The Munich Art Hoard by Catherine Hickley

Author:Catherine Hickley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780500773093
Publisher: Thames and Hudson Ltd
Published: 2015-03-06T05:00:00+00:00

8 Selling Plunder

It’s surprisingly easy to sell Nazi-looted art without being detected. The Gurlitt family managed it on several occasions over the decades, probably more often than we’ll ever know. Equipment found in Cornelius’s apartment included a book of erotic texts from famous English authors with the pages cut by a machine inside to create a secret space for banknotes. Investigators also found a metal strongbox artfully disguised with the pages of a newspaper that could have been used to transport artworks.1

Yet despite the cloak-and-dagger gear, Helene and Cornelius had no need to be surreptitious about selling their art by resorting to backstreet dealers. The Gurlitts approached some of the most prestigious auction houses in Germany and Switzerland, which readily accepted their wares. The truth is that auction houses in Germany, and not only in Germany, still do a brisk trade in Nazi plunder that has never been restituted to the heirs of Jewish victims of theft, persecution and in some cases, murder.

The art market is notoriously opaque and resistant to self-regulation, making it a haven for money launderers, forgers, tax evaders and anyone who wants to be able to roll up an expensive investment and hide it in an attic or a bank vault for a rainy day. Buyers are often cavalier about checking provenance. Anyone who failed to ensure that they have undisputed legal title when purchasing a house would be considered foolish. Yet it happens with art all too frequently – even with paintings worth millions.

Heirs hoping to claim back stolen artworks that have found their way into private collections like Cornelius Gurlitt’s need to be watchful, persistent and prepared to do battle. They also need considerable resources. It is like a long, drawn-out game of Whac-a-Mole, requiring decades of patient waiting for an artwork to surface at auction, and then pouncing at the right moment with the right amount of force before it disappears again.

Mike Hulton, the heir of a Jewish art dealer who was persecuted by the Nazis, got lucky in 2011. Two years before his trove was exposed, Cornelius offered a striking gouache and pastel work by Max Beckmann to the Cologne auction house Lempertz. The colourful Lion Tamer shows the powerful torso of a man stripped to the waist from behind, exercising his authority over a comically acquiescent lion who sits meekly on a stool, towering above his master. Hildebrand Gurlitt acquired it from Alfred Flechtheim, Hulton’s great-uncle, a Jewish dealer who ran galleries in Düsseldorf and Berlin before World War II.

The founder of an art magazine and one of Germany’s most prominent dealers in contemporary art, Flechtheim was among the first targets of anti-Semitic victimization, attacked in a barrage of hate articles in the Nazi press even before 1933. He fled to London via Zurich and Paris soon after Hitler seized power – in a 1933 letter from exile to the artist George Grosz, Flechtheim said he and his wife were ‘poor as church mice and nervous’. Flechtheim died of blood poisoning in London in 1937 after treading on a rusty nail.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.