As the Nazis appropriated art collection

[LCR]

This is a great and detailed article on artistic policy, if I may say so, the National Socialist Party of Germany during the war. I will spread a little, I have not all translated.


How the Nazis appropriated art collection
Adrian Darmon, http://www.artcult.fr/_Sommaire/

Immediately after coming to power in 1933, the Nazis developed a plan of expropriation of works of art belonging to Jews in Germany and abroad, in anticipation of a new Europe.

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30 January 1933, President Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor of the Reich, and within a month in many German cities were organized against the exhibition of contemporary art - Hitler clearly outlined his criteria in this area.

20 th March 1933 was organized by the public burning of the 5000 works "degenerative art".

1 st April 1933 the Nazis organized a national day boycott of shops belonging to persons of Jewish origin, and have begun to exclude them from government agencies and from professional colleagues, and forbade them to cultural activities.

On May 10, the Nazis carried out in Berlin the first public burning of banned books.

On September 10, 1935 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, Hitler made a speech against modern art. After 5 days, the Nazis began to apply the "Nuremberg laws" that deprives people of Jewish origin, civil rights and prohibiting mixed marriages. Since then, people of Jewish origin finally realized the danger that hangs over them. Many of them decided to emigrate.

From 19 July to 30 November 1937 the Nazis carried out the Munich exhibition of "degenerative art» ( «Entarte Kunst»), which were exhibited works of contemporary art, representing the "essence of the Judeo-Bolshevik degeneration in German art." By March 1938, museums have been "cleaned up" - was removed about 16 000 "degenerative" works of art.

12 th March 1938 the German army entered Austria, and in six weeks the Nazis issued a decree imposing an obligation on persons of Jewish origin to submit an inventory of his fortune to follow the expropriation.

In May 1938, in Germany, a commission was established under the leadership of Alfred Rosenberg and Adolf Ziegler operating confiscated "degenerative" works of art. The castle Nidershenhoyzen near Berlin was opened on the auction hall for their sale. German citizens have the right to buy these products on the currency or barter them for works of interest to Hitler and the Nazis. A month later, a decree that Germanskoe state will not pay any compensation for the confiscated them "degenerative" works of art.

14 June, the Minister of Interior issued a decree on the nationalization of all businesses owned by persons of Jewish origin, giving them the right to sell their enterprises to citizens-Aryans.

6 June 1939, Hitler appointed Dr. Hans Posse, the director of the Dresden Museum, the only authorized the purchase of works of art for the museum in Linz (Austria), designed to gather the largest collection of germanskogo art and foreign art masterpieces by purchase or expropriation.

June 30, Fischer Gallery in Lucerne, organized the sale of 126 works of "degenerative art", the proceeds of which was supposed to go to the German museums. A month later, Martin Borman ordered that the collection, expropriated in the occupied territories, were kept intact, while the Chancellor and Dr. Posse does not take away items for the Linz Museum.

On August 23 signed a nonaggression pact with the USSR.

In Paris, all museums were closed. Between August 27 and December 28, sent 27 freight trains, in which most of the collections of French museums was transferred in 7 locks, including Chamfort. Some collectors of Jewish origin have transferred their meeting in temporary storage in the state museums. These collections were taken to Chamfort, Brissak and Sursh with national meetings.

1 st July 1940 Germany's ambassador in France, Otto Abetts ordered the military commander of Paris to seize the meeting of the museums of Paris and provincial museums, as well as an inventory and to expropriate the works of art belonging to persons of Jewish origin living in the occupied territories. Captured items were to be transported to the Embassy of Germany in Paris. With regard to the subjects of the national assembly, at this stage of the Nazis confined the preparation of documents for their expropriation.

All the same Abetts sent to the Gestapo list of the fifteen largest art dealers in Paris of Jewish origin, including Seligman, Vildenshtayn, Alphonse Kahn (who escaped to London), Paul Rosenberg, and Bernheim, Jr.. Most of these merchants did not manage to hide their collection.

In July 1940 a decree was issued, committing French settlers in the occupied territories, to convey to the office inventory of all movable property belonging to them worth more than 100 000 francs, and soon - another decree, forbidding any movement artifacts without a permit. At the end of the month a special service, led by the theoretician of the National Socialist Party, Alfred Rosenberg, was transferred to Paris. She was charged with the confiscation of property of persons of Jewish origin and the Freemasons in occupied Europe.

In August 1940, Goebbels ordered Dr. Kimmel, Director General National Museums of Germany, a list of works by German artists who were in occupied countries, in order to confiscate them, but if they get a refund of extinction in the form of equivalent products. The property of persons of Jewish origin and the Masons, who lived in Alsace-Lorraine, annexed in the same month was transferred to Nazi organizations. Established a special office, which passed on the proceeds from the sale of confiscated items.

In late August Abetts sent to Berlin full documentation on the confiscated paintings from the national assembly in the occupied territories, and conveyed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Reich's list of thirty of the most valuable paintings discovered in the mansions of people of Jewish origin. Two days later the Vichy government issued a decree on the appointment of temporary administrators of enterprises whose owners were denied the right to perform their duties. It should be noted zeal with which the Vichy government was subject to the requirements of the Nazis!

On September 13 the Regional Trial Court Upper Pyrenees ordered to liquidate all the property of Baron Maurice de Rothschild, which was detected in Arzheles-Gazo. Museums used the right of priority purchase and receive the confiscated works of art. In this case, the Vichy government had shown its own initiative, plunder the property belonging to a Jewish family, despite the fact that the law on the special status of persons of Jewish origin had not yet been adopted.

September 17, Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to render all assistance in the transport of cultural property to Germany. At the same time a decree was issued, according to which on September 1, all the deal to sell works of art to the French state or private person were declared null and void.

On September 26, Directorate Hotel Drouot in Paris appealed to the Nazi authorities for permission to resume the activities of auction houses. This permission was granted with the condition to send them all the directories of trades and separately report on items valued at more than 100 000 francs, as well as information about customers. Since then, the official market of art began to develop in parallel with the black market.

In early October, the Nazis confiscated the Turgenev Library, established in Paris by Russian emigrants. This collection, numbering more than 100 000 volumes, was moved to Berlin, and later, probably in Prague, where the Nazis wanted to create a "center of Slavic Studies. At the end of the war, this collection was seized by Soviet troops and sent to Moscow.

October 5, was issued a law that instructed the French government to control and elimination of the confiscated property of emigrants. The head of the German military command gave the order to transport the confiscated works of art from the Embassy of Germany in the museum Jeu de Pomme, who became the principal repository of confiscated works of art.

Rose Vallan, an employee of the museum Jeu de Pomme, was the only Frenchwoman, who retained access to the museum. She decided to gather as much information about the works of art were stored there and send it to the directorate of national museums. Works of "degenerative art" stored separately, the Nazis used them to exchange for the antiquities, intended for Germany.

Director of National Museums tried to ensure the preservation of the collections of the Jews, not deprived of French nationality, appointing interim managers of these collections, but his efforts were unavailing.

November 3, Marshal Goering visited the museum Jeu de Pomme and selected 27 paintings from the collections of confiscated for his personal collection. Subsequently, he has visited the museum and was a program of transferring confiscated from Jewish collections in the collection of Hitler and in his collection. Hitler, in turn, ordered to keep all the confiscated works for a museum in Linz, but this order is not performed very strongly, as he sometimes preferred to display these works are not for sale. However, its solution experts from Linz able to select items that interested them, for the museum collection.