Nazi Looting of Art

Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were not only the most systematic mass murderers in history, they were also history’s greatest thieves. Beginning with the duress sales of Jewish property starting in 1933 and escalating to expropriation as part of emigration in Austria to outright seizure in conquered nations during World War II, the Nazis carried out a plundering program that extended to millions of cultural objects. The Allied response began during the war: after concerned academics (such as the Harvard Defense Group) alerted military and civilian leaders to the dangers to Europe’s cultural patrimony, the United States created the Roberts Commission to study the issue, which in turn led to the creation of Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section, where officers accompanied the invading armies and tried to mitigate the damage from combat, as well as track the looted works. The Monuments officers undertook a massive, international restitution effort, but could not complete the task: there is still much “unfinished business” from this era. The literature on Nazi plundering and Allied restitution is rich and varied: from the vivid accounts of the Monuments officers to the technical and occasionally arcane scholarly interventions (e.g., how to interpret labels on the backs of paintings). The opening of archives and the continued discovery of Nazi-looted works in museums and private collections has served as an impetus for continued research, and an international effort promises to yield further discoveries. This article is divided into twenty-two sections, with the entries in chronological order. It bears mentioning that there are four sections where the historiography is particularly rich: (1) plunder and restitution in France, (2) the literature on “degenerate art,” (3) Nazi-looted art and the law, and (4) anthologies. The first is likely due to the cultural riches of France, as well as the accessibility of archives. The scholarship on “degenerate art” took off in the late 1980s, with the observance of the fifty-year anniversary of the Aktion in 1987, and the public revelation of the Gurlitt cache in 2013 contributed to this impetus (Hildebrand Gurlitt had been one of the four official dealers of the purged art). Due to the emergence of myriad restitution cases starting in the early 2000s, the legal aspects of looting and recovery have attracted intense scholarly interest. And the international nature of the research, which has involved scholars from both North America and Europe, has led to many conferences, which in turn yielded a rich array of anthologies.

Expositions of ‘degenerate’ art and music in nazi Germany: reflections on totalitarian aesthetics and education

Durante o Terceiro Reich (1933-1945), os intelectuais nazistas conceberam a música e as artes plásticas como elementos formadores de valores morais, podendo corromper a educação e comprometer a vida política e social. A partir da formulação teórica da estética totalitária, toda arte considerada "degenerada" passou a ser censurada e exposta como exemplo de imoralidade. Inauguradas em 1937, as exposições Entartete Kunst (Arte Degenerada) e Entartete Musik (Música Degenerada) trouxeram até a cidade de Munique obras ligadas ao modernismo, ao bolchevismo, bem como a produção artística de negros, judeus e soviéticos. Com base em uma pesquisa bibliográfica amparada pela teoria crítica da sociedade, o presente artigo analisa o conteúdo dessas exposições, demonstrando a caráter pedagógico da arte na formação dos valores morais da sociedade alemã, sob a ótica dos intelectuais nazistas.

FROM THE STUDIES ON ‘DEGENERATE ART’ TWENTY YEARS AFTER THE WASHINGTON CONFERENCE. SZCZECIN’S CASE (MUSEUM DER STADT STETTIN)

On 5 August 1937, fulfilling the orders of the Chairman of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts (Reichskammer der bildenden Künste), a confiscation committee showed up at the City Museum in Stettin, and demanded to be presented by the Director of the institution the Museum’s collection in view of ‘degenerate art’. While ‘hunting’ for the Avant-garde and ‘purging museums’, the Nazis confiscated works that represented, e.g. Expressionism, Cubism, Bauhaus Constructivism, pieces manifesting the aesthetics of the New Objectivity, as well as other socially and politically ‘suspicious’ art works from the late Belle Époque, WWI, German Revolution of 1918–1919, or from Weimer Republic Modernism of the 1920s and 30s. The infamous Munich ‘Entartete Kunst’ Exhibition turned into a travelling propaganda display, presented in different variants at different venues. A three-week show (11 Jan.–5 Feb. 1939) was also held in Stettin, in the Landeshaus building (today housing the Municipality of Szczecin). Provenance studies: biographies of the existing works, often relocated, destroyed, or considered to have been lost, constitute an interesting input into the challenging chapter on German and European Avant-garde, Szczecin museology, and on Pomerania art collections. Side by side with the artists, it was museologists and art dealers who cocreated this Pomeranian history of art. The Szczecin State Archive contains a set of files related to ‘degenerate art’, revealing the mechanisms and the course of the ‘museum purge’ at the Stettin Stadtmuseum. The archival records of the National Museum in Szczecin feature fragments of inventory ledgers as well as books of acquisitions, which provide a particularly precious source of knowledge. The published catalogue of the works of ‘degenerate art’ from the Museum’s collections covering 1081 items has been created on the grounds of the above-mentioned archival records, for the first time juxtaposed, and cross-checked. The mutually matching traces of information from Polish and German archives constitute a good departure point for further more thorough studies.

Pechstein, Max (1881–1955)

The Saxon painter Max Pechstein was hailed as one of the leading representatives of modern painting in Germany throughout the 1910s and 1920s, but played a comparatively minor role in the canonization of German Expressionism after 1945. Pechstein first gained notoriety through his affiliation with the artist’s group Die Brücke from 1906 until 1912. He only came to the attention of a wider art public by way of his involvement in the controversial exhibition society Neue Secession in Berlin in May 1910 for which he served as president, designing its legendary first poster and catalog cover (see figure). Pechstein featured prominently in Paul Fechter’s 1914 book Der Expressionismus which presented him as the figurehead of Die Brücke in Dresden and Berlin (much to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s annoyance). Pechstein continued to paint and to exhibit throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Despite being included in the notorious 1937 Degenerate Art exhibition, and expelled from the Prussian Academy of Arts, he remained a member of the Reich Chamber of Arts throughout the Nazi dictatorship, and was the first of the so-called "degenerate artists" to receive permission to exhibit again in private galleries in 1939. The first retrospective of his work after his death (in Berlin in 1959) signaled the art historical focus on the early period of his career during the Brücke years at the expense of his later oeuvre.

Younan, Ramses (1913–1966)

Born into a middle-class family in Minieh, Egypt, Ramses Younan enrolled at the School of Fine Arts in Cairo in 1929. Due to an irreconcilable gap in creative and intellectual affinities between him and his peers and instructors, however, Younan dropped out in 1933 before finishing his diploma. In 1934, after obtaining a teaching certificate from the Syndicate of Higher Education, Younan took a job as an art teacher in a number of public schools in Tantah, Port-Said, and Cairo. In 1935, he joined The Call for Art Group founded by Habib Girji, which advocated the importance of art in the education of children. In 1939, he was one of the co-signatories of the manifesto "Long Live Degenerate Art," which was signed by thirty-seven mostly—but not exclusively—Egyptian artists and intellectuals living in Cairo at the time, who condemned the persecution of artists in Europe by Nazis and Fascists. In 1939, he and Georges Henein co-founded the Art and Liberty Group, comprising a number of intellectuals and artists who aligned themselves primarily with Surrealism. In 1941, Younan quit teaching to devote himself entirely to art and writing, and became the editor-in-chief of the leftist weekly magazine Al-Majalla Al-Jadida [The New Magazine]. He left Egypt for Paris in 1947 and worked in the Arabic Department of the French National Radio until 1956, while continuing to work as a painter and writer. After a brief time spent in the press office of the Egyptian Embassy in Paris, he returned to Cairo where he stayed until his death in 1966.