The Rape of Europa (9 page)

His tour of smaller-scale Florence, where he was welcomed by cheering crowds lining the decorated streets, made him feel much better. He was the
more deceived: rumor had it that the city fathers had used most of the money sent from Rome for the ceremonies to improve the sewer system.
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Hitler exhausted his Italian host by spending four hours in the Uffizi. Mussolini, trailing behind, was heard to murmur in exasperation,
“Tutti questi quadri
… [All these pictures …].” Their guide, the anti-Nazi director of the German Art Institute, Dr. Friedrich Kriegsbaum, tried to keep the Führer moving along, fearing that Mussolini might give Hitler something he particularly admired, such as Cranach’s famous
Adam
or
Eve.
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This trip made abundantly clear to Hitler that Germany’s existing public collections would not suffice to adorn the multiple new museums being planned for Berlin and Linz.

Rome: Hitler and Mussolini, accompanied by Goebbels and Himmler, tour the Borghese Gallery (Photo by Heinrich Hoffmann)

The confiscated Austrian collections instantly came to mind. In addition to these, large quantities of objects were becoming available in Germany itself. In the months following the Anschluss, perhaps as a result of events in the Ostmark, pressure on the Jews of Germany greatly increased. On April 26, 1938, a decree was issued requiring them to report their assets, but this did not yet include personal property. Arrests and anti-Semitic violence in the streets increased all during the summer and fall, culminating
in the hideous and carefully orchestrated events known as Kristallnacht, which took place in the dark hours between November 9 and 10. Now the personal possessions and businesses of the Jews were fair game.

Confiscation of private property was openly organized. In Munich, Gauleiter Wagner called together the directors of the state collections “for a conference about the safekeeping of works of art belonging to Jews.” The museum officials were told that teams of Gestapo officers and art experts, dealers, or curators were to carry out the confiscations. The hall of the study building of the Bavarian National Museum was requisitioned for storage; only the Gestapo had the key. Large objects were to be left in the houses; coins and jewelry would be taken over by the Gestapo itself. The victims would graciously be allowed to keep family portraits. “Protocols” were to be typed in the presence of the proprietors, who could make notes but would not receive a copy or a receipt. Hundreds of these documents survive in the National Archives of the United States. They make sad reading:

25 November 1938. Protocol, recorded in the residence of the Jew Albert Eichengrun, Pilotystr. 11/1, presently in protective custody. The housekeeper, Maria Hertlein, b. 21/10/1885, in Wilpolteried, BV., Kempten, was present. Dr. Kreisel, Director, Residenzmuseum, and Criminal Investigators Huber and Planer officiated.
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From this house five nineteenth-century German paintings were sent to the depot, where another museum official signed a receipt. On the same day, at the “residence of the Jew Moses Blum, his wife Frieda Moses being present,” fifteen paintings were registered, and picked up the next morning by a local moving company. Some were luckier: three faience platters taken from Dr. Ernst Darmstadter on January 18 were returned as being of “no cultural value.” A series of laws passed ex post facto over the next few years would “legalize” these procedures and change the status of the objects from “safeguarded” to “confiscated.” To speed emigration of the still reluctant, an organization based on Eichmann’s successful example in Austria was set up under the equally infamous Reinhard Heydrich. All sorts of ingenious schemes were devised to hide, sell, or export possessions, but by now, for most, it was much too late.

And there was more: just one year after the Austrian windfall, the inventory of objects was increased by the taking of the rest of Czechoslovakia. Here the confiscations were not necessarily limited to the non-Aryan. The Czechs were not fellow Germans, but Slavs. Insufficiently Germanic private and public collections could be taken to benefit the master race. The library of Prague University, the Czech National Museum,
the palaces of the “decadent” Hapsburg Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Count Colloredo, and Prince Schwarzenberg, and the Lobkowitz collections of armor, coins, and paintings (including Breughel’s famous
Hay Harvest)
were all eventually raided, and the Bohemian crown jewels joined the Holy Roman regalia in exile. In an attempt to legitimize this expropriation, the jewels were handed over by President Hacha of Czechoslovakia in an elaborate ceremony staged by the Nazis. But an official photograph tells all: the tiny, frail President stands sadly before the dazzling display, flanked by the newly named Reichsprotektor of his country and other Nazi officials, who tower over him, splendid in their dashing uniforms.

By the early summer of 1939 the Führer had realized that the burgeoning storerooms of confiscated art and the greedy dealers and officials hovering about them must be dealt with in an organized fashion. On June 26, 1939, from Obersalzburg, Hitler authorized Hans Posse, only recently back in control of the museum in Dresden, to “build up the new art museum for Linz Donau.”
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From this moment on, there ceased to be any distinction between Hitler’s personal possessions and those destined for Linz.

Posse was an excellent choice for this job, a totally professional art historian and an aggressive acquisitor. Not interested in politics but without any doubts as to the greatness of Germany, he threw himself into the already monumental job of sorting out the available works. He was backed by a large staff, and had access to the highest levels of the government and to virtually unlimited funds. The first appropriation for Linz in 1939 was RM 10 million; by December 1944 the total had reached 70 million.
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All during its existence, the Linz organization remained under Hitler’s direct control. Until he died in 1942, Posse corresponded almost daily, in minute detail, with Martin Bormann. A great percentage of the letters are marked in Bormann’s writing: “shown to the Führer.” On July 24, 1939, Bormann informed Reichskommissar Buerckel and other authorities that all confiscated collections in the newly conquered areas were now to be kept intact so that Hitler himself, or his curator, could choose what they wanted for Linz.
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A bit later, just to avoid loopholes, he wrote again to say that “safeguarded” as well as “confiscated” collections were included in this order. The resulting mass of objects was henceforth known as the Führervorbehalt (Führer Reserve).

