The race for works looted by the Nazis: an unrecognized war

75 years ago, on May 8, 1945, Nazi Germany capitulated. The fate of enemy nations will be negotiated a few months later at the Potsdam conference. But another, less well-known issue also motivated the Allies: finding the works of art that the Nazis appropriated by looting large Jewish collections and museums across occupied Europe. In this new episode of "At the heart of history", produced by Europe 1 Studio, Jean des Cars returns to this story. 

The Red Army was the first to enter ruined Berlin, followed by Allied Anglo-American and French troops. The world doesn't know it yet, but the race for works of art has just started, as soon as the liberators entered Germany. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the USSR, many leaks from former KGB agents led to surprising discoveries. In 1991, an article, published in a New York art review, reveals that the treasures of the mythical Troy, disappeared since 1945, are, in reality, hidden in anonymous crates, at the bottom of the cellars of the Pushkin Museum, in Moscow. Their labels claimed that it was "school material" ... 

The treasures of Troy had been discovered in Turkey at the end of the 19th century by the German Schliemann. An exceptional collection: fabulous jewelry and gold objects. They then took the direction of Berlin to be exposed. At the start of the Second World War, Hitler had these wonders protected in a bunker, under the station of the Berlin Zoo. We had never found them. They were considered lost in the German debacle and the ruins of Berlin. 

When one learns the truth, confirmed by the Kremlin on August 30, 1993, the emotion is considerable. We also discover that other cases contain 73 impressionist and post-impressionist paintings, all plundered in Paris by the Nazis between 1940 and 1945. They were also considered missing in the bombing. We find, for example, the superb canvas by Degas "Le Vicomte Lepic and his daughters Place de la Concorde", a "Woman combing her hair" by Renoir, "La Maison Blanche" by Van Gogh.

In the fall of the same year 1993, an exhibition was organized in Moscow to present the treasures of Troy while in Saint Petersburg, the State Hermitage Museum presents the 73 paintings, under the somewhat cynical title "Treasures lost and found. " They are now on display in the impressionist museum of the former headquarters, opposite the Hermitage.

The truth is that if the Allies had sent commandos to find the works of art looted by the Nazis, Stalin had preceded them with his own brigades of experts, fully informed of the places where the works were located. Art commandos! A secret, unknown and clandestine war at the end of the world war. But why and how did Hitler put together these fabulous collections?

Hitler's dream: building the most beautiful museum in the world 

The global Nazi project placed culture at the heart of the system. Hitler dreamed of a large museum in Linz, Austria. It would exhibit all of the Aryan masterpieces found in Europe. This grandiose museum would be located in Upper Austria because it was in Linz that he spent his childhood and adolescence. On the other hand, he had received a warm welcome during the Anschluss, that is to say the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, March 12, 1938. He wanted to make the museum the heart art of a Europe dominated by the theses of National Socialism in matters of art. So no "degenerate" art or Jewish artists. 

On June 23, 1940, Hitler arrived in Paris. For a historic photo, he poses on the Trocadéro esplanade, in front of the Eiffel Tower, surrounded by the sculptor Arno Breker and the architect Albert Speer, in charge of the museum project in Linz. Hitler is in conquered territory. He set up a very effective organization to plunder the artistic treasures of the occupied territories, including France of course. This is the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg or "ERR". Its mission: to locate and confiscate collections belonging to Jews. Then the Reichsleiter Rosenberg, the person in charge, will have the objects which he considers most precious transported to Germany. By an irony of History, the sinister Reichsleiter Rosenberg bears the same name as one of the main art dealers in Paris, whose collection will be robbed. 

The organization's HQ was first installed at the Commodore Hotel on Boulevard Haussmann, then in 1943 at 54 Avenue d'Iéna. Operations began in October 1940. Looting was committed in private homes, furniture repositories, bank safes but also in the depots of national museums where certain Jewish collections had been sheltered. 

