The Rape of Europa Read online

  Other refuges were prepared in the West Country for the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert. And the bombs did come. The National Gallery was hit nine times. An oil bomb went straight through the dome of the main reading room of the British Museum; others destroyed the roof of the new Parthenon Gallery recently given by Lord Duveen. The Tate, whose collections had also been regrouped from their original refuges to Sudley Castle in Gloucestershire, was hit over and over again, until all of its galleries were unusable. Director Rothenstein, looking down from what was left of the roof, saw

  a scene of desolation and fantasy: acres of glass roofing had disappeared, and daggers of glass, some as high as a man and others minute, were lodged upright in the surrounding lawn—a dense harvest of glass dragon’s teeth, glittering in the sun. Entire paving stones from the street lay on top of the walls and roof beams; others, which had fallen through glass roofing and wooden floors, lay in the basement far below.31

  By June 21 it was all over. An exultant Hitler now controlled most of the European continent. The Nazi idea of what to do with their new Western territories was radically different from their concept of exploitation of the East. The cultural amenities of the West were supposed to be enjoyed as well as conquered. These countries would be economically integrated into the German sphere. The more “Germanic” areas such as Holland, Flanders, and Luxembourg would be structured in the same way as Germany itself, and become part of a “Nordic Reich.” France, as always a special case, would be allowed to preserve aspects of its culture which would not be tolerated in the rest of Hitler’s empire, many in the Nazi regime being secretly full of admiration for the civilization of their elegant and arrogant neighbor.

  There was no need for the conqueror to take away the national collections of these new “provinces”; the Thousand-Year Reich now owned them. Come the peace treaty the government-run museums would automatically fall under the control of the German Ministry of Culture, and their collections could be redistributed as indicated by the researches of German art historians. In the meantime, it was in the interest of the Reich to monitor and help preserve these collections. The newly established Nazi museums would continue to be augmented by confiscations of the property of “enemy aliens” (who eventually included all Jews no matter what their nationality) and by a purchasing program of gigantic proportions, fueled by the unlimited funds now available to the Germans from the economies of their victims.

  All this preservation, confiscation, and dealing would be carried out by a complex group of bureaucracies, often in ferocious competition, whose utterly cynical exploitation of those in their power was justified within true Nazi bosoms by an equally complex series of legalisms and rationalizations. The mad grandeur of the whole thing, which envisaged nothing less than a complete redistribution and reorganization of Europe’s peoples and their patrimonies, is impressive. In the purified New Order all would be perfect and homogeneous. Undesirable thoughts, sounds, images, and beings would be eliminated. Then everything would be magnificently organized, efficient, and clean, classified and arranged in the gleaming new cities, to the Glory of Germanism.

  The status of the Netherlands as a future German province was underlined by the immediate appointment of a nonmilitary Reichskommissar with such close ties to the Nazi leadership that there could be no doubt of his loyalty: Arthur Seyss-Inquart, who had been so helpful in engineering the Austrian Anschluss, and who had had more occupation experience as assistant to Governor General Frank in Poland. This appointment was a surprise to the Army, which had planned a traditional military government. Within days of the Dutch surrender, Himmler, fired up to mystical fervor by the successful initiation of his plans for the Germanization of Poland, secretly toured the Netherlands with his personal adjutant Karl Wolff, “observing the sights and the peoples who would clearly be a racial benefit to Germany.”32 After Poland, “purification” of this basically Germanic region would be easy, and it would soon find its natural place, stemming from its prehistoric Germanism, as part of the new Europa, which would form a buttress against the terrible cultures of the East.33 By June 20 Himmler had already ordered an Ahnenerbe representative to be sent to The Hague to make contact with Dutch intellectuals and promote “Nordic Indo-Germanism” by getting rid of the Church, Bolshevism, Freemasonry, and Jewry. When a surprising animosity on the part of the Dutch to these reforms became clear, Himmler sadly attributed it to a too close association in the public mind of the Ahnenerbe with the definitely nonintellectual activities of other branches of the SS. The project, always underfunded by Hitler, was not a success.34 Indeed, the antipathy of the Dutch people for the Germans was so intense that Goebbels would be moved to call them “the most insolent and obstreperous people in the entire West.”35

