The Rape of Europa (20 page)

When people were detained, their possessions were confiscated, and if
they were so fortunate as to escape, belongings left in storage were taken as well. Works of art from this source were collected by Mühlmann’s agency and sold. A decree of August 30, 1940, also permitted them to open containers awaiting shipment abroad and remove desirable items. Museums and dealers were visited and ordered to list any private collections being held for absentee owners. Just so nothing would be missed, Seyss-Inquart authorized the removal of objects from houses abandoned during the invasion.

It was soon clear that Mühlmann’s office would need more personnel. Help was provided in the person of Edouard Plietzsch, an expert on Dutch art from Berlin, who, as was true of so many in the Nazi art organizations, never was a Party member. He had written Posse soon after the invasion of Holland to ask for a job there, and had accepted only after being promised that he could remain a civilian, take a 15 percent commission on the paintings he handled on top of his regular salary, and be given travel expenses. On September 7, 1940, Plietzsch arrived in The Hague, where he shared offices with the local Gestapo representatives. By the twelfth he had provided an analysis of the major collections in Holland which might be open to offers to buy or to confiscation. This was forwarded to Bormann and Hitler. In a later report to Seyss-Inquart, Plietzsch pompously boasted of his discovery of the hiding place of “the Jewish Berlin collection of Dr. Jaffé in the Museum at Leiden, through confidential information from private quarters in Germany.” This led to the seizure of the large collection, whose owner had emigrated to England. Six Jaffé works went to Hitler, and nine to his crony Heinrich Hoffmann. In the albums of photographs of available works now sent regularly to the Führer the provenance and recent history of the Jaffé works is clearly stated. Plietzsch was also instrumental in fingering works from the Rathenau, or Berlin-Kappel, collection, which had also left Berlin in the thirties. The distinctly unsavory methods he employed to recoup these works for the Reich are unabashedly revealed in his reports to Seyss-Inquart:

An Aryan co-heir had confidentially informed me that years ago the paintings had illegally been exported from Germany and some had later on, with the knowledge of the Rijksmuseum, been transported to America. Owing to my knowledge of ownership and the secret place of storage of the rest of the paintings, we were able to indemnify ourselves by seizing a series of the Kappel drawings by Menzel and the famous paintings
View of Haarlem
by Jacob Ruysdael and
Canal in Amsterdam
by Jan van der Weyden, and by paying in installments a very small amount to the Aryan joint-owner.
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Another Rathenau painting, Rembrandt’s
Self-Portrait
of 1669, was removed from the custody of the Rijksmuseum.

Plietzsch did have his own brand of propriety about such things as long as those involved were not Jewish. In the fall of 1940 Frits Lugt’s secretary, who was supposed to be taking care of the items the collector had left in Holland, reported that Lugt had ordered him to divide the collection up and hide it with friends. This the Nazis regarded as an illegal act. The Enemy Property Office confiscated the lot, and twenty-four paintings were sent off to Munich along with the Jaffé works. When, however, it was revealed that the secretary had fabricated the whole story in order to get a job with the Nazis, Plietzsch indignantly ordered the release of the rest of the collection and had the man jailed.

The Dutch art trade had traditionally had a solid relationship with Germany. The combined effects of the Depression and the advent of Nazism, which restricted the export of reichsmarks, had severely reduced its volume until 1936, when devaluation of the Dutch guilder led to a slight improvement. The outbreak of war again closed down the flow of German clients. Now the incorporation of Holland into the Reich economy reopened the trade. But this time there was nothing traditional about it. German government officials suddenly had access to millions of guilders in occupation money, forcibly siphoned off from the Dutch economy. All exchange restrictions were lifted on the reichsmark so that buying in Holland did not consume precious foreign currency. One study estimates that by June 1941 some RM 4.5 million a day were coming into Dutch banks.