Some examples: in July 1941, the removal from the Château de Chambord of the Jacobson, Leven and Roger Lévy collections. On August 11, the 130 pieces from the David Weill collection were seized at the Château de Sourches in Sarthe. On August 17, the Léonce Bernheim, Erlanger, Primo Lévi collections were taken to the Château de Brissac, in the Loire Valley. At first, the confiscated works are stored in the cellars of the German Embassy, ​​rue de Lille and in some rooms of the Louvre requisitioned for this purpose. In November 1940, all these treasures were transferred to a single place, the Jeu de Paume museum, in the Tuileries garden.

In 1939, when general mobilization was declared, the deputy director of the National Museums, Jacques Jaujard, had entrusted Rose Valland to take the necessary measures for the security of the collections. This woman was the remarkable scientific collaborator of the director of the Museums, then absent due to illness. Rose Valland had the Jeu de Paume collections transported to the Château de Chambord, joining the national collections of Parisian museums. Those from the Louvre were transported to other places considered safe ...

From the moment the Jeu de Paume becomes the depot of looted works, Rose Valland will draw up a meticulous inventory of all the depots, on their arrival and departure for Germany. It will prove to be extremely precious during their recovery at the end of the war and their restitution to their owners. Obviously, a large part was transferred to Germany by train. We know that from the moment the Resistance was active, it was able, thanks to the courage of the railroad workers, to sometimes prevent deliveries to Germany ...

In this particularly efficient Hitlerian state organization, the German gallery owner Hildebrand Gurlitt was designated, from 1943, as official buyer for the Grand Museum in Linz. He has considerable credits. He goes to Paris to buy a lot. The art market worked perfectly during the war ... It acquired what pleased the Führer: the French artists Boucher, Fragonard, Watteau, the Venetians Guardi, Tiepolo, Canaletto as well as the Dutch and Flemish masters, with a preference for Rubens. Gurlitt buys for Hitler but also for himself. I'll talk to you later.

The system of systematic plunder put in place in Paris has been in all the other countries occupied by Germany. Although the plans and a model were produced by Albert Speer, the Linz museum never saw the light of day. On the other hand, the works which were intended there gained Germany. Their search was one of the important missions of the Allied armies.

Works of art found, not all returned…

They knew that a large part of the works not kept in Berlin had been sheltered in Bavaria, for example in the cellars of Neuschwanstein, a castle of King Louis II and also in the salt mines of the Salzkammergut, in Austria . The Americans invested caches around Berchtesgaden. But these episodes, gratifying and spectacular, must not hide the fact that a large number of looted works of art have not been found in Germany. 

Several of them had been exported illegally to Switzerland, notably the wonders of the Paul Rosenberg collection: paintings by Matisse and Picasso, among others, had passed through the Fischer gallery in Lucerne. At the start of the war, before taking refuge in the United States, Paul Rosenberg had 18 very beautiful Matisses deposited in a safe at the national bank for trade and industry in Libourne, near Bordeaux. These paintings were confiscated by the Germans in 1941, along with 160 other works. The whole was transferred to the Jeu de Paume. 

In February 1945, Paul Rosenberg was alerted: several treasures from his collection had been sold in Switzerland. The Fischer gallery had sold a Corot, a Degas, a Manet and still held very beautiful drawings. The Fischer gallery has been charged with these operations. It was Marshal Göring himself who had "exchanged" some of the works he held for those in the Rosenberg collection. Among the clients of the Fischer gallery, an art collector from Zurich, Emil Bührle, assures the investigators of his good faith. He had bought there "Odalisque au tambourin" from Matisse. He explains this to Paul Rosenberg: "I am not the only one who bought such paintings at the Galerie Fischer in Lucerne although my purchases are, in terms of volume, the most important ... Since the Galerie Fischer in Lucerne is an important Swiss house, enjoying a good reputation, I had no reason to be wary of these paintings offered for sale. I must add that at the time when I made the purchases of the paintings in question Fischer’s warnings had not yet appeared. "

Nevertheless, Paul Rosenberg will have to wait for a judgment of the Federal Court of Bern on June 3, 1948 to recover legally his "Odalisque au tambourin". This is just an example. But it is indicative of the difficulties for the original owners to recover their property. Switzerland has been a hub for trafficking in works of art. Many Nazi dignitaries, feeling the wind turn, passed by Zurich and Lucerne to negotiate despoiled works.

The results for France are enlightening: 100,000 works were transferred from France to Germany during the Occupation. The meticulous notebooks kept by Rose Valland bear witness to this. Only 60,000 works have been recovered. Among them, 45,000 were returned, between 1945 and 1950, to their owners or assigns. 13,000 were sold by the State, while 2,000 works, stamped MNR (National Museums Recovery) were entrusted to the guard of the National Museums. Regularly, some of these treasures find their legitimate owners and assigns. For France, the restitution of looted works is a constant and obvious process. This is not always the case, especially for Russia.

Russia and the works "lost and found" 

The Russian position is completely different. As Irina Antonova, the former director of the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and loyal to Stalin, said: "We are not politicians. Our mission is to get these works out of the dark and show them." To sum up: everyone believed these lost works. The Soviets found them. They will allow the whole world to rediscover them in their museums. They won the war at the cost of immense sacrifices. It is thanks to them that these works have not been destroyed. 

One thing is certain: none of these "lost and found" works will ever leave Russia. They cannot be loaned for an exhibition abroad. It would be to run the risk of their legitimate beneficiaries having them seized. The Russians apply the principle of taking war. Let us recognize it: it has sometimes allowed, in the past, the largest museums to constitute their collections. The Russians pretend to ignore that the raid carried out systematically by the Nazis in all the countries they occupied has no precedent in European history. 

Stalin's "art commandos" were effective. The collection was not only carried out in Berlin. The same thing happened in Budapest. And in Germany, the works recovered by the Red Army are estimated at 600,000 pieces. It's not just tables. There are also bronze, jewelry, porcelain, furniture and 2 million old books, including a Gutenberg Bible.

The results are enormous, commensurate with the war effort of the USSR. It is the doctrine of the Russians. There are no reasons for it to change. But it was still in Germany that we had the biggest surprises.

The hidden treasures of Cornelius Gurlitt 

On November 3, 2013, the German weekly magazine Focus announced the discovery in February 2012 of some 1,258 works stored in an unsanitary apartment in Schwabing, a district of Munich. The investigators had found, piled up pell-mell, tables, watercolors, drawings, engravings and lithographs of the greatest artists of the 19 and 20th centuries. This modest three-room apartment was occupied by Cornelius Gurlitt son of the well-known German gallery owner, Hildebrand Gurlitt. I already told you about this at the beginning of this story. It was he who had been responsible for buying with considerable funds, on the art market, from gallery owners and in public sales, paintings intended for the famous Linz museum, which never saw the day.

If Hildebrand Gurlitt had bought for the Führer, it would seem that he also bought a lot for himself. His taste led him to German and Austrian expressionists but also to the whole European avant-garde, and particularly French. But not only ... in the bric-a-brac of Schwabing, there are Corot, Courbet, Degas, Delacroix, Renoir, Rodin, Toulouse-Lautrec but also Chagall, Derain, Maillol , Matisse, Picasso and Signac.

Two years later, on February 11, 2014, in Salzburg, Austria where Cornelius Gurlitt has a residence, we discover 239 new works. On May 6, 2014, Cornelius Gurlitt died in an 81-year-old Munich hospital. To everyone's surprise, we discover that the disappeared instituted the universal legatee of his collections one of the oldest museums in Switzerland, the Museum of Fine Arts in Bern. It is somewhat embarrassing! This museum is a foundation under private law. He finally accepted the inheritance on November 23, 2014. However, the usual precautions were taken. A tripartite agreement between the Federal Republic of Germany, the Land of Bavaria and the Swiss museum is signed. This agreement is based on the principles of the 1998 Washington Convention on spoliations and restitutions.

The museum decides to set up an important system prior to the creation of a Research Center on the provenance of the works. It was good the least! This astonishing affair is like a high point in the incredible tribulations, dissimulations, prevarications and negotiations consecutive to the plunder organized by the Nazis between 1940 and 1945. It is not sure that morals will find its account there ...

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"At the heart of history" is a Europe 1 Studio podcast

Author and presentation: Jean des Cars 

Project manager: Adèle Ponticelli

Realization: Guillaume Vasseau

Diffusion and edition: Clémence Olivier

Graphics: Europe 1 Studio