Nazi looted art restitution claims case studies: Newsletter April 2023 – N°16

To read the complete newsletter, please see: https://www.restitutiecommissie.nl/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Network-Newsletter-no.16-April2023.pdf

In this post, we reproduce the case studies published in April 2023 (Number 16) by the Network of European Restitution Committees on Nazi-Looted Art (originally published by the Advisory Commission)

• CASE STUDY Update: A German family hands over to France two paintings stolen in Brittany during the Occupation 
• CASE STUDY Restitution to heirs of Dr. Erich Stern 
• CASE STUDY The painter Hirschenhauser and a special work of art 
• CASE STUDY The Fritz Illner collection. Provenance Research in the Natural History Museum Vienna 

(Searchable text with some names highlighted)

If artworks could speak they would tell you what Nazis did to these art collectors

"Dr Lillie has explained the Kafkaesque system for the confiscation of goods, which usually worked like this. When a Jew applied to emigrate, in theory only 25% of his goods went to the State. An inventory was submitted and the Zentralstelle für Denkmalschutz decided which works of art were of national importance and these were “made secure”, ie; confiscated. It was rare, however, for what was left to be reunited with the owner, who had usually already fled to an unknown destination. Instead, it sat in Nazi-owned warehouses, which sold the goods to pay the “storage charges” that the owner obviously could not cover." 

- A portrait, person by person, item by item, of a society wiped out

Anna Somers Cocks, 1 July 2004 The Art Newspaper, Book review of Sophie Lillie's Was Einmal War

Sophie Lillie, Was einmal war: Handbuch der enteigneten, Kunstsammlungen Wiens (Czernin Verlag, Vienna, 2003) 1,440 pp, 354 b/w ills, €69 (hb), ISBN 3707600491

"This important book gives a full documentation for the Jewish art collectors of Vienna whose goods and lives were targeted by the Nazis"

Austrian Jewish art collectors who were dispossessed by the Nazis 

 Leon and Marianne Abramowicz,

 Bernhard Altmann,

 Hans and Helene Amon,

 Otto and Clara Anninger,

 Gustav Arens,

 Fritz and Anna Unger, 

Felix and Lise Haas,

 Carl and Rosa Askonas,

 Stefan Auspitz,

 Theodor and Angela Auspitz-Artenegg,

 Elisabeth Bachofen-Echt,

 Richard and Paula Beer-Hofmann,

 Ernst and Irma Benedikt,

 Ludwig Bettelheim-Gabillon,

 Rudolf and Martha Bittmann,

 Josef and Gusti Blauhorn, 

Hugo and Malvine Blitz,

 Wilhelm and Gertrude Blitz,

 Ferdinand and Adele Bloch-Bauer,

 Victor and Alice Blum, 

Oscar Bondy (fled to Switzerland, died in NY in 1944)