Germany and its occupied lands became a giant pressure cooker of a self-contained market with little outlet for investment. No one, German or otherwise, could move money outside the Axis-controlled countries. No one could travel or buy nonexistent consumer goods. Art soon became a major factor in the economy as everyone with cash, from black marketeers to Hitler, sought safe assets. As the trade heated up, prices rose and family attics were scoured for the Dutch Old Masters and Romantic genre scenes beloved by the conquerors. German and Austrian dealers and auctioneers’ agents from the houses of Weinmuller, Lange, and the Dorotheum, trying to meet the rising demand at home, poured into Holland. Newspapers were full of ads offering and seeking works of art. New dealerships sprang up left and right—so much so that the Dutch Nazi Chamber of Culture was forced to impose export limitations and issue restrictive rules in an effort to regulate auctions of “kitsch,” and forbid the selling and display of “art” in such emporia as cleaners and tobacco shops.
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By 1941 this new commerce, which at first was allowed to flourish unmolested, had also come under the regulations of the Nuremberg laws and Jewish firms began to be Aryanized. A special agency oversaw the transfer of ownership to Aryan “trustees,” after which the Jews, if they were still there, could run the business but were paid a salary limited by law to DFl 250 a month. The trustee could liquidate or sell the firm if he pleased. The experience of the old Amsterdam house of Jacob Stodel, which dealt principally in the decorative arts, was typical. The Stodels had cut off trade with Germany in 1933, but for more than a year after the invasion they were deluged with German customers (including the ever-busy director of the Museum of Breslau) seeking seventeenth-century armoires, Delft porcelains, and minor paintings. Prices rose nicely with the increasing demand. In October 1941, with no warning, the shop was raided and sealed by a squad of police and civilians. The German museum directors were allowed back in to collect their purchases; apparently equally surprised by the raid, they smuggled a few extra objects out and delivered them to the Stodel brothers.

The business stayed closed until December, when the owners were summoned to meet their new “trustee,” a Herr Kalb. Sales at the newly reopened gallery increased so phenomenally during the winter that Herr Kalb decided he would like to own the business outright. The official assessment was reduced by two-thirds and Kalb agreed to pay the Stodels this sum over twenty-five years, as long as they kept their assets in an “approved” bank. No payment was ever made. In June 1942, when all Jews were required to wear a yellow star, Kalb, declaring that having personnel so adorned was bad for business, fired them all. The Stodels managed to get to Brussels, where they survived the war.
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The high-level Nazi art purveyors were deeply involved in this buying frenzy and made full use of their prewar connections. Hans Posse could hardly wait to get there, and wrote Bormann on June 10, 1940, that although he had feared that much had been taken to America before Holland had been overrun, a great number of very high-quality works were left. Three days later Posse was authorized by Hitler to go to Holland.
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But Goering and his minions had the same information, and got there first.

No collection was more vulnerable than that abandoned by Jacques Goudstikker. At the sudden flight of their master and the death of his appointed trustee, two of the firm’s employees had taken its operation upon themselves and, in the days immediately following the Dutch surrender, inveigled both Goudstikker’s mother and the banks holding the firm’s assets into appointing them as trustees.

This extraordinarily efficient wheeling and dealing while war still raged
only a few miles away seems remarkable to us now, but the vultures had immediately begun to circle here, just as they had in Austria, and the new “owners” of Goudstikker were soon approached. Two directors of the German industrial giant Persil had shown interest.
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Others followed. The thought that the Nazis might otherwise confiscate the inventory of this Jewish firm without compensation was brought forth with varying degrees of subtlety by some of the prospective buyers. A quick sale, therefore, seemed prudent.

