany on cultural plunder. Classes would be taught at the undergraduate level towards completion of a Bachelors of Art. However, no details were forthcoming about the actual nature of the program, the number of classes offered, the length of the program, the inter-disciplinary nature of the curriculum, and the scope of the content being offered to students.

As it turns out, the program itself, new as it is, is far from being that ambitious. In fact, it is a provenance research program. The novelty of teaching provenance research in an undergraduate setting is duly noted, but the fanfare surrounding the creation of the program might have been a bit over the top.

Nevertheless, let’s take a closer look at what is actually being taught and by whom. The program addresses a number of broad themes: the historical background, the impact of National Socialist cultural policy; reparations and compensation (hopefully, restitution figures here as well); case studies of provenance research conducted for auction houses, museums, private collections and claimants; Art and the Law; Sources and Documentation. Students are expected to produce research papers and present their findings at the end of the course.

There is one lecture per week. A different specialist presents a specific topic at each lecture. The program is broken down into two segments; coursework in the first semester and independent archival research in the second semester.

Although the Third Reich orchestrated institutional acts of cultural plunder in every country that it occupied, the historical locus of the program remains Nazi Germany with some considerations given to collections stolen in other parts of Europe and to the methods of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR).

As to the types of looted cultural objects being covered in the case studies, emphasis, as usual, is on paintings and works on paper, but other categories are also being addressed like furniture, accessories, and Judaica.

Subsequent to the program, the Free University of Berlin has organized three month internships for the students with institutions in Berlin, Leipzig and London. The lecture “Cultural and museum policies and the art market during the Nazi era”  was taught by Meike Hoffmann together with Andreas Hüneke. Together with Uwe Hartmann, she also taught the lecture “Galleries, private collections, dealers and collectors (Aryanization, confiscation and duress sales)” while visiting the exhibition “Gute Geschäfte. Kunsthandel in Berlin 1933-45 (A Good Business: The Art Trade in Berlin 1933-45)” which was on display at the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin, 10 April-31 July 2011.

The following is a summary of the courses offered and a brief description:

Historical Background

"Looting during the Napoleonic wars and gaps in the historical record prior to the 20th century" Uwe Hartmann (AfP)

Presentation topics:

• The effect of secularization (1803) on the art trade and the development of private and public collections.
• Napoleon’s donations

"Cultural and museum policies and the art market during the Nazi era" Andreas Hüneke (Degenerate Art Research Centre, FU Berlin)

Presentation topics:

• The law to re-establish the civil service (7.04.1933) and its impact on museum directors.
• Auction houses and galleries during the Third Reich
• Consequences of Nazi Cultural Policy

"'Degenerate Art' – seizure, confiscation and exploitation of modern art" Andreas Hüneke and Meike Hoffmann (Degenerate Art Research Centre, FU Berlin)

Presentation topics:

• Confiscation of “degenerate art” at the museum of fine arts and applied arts in Halle in 1937.
• The exploitation of “degenerate art” through the art dealer Bernhard A. Böhmer.

"Galleries, private collections, dealers and collectors (Aryanization, confiscation and duress sales)" Uwe Hartmann (AfP)

Presentation topics:

• The art dealer Karl Haberstock (1878-1956) – Hitler's art dealer
• The Aryanization of the Heinemann Gallery

"Looted art and the art trade in occupied territory" Dr. Stephanie Tasch (Christie's)

Presentation topics:

• “Sonderauftrag Linz” (Special commission Linz) and the confiscation of the Adolphe Schloss collection
• Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg and the confiscation of the Salomon Flavian collection.

Reparations and Compensation

"Public collections in Germany dealing with the burdened inheritance from1945 to the present (CCP – TVK – BADV)" Dr. Angelika Enderlein (BADV)

Presentation topic:

• The work of the American Allies in the Munich Central Collecting Point (MCCP)

"Provenance research as a political task and moral responsibility (“Washington Principles”, “Joint declaration”, current debates)" Peter Müller (BKM - Federal Government for Culture and Media)

Presentation topics:

• The dispute about the Sachs poster collection in the German Historical Museum
• The dispute about “Sumpflegende” by Paul Klee 

"Sumpflegende", Paul Klee
Source: Bloomberg

Case Studies

"Provenance research in the art trade" Isabel von Klitzing (Sotheby’s)

Presentation topics:

• The collection Henry and Emma Budge, Hamburg
• Lovis Corinth „Römische Campagna“, 1914, from the collection Curt Glaser, Berlin

"Provenance research at the Berlin State Museums" Dr. Jörn Grabowski, Dr. Petra Winter (ZA SMB - Central Archive of the Berlin State Museums)

Presentation topics:

"Der Watzmann", Caspar David Friedrich
Source: Amazon.com

• Caspar David Friedrich „Der Watzmann“ (1824/25). Acquired by the National Gallery in 1937 from Martin Brunn (Berlin)
• Johann Erdmann Hummel „Bildnis Frau Luise Mila“ (around 1815). Acquired by the National Gallery from a private collection in 1937

"Provenance research for collectors or claimants" Nina Senger (Jacques Goudstikker collection)

Jacques Goudstikker
Source: Jüdisches Museum, Berlin

Presentation topics:

• Hermann Göring and the confiscation of the Goudstikker collection
• Just and Fair Solutions: Restitution of confiscated Jewish collections in Holland using the example of the Goudstikker collection

Art & Law

"Results of provenance research as a basis for court decisions or out-of-court settlements" Carola Thielecke (HV SPK)

Sources & Documentation

"Archival material, databases and further electronic resources in use for provenance research" Dr. Andrea Baresel-Brand (Koordinierungsstelle Magdeburg) 


According to the 13 April 2011 press release accouncing the program, for more information, please contact:

Dr. Meike Hoffman
Freie Universität Berlin, Kunsthistoisches Institut, Forschungsstelle Entartete Kunst
Telefon: 030 / 838-54523
E-Mail: meikeh@zedat.fu-berlin.de