 Julius and Paula Breuer, 

Otto and Lilly Brill,

 Julius and Margarethe Buchstab,

 Paul and Mary Cahn-Speyer,

 Edwin and Caroline Czeczowiczka,

 Arthur and Irma Czeczowiczka, 

Georg Duschinsky, 

Ernst and Fanny Egger, 

Lothar and Eveline Egger-Möllwald, 

Alfred and Valerie Eisler,

 Hermann and Hortense Eissler,

 Berta Morelli,

 Hans and Lucie Engel,

 Viktor and Emilie Ephrussi,Charlotte Epstein,

 Rudolf Ernst,

 Gertrud Felsöványi,

 Adele Fischel,

 Josef Freund,

 Wilhelm Freund,

 Hugo and Hilde Friedmann,

 Hermann and Elsa Gall,

 Paul and Martha Gerngross,

 Robert and Frida Gerngross,

 Emil Geyer,

 David and Lilly Goldmann,

 Philipp, Cornelia and Marie Gomperz,

 Fritz and Lilly Grünbaum,

 Karl and Stephanie Grünwald,

 Rudolf and Marianne Gutmann,

 Leo and Helene Hecht,

 Valerie Heissfeld,

 Wilhelm and Daisy Hellmann,

 Franz and Marie Louise Herzberg,

 Fritz and Gertrud Hirsch,

 Ernst and Martha Hirsch,

 Adolf and Hilda Hochstim, 

Franz Josef and Vally Honig,

 Josef Franz and Hermin Hupka,

 Bruno Jellinek,

 Otto and Fanny Kallir-Nirenstein,

 Siegfried and Irma Kantor,

 Emil and Helene Karpeles-Schenker,

 Irma Ketschendorf,

 Benedikt and Emilie Klapholz,

 Norbert and Serafine Klinger,

 Isidor and Camilla Kohn,

 Nettie Königstein,

 Felix Kornfeld

Gottlieb and Mathilde Kraus

Wilhelm Viktor and Marianne Krausz,

 Hans Krüger,

 Moriz and Elsa Kuffner,

 Stephan Kuffner,

 Wilhelm and Camilla Kuffner,

 Adele Kulka,

 Wally Kulka,

 Oscar L. Ladner,

 Richard and Anna Lanyi,

 Georg and Hermine Lasus,

 August and Serena Lederer,

 Rosa Lemberger,

 Mathilde Lieben,

 Leon and Antonie Lilienfeld,

 Markus and Melanie Lindenbaum

, Fritz and Helene Löhner

, Arthur and Marianne Lourié,

 Wilhelm and Fanny Löw,

 Oscar and Irma Löwenstein,

 Alma Mahler-Werfel,

 Fritz Mandl,

 Stephan and Else Mautner,

 Edmund and Adele Mendelsohn,

 Franz Mendelsohn,

 Alice Meyszner,

 Max and Hertha Morgenstern,

 Aranka Munk,

 Oskar and Therese Neumann,

 Richard and Alice Neumann,

 Gabriele Oppenheimer,

 Ignatz and Gisela Pick,

 Moric and Irma Pick,

 Otto and Katharina Pick,

 Ernst and Gisela Pollack,

 Albert Pollak,

 Robert and Adele Pollak,

 Leopold Popper-Podhragy,

 Ernst and Ilse Popper-Podhragy, 

Arthur and Agnes Prager,

 Julius and Camilla Priester,

 Leo Prister,

 Alfred Quittner,

 Amalie Redlich,

 Anton and Marie Redlich,

 Paul and Therese Regenstreif,

 Oskar and Malvine Reichel,

 Arnim and Rosa Reichmann,

 Heinrich Reif,

 Andreas and Luise Reisinger,

 Franz and Anna Riedl,

 Heinrich and Berta Rieger, (Heinrich died in Theresienstadt camp in 1942)

Max Roden and Sascha Kronburg,

 Heinrich and Ella Rothberger,

 Moriz Rothberger,

 Alphonse and Clarice Rothschild,

 Louis Rothschild,

 Franz Rothschild,

 Franz Ruhmann,

 Emma Schiff-Suvero,

 Gustav and Louise Schoenberg,

 Ludwig and Gertrude Schüller,

 Eduard and Gisela Schweinburg,

 Arnold and Margit Löffler,

 Elkan and Abraham Silberman,

 Josef and Louise Simon,

 Marianne Singer, 

Alfred and Irmgard Sonnenfeld,

 Valentine Springer,

 Jenny Steiner,

 Klara Steiner,

 Paul and Nora Stiasny

, Georg Terramare and Erni Terrel,

 Alfons and Marie Thorsch,

 Siegfried and Antonia Trebitsch,

 Alexander and Irma Weiner,

 Leopold Weinstein

,Josefine Winter,

 Paul Wittgenstein,

 Fritz and Annie Wolff-Knize,

 Frank and Mary Wooster,

 Alexander and Luise Zemlinsky,

 Paul Zsolnay,

 Fritz and Trude Zuckerkandl

Bruno Lohse Nazi Art Looter Transcription of ALIU Detailed Interrogation Report NARA RG239 DIR 6

The text below is a transcription of a document in the National Archives concerning Nazi art looting that was declassified in 1975. It concerns the notorious Nazi art looter, Bruno Lohse. This Detailed Interrogation Report was written by Monuments Man and OSS Art Looting Investigation Unit member James S. Plaut in 1945. It detailed the interrogation of Nazi art looter Bruno Lohse conducted from June 15, 1945 to August 15, 1945.

NARA : copy of transcription D. I. R. # 6 - Bruno Lohse, 1945-1946 

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/66892059/1/public?contributionType=transcription

A photocopy of the Detailed Interrogation Report Number 6 can be downloaded here: Download PDF

The text, transcribed in a digital searchable text, is below

Names of persecuted Austrian Jewish collectors

How to verify the provenance texts of artworks for names that might indicate a history of Nazi looting or persecution?

There are many potential sources and lists.

In this post, we look an official Austrian report from 2008 that contains names of Austrian Jewish collectors whose art collections were plundered by the Nazis.

Portraits of Murder and Plunder

Amalie Zuckerkandl was at the height of her beauty when Gustav Klimt begin this (unfinished) portrait of her in 1917-8. A member of the Viennese Zuckerkandl family, Amalie was murdered in the Holocaust along with her daughter Nora Stiansy because they were Jewish, and her portrait was stolen by Nazis.

