Walther Bernt, authenticator of looted paintings

"Merry company making music," by Jost van Geel

by Claudia Hofstee

Many art historians who were caught up in the horrors of the Second World War and the Holocaust threw their lot with the Nazis only to turn their coats and cooperate with the victorious Allies after 1945, providing them with the same skills and expertise that they had to their Nazi overseers. One of them was Walther Bernt who was active in Czechoslovakia and Germany.

On 30 January, 1976, the German art historian Walther Bernt (1900-1980) produced a certificate of authenticity for a painting by Joost van Geel, Merry company making Music, which the Cologne-based Lempertz auction house is scheduled to sell on 19 November 2022 (lot no. 1569). This painting was stolen from the collection of the late Adolphe Schloss and has not been restituted to his heirs. Bernt was familiar with the Schloss Collection­–one of the best-known collections of Old Masters in Western Europe at the time. His failure to report the existence of this unrestituted painting to the French authorities illustrates his complicity in the post-1945 dispersal of Nazi looted art. He became the “go-to guy” for these certificates and because of his reputation in the art world, nobody questioned the provenance of the works he authenticated. Who was Walther Bernt?

Walther Bernt is famous for authoring a four-volume monograph entitled “17th century Dutch painters” (Niederländischen Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts (1948-1962)”. He and his wife Ellen (1913-2002) became international experts on 17th century Dutch and Flemish painters. However, a dark shadow hangs over Bernt’s legacy. Born in Krumau (Český Krumlov, Czechoslovakia), he became an art consultant and dealer in the 1930s and from at least 1937 he worked as an editor of auction catalogs. He advised the prominent Jewish industrialist Frank Petschek of Aussig for whom he acquired a number of works of art. After the German takeover of Czechoslovakia and the imposition of a Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Bernt served as an appraiser for the Gestapo in Prague for art collections confiscated from Czech Jews before they were sent to death camps. Bernt also offered his services to Hans Posse (1879-1942) in October 1940 as he was building up a massive art collection to be housed in Hitler's Führermuseum.

Not long after, Bernt turned up as a cataloguer for the Nazi art dealer Hans W. Lange (1904-1945) at Alois Miedl's (1903-1970) Berlin auction on 3-4 December 1940 which was selling works of art seized from the Dutch art dealer Jacques Goudstikker (1897-1940). Bernt continued to advise private collectors like Hans-Werner Habig (1921-1954) from Oelde for whom he bought a painting by Joost de Momper, Stretch landscape with corn crop. [the painting now hangs at the Museum Abtei Liesborn des Kreises Warendorf (Germany) and is listed on the German Lost Art Database. The painting was previously in a private collection in Aussig in 1938.] 

After the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany in May 1945, Bernt collaborated with Allied officials by identifying looted works of art recovered by Allied forces. Although he did not disclose his wartime involvement in looting activities, postwar documents suggest that the Allied forces had an inkling of Bernt’s work with the Gestapo in Prague. The Bernt family lived in Munich where he produced numerous certificates of authenticity for art dealers and auction houses until his death in 1980, after which his widow Ellen continued his work. As looted art flooded the postwar art market, many experts and dealers issued certificates to manufacture or hide provenance information, such as removing labels from the backs of paintings. The certificate conveyed a certain sense of legality and value to the works. Anyone looking closely at the certificates provided by Walther Bernt can see that oftentimes they do not mention any provenance and mask the dubious origin of the works.

Führerbau, Munich, site of theft of van Geel painting, 1945

During WWII, the Nazis valued art historians and used their services to legitimize their art seizures and appraise them. André Schoeller (1879-1955) is a good example of this; he was an art dealer and appraiser for Hôtel Drouot, he appraised confiscated paintings for the ERR in Paris and sold pictures to several German museums and worked closely with Nazi dealers (e.g., Hildebrand Gurlitt, 1895-1956). Besides the connoisseurship, art historians’ knowledge of collectors and their collections made it possible for Nazis to acquire many artworks. Some of the better-known art historians who were involved with the Nazis during the war were Max. J. Friendländer (1867-1958), Vitale Bloch (1900-1975) and Eduard Plietzsch (1886-1961). Like Bernt, many of these art historians hardly suffered any consequences for their wartime collaboration with Nazi officials.

More research is required about Bernt and his post-war activities and his network. Evidence can in all probability be found at the “Walther and Ellen Bernt collection”, which contains (exhibition) catalogs, card catalogs, and photographs of works of art (published and unpublished). Who knows what else we will find?

A note about the author

Claudia Hofstee MA, studied art history and graduated from Utrecht University in 2018. Specialized in 16th- and 17th century Dutch and Flemish paintings. Worked as a provenance researcher for the JDCRP: The Pilot Project-The Fate of the Adolphe Schloss Collection. Working currently as an independent provenance researcher for the Mauritshuis in The Hague and is working on a collection catalogue for a private collection.

Hans Posse

Alois Miedl

Printed and Digital Sources:

www.fold3.com: RG 260 M1946 roll 10, NARA; RG 260 M1946 roll 121, NARA; RG 260 M149 roll 5, NARA; RG 260 M1946 roll 49, NARA; RG 260 M1947 roll 49, NARA; RG 260 M1946 roll 135.

