Nazi looted art: deception by provenance authors

The scale of deceptive practices by art market professionals concerning Holocaust-related looted art is under-appreciated.

The web of complicity is tough to break through, and it is rather depressing to even try. 

However, inspired by recent events, we will in this next series of posts, attempt to highlight of few of the tricks used by various art market actors to disguise what they clearly suspect to be illicit origins.

In this first post, we revisit the El Greco, Portrait of a Gentleman, that was part of the Julius Priester collection before the Holocaust. 

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Women Art Dealers Involved in Nazi-Era and Post-War Art Market Networks

The 1946 Art Looting Investigation Unit Final Report listed many women

The OSS Investigators in 1946 identified numerous women involved in various capacities in the Nazi-era art market. There were art dealers, collectors, restorers, and other art market professionals as well as secretaries, assistants, family members, spouses and lovers ("six mentions of "mistress") 

How to find the women investigation by the ALIU? In this experiment, we searched by the following words:
Frau
Frl
Madame
Mlle
Mme
wife
mother
sister
daughter 
secretary
Mrs

In many cases the woman was the subject of an investigation by the Art Looting Unit and consequently had her own entry with a description of her activities. In other cases, she is mentioned in the description of a man ("wife of", "sister of", etc.)

The source data is available in this public Google Fusion table:

OSS ALIU Red Flag Names PUBLIC-Women of the Red Flag List

The original data source is from lootedart.com which was formatted for searches in Google Sheets in OSS ALIU Red Flag Names PUBLIC using filters.

How active were women in Nazi looting? The ALIU Red Flag List of Names mentions about 177 people in connection with the ERR. Women were about 10% of the total.

Women in the Nazi looting organisation known as the ERR ("Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce" or "Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg")

Male vs Female members of the Nazi looting organisation known as the ERR
source: ALIU Red Flag List

At the center of Nazi action: Frau Maria Dietrich.

The Networks of Frau Maria Dietrich

Suspects who the ALIU connected to Frau Maria Dietrich
source: ALIU Final Report

"Dietrich, Frau Maria Almas. Munich, Gustav Freytagstr 5. Art dealer; personal friend of Hitler, and for a time his principal buyer of works of art. One of the most important purchasing agents for Linz. Was under house arrest at Grafing, Bavaria, autumn 1945." - ALIU 1946 Final Report

Dietrich appears in the bios of 17 suspects under investigation by the Art Looting Investigation Unit in the 1946 Red Flag list.  ("DIR No.14 on the activities of Maria Dietrich was planned.It was not issued, but a full accounting of her activities was incorporated into Consolidated Interrogation Report No. 4.")

The networks become very interesting when one takes the analysis further, looking into the connection of each of Dietrich's connections.... Some of these names have already been touched upon in previous posts.

See:
Provenance Research: Paul Cailleux in NEPIP

Networks of Yves Perdoux

Red Flags in Art History: Zacharie Birtschansky or Birshansky

WWII art looting networks: Leegenhoek

WWII Art Looting Networks: Göpel (Goepel), Wuester, Holzapfel, Lefranc, Mandl, Birtschansky and Bloch

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