The Rape of Europa Read online

  The Dutch art trade had traditionally had a solid relationship with Germany. The combined effects of the Depression and the advent of Nazism, which restricted the export of reichsmarks, had severely reduced its volume until 1936, when devaluation of the Dutch guilder led to a slight improvement. The outbreak of war again closed down the flow of German clients. Now the incorporation of Holland into the Reich economy reopened the trade. But this time there was nothing traditional about it. German government officials suddenly had access to millions of guilders in occupation money, forcibly siphoned off from the Dutch economy. All exchange restrictions were lifted on the reichsmark so that buying in Holland did not consume precious foreign currency. One study estimates that by June 1941 some RM 4.5 million a day were coming into Dutch banks.

  Germany and its occupied lands became a giant pressure cooker of a self-contained market with little outlet for investment. No one, German or otherwise, could move money outside the Axis-controlled countries. No one could travel or buy nonexistent consumer goods. Art soon became a major factor in the economy as everyone with cash, from black marketeers to Hitler, sought safe assets. As the trade heated up, prices rose and family attics were scoured for the Dutch Old Masters and Romantic genre scenes beloved by the conquerors. German and Austrian dealers and auctioneers’ agents from the houses of Weinmuller, Lange, and the Dorotheum, trying to meet the rising demand at home, poured into Holland. Newspapers were full of ads offering and seeking works of art. New dealerships sprang up left and right—so much so that the Dutch Nazi Chamber of Culture was forced to impose export limitations and issue restrictive rules in an effort to regulate auctions of “kitsch,” and forbid the selling and display of “art” in such emporia as cleaners and tobacco shops.46

  By 1941 this new commerce, which at first was allowed to flourish unmolested, had also come under the regulations of the Nuremberg laws and Jewish firms began to be Aryanized. A special agency oversaw the transfer of ownership to Aryan “trustees,” after which the Jews, if they were still there, could run the business but were paid a salary limited by law to DFl 250 a month. The trustee could liquidate or sell the firm if he pleased. The experience of the old Amsterdam house of Jacob Stodel, which dealt principally in the decorative arts, was typical. The Stodels had cut off trade with Germany in 1933, but for more than a year after the invasion they were deluged with German customers (including the ever-busy director of the Museum of Breslau) seeking seventeenth-century armoires, Delft porcelains, and minor paintings. Prices rose nicely with the increasing demand. In October 1941, with no warning, the shop was raided and sealed by a squad of police and civilians. The German museum directors were allowed back in to collect their purchases; apparently equally surprised by the raid, they smuggled a few extra objects out and delivered them to the Stodel brothers.

  The business stayed closed until December, when the owners were summoned to meet their new “trustee,” a Herr Kalb. Sales at the newly reopened gallery increased so phenomenally during the winter that Herr Kalb decided he would like to own the business outright. The official assessment was reduced by two-thirds and Kalb agreed to pay the Stodels this sum over twenty-five years, as long as they kept their assets in an “approved” bank. No payment was ever made. In June 1942, when all Jews were required to wear a yellow star, Kalb, declaring that having personnel so adorned was bad for business, fired them all. The Stodels managed to get to Brussels, where they survived the war.47

  The high-level Nazi art purveyors were deeply involved in this buying frenzy and made full use of their prewar connections. Hans Posse could hardly wait to get there, and wrote Bormann on June 10, 1940, that although he had feared that much had been taken to America before Holland had been overrun, a great number of very high-quality works were left. Three days later Posse was authorized by Hitler to go to Holland.48 But Goering and his minions had the same information, and got there first.

  No collection was more vulnerable than that abandoned by Jacques Goudstikker. At the sudden flight of their master and the death of his appointed trustee, two of the firm’s employees had taken its operation upon themselves and, in the days immediately following the Dutch surrender, inveigled both Goudstikker’s mother and the banks holding the firm’s assets into appointing them as trustees.

  This extraordinarily efficient wheeling and dealing while war still raged only a few miles away seems remarkable to us now, but the vultures had immediately begun to circle here, just as they had in Austria, and the new “owners” of Goudstikker were soon approached. Two directors of the German industrial giant Persil had shown interest.49 Others followed. The thought that the Nazis might otherwise confiscate the inventory of this Jewish firm without compensation was brought forth with varying degrees of subtlety by some of the prospective buyers. A quick sale, therefore, seemed prudent.

