During WW II Gurlitt’s options and profits were almost boundless.
France was the greatest treasure
trove for avaricious dealers such as Gurlitt. While Goering skimmed off a large number of
artworks there were thousands of other pieces of art.
Gurlitt made sure he had good
relations with the men appointed to purchase art for the planned Fuhrer Museum
in Linz, Austria.
Not content with commissions from buying and selling artworks Gurlitt occasionally manipulated payments. He bought some paintings by having the
purchase prices credited “against the ‘occupation credits’ that France had to
pay Germany” as part of the terms of surrender in 1940.
Occasionally there is outright theft.
Gurlitt is so bold as to buy paintings
for Hitler that never reach their destination. Fake invoices and other
fraudulent accounting aid the deception.
The looting process accelerates once
the Allies invade France in 1944. The art dealers are among the first Germans
to understand the war was lost and plan for the future. There were 34 export
licences granted in France during part of 1944 but only 29 are reported in
Germany
Gurlitt manages to get a general
authorization from the Fuhrer Museum to allow him to make up his own
applications for export.
He constantly visits
Switzerland.
As the war comes to an end Gurlitt
helps to hide art from the Allies.
It was a good war financially for
Gurlitt. His estimated income during the war exceeds 1,000,00 Deutsche Marks.
Continuing his pattern of deceit he declares for income tax less than 20% of
his income.
When questioned after the war he
carefully avoids implicating himself. It is soon apparent America is not
pursuing the looters of art. The focus is on genocide and slave labour. Ronald
sets out with brutal simplicity that the “Truman administration did not wish to
understand that art theft and genocide were intrinsically linked”.
What America chose not to understand or overlooked at that time was that from the beginning of the Holocaust works of
art were confiscated from European Jews meaning Gurlitt and other dealers were directly
involved in the Holocaust.
Through lies and bureaucratic
indifference Gurlitt’s art collection is returned to him in 1950.
The Gurlitt name becomes known
around the world for the looting of art when his son, Cornelius, is discovered
in 2010 as still having 1,407 pieces of artwork in his Munich apartment from
his father’s collection.
Cornelius, a strange and private
man, had gone through his adult life thinking his father had rescued art during
the Nazi regime. Cornelius thought of the paintings as dear friends.
Once the book reached the time of
the Nazi takeover I found it interesting. Unfortunately, it took 150
pages to reach that point. Ronald provided a great deal of German history in
the first half of the book. Some chapters had more history than writing about
the Gurlitt family.
At the end of the book there are but
a few pages on Gurlitt’s family after the war and especially after he died in
1956.
It would have been a better book
with less German history and more Gurlitt history.
I found the title misleading. I was
expecting in the book to find out how Gurlitt was Hitler’s personal thief or at
least the most prominent German art thief. While Gurlitt was an art thief for
Hitler he was far from the only art thief for the Fuhrer and but one of
several very successful art thieves in Nazi Germany.
Not surprisingly those who had no scruples profited most during the Third Reich in every business. What was most striking was his talent at anticipating what was going to happen before, during and after WW II. The amoral have the advantage of no ideology to cloud their judgments.
What I learned most from the book
was the immense amount of money involved in art during the Nazi regime and
World War II. Further conflict is ahead. The war over Gurlitt’s collection has just begun over 70 years
after the end of the war.
****
Hitler's Art Thief by Susan Ronald
A sad and depressing story, and the book sounds somewhat disappointing. I think Frederick Forsyth wrote a thriller based on some aspects of the post-war art smuggling. But as you said before, the true stories are stranger than fiction.
ReplyDeleteMoira: Thanks for the comment. Reading about those profit from misery is unpleasant. I still think the book could have been significantly better had it also focused on the later personal lives of the Gurlitt's.
Delete