A recapitulation of Jeu de Paume articles (2011-2020)

by Marc Masurovsky

The “plundered art” blog has given extensive coverage to different aspects of the so-called ERR database, or “Jeu de Paume” database, since its release to the public in October 2010. The database is still available for anyone to consult and conduct searches on looted objects, their owners and their displacement during and after WWII. The main reason for this is selfish: I designed this database and managed it for close to 15 years. It is the ideal case study with which to understand the inner workings of what we refer to as “cultural plunder.” Not the kind that is random and unorganized, but the kind that is premeditated, scientifically executed, methodically prepared and carried out in the context of a genocidal undertaking.

The second half of October 2024 will be devoted to a series of articles that drill deep inside the inner workings of the Jeu de Paume from its reconversion in the fall of 1940 as a processing center for confiscated Jewish cultural property to its closure in early August 1944, two weeks before the Paris insurrection led by French resistance elements on August 19, 1944. Hopefully, it will give me an opportunity to ask (or re-ask) some uncomfortable questions which require at some point answers from scholars and researchers.

At the end of this exercise, I hope that you, the reader, will realize that the people responsible for the management of the Jeu de Paume and the processing of tens of thousands of looted objects through its galleries and storage areas were rather ordinary, many of them well-educated, and if you met them today, you would not suspect in the least that they participated in a massive four-year long criminal enterprise. They are just like you and me, they do their job and go home. They may even enjoy what they do. Like well-trained museum employees, art historians and experts, cataloguers, craters, appraisers, they apply themselves to their tasks with the professionalism that is expected of them, despite the fact that their superiors were ideological architects of the plunder whose fruits they handled on a daily basis.

Here are the highlights of the 2011-2020 "plundered art" coverage of the Jeu de Paume's activities and operations between 1940-1944:

-the building of the ERR database, its inner workings and the process of building the ERR database

-case studies of collections like those of Georges Bernheim, Diane Esmond (mistakenly tagged by the ERR as her father’s, Edouard Esmond) and a follow-up look at the collection’s fate, Raoul Meyer, Alexandra Pregel also known as Avxente or Auxente, Robert Schuhmann, Jacques Seligmann and Co., Hugo Simon, Frederic Unger, Georges Voronoff,

-certain classifications of objects dictated by the ERR’s experts like MA-B (or Möbel-Aktion Bilder), UNB (Unbekannt)

-particular artists and their creations whose stories were compelling or raised larger questions about Nazi cultural policy:

Jean-Baptiste Corot’s “Mrs. Stumpf”, a dessus-de-porte by Marie Laurencin, a bronze casting by Aristide Maillol, Gabriel Metsu, Caspar Netscher’s “Lady with a Parrot”, Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro’s “View of the Pont-Neuf from the Seine” , a self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh, Edouard Vuillard, Philip Wouwermans, “Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berri » 

the Nazi fascination with Netsuke objects, Valencia ceramics, MA-B 702, Schloss 91, a painting by Bartholomeus van der Helst and the various attempts to recover it. and a 13th dynasty Egyptian antiquity.

-certain depots managed by the ERR in various parts of occupied Europe to store and dispose of looted cultural objects like the Nikolsburg depot in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and the fate of its contents in 1945.

-the treatment of ideological issues through art like the “Jewish question”, race, “Degenerate Art” and its hypothetical destruction.

Future installments on the Jeu de Paume will focus on the photographing of confiscated works and objects, the implementation of Nazi cultural policy on the treatment of confiscated works and objects, the esthetic preferences of Jewish collectors and dealers whose collections were processed through the Jeu de Paume, and a reconstruction of the actual chronology of the confiscations of Jewish collections in the Paris region.

A work of art is not a work of art

SEL531
Source: ERR Project via Bundesarchiv

On 30 May 1947, the French “Commission de récupération artistique” (CRA) handed over 29 works and objects of art to the “Office des Biens et Intérêts Privés” (OBIP) because it ruled that they could not be considered as being part of the “Patrimoine National.” The CRA’s decision was founded on a definition of what constitutes a “work of art” determined at a 2 November 1945 session of the CRA. In other words, the CRA came up with its own definition of what a “work of art” is …. or is not.

The “Patrimoine National” is literally the “national heritage,” a fluid concept applied to any item that is deemed to be incorporated into the heritage of a nation. Although this is not the time to engage in a full-scaled discussion of what is worthy of being considered as part of the national heritage, suffice it to say that the definition is highly malleable and subject to the fleeting whims of governments. However, once an object enters the “patrimoine national,” it is unlikely that it leaves it…ever. If the item turns out to have been looted during a military conflict or, worse, an act of genocide, regardless, restitution is nigh impossible because the “patrimoine national” trumps the rights of individuals if they seek restitution of items that have become part of the heritage of a nation.

None of the items could be officially linked to a particular owner as they were labeled by the Germans as MA-B (Möbel-Aktion Bilder) or Unb (Unbekannt)… except for one.