  One of those interested was Alois Miedl, a German businessman and banker long resident in Holland and married to a Jew. Miedl’s rather speculative and shady business dealings included an attempt to buy up the coast of Labrador to supply wood to Germany, a project rejected by Canada, and reputed diamond smuggling. He had several times been associated with Goering, knew the Reichsmarschall’s sister, and had visited Carinhall. Goering had recommended him to Seyss-Inquart and Mühlmann as one familiar with the Dutch market. Mühlmann found that Miedl had gone rather beyond mere familiarity, and had “as a good businessman taken advantage of the panic which had taken place at the invasion” by suggesting to certain Jewish dealers that they sell to him before the Nazis confiscated their stock.50

  Miedl had accompanied Goering’s agent Hofer on his May trip to Holland, and shown him several available collections. This had been most successful. From the non-Jewish German banker Franz Koenigs, also a resident of the Netherlands, who was in financial difficulties, Miedl bought, on Hofer’s advice and with the promise that he would offer Goering first refusal—and of course Hofer a kickback on any resale—nineteen paintings, of which no less than nine were by Rubens. Miedl, involved in buying out the Lisser-Rosencrantz Bank (Koenigs’s principal creditor), had undoubtedly made the art sale part of the deal.51 This purchase was also a clever preemptive move on Hofer’s part, as Posse arrived only days later, ready to buy for Hitler, and had to concede these works to Goering.

  Continuing the tour, Miedl introduced Hofer to another German businessman with a Jewish wife, his close friend Hans Tietje, who duly sold him a nice Cranach Madonna and Child. Fritz Gutmann, a German Jew desperate to leave Holland, who had sent most of his collection to Paris, offered Miedl three sixteenth-century silver cups. From Daniel Wolff, whose brother had unfortunately helped finance the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, three more nice Dutch pictures were bought.52 Stimulated by these eminently salable acquisitions, Miedl now wanted to begin dealing in a major way. Acquisition of the Goudstikker firm would put him in the first rank of European dealers.

  The new “owners” had set the price for the firm and the rest of Goudstikker’s assets at DFl 2.5 million, a full million more than its appraised value. Rumors that Goudstikker was heavily in debt made this high price seem reasonable and Miedl made an offer. At this point all becomes murky. It is not clear to this day if Miedl was acting in collusion with Hofer, the Goudstikker owners, neither, or both; but it is a matter of record that the contract of sale was signed by Hofer, and that Miedl paid DFl 550,000 and got the real estate: Castle Nyenrode and the Villa Oostermeer, another Goudstikker property on the Amstel River (contents included), the Amsterdam gallery, and the firm’s name. Goering, who contributed DFl 2 million, got some six hundred paintings, among them the nine Rubenses and the Cranach purchased by Miedl on his shopping trip with Hofer and the four little angels which Goudstikker had so recently lent to the Memling show.

  It was no bargain for the Reichsmarschall, though he considered it one. At Nuremberg he would testify that he had believed the business to be worth DFl 5 million, which is the amount Miedl had at first tried to get out of Goering’s staf
f. After the (in fact) not so enormous debts were paid off, and the “owners” had been given large bonuses and assurances of continued employment, a considerable amount was invested in high-grade securities, chosen with the help of banker Koenigs, in the name of Desi Goudstikker. Miedl managed to protect this fund from the agencies confiscating Jewish assets throughout the war; he also supported and protected Goudstikker’s mother. This altruism was somewhat offset by Miedl’s precautionary measure of putting Villa Oostermeer in the names of his own children, which would seem to indicate that he did not expect Desi Goudstikker to return anytime soon. After Goering had sorted out the mass of paintings, Miedl bought back the residue. In the next four years he would sell some DFl 6 million worth of art to his countrymen from his new emporium.