One of those interested was Alois Miedl, a German businessman and banker long resident in Holland and married to a Jew. Miedl’s rather speculative and shady business dealings included an attempt to buy up the coast of Labrador to supply wood to Germany, a project rejected by Canada, and reputed diamond smuggling. He had several times been associated with Goering, knew the Reichsmarschall’s sister, and had visited Carinhall. Goering had recommended him to Seyss-Inquart and Mühlmann as one familiar with the Dutch market. Mühlmann found that Miedl had gone rather beyond mere familiarity, and had “as a good businessman taken advantage of the panic which had taken place at the invasion” by suggesting to certain Jewish dealers that they sell to him before the Nazis confiscated their stock.
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Miedl had accompanied Goering’s agent Hofer on his May trip to Holland, and shown him several available collections. This had been most successful. From the non-Jewish German banker Franz Koenigs, also a resident of the Netherlands, who was in financial difficulties, Miedl bought, on Hofer’s advice and with the promise that he would offer Goering first refusal—and of course Hofer a kickback on any resale—nineteen paintings, of which no less than nine were by Rubens. Miedl, involved in buying out the Lisser-Rosencrantz Bank (Koenigs’s principal creditor), had undoubtedly made the art sale part of the deal.
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This purchase was also a clever preemptive move on Hofer’s part, as Posse arrived only days later, ready to buy for Hitler, and had to concede these works to Goering.

Continuing the tour, Miedl introduced Hofer to another German businessman with a Jewish wife, his close friend Hans Tietje, who duly sold him a nice Cranach
Madonna and Child.
Fritz Gutmann, a German Jew desperate to leave Holland, who had sent most of his collection to Paris, offered Miedl three sixteenth-century silver cups. From Daniel Wolff, whose brother had unfortunately helped finance the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, three more nice Dutch pictures were bought.
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Stimulated by these eminently salable acquisitions, Miedl now wanted to begin dealing in a major way. Acquisition of the Goudstikker firm would put him in the first rank of European dealers.

The new “owners” had set the price for the firm and the rest of Goudstikker’s
assets at DFl 2.5 million, a full million more than its appraised value. Rumors that Goudstikker was heavily in debt made this high price seem reasonable and Miedl made an offer. At this point all becomes murky. It is not clear to this day if Miedl was acting in collusion with Hofer, the Goudstikker owners, neither, or both; but it is a matter of record that the contract of sale was signed by Hofer, and that Miedl paid DFl 550,000 and got the real estate: Castle Nyenrode and the Villa Oostermeer, another Goudstikker property on the Amstel River (contents included), the Amsterdam gallery, and the firm’s name. Goering, who contributed DFl 2 million, got some six hundred paintings, among them the nine Rubenses and the Cranach purchased by Miedl on his shopping trip with Hofer and the four little angels which Goudstikker had so recently lent to the Memling show.

It was no bargain for the Reichsmarschall, though he considered it one. At Nuremberg he would testify that he had believed the business to be worth DFl 5 million, which is the amount Miedl had at first tried to get out of Goering’s staff. After the (in fact) not so enormous debts were paid off, and the “owners” had been given large bonuses and assurances of continued employment, a considerable amount was invested in high-grade securities, chosen with the help of banker Koenigs, in the name of Desi Goudstikker. Miedl managed to protect this fund from the agencies confiscating Jewish assets throughout the war; he also supported and protected Goudstikker’s mother. This altruism was somewhat offset by Miedl’s precautionary measure of putting Villa Oostermeer in the names of his own children, which would seem to indicate that he did not expect Desi Goudstikker to return anytime soon. After Goering had sorted out the mass of paintings, Miedl bought back the residue. In the next four years he would sell some DFl 6 million worth of art to his countrymen from his new emporium.

Hofer bought hundreds more pictures in Holland and Belgium. Over and over again an exit visa or some special form of payment or protection was part of the deal. A Freiherr von Palm sold a Lochner
Nativity
for cash plus special forest land in Württemberg. Frau von Pannwitz, an Argentine national and member of the German jet set in Holland, who had previously entertained Goering at her house and sold him several drawings right off the wall, wanted a visa for Switzerland. Goering obligingly bought her Rembrandt,
Portrait of an Old Man Wearing a Turban
, and four other pictures which he had noticed at the dinner party, for DFl 390,000, gave her the visa, and put her house off limits to troops. The rest of her collection stayed in storage at the Rijksmuseum—which was fine with Goering, who fully intended to take it over if Argentina declared war on Germany.
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