Hitler's Art Thief: Hildebrand Gurlitt, the Nazis, and the Looting of Europe's Treasures by Susan Ronald

Author:Susan Ronald [Ronald, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: True Crime, 20th Century, Modern, General, Biography & Autobiography, Historical, Criminals & Outlaws, History
ISBN: 9781466866829
Google: r_65BwAAQBAJ
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2015-09-22T20:38:58+00:00

21

THE POSSE YEARS

While Man’s desires and aspirations stir,

He cannot choose but err.

—JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, Faust

Impending war inevitably led to the squirreling-away of art treasures throughout Europe. London’s National Gallery moved the bulk of its holdings to remote Wales. Belgium asked for asylum for its priceless van Eyck Ghent Altarpiece in France. Knowing that France was the Continental prize Hitler most coveted, the Musées Nationaux spread its riches between dozens of former royal châteaus in the Loire. Belgium’s Altarpiece was moved to the south. Noted collectors were also given the opportunity to safeguard their collections alongside those of the Louvre. Many, including the Rothschilds, whose cousins had suffered so badly in Austria, were glad of the help. British subject Alphonse Kann sent a portion of his collection to the château at Brissac. The American Nazi sympathizer Florence Gould put her valuable tapestries in storage at the American embassy.1

* * *

Since the Fischer Auction, there was a new master whom all art dealers in the Third Reich wanted to serve—Dr. Hans Posse, the weak-chinned, thin-lipped son of Dresden, who had been the director at the Gemäldegalerie since 1913. He was talented, opinionated, and starry-eyed at the unparalleled potential of the new role conferred on him: amassing riches for Hitler’s übermuseum.

During the war of 1914–18, Posse was responsible for Raphael’s magnificent Portrait of a Youth from the Czartoryski Collection of the National Galerie in Cracow, which had been evacuated to Dresden by German Monuments Men for safekeeping.2 Perhaps one of Posse’s greatest selling points to Hitler was that he refused to return the Raphael painting until 1920, once the harsh sentence of the Versailles Diktat was passed on Germany.3 Covetousness in the name of the Reich was always applauded. When Gauleiter Mutschmann attempted to oust Posse for alleged anti-Nazi sentiments in 1933, he was immediately and personally reinstated by Hitler—at the quiet urging of Haberstock. Posse’s true crime was the acquisition of modern art.4

Gurlitt knew that Posse hadn’t warmed to him while they lived in the same cliquey art community in Dresden. Hildebrand blamed Posse’s coldness on some perceived snub in the unending feud between Posse’s friend Pinder, in Leipzig, and his father. Notwithstanding this, it seems more likely that Posse couldn’t abide Hildebrand’s high opinion of himself. Whatever the cause, Gurlitt sensed that the only way to ensure his exalted position for the future was to work for the Propagandaministerium and Posse. First, however, he’d need to break Haberstock’s stranglehold of gratitude on Posse.

In fact, Haberstock and Posse coordinated their efforts since the Anschluss. Posse traveled to Vienna to see German troops parading victoriously through the city. While the Gestapo interrogated and tortured private collectors from their base at Vienna’s Hotel Metropole, Posse personally impounded the collections of Alphonse and Louis de Rothschild. Together with the Nazi Kunsthistorisches director with the unfortunate name von Baldass, Posse plundered thousands of artworks from private collectors who either fled without their beloved possessions or who were made to sign them over for their freedom, like the Ephrussi family.

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