Lifting the veil

Handwritten note explaining that UNB belonged mostly to Rothschild
Source: Bundesarchiv, B323_1078

by Marc Masurovsky

Since the plundered art blog was first launched in 2011, it has published a number of articles on the objects labeled as “unbekannt” (unknown origin) which were stored and processed at the Jeu de Paume Museum in central Paris. From fall 1940 to August 1944, the Jeu de Paume served as a transit station for tens of thousands of objects of all kinds confiscated and stolen from residences and businesses inhabited and managed by Jewish individuals principally in Paris and its outlying areas. Objects belonging to Jews were subjected to systematic State-sanctioned theft or plunder as of late June 1940, barely two weeks after the Germans defeated France and occupied Paris.

The first phase of thefts targeting Jews and opponents of the Nazis in German-occupied Paris mobilized a plethora of security and police agencies as well as French collaborators in the police, the criminal underworld and the art world as of summer 1940. First it was the German Embassy that took control of the cultural plunder of Jewish collections helped by specialized hybrid units known as Geheime Feld Polizei (GFP) units. Then from late September 1940 to July 1944, Alfred Rosenberg and Hermann Goering sidelined Ambassador Abetz and his boss Joachim von Ribbentrop to take charge of the systematic plunder targeting thousands of residences, businesses, banks, brokerage houses, storerooms, religious establishments, libraries, and other facilities which contained assets of interest to the Nazis.

Three vast rooms were set aside at the Louvre Museum as well as the Jeu de Paume museum in the Tuileries Gardens in central Paris. These facilities served as permanent storerooms where plundered objects could be examined, catalogued, sorted, inventoried, compared, carded, crated, shipped to various parts of the German Reich or sold on the local Parisian art market.

From fall 1940 to winter 1941, Nazi officials associated with the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) oversaw break-ins and seizures on an industrial scale but failed to record the names and addresses of their victims, perhaps because they relied heavily on local thugs in their pay to conduct many of the thefts during this chaotic period. More than 5000 stolen objects were thus not properly recorded, their provenances left murky until today. In February-March 1941, a new team took over the daily functions in the Paris region connected with the plunder of Jewish collections. The post-theft handling of Jewish-owned objects thus became more coherent and rational and gradually resembled a well-organized criminal operation benefiting Nazi officials, German cultural institutions and the international art market. 

UNB 101*_page 1 of inventory
Bundesarchiv, B323_301

The 5000 or so undocumented objects stolen before Spring 1941 received the label of “unknown” or “unbekannt” or “UNB” to denote ignorance of the identity of the objects’ owners. Decades later, attempts are being made to reconnect those unknown objects with their actual owners. A decade-long effort analyzing detailed inventories and crossing them with spotty police and law enforcement records and comparing them with postwar restitution files submitted by the victims of the thefts, has made it possible to cobble together a tentative list of despoiled owners once known as “unknown.” Keep in mind that half of the objects labeled “UNB” were paintings, works on paper and sculptures, while the other half consisted of furniture. On a final note, the working sample from which the raw information was extracted consists of close to 700 individual postwar restitution files, the B323 series at Bundesarchiv, Koblenz, and captured German documents at the National Archives in College Park, MD (USA).

Here it is:

Hans Arnhold
Alexandre Ball
Roger Bernheim
Jules Blum
Marcel Blum
Mme. Robert Braun
Mme. Deutsch de la Meurthe
Raymond Dreyfus
Diane Esmond
Mme. J. Feuchtwanger
Salomon Flavian
Jules Fribourg
Michel Georges-Michel
Maurice Hamburger
Louis Louis-Dreyfus
Emmerich Kalman
Alphonse Kann
Antoinette Léonino
Moïse Levi de Benzion
Auguste-Michel Levy
Veuve Lucien Levy
Tony-Georges Levy
M. Levy-Clarence
Mme. Levy-Hermannos
Charles Mayer
Michel Mayer
Roger Meyer
Erwin Rosenthal
Robert de Rothschild
Walter Strauss
Me. André Weyl
Mme. Jean Zay
Mme. de Zuylen de Nyevelt

*: UNB 101 was brought to the Jeu de Paume on 14 January 1943. It had been picked up on rue Victoire in Paris where it had been stashed with help from a unit of the NSKK and of the Field police unit 913. UNB 101 consisted of more than 700 medals. The date of their "discovery" is unknown but it probably took place in 1941. We don't know who "found" them and where. This collection stands as an imposing group of bronze medals representing historical characters from across Europe with some dating back to the 17th century.

ERR Database

For more details about the above victims of Nazi plunder in German-occupied France during the early phase of the Nazi repression between 1940-1941, please consult the Database of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paume: Cultural Plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg at www.errproject.org.

Instructions on how to find UNB objects at www.errproject.org.

Click on Jeu de Paume database. You can then click either on “Advanced Search” and then browse the various names of owners, or you can click on “Browse” and search for the name of the owner under “Art Owner”. Or you can click on the "UNB" tag after you click on "Advanced Search." This will allow you to get an idea of the types of objects that the ERR’s units removed from the owner’s residences, bank vaults, storage spaces, warehouses, galleries or other facilities harboring their assets.

Primary Sources

Archives

Bundesarchiv Koblenz, B323 series, Koblenz (Germany)

Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères et de l’Europe (AMAE), La Courneuve (France).

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), College Park, MD (USA)

Archives of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), Washington, DC.

Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris (France).


Related blog pieces in plundered art (2011-2025)

ERR Database-UNB section [unbekannt/unknown owners]

A work of art is not a work of art

The Destruction of works of art in wartime Paris, Part One

The Destruction of works of art in wartime Paris, Part Two

A Recapitulation of Jeu de Paume articles (2011-2025)