Slight oversight on the part of the French government or just plain sloppiness?

The item in question was labeled “KS 538 – 6432.” It was described as a cartel signed by the French painter Prud’hon and entitled “Femme au bain.”

KS 538-6432
Source: MCCP Database via Bundesarchiv

The number 6432 refers to a number assigned by US authorities at the Munich Central Collecting Point (MCCP). The MCCP card for item 6432 identified the painting by Prud’hon as a “bathing nymph”. There was another number assigned to the painting: SEL 531. 

SEL 531
Source: ERR Project via NARA

SEL is an acronym assigned by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) in Paris for any item looted from the Seligmann family. Therefore, the allegedly ownerless Prud’hon painting belonged to Seligmann whose antiques business at the Place Vendôme in Paris was thoroughly looted beginning in early July 1940.  The painting was restituted to the Jacques Seligmann Company on 15 January 1948 and its legal representative, René Fulda.

Let’s go back to the initial sentence which indicates that the CRA did not consider the painting to be part of the “Patrimoine National.” What would have happened if the CRA had ruled the Seligmann painting as belonging to the “Patrimoine national”? It would have been incorporated into a French museum collection. What about the rights of the Seligmann family to recover this work of art even if the CRA considered it to be part of the “Patrimoine National”? One has to wonder if the CRA even bothered to notify families whose works were deemed to be worthy of inclusion in the “Patrimoine National”?

More importantly, how does a French government agency decide whether or not a work of art is a work of art?

ERR database—UNB section [unbekannt/unknown owners]

It's unclear when the Germans--SS and ERR staff combined--at the Jeu de Paume adopted this nomenclature of unbekannt or UNB for works and objects whose owners were unknown. And yet, that category begins almost as quickly as thousands of objects of art, tchatchkas, furniture, paintings, drawings, libraries, stream into the rooms of the Louvre and the Jeu de Paume set aside to welcome them for sorting and redistribution somewhere...

At first blush, it makes sense.  If you don't know from whom you are stealing an object and don't really care who the owner is as long as he or she is a Jew, just give it that nomenclature of being unknown.  UNB has a certain edge to it, a Nazi edge, the edge of a Nazi thief plunderer who remains completely indifferent to the plight of his/her victim, in this case his/her Jewish victim.  SS Colonel von Behr is the nominal head of the ERR in Paris. An unpleasant fellow, former director of the German Red Cross--try that on for size, German Red Cross and SS uniforms all folded into one cozy suprematist image.  Mr. von Behr is very aggressive about his anti-Jewish mission in occupied France and quickly teams up with a local band of thugs, former police officers and inspectors as well as hardened crooks and criminals, the infamous Paris Gestapo or the Bonny-Lafont gang, or what will become sadly known as the 'bathtub gang' because of its members' proclivities towards torturing to death their mostly Jewish victims in bathtubs filled with ice cold water inside plush apartments nestled in the better neighborhoods of Paris.

From late 1940 to the end of 1941, von Behr is hard at work ordering the ransacking of Jewish-owned apartments and shaking down wealthy Jews across Paris.  The fruit of his thirst for material goods that don't belong to him ends up fitting into close to 60 crates sitting in the Louvre.  They are all marked UNB or unbekannt or unknown owners.  And so begins the story of the UNB objects.

From von Behr's roguish and uncontrolled antics as an anti-Jewish plunderer, the ERR settles in and rationalizes its illegal acquisitions of Jewish cultural assets.  Many paintings and works on paper that are seized fit into the broad category of 'modern'---in Nazi-speak, that becomes 'degenerate'.  Those hundreds of 'modern' items are placed in separate rooms awaiting an uncertain fate.  Quickly, ERR staffers forget how these items even entered the Jeu de Paume and when they return to them more than a year after their confiscation, the institutional memory of how and from whom is lost, hence they become UNB.  But, because many of these works belonged to high-flying collectors and dealers in and around Paris, they bear labels and other identifying markings on their backs.  So, from UNB, they can actually be assigned to a particular owner.  But, bureaucracy being what it is, the ERR staff will end up inventorying these items as UNB, noting however that they could be matched up with specific owners like Paul Rosenberg, Levy-Hermanos, Weil-Picard, etc...

My particular concern today was the numbering sequence.  If you follow the numbers, there should be 4059 items labeled and inventoried as UNB.  And yet, there are not more than 440 for which a description has survived.  What about the other 3500 or so? We continue to investigate what they were and where they went.

Last but not least, most of the UNB items were seized before or during the Mobel-Aktion (M-Aktion) which began in spring of 1942 and ended two years later, leaving behind desolation and empty, wrecked dwellings across occupied France.

Therefore, UNB owes its existence to the violence of the ERR's methods in occupied France against those whose identities did not matter when they entered their dwellings to steal their property.