Bernt, Walther. Die Niederländischen Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts, 3 vol. Munich, 1948-1962.

Flick, Caroline. Verwertungskampagne. Beobachtungen zur niederländischen Kunsthandlung Goudstikker-Miedl, Verwertungskampagne (March 2022).
https://carolineflick.de/publikationen/verwertungskampagne.pdf

Führmeister, Christian and Hopp, Meike. Rethinking Provenance Research, Getty Research Journal, vol. 11, issue 1 (2019), pp. 213-231.

Oosterlinck, Kim. Gustave Cramer, Max. J. Friedländer, and the value of Expertise in the Arts, Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics, Vol. 3 Nr. 1 (2022), pp. 19-56.

https://www.archivportal-d.de/item/ZO3W5LFDX74LDMHJIQONJI2ARWNP5ZYZ?isThumbnailFiltered=false&rows=20&offset=0&viewType=list&hitNumber=8

https://www.archivportal-d.de/item/JH4TDJ2XWWLXFJ5VB6NIJISZWAJQRTSV?isThumbnailFiltered=false&rows=20&offset=0&viewType=list&hitNumber=3

https://editionhansposse.gnm.de/wisski/navigate/9165/view

Commission for Looted Art in Europe (CLAE), London, UK

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project (JDCRP) Foundation, Berlin, Germany

Digital art market and art history sources

Auction.fr
Bonham's, London, UK
Christie's, Inc.

Dorotheum, Vienna, Austria
Invaluable, Inc.
Koller Auction House, Zurich, Switzerland

Lempertz, Köln, Germany
Neumeister, Munich, Germany

Open Art Data
RKD, Den Haag, Nederland

Historians vs. lawyers

by Marc Masurovsky

The past two decades have witnessed hundreds of restitution cases whose purpose is to reclaim the return of objects looted during the Nazi era. Although the claimants are located around the world, the legal actions are concentrated in so-called market nations, namely in North America, Europe and occasionally in Japan.

These cases set out to fix, to repair historical wrongs. Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat came up with what turned out to be an enduring catch phrase to describe such actions: “just and fair solutions”. It’s anyone’s guess, frankly, what constitutes “fair” and “just” solutions. They vary greatly whether you are the current possessor or the victim’s heir/heiress.

Still, the wrongs being repaired took place during a historical act of genocide that spanned the greater part of 12 years, from 1933 to 1945. It was aimed principally at the citizens of European countries of Jewish descent. Thus, art restitution is an act of justice seeking to repair a historical wrong.

To establish the facts and circumstances surrounding the “historical wrong”, lawyers—who are not trained historians—rely on those who have made it their career to examine the historical past, understand its many sinews and meanders and interpret it for a larger public. Hence, lawyers need historians to compile evidence and build a persuasive case to convince a current possessor of the looted object either through mediation or before a judicial authority that the looted object should be returned to his/her client.

If lawyers need historians, historians do not need lawyers.

And yet…

The variegated ways by which art objects were forcibly removed from the ownership and control of their rightful Jewish owners can give us pause. Here are some, not all by any means:

-forced sales
-duress sales
-confiscations
-seizures
-sales while fleeing the site of persecution (flight sales or fluchtgut).

These complex “transactions” were deemed illicit by Allied powers fighting the Axis (Germany, Italy, and Japan) in a series of declarations during and after WWII making it clear that those responsible for aiding, abetting and/or provoking such illicit acts of forcible removal would be held accountable after the Allied victory over the Axis.

These illicit acts, in the eyes of those who study them—the historians—need to be clearly defined and all of their possible variations fully delineated and outlined so that their many permutations can be factored into legal proceedings.

By some perverse twist, American lawyers have increasingly opposed historians’ efforts to come up with clear definitions and delineations of these historical wrongs because any definition might impair their ability to successfully prosecute a claim against a current possessor.

The world is a strange place especially when, in order to repair a historical wrong tied to an act of genocide, a historian is asked to be silent on the exact details of these illicit acts.

Let’s be very clear here: historians need to do their jobs which is to apprehend the complexities of the past and explain them to the public in order to promote greater knowledge and enlightenment about what human beings do to other human beings so that, hopefully, we might not repeat such heinous acts in the future. Nice thought, I know.

Likewise, lawyers must do their job and protect their clients’ interests. For that, they need historians and other specialists to help them harness the facts of a case.

One thing they cannot do is order historians to censor themselves, just like historians do not ask lawyers to censor themselves.

Therefore, historians and researchers steeped in the tangled webs of persecution and exploitation of Jewish members of national communities between 1933 and 1945 will continue to study, examine, share in public and in private their findings and publish them where appropriate so that the many can have access to such knowledge.

Lawyers are intelligent people; they will surely find a way to adapt to such a state of affairs. After all, they cannot control the dissemination of knowledge anymore than governments can. And should not, under any circumstance.

Facts, ma’am, just the facts.

Some of the main Allied declarations:

"Inter-Allied Declaration on Axis Acts of Dispossession" (London Declaration) of 5 January 1943
Bretton Woods Resolution VI of 20 July 1944