  Hofer bought hundreds more pictures in Holland and Belgium. Over and over again an exit visa or some special form of payment or protection was part of the deal. A Freiherr von Palm sold a Lochner Nativity for cash plus special forest land in Württemberg. Frau von Pannwitz, an Argentine national and member of the German jet set in Holland, who had previously entertained Goering at her house and sold him several drawings right off the wall, wanted a visa for Switzerland. Goering obligingly bought her Rembrandt, Portrait of an Old Man Wearing a Turban, and four other pictures which he had noticed at the dinner party, for DFl 390,000, gave her the visa, and put her house off limits to troops. The rest of her collection stayed in storage at the Rijksmuseum—which was fine with Goering, who fully intended to take it over if Argentina declared war on Germany.53

  If the Reichsmarschall displayed a certain noblesse oblige on these occasions, he was not forgiving when he was the supplicant. Soon after the German takeover, the Belgian Emile Renders had let it be known that he would sell his collection of some twenty very nice, if somewhat retouched, early Flemish works if the buyer would agree to keep them together. Included in the package were several supposed Memlings and a van der Weyden. Goering was interested and turned over details of payment to his staff. Renders, trying to make the most of the deal, kept changing the mode of payment from dollars to gold to securities. Irritated by this, Goering had the collection frozen by his Currency Control unit, the Devisenschutzkommando. Miedl, who had bank connections, was sent to pursue the negotiations. Unbeknownst to his underlings, Goering also sent Renders a little note saying, “Should you this time again not be able to decide, then I should be compelled to withdraw my offer and then things would go their normal way, without my being able to do anything to impede it.” (Mühlmann later wryly commented that Goering “did not usually put that sort of thing in writing”) Renders settled. Miedl paid him about BFr 12 million in securities—not an easy thing to arrange, as the stock market was officially closed. All the paintings went to Miedl in Amsterdam. The collector’s desire to keep the collection intact was ignored; six were reserved for Goering, and the rest were put in Miedl’s stocks. Renders could not have been too intimidated: two years later he offered Goering his sculpture collection on the same basis. Hofer, who did not think much of it, bought it for Miedl, and reserved five pieces for his chief.54

  Native Dutch dealers, many with problems similar to those of the refugees, but not loath to partake of the millions being spent, awaited Goering’s visits with mixed emotions. Next to Miedl the largest seller to Germans in Holland was Pieter de Boer. De Boer had been head of the Dutch Association of Art Dealers since Goudstikker’s death. His wife was Jewish too, and he and his brother, who had dual Swiss citizenship, had applied for entry there. On his first visit in August 1940, Goering kissed Mme de Boer’s hand in the most courtly manner, examined their stock with great attention, but bought nothing. As soon as he left, the de Boers rushed a number of pictures into hiding. A few days later they reserved an early German altarpiece for the representative of a Cologne museum. When Goering suddenly reappeared in September he noticed immediately that certain pictures were missing, and declared that he wanted the altar-piece. The frightened de Boers said that the paintings had been sold and the altarpiece reserved for Cologne. Goering laughed and said that that was no problem in an authoritarian state, and bought it along with fifteen other pictures.

  From then on, the de Boer firm did very well, actively courting major German clients. Baldur von Schirach spent DFl 127,000; representatives of the Dorotheum and all the major German museums poured through the shop. Private Dutch citizens, pretending not to know who de Boer’s customers were, brought in things to sell on consignment. By war’s end the house had sold nearly DFl 2 million worth of art (more than three hundred pictures) to their enemies and DFl 2.3 million to their compatriots. In 1943, when Jewish deportations began in earnest, the de Boers’ Swiss citizenship was approved. They did not leave right away. The heyday of trading was nearly over, but there were other deals to be made. Four panels by Jan Breughel representing the Elements, taken from their hidden private collection, were exchanged with Hitler’s curators for the freedom of their Jewish employee Otto Busch and his fiancée. The paintings were to be handed over to a representative of the Linz Museum upon written proof that the Busches had “crossed the frontier of a neutral nation.” The Breughels went to Dresden, where they are said to have adorned the office of Hans Posse’s successor, Hermann Voss, until they perished in the fire bombing of that city.55

  Another firm which did well while it lasted was that of Nathan Katz of Dieren, near Arnhem. They had opened a branch in The Hague on May 1, 1940, just in time to partake of the coming boom. This was an old house that had gone from small beginnings to the big time very rapidly, helped by the establishment of a branch in Switzerland. The really good Katz pictures, which everyone knew were there, were never put on the market. The Germans tolerated this because Nathan Katz was the conduit for major works from several extremely important private collections. For Goering, in 1941, he procured Rembrandt’s 1630 Portrait of Saskia and Hals’s Portrait of a Sacristan from the Ten Cate collection, plus the van Dyck Portrait of a Family from the recently sold Cook collection. But the real reason Katz survived was his connection to the widow of Otto Lanz, a former Swiss consul in Holland to whom belonged the collection Schmidt Degener had just put on show at the Rijksmuseum.

