What happened during WWII at the Musée du Jeu de Paume in Paris?

Musée du Jeu de Paume, Paris courtesy of wikipedia

by Marc Masurovsky

I have to admit that historians are a strange lot, especially in the choices they make on what to research and write about. Whether they are aware of this or not, their choices, once published and commented on, shape our popular understanding of history and their omissions (what they are not interested in) deprive us of a fuller understanding of historical events, large and small. 

Take the Museum of the Jeu de Paume in central Paris. It is a typical example of this. Aside from the work of Emmanuelle Polack, there is not a single book that has been exclusively devoted to the history of the Jeu de Paume during the years of German occupation (1940-1944) of France. But there are at least 12 non-fiction books solely devoted to Rose Valland’s heroism and work as a French spy and a cultural property recovery officer for the French government.

The outside world may have experienced the historical Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris’ Jardin des Tuileries through the eyes of Rose Valland’s hagiographers. If you are a movie buff, you may catch a glimpse of it in “The Train” by John Frankenheimer, a paean to French railroad workers during WWII who tried their utmost to prevent France’s cultural treasures from being removed to Nazi Germany in the closing months of the German occupation of France. 

The rooms of the Jeu de Paume have been a regular feature on the French Ministry of Culture’s website for over a decade, illustrating its many rooms through contemporaneous black and white photographs made interactive so that you can discover the looted objects displayed there for Hermann Goering’s pleasure.

Do you really know what happened at the Jeu de Paume from Fall 1940 when it opened as a depot and processing station for confiscated Jewish cultural property to early August 1944 when it ceased to function as such? Do you know who worked there, what their jobs were, what objects they handled, how decisions were made day-to-day, why they chose certain objects and not others, their likes and dislikes, who hated who, who slept with who, the internal cliques? This is "perpetrator history" and it should not be ignored. Otherwise, you, we, end up knowing little about a fundamental cog in the machinery of cultural plunder devised by a perpetrator in the 20th century. History tends to repeat itself like an old cliché.

The Jeu de Paume was a laboratory of cultural plunder created by the perpetrators—the German occupying power and a Nazi plundering agency, the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), its employees, experts and agents. It is therefore logical to dissect its internal mechanisms so that we can understand how looted, confiscated, misappropriated cultural assets are “handled” by those who carry out these crimes.

Alfred Rosenberg, founder of the ERR

To this day, the Jeu de Paume and the four-year long campaign of confiscation, processing, and dispersal of Jewish-owned cultural property reflects the dark side of the museum world and its cultural workers. Your involvement in the arts and cultural activities, whether as a producer or consumer, does not shield you from engaging in heinous acts as a deliberate cog in a machinery of racially-motivated exploitation, grand theft, and persecution. These people are your typical “collaborators”, persons who intentionally cast their lot with the new sheriff in town—in this case, the Nazis and their local Fascist supporters (in this case, partisans of the collaborationist Vichy government).

PS: The only "depot" of cultural objects that has received proper scholarly treatment is the postwar Munich Central Collecting Point (MCCP) which supplanted Hitler's Führerbau as of May 11, 1945, as a central processing station for recovered looted objects. American cultural officials referred to in pop culture as the "Monuments Men and Women” managed the site. Dr. Iris Lauterbach of the Munich-based Zentral Institut für Kunstgeschichte is the author of that study.

The next article will be devoted to inventories, basic didactic instruments that document cultural plunder.

For more on WWII films with some mention of cultural plunder, check out:

https://plundered-art.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-challenges-of-making-historically.html

For more on Rose Valland, see:

https://plundered-art.blogspot.com/2012/01/three-graces-of-art-restitution.html

For more on the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, see:

https://plundered-art.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-destruction-of-works-of-art-in.html

https://plundered-art.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-destruction-of-works-of-art-in_5.html

 

The Night of the Generals, directed by Anatole Litvak

Night of the Generals 1967 Movie Poster
Source: IMPAwards

I just finished watching this oldie but goodie from 1966, starring Peter O'Toole as a psychotic SS General, adapted from a novel by French author, Joseph Kessel.

One particular scene attracted my attention. Peter O'Toole's character, SS General Tanz, visits the Jeu de Paume in the Jardin des Tuileries, courtesy of the German General Staff in occupied Paris. He is offered a private tour of the art looted from Jewish households, which has been stored there before being shipped to Germany.

It would all be fine except that we are now on July 18, 1944. Most of the art looted by the Germans and taken to the Jeu de Paume for processing had already been either sent to the Reich for dispersal or incorporation into either the future Linz Museum collection or other State or private collections, or been disposed of on the Paris art market.

SS General Tanz is taken into a private room protected by a curtain that cloaks a metal gate. Behind the curtain and the gate is a room where 'decadent' works are stored, as they called them in the film.

This is where it gets curious. Lance Corporal Hartmann (played by Tom Courtenay) who accompanies SS General Tanz has a ledger in hand from which he describes each painting that Tanz reviews. How extraordinary! especially since such an 'exhibit' ledger did not exist. Nevertheless, we see reproductions of paintings by Toulouse-Lautrec (Le Divan), a nude by Renoir which he painted in 1910, Paul Gauguin's "On the Beach," and, most amazingly a painting by Chaim Soutine described as 'Le Garcon d'Etage [the Bellboy]', Edgar Degas' 'The Tub" painted in 1886. I would stop here were it not for the self-portrait by Van Gogh, sometimes called "Vincent in Flames" which entrances General Tanz who almost goes into convulsions so hypnotic is the work.

Were these paintings ever at the Jeu de Paume? I checked the ERR database at www.errproject.org/jeudepaume, on the off-chance that they might be listed there.

None of them are and the Degas looked more like a Bonnard.

The Van Gogh does not appear to exist either.

Why take such license when there were so many great works to choose from, reproduce and display?

The only truth to the story is that many such 'decadent' works had been prepared for shipment to a castle in present-day Czech Republic at Nikolsburg/Mikulov on August 1, 1944. The train barely made it out of Paris and was stopped by the French resistance near a small town called Aulnay-sous-Bois. On that train were a trove of Impressionist works which the rightful owners recovered in due course.

The Train, 1964
Source: imdb

The subject of that dramatic story is treated in yet another film aptly called 'The Train' by John Frankenheimer, made in 1964, with Burt Lancaster in the starring role.

Epilogue

SS General Tanz is set to leave the 'decadent' room--in the film, it is labeled 'Salle E', while in the actual history of the Jeu de Paume, it is referred to as the 'Salle des Martyrs." On his way, he picks up what look like flyers from a stack on a table. These are reproductions of some of the paintings that he just looked at, as if the Nazis had organized the room in true exhibit form complete with photo-reproductions that one could take home and admire. Photos of 'decadent' works? How strange! But then, life is stranger than fiction, non?