Catalogue description Miscellaneous Lists of Looted Art sent to the Macmillan Committee. Report on 'Accessions...

Miscellaneous Lists of Looted Art sent to the Macmillan Committee.

Report on 'Accessions to German Museums and Galleries during the Occupation of France', compiled by the MFA and A branch of SHAEF and copied to various departments including the Macmillan Committee on 5 April 1945. The report is collectively known as the 'Schenker Papers', with much of the information derived from the papers found in the Paris office of the Schenker international transport firm. The predominance of Rhineland museums as purchasers of French art at low rates is explained by the activities of 'a Rhineland gang, consisting of Apffelstaedt and Baumann of Duesseldorf and Rademacher of Bonn'. The papers provide extensive lists of the pictures acquired by the Suerdmondt Museum in Aachen; the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, the Jagdmuseum and the State Museum Egyptian and Islamic Departments in Berlin; the Rheinische Landmuseum in Bonn [purchases amounting to several million francs in value, including paintings by Delacroix, Corot and Renoir]; the Stadtische Kunstsammlungen in Dusseldorf [purchases amounting to roughly two million francs in value, including paintings by Chardin, Watteau and Breughel]; the Folkwang Museum in Essen [purchases amounting to roughly three million francs in value, including paintings by Corot, Delacroix and Hubert Robert]; the Kunsthalle in Hamburg ['Flora and Pomona' by Rubens purchased for two million francs]; the Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe [including works by Fragonard and Sisley]; the Hessisches Landesmuseum [with a male portrait by Mignard]; the Deutsches Tapetenmuseum in Kasse [including a Gobelin tapestry]; the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld [including works by Gaugin, Sisley and Delacroix]; the Marburg Museum; the Stadtisches Heimatmuseum in Nassau an der Lahn; the Strasbourg Museum [a landscape attributed to Adrien van der Velde purchased for 275,000 francs]; the Deutsches Schloss and Beschlagmuseum in Velbert; and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna [a clavichord by Pascal Taskin for the sum of 127,000 francs].

The second part of the report consists of an 11-page report dealing with the purchase of works of art in France during the occupation, excluding those made directly by German museums and galleries. States that in some cases 'several of the dealers [e g Herbst] were stated to be purchasing on behalf of museums. Others were acting in a variety of capacities, such as furnishing houses taken over by the Party big-wigs, or buying pictures to form the nucleus of new and Party-inspired galleries. A small quantity of goods were sent to prominent Party figures [e g Ribbentrop, Speer] apparently for their personal use. Goering, having the fruits of the Einsatzstab Rosenberg at his disposal only figures in the Schenker papers in one instance'. Provides a detailed list of purchasers listed in alphabetical order with information on their activities, contacts and main transactions. The papers frequently include information on the acquired pictures, their prices and descriptions, as in the case of Philipp Frank, 'described as Director of the Deutsche Bank, Mannheim', who had reportedly bought eight paintings mostly from the art dealer Gobin, including 'Pine trees and rocks' by Cezanne, 'Dancer' by Degas and 'Landscape' by Courbet. Among the biggest buyers figured Hans Herbst, Wolfgang Krueger, Dr Josef [sic] Muehlmann and Anton Poessenbacher [sic]. Includes an Appendix with an alphabetical list of French art dealers, firms and individuals 'who sold works of art to the Germans during the occupation', with their addresses.

Report [in French] from Western Germany and Austria compiled by the intelligence department of the French Army, DGER [Direction Générale des Etudes et Recherches] and copied to the Macmillan Committee by MFA and A Squadron Leader Douglas Cooper providing lists of West German and Austrian depositories of art and archives and of people involved in the looting of France's artistic heritage as indicated in previous SHAEF reports and in the Schenker papers [see above], with amendments and addenda, dated 3 July 1945. Provides a chart of the organisation of the MFA and A branch within the US Zone and an index of the reported locations of art repositories, covering the regions of the Saarland, Palatinate, Baden, Wurttemberg [on blue-green paper], Austria [on yellow paper], Bavaria [on pink paper], Thuringia, Westphalia, Hessen, the Rhineland and the Ruhr [on white paper]. Contains an index with basic information [name and city] of the 124 German individuals mentioned in the following lists, mainly art dealers, museum directors and art historians involved directly or indirectly to the looting of France's artistic treasures, such as Professor W Andreas, Dr Bunjes, Dr Buchner, Hans Herbst, Frau Maria Dietrich, Dr Metz, Hans Moebius, Rademacher, Rochlitz, A Possenbacher and Professor Dr Sauer. More detailed information is included in the regional lists.

The Saarland, Palatinate, Baden, Wurttemberg section provides a 42-page list of repositories of art and archives and of individuals who might possess useful information relating to the looting of French works of art, listed according to the location of the repositories with brief remarks on their contents and the individuals' occupations and attitudes towards Nazism, with dates and source [presumably of when-where the information was acquired]. Mentions the location and reported contents of the main repositories of the area containing German and French public and private collections of both known and unknown origins [see also T 209/28, which contains most of the information in its English version]. Examples are the Chateau de Schoeborn near Geisheim, belonging to Eugene Abresch and containing more than 200 items, including a Bismarck portrait by Franz von Lenbach and paintings by Rubens, Tintoretto and Murillo; the Chateau of the Baron d'Adelsheim, used as a depository for his private collection and for the museum of the Palatinate, Heidelberg; the depositories of the National and Army Museums, archives and libraries in Karlsruhe; the depository of paintings from the Prince of Lichtenstein's collection on the island of Reichenau, near Constance; a repository of art confiscated by the ERR located in Amstetten; the salt mines at Heilbronn, where several of the major public collections of art and archives of Western Germany and c 70 cases containing glass from the Strasbourg cathedral were kept; the private residence of Verwaltungsrat Schmidt in Tuebingen containing several looted art objects marked as 'Wehrmachtsgut'; and the Chateau Wildenstein with