  Himmler’s fellow theorist Alfred Rosenberg was not far behind. A letter from Supreme Commander Keitel notified the Army on July 5 that Rosenberg’s minions, known as the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, or ERR, would soon be searching libraries and archives for documents “which are valuable to Germany.” They would also search for “political archives which are directed against us” and have the material in question confiscated in cooperation with the SS. The resulting accumulations of books and documents would be sent off to Rosenberg’s Hoheschule to be used in the training of future generations of purifiers.36 By September 1940 they were busily at work. The leader of this confiscation group was so proud of his achievements that he concluded a progress report with the comment that his men had been “working overtime for weeks now, and also, as is done on the battlefield, on Sundays.”37

  But weeks before these gentlemen had come on the scene in Holland, another familiar figure, Kajetan Mühlmann, was in full action, having arrived as an advance man for Reichskommissar Seyss-Inquart. As always he was a great help to his superior, finding him a suitable residence in a vacant villa just outside The Hague, occupation of the Dutch Royal residences having been rejected as tactless. Before Seyss-Inquart arrived, Mühlmann also called upon the chief for museums of the Dutch Ministry of Culture, J. K. van der Haagen, to inquire about the location of certain collections and repositories. Van der Haagen assumed he represented the military authorities, and only later would come to understand his true intentions.38

  By the end of May, Mühlmann and several assistants had set up an office at Sophialaan 11, in the center of The Hague, and were busy making lists of “enemy” property and opening bank accounts: one for purchases for Goering, Hitler, and other high officials, which would be funded from Germany; one for money from the future sales of objects to be confiscated by the agents of the “Enemy Property Service,” which would be credited to a “trust fund” in Germany, as had been the case in Poland; and another with money from clients in Poland desiring objects from the West. There was no time to waste in organizing these services. Goering’s curator Hofer had also arrived in early May to arrange potential purchases, and the Luftwaffe commander himself had taken advantage of the halt before Dunkirk to make a quick trip to Amsterdam on May 20 to see the results. Mühlmann and his staff would be paid by a 10 percent commission on each transaction they could generate. This office, known as the Dienststelle Mühlmann, did not bother much with “Indo-Germanism.” They were all business.39

  The actual overseeing of the Netherlands’ national collections was not to be Mühlmann’s concern; it was left to the Dutch under the supervision of the Seyss-Inquart government. Construction of shelters for the Dutch treasures was continued with full German cooperation throughout the first months of the occupation; after all, the Germanic patrimony must be preserved. Nothing could have been a greater contrast to Poland: sophisticated concrete buildings, with the latest in air conditioning, covered with false dunes and heavily fortified, were rushed to completion near Castricum just west of Amsterdam, and the Night Watch and other masterpieces were moved into these new repositories from the more vulnerable castle at Medemblik. Another bunker was constructed in the Hoge Veluwe National Park in central Hollan
d for the collections of the Kröller-Müller Museum. In late 1941 the German authorities, fearing a British invasion, ordered the construction of further shelters in the limestone caves near Maastricht, right on the German border. Again the greatest masterpieces from the major museums and the Royal Palaces were gingerly moved to this secret place on special trains. The exact location was equally secretly transmitted to the Dutch government in exile in England by van der Haagen.