Serena (Szeréna) Lederer was the model for this beautiful portrait by Gustav Klimt. Her family, which was Jewish, was plundered by the Nazis. Serena Lederer died in 1943 as a refugee from Nazism. 

This magnificent portrait by Klimt depicts the Jewish Austrian intellectual and feminist Adele Bloch-Bauer. Commissioned by her husband, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a Jewish banker and sugar producer, the painting was looted by the Nazis in 1941, along with numerous other artworks. 

Irène Cahen d'Anvers was eight years old when her father, the French Jewish banker Louis Cahen d'Anvers, commissioned this lovely portrait from Pierre-Auguste Renoir in 1880.  During World War II, the Nazis stole the portrait and murdered Irène's daughter, Béatrice, her ex-son-in-law and their two children because of their Jewish ancestry.

The painter Eduard Einschlag was murdered in the Treblinka concentration camp in 1942, and his estate was confiscated. He painted this self portrait in 1930.

Renoir painted this portrait of the Austrian actress Tilla Durieux (Ottilie Godeffroy, 1880–1971) in 1914 when she was married to the art dealer Paul Cassirer. After Cassirer's suicide she married Ludwig Katzenellenbogen who was deported and murdered in the Nazi Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1944 because Jewish.

Selfportrait by the German Jewish painter Ernst Oppler, showing himself as an art collector.  Ernest Oppler died in 1929, thus escaping the Holocaust, but many members if his family were plundered and persecuted by the Nazis; his brother, the doctor Berthold Oppler, committed suicide in detention on 6 January 1943 to avoid imminent deportation to a Nazi death camp.

The German Jewish painter Charlotte Salomon looks warily at the viewer in this self-portrait from 1940; her family fled Germany for France after Kristallnacht but, five months pregnant, she was captured and murdered in Auschwitz in 1943. 

This brooding self-portrait was painted by the German Jewish artist Felix Nussbaum who died in Auschwitz in 1944.

Getrud Loew was the daughter of Gustav Klimt's doctor, Anton Loew. She was 19 years old when this portait was painted (see full length here). She managed to escape Nazi Vienna in 1939,  under her widowed name Gertha Felsöványi.  

"Pieces with titles that referenced their Jewish origins, were completely changed. For example, The Portrait of Margaret Stonborough Wittgenstein (a Jew) became Damenbildnis in Weiss (Portrait of a lady in white)." - (Morowitz, Laura. “‘Heil the Hero Klimt!’: Nazi Aesthetics in Vienna and the 1943 Gustav Klimt Retrospective.” Oxford University Press 39, no. 1 (2016): 122-23. cited by Gabrielle Knight in Honors Thesis)

Little is known about Walburga "Wally" Neuzil, the blue-eyed model painted by Egon Schiele in 1912. The portrait was stolen by a Nazi art dealer from the collection of Jewish collector Lea Bondi Jaray when her gallery was Aryanized by Nazis in 1939 and she was forced to flee Vienna as a Jew. 

For more reading, see:

Un tableau de Klimt volé par les nazis n'a jamais été restitué à son propriétaire

‘Heil the Hero Klimt!’: Nazi Aesthetics in Vienna and the 1943 Gustav Klimt Retrospective

Leipzig gibt jüdischer Familie ein Stück Geschichte zurück

A Blood-Stained Renoir on Exhibit in Paris

Leipzig Mayor Hand Delivers Nazi-era Art to Painter's Heirs 

Case Review: Cassirer v. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation

Holocaust Victim Assets Litigation Case No. CV96-4849

Ein Haus wie ein Museum

Die Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz gibt Kunstwerke aus der Sammlung des von den Nationalsozialisten verfolgten und ermordeten Max Silberberg zurück.

Münchner Kunstfund Bewusst verschleiert

A Tale of Two Portraits, by Rudolf Beran

Raubkunstverdacht: Der Kandinsky-Konflikt

Der Schandfleck

Bank's Kandinsky painting was looted by Nazis, says family

Analysis Art Provenances: Red Flag Name Benno Geiger

https://www.fold3.com/image/270109050

"Geiger, Benno. Venice, Botto Nuevo. Art historian-dealer of Baltic origin. Friend of Kieslinger and acted as guide for Muehlmann and Kieslinger during their trips to Italy in 1942 and 1943. Involved in irregular art purchases ordered by Muehlmann and frequently in touch with Hofer.

Asta, Ferruccio. Ascona, Switzerland-Milan, via Andegari. Milan art dealer now living in Switzerland as a refugee. Reported to have worked actively with Geiger and suspected of trafficking in loot."

Below are provenances that mention Geiger: