The Rape of Europa

Acclaim for
LYNN H. NICHOLAS’S
THE RAPE OF EUROPA

“An astounding book … rich and detailed … sure to become the standard work.”

—Christopher Hitchens,
Washington Post Book World

“[Told] with a mastery based on very extensive reading and research. Nicholas brings to her task historical perspective, a remarkable command of the economics of the art business and a feel for the appropriate and telling anecdote. This is a book with heroes and villains and a strong narrative line.”

—
The New York Review of Books

“A little known saga that, thanks to Nicholas, is now restored to our collective memories.”

—
Chicago Tribune

“Absorbing. … A superbly researched study.”

—
Wall Street Journal

“[An] engrossing, carefully researched account [that is] never less than interesting and fresh in numerous details.”

—
Boston Globe

“Extraordinary and harrowing … make[s] your hair stand on end. Surely the most comprehensive and thorough account to date Excellent.”

—
Washington Times

“Her attention to detail is simply astounding, and she clarifies legends and myths. Nicholas’s book is must reading for people with a passionate, academic or professional interest in the subject.”

—
Newsday

“Edifying and fascinating … easily the most compelling work of the year’s releases on art.”

—
Philadelphia Inquirer

LYNN H. NICHOLAS
THE RAPE OF EUROPA

Lynn H. Nicholas was born in New London, Connecticut. She was educated in the United States, England, and Spain, and received her B.A. from Oxford University. After her return to the United States she worked for several years at the National Gallery of Art. While living in Belgium in the early 1980s, she began research for this book, her first. Ms. Nicholas and her husband live in Washington, D.C.

FOR ROBIN
AND IN MEMORY OF MY GRANDMOTHER, MISS BECKY,
WHO TAUGHT ME TO READ

CONTENTS

            
Acknowledgments

      I.   
Prologue: They Had Four Years: Germany Before the War: The Nazi Art Purges

    II.   
Period of Adjustment: The Nazi Collectors Organize; Austria Provides, Europe Hides

   III.   
Eastern Orientations: Poland, 1939–1945

   IV.   
Lives and Property: Invasion of the West; The Nazi Art Machine in Holland

    V.   
Lenity and Cruelty: Occupied France: Protection and Confiscation

   VI.   
Business and Pleasure: France: The Art Market Flourishes; Nazi Kultur Withers

 VII.   
Plus ça change:
The Invasion of the Soviet Union

VIII.   
Inch by Inch: The Launching of the Allied Protection Effort

 IX.   
The Red-Hot Rake: Italy, 1943–1945

  X.   
Touch and Go: The Allies Take Over: Northern Europe, 1944–1945

 XI.   
Ashes and Darkness: Treasure Hunts in the Ruined Reich, 1945

 XII.  
Mixed Motives: The Temptation of Germany’s Homeless Collections

XIII.  
The Art of the Possible: Fifty Years of Restitution and Recovery

         
Notes

         
Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writing this book has been a long and exciting voyage of discovery for me. The propaganda, fear, and fervor of World War II were an important part of my childhood. In 1948 my family and I went to Germany and saw the shambles of her cities; in Holland I heard tales of resistance and escape. Much later the fate of works of art in this ambience became of interest to me. This book is the result of my desire to understand what happened to both people and their possessions at that time.

I have been amazed at the generosity of everyone with whom I have come in contact in the course of my research. Many of those I interviewed opened not only their archives but their hearts to me. All those concerned with the recovery of Europe’s patrimony are rightly proud of their achievement and their memories are vivid. My greatest regret is that I could not include every single story in this book; for each one told there are many more. I have also had to limit the number of countries covered. Events similar to those I have described took place in every nation overrun by the Nazis; each account could fill a book, all the more so given the recent opening of the archives of Eastern Europe.

My very first thanks must go to the Brussels friends who encouraged me to start this project: Julia and Christopher Tugendhat, Carole Drosin, Penny Custer, and Michele Bo Bramsen.

In Washington I have worked principally at the National Archives and the National Gallery of Art. Former director J. Carter Brown at the Gallery was enthusiastic from the beginning and generously allowed me access to the wartime correspondence of his father, John Nicholas Brown. John Wilmerding gave me precious work space. Maygene Daniels guided me through the newly organized archives and Lisi Ferber shared her amazing fund of knowledge. Most wonderful were the entire staff of the library—and especially Neal Turtell, Caroline Backlund, Ariadne DuBasky, Ted Dalziel, Lamia Doumato, and Thomas McGill (who can find any book in the world). Ruth Philbrick, Jerry Mallick, and Wendy Cole of Photo Archives supplied pictures and companionship. I was particularly fortunate to be able to work with Craig Smyth, Kress Professor at the National Gallery, 1987–1988, on his own book on the Munich Collecting Point. Among many others who assisted were Bob Bowen, Kathy and Ira Bartfield, and Anna Rachwald.

The National Archives with its remarkable holdings of both German and Allied documents was no less important, and there I must above all thank Jill Brett, former director of Public Affairs, for her tremendous help, which included introductions to John Taylor, Dane Hartgrove, and Michael Kurtz. I wish I could mention every person in the various research rooms. Never have I met a more helpful group of people.