  The museums themselves slowly reopened with whatever was still available. At the Rijksmuseum, the large Lanz collection was brought out of longtime storage to fill up empty walls, and Director Schmidt Degener, in office since 1922, arranged exhibitions of musical instruments and objects from the Netherlands Railway Museums in more of the echoing spaces. The Boymans Museum in Rotterdam also made do with previously stored collections, but here things were a little different. The director, Dr. Dirk Hannema, was kept so busy by his duties as a member of Seyss-Inquart’s new Dutch Chamber of Culture and by his involvement in delicate sales negotiations between the museum’s greatest patron, D. G. van Beuningen, and Linz director Hans Posse (about which more later) that he had to turn over the day-to-day running of the museum to his assistant. The Boymans became quite a German favorite. By 1942 Hannema had gained the confidence of the new rulers of Holland to such a degree that he was appointed head of the Dutch museums, a job, he assured van der Haagen, he had accepted only in order to protect the Dutch patrimony. Van der Haagen later endorsed this claim, but it was in this capacity that Hannema became a participant in the only deal in which works owned outright by a Dutch national museum were transferred to the Reich.40

  Dr. A. G. Kröller and his wife, née Müller, the chief benefactors of the museum named for them, had, immediately after World War I, bought three paintings by German artists for extremely low prices in Germany, brought them back to Holland, and donated them to the museum. Goering had had his eye on these pictures from the outset, one of them being a Venus by his favorite artist, Cranach. The other two, another Venus by Hans Baidung Grien and a Bruyn the Elder Portrait of a Lady, were also highly desirable. The Reichsmarschall felt that they had been bought for “unfair prices” and been unjustly removed from their Fatherland. Mühlmann, the true intent of his visit to the director of museums now revealed, was sent off to discuss a possible sale with the director of the Kröller-Müller, Dr. van Deventer.

  Mühlmann offered DFl 600,000 in cash. Van Deventer was at first amazed at this offer, which was absolutely opposed by most of his museum colleagues, but after a time he consented to form a little committee to consider the matter. This body consisted of himself and his assistant, Dr. Hannema of the Boymans, and an expert from Mühlmann’s staff. The Dutch felt that Goering’s offer was too low. The negotiations seemed at an impasse until Mühlmann proposed that the Kröller-Müller receive DFl 600,000 in credits to be spent on the market, through his office of course, plus property concessions in the national park in which the museum was located.41 This offer was accepted.

  But Goering was not to keep all three pictures. On September 23, 1940, Posse had written Bormann that since the Baldung Grien was “one of the most beautiful and important works of the German Renaissance,” it was “urgently desirable” that it be acquired for Linz, where it would be the “masterpiece of the German section.” He suggested that Bormann help push along the negotiations. To make it all irresistible he enclosed a photograph. Bormann, still a bit unclear about the whole deal, showed this to Hitler, who was not. The picture was preempted for Linz.42

  It took the Kröller-Müller officials months of fussing to choose their pictures, which included canvases by Pissarro, van Gogh, Manet, and Degas. Nothing could have been more to the liking of the Nazis, who were thrilled to unload these “degenerate” pictures, at least two of which would turn out to have been confiscated by them in Paris. The Kröller-Müller was happy too, if perhaps not for the right reasons. And indeed it all turned out very well for them: after the war they got back the three German pictures, and got to keep all but the two pictures found to be stolen from Paris.43

  Unaware of the noble Germanic intentions and bureaucratic machinations of the Nazi agencies, the civilian inhabitants of the Netherlands were principally concerned with the immediate problems created by the occupation. In 1940 it was not yet known that for many it would be a question of life and death, and few comprehended the totality of Nazi purification ideology. At this early date compromises of all sorts seemed possible, and while one hoped for escape or liberation, there was no reason to forgo the enormous profits to be made at the expense of the enemy. Nowhere would these be greater than in the art trade, and nowhere was the survival of the otherwise doomed more possible than through the satisfaction of the collector’s fever by which the Nazi leadership was possessed.

  One of the very first acts of the new Dutch occupation regime was a decree ordering the arrest of German Jewish refugees who had arrived there after 1933. Among these was the legendary art historian Max Friedländer, a former director of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, who had reluctantly come to Holland in 1938 after having been refused entry by the Swiss. With him, as part of the deal, had come his library and archives, which were installed at the prestigious Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie in The Hague. A hopelessly impractical academic of seventy-one, he and his old housekeeper had been tended by other art world emigrés from Germany, including the Feilchenfeldts and Friedländer’s former protégé from Berlin, Vitale Bloch. The incarceration of Friedländer was immediately reported to Goering’s curator Hofer, who was busily shopping in Amsterdam. On Goering’s authority Hofer personally went to the Osnabrück internment camp to arrange for the release of Friedländer. It was explained that the arrest was a case of mistaken identity. In exchange for this rescue, Friedländer would be asked to supply evaluations for Nazi collectors for the duration of the war. In 1942, when all Dutch Jews were required to wear the yellow star, Friedländer and Vitale Bloch were declared “Honorary Aryans” and exempted after Hofer sent a memo declaring that “due to the great expertise of Professor Friedländer in German and Dutch painting, the Reichsmarschall desires that he remain in The Hague, and not be disturbed by the Delegate on Jewish Questions.”44

  When people were detained, their possessions were confiscated, and if they were so fortunate as to escape, belongings left in storage were taken as well. Works of art from this source were collected by Mühlmann’s agency and sold. A decree of August 30, 1940, also permitted them to open containers awaiting shipment abroad and remove desirable items. Museums and dealers were visited and ordered to list any private collections being held for absentee owners. Just so nothing would be missed, Seyss-Inquart authorized the removal of objects from houses abandoned during the invasion.

  It was soon clear that Mühlmann’s office would need more personnel. Help was provided in the person of Edouard Plietzsch, an expert on Dutch art from Berlin, who, as was true of so many in the Nazi art organizations, never was a Party member. He had written Posse soon after the invasion of Holland to ask for a job there, and had accepted only after being promised that he could remain a civilian, take a 15 percent commission on the paintings he handled on top of his regular salary, and be given travel expenses. On September 7, 1940, Plietzsch arrived in The Hague, where he shared offices with the local Gestapo representatives. By the twelfth he had provided an analysis of the major collections in Holland which might be open to offers to buy or to confiscation. This was forwarded to Bormann and Hitler. In a later report to Seyss-Inquart, Plietzsch pompously boasted of his discovery of the hiding place of “the Jewish Berlin collection of Dr. Jaffé in the Museum at Leiden, through confidential information from private quarters in Germany.” This led to the seizure of the large collection, whose owner had emigrated to England. Six Jaffé works went to Hitler, and nine to his crony Heinrich Hoffmann. In the albums of photographs of available works now sent regularly to the Führer the provenance and recent history of the Jaffé works is clea
rly stated. Plietzsch was also instrumental in fingering works from the Rathenau, or Berlin-Kappel, collection, which had also left Berlin in the thirties. The distinctly unsavory methods he employed to recoup these works for the Reich are unabashedly revealed in his reports to Seyss-Inquart:

  An Aryan co-heir had confidentially informed me that years ago the paintings had illegally been exported from Germany and some had later on, with the knowledge of the Rijksmuseum, been transported to America. Owing to my knowledge of ownership and the secret place of storage of the rest of the paintings, we were able to indemnify ourselves by seizing a series of the Kappel drawings by Menzel and the famous paintings View of Haarlem by Jacob Ruysdael and Canal in Amsterdam by Jan van der Weyden, and by paying in installments a very small amount to the Aryan joint-owner.45

  Another Rathenau painting, Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait of 1669, was removed from the custody of the Rijksmuseum.

  Plietzsch did have his own brand of propriety about such things as long as those involved were not Jewish. In the fall of 1940 Frits Lugt’s secretary, who was supposed to be taking care of the items the collector had left in Holland, reported that Lugt had ordered him to divide the collection up and hide it with friends. This the Nazis regarded as an illegal act. The Enemy Property Office confiscated the lot, and twenty-four paintings were sent off to Munich along with the Jaffé works. When, however, it was revealed that the secretary had fabricated the whole story in order to get a job with the Nazis, Plietzsch indignantly ordered the release of the rest of the collection and had the man jailed.