It took a little time for this arrangement to sink in. As late as November 1939 Goering’s secretary was forced to write several times to the Viennese administrators of confiscated goods, to make clear that her chief “upon orders of the Führer … will have to desist from the purchase of secured art
objects.”
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Bormann had also immediately written to a Munich official to tell him to look for “several very large spaces in which the art treasures for the new Linz galleries can be stored, as a large number of paintings—four to five hundred—would soon be arriving from Vienna.” Hitler himself wondered if a suitable schloss could be found in which the pictures would not be crowded together, as they now were at the Führerbau, but might be arranged “more like a gallery.”

Hans Posse: Hitler’s grand acquisitor

So varied were the works already assembled by 1939 that subordinate curators had to be appointed for armor, coins, and books. The plans for Linz soon expanded exponentially, from one museum for nineteenth-century German art to a complex with separate buildings for each discipline. By late October, Posse had won a few bureaucratic battles. With the backing of his colleague Fritz Dworschak, director of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Vienna, he had managed to get the Führer to authorize the separation of the Rothschilds’ art collections from the rest of their assets and their inclusion in the Führervorbehalt. He had also looked through all the Vienna pictures and chosen 182 for Linz and 43 for other provincial Austrian museums. Forty-four more were designated for the Kunsthistorisches, a proposal later rejected by Hitler, who stated that Vienna, which he had always hated, “already has enough works of art, and it is right to make use of these art objects for Linz, or as a foundation for other collections.”
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Posse also now had to deal with the objects which had been confiscated in Germany itself. In Bavaria, those gathered by the Gestapo teams had already been sorted out according to medium and quality. The best pictures were put on exhibition at the Munich Association of Artists, in the former premises of the well-known Jewish firm of Bernheimer, much of whose stock was included. Hitler and Posse both visited the gallery, and made their choices for Linz. It was then opened up to representatives of the German museums, who were allowed to keep their choices as “loans from the State.” What remained was made available to dealers or sold at auction.
After this first show, the museums were obliged to buy what they wanted from the confiscated stocks, using money from their regular acquisition funds, special grants from the Ministry of Culture, or cash raised by selling off lesser museum holdings. The proceeds went, for the time being, into a special Gestapo account.
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Keeping control of all the confiscated objects at home was not easy. The SS, Gestapo, Finance Ministry, Reich Chamber of Culture, local Nazi organizations, museums, and others were all happily carting things away, or making plans and claims for them. The temptation to do a little dealing was overwhelming. Posse, who hated the idea that anything might escape him, wrote anxiously to Bormann in May 1940 to say that in various provinces of the Reich, officials were disposing of confiscated objects on their own. The valuable collection of the “expatriate” Dr. Fritz Thyssen, an early supporter of Hitler who had seen the light and fled abroad, was about to be divided up by the Rhenish museums, he complained, and the Goldschmidt-Rothschild collection had reportedly been sold to a private collector. Posse implored Bormann to ask Hitler to reserve the same exclusive rights to all confiscated collections in Germany for himself, as he had in the occupied areas.
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This was not done until much later—but of course things got to be rather busy at the Reichschancellery in the spring of 1940.

Meanwhile, the energetic Posse had sifted through all the works in the Führervorbehalt and made his choices. For Linz it was nothing but the best. By July 1940, 324 paintings had been selected from the hundreds presented for his inspection, and 150 more chosen as a reserve. These included most of the pictures previously acquired on the market by Hitler. Although there were some impressive items, the collection was not yet in the class of those of the great museums and was top-heavy in the genre paintings that Hitler loved. To remedy this, Posse had already started to buy from dealers and collectors in Austria and Germany. He snapped up the drawings collection of the late Prince Johann Georg of Saxony in Leipzig, found a Waldmüller portrait of young Prince Esterhazy for “the exceptionally low price of RM 10,000,” and bought 37 more works by Rubens, Hals, Lorenzo Lotto, and Guardi.
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But he was hoping for much, much more.

In a report cleverly designed to fuel Hitler’s competitive collecting instincts and lead him beyond his limited tastes, Posse set out his plans for Linz. Even with the vast funds at his disposal, he sadly recognized that it would be impossible to gather together an in-depth collection ranging from the prehistoric to the modern. The early German period would have
to be limited to a “small but elegant” collection, an attitude which may have reflected Posse’s reluctance to tangle with Himmler, whose specialty this was. The Romanesque and Gothic periods, however, should be greatly increased “from the holdings of the monasteries of the Ostmark,” which could also supply objects for the German Renaissance galleries. For this reason “removal of works from the monasteries should be carefully monitored in future.” Posse had in mind, among other things, the great altar-piece by Altdorfer at the Monastery of St. Florian. He wrote that they could hardly hope to get works by Dürer, Holbein, or Grünewald, but that there were plenty of Cranachs available. The seventeenth-century Dutch school was already strongly represented, but major works by Rubens, Rembrandt, and Vermeer, plus some sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italians, were needed to “round off the collection.” There was one bright spot: they could do a nice French gallery with the paintings, furniture, and tapestries already at hand, supplied almost entirely by the Austrian Rothschilds. To flatter Hitler, Posse hastened to conclude with the promise that the
Hauptabteilung
, or central collection, of the museum would, of course, be the “valuable collection already assembled in Munich,” i.e., Hitler’s favorite nineteenth-century Germans.
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