In other areas I would like to thank Constance Lowenthal of IFAR, who persuaded me I could give a lecture, Irene Bizot of the Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Isabelle Vernus of the Archives Nationales in Paris, Ely Maurer of the State Department, Cynthia Walsh at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, and the staff of the Archives of American Art in Washington. Cay Friemuth, of Gütersloh, Germany; Dr. Klaus Goldmann of the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte, Berlin; Agnieska Morawinska and Professor Wojiech Kowalski of Warsaw; Patricia Dane Rogers; and the late Christopher Wright (through Marcia Carter) all supplied valuable documentation. Others who helped in many ways include Roger Mandle, Mrs. Robert Seamans, David Rust, Lynn and Arnold Lipman, John Richardson, Pierre de Séjournet, Thomas Blake, Eliza Rathbone, Stuart Feldman, Doda de Wolf, Hector Feliciano, David Gibson, and most especially my brother Chip Holman, whose library I raided. To all who read and criticized unedited copy, particularly Professor S. Lane Faison of Williams College, my gratitude; and special thanks to Marion Evans, who dealt cheerfully with the stacks of paper.

I am indebted to Alan Williams, Pat Hass, Deborah Shapley, and Robert Barnett, who gave me advice on the writing and publication process, and most particularly to Preston Brown and Stuart Blue, through whom this manuscript so serendipitously found its way (via Ash Green) into the unwaveringly patient and encouraging hands of my editor, Susan Ralston. Also at Knopf I would like to thank Jennifer Bernstein, who actually
can
read my writing; and Peter Andersen, who designed this volume.

Most of all I am grateful to my husband, Robin, and my sons, William, Carter, and Philip, for their love and humor; to my mother, Daisy; and to all the rest of my family and friends who cheered me on.

Washington, D.C.
1993

Advertisement for the Lucerne auction in
Art News,
New York, April 29, 1939

I

PROLOGUE:
THEY HAD FOUR YEARS

Germany Before the War: The Nazi Art Purges

On the afternoon of June 30, 1939, a major art auction took place at the elegant Grand Hotel National in the Swiss resort town of Lucerne. Offered that day were 126 paintings and sculptures by an impressive array of modern masters, including Braque, van Gogh, Picasso, Klee, Matisse, Kokoschka, and thirty-three others. The objects had been exhibited for some weeks before in Zurich and Lucerne and a large international group of buyers had gathered.

Next to the well-known German dealer Walter Feilchenfeldt and his wife, Marianne, who had moved in 1933 to the Amsterdam branch of the Berlin-based Cassirer firm to escape the drastic anti-Jewish laws at home, sat the famous producer of
The Blue Angel
, Josef von Sternberg. A group of Belgian museum officials and collectors led by Dr. Leo van Puyvelde, director of the Brussels Museum of Fine Arts, were in the next row.
¹
Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., in Europe on his wedding trip, was there with his two friends, dealers Pierre Matisse and Curt Valentin.
²
Valentin, formerly of Berlin’s Buchholz Gallery, and only recently established in New York, had persuaded Mr. Pulitzer to attend; armed with commissions from various museums and collectors, he had come prepared to buy.

An auction of this nature was not in itself an unusual thing in 1939. There had been large sales in London and elsewhere that spring. What made this one exceptional was not only the very contemporary nature of the lots but more especially their provenance. For these pictures and sculptures came from Germany’s leading public museums: Munich, Hamburg, Mannheim, Frankfurt, Dresden, Bremen, the Wallraf-Richartz in Cologne, the Folkwang in Essen, and Berlin’s Nationalgalerie. Nor could the lots be considered minor examples of each artist’s work, which might be sold to clear a museum’s storerooms. They included Picasso’s
Absinthe Drinker
, described in the catalogue as “a masterpiece of the painter’s Blue Period”;
van Gogh’s great
Self-Portrait
from Munich, which Alfred Frankfurter would buy for Maurice Wertheim for SFr 175,000, the highest price of the day; and Matisse’s
Bathers with a Turtle.
Indeed, Pierre Matisse, bidding for Pulitzer, considered the
Bathers
one of his father’s masterpieces, and had been prepared to go far higher than the final bid of SFr 9,100.
³

Missing at Lucerne were the joy and excitement usually felt at such a sale. Joseph Pulitzer remembers quite different emotions: “To safeguard this art for posterity, I bought—defiantly! … The real motive in buying was to preserve the art.”
⁴
It was widely felt that the proceeds would be used to finance the Nazi party. The auctioneer had been so worried about this perception that he had sent letters to leading dealers assuring them that all profits would be used for German museums. Daniel Kahnweiler, whose own collection had been confiscated and auctioned by the French government after World War I, was not convinced and did not attend.
⁵
Alfred Barr, director of the Museum of Modern Art, in Paris arranging its upcoming blockbuster Picasso show, did not go either, feeling that the museum should not be linked in any way with such an unpopular sale. He also instructed his staff to state firmly that recent acquisitions from Germany had been bought from the new Buchholz Gallery in New York.
⁶