  Both Posse and Hofer coveted this uneven group of mostly Italian works, plus others which had gone back with Mme Lanz to Basel. Posse had personally proposed to the Führer that he keep the cream of this collection and sell the large number of leftovers at auction, which would surely bring in large sums. Mme Lanz refused to deal through anyone other than Katz, and also wished to be paid SFr 2 million. Such a quantity of foreign currency Goering could not manage, and Posse, with his direct pipeline to Hitler, won the day.

  A visa to Switzerland for Nathan Katz was also part of the deal, and this was much harder to obtain than the money. Posse wrote to the Reichschancellery that Katz, “with whose activity I have always been pleased,” had told him of very valuable works for sale in Switzerland, which could be obtained if the dealer could go there to arrange things. The visa request was sent on to Bormann, with the suggestion that he speak to the dreaded SS Gruppenführer Heydrich, as the fact that Katz was Jewish was “a problem.” It is indicative of Posse’s power that Nathan Katz indeed went to Basel in late 1941, where he of course remained for the duration of the war.

  The affair did not end there. In return for Rembrandt’s Portrait of a Man—Member of the Raman Family from his private holdings, twenty-five other Katzes, it was said, were given visas to Spain, and were able to make their way to the Americas. Posse went to Basel and from there personally spoke to German officials at the Spanish border in order to be sure they had passed; only then was the Rembrandt put into his hands. And, last but not least, Katz’s mother was released from the Dutch concentration camp at Westerbork in exchange for a picture which a high SS official wanted to give Hitler for his birthday.56

  Goering was never unpleasant in his dealings. He would arrive in high spirits on his palatial train, complete with oversize bathtub and phalanx
es of elegantly uniformed adjutants, and go from one gallery to another. Even the most endangered agreed that he had a certain charm, and considering the amounts he spent, they were not reluctant to see him arrive. The less agreeable realities of the financial and human arrangements were left to the likes of Hofer and Miedl. The non-Jewish house of Hoogendijk was one of Goering’s particular favorites. By prearrangement with Hofer, the management always had high-quality works, outrageously overpriced and carefully vetted by Friedländer, waiting for him.57 Goering, who seemed quite amused by this tough trader, bought forty-two pictures from him in the course of the war.

  Hoogendijk was particularly known as the dealer who handled the remarkable series of Vermeers which came to light in the occupation years and which he sold for high prices to Dutch collectors and museums. These were later found to be brilliant forgeries by the unsuccessful artist Hans van Meegeren. Hoogendijk was not the only one taken in. In 1943 de Boer too tried to sell one entitled Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, duly authenticated by Vitale Bloch, to Goering. Hofer refused it on grounds of its price and condition. Linz director Voss thought it was a fake and also refused. Terrified that they would lose this national treasure, the Dutch museums snapped it up.58

  Hofer meanwhile had heard from Miedl of yet another of these “Vermeers,” this one entitled Christ with the Woman Taken in Adultery. Miedl took it to Carinhall on approval in September 1943. Like the others, its provenance was unclear, and the asking price was a steep DFl 2 million. Vermeer had become all the rage among the Nazi leaders, and Goering deeply desired a picture by this artist, having been done out of both the Czernin Vermeer and, as we shall see later, the Rothschild Astronomer, by the Führer. But the price for the Woman Taken in Adultery was still too high. Unable to bring himself to relinquish it, Goering kept it at Carinhall for months, leaving Miedl to deal with pressure from the Dutch. Finally the Reichsmarschall resorted to his favorite device for acquisition without cost: the exchange. Miedl was given 150 second-quality pictures from Goering’s now enormous inventory, and the “Vermeer” stayed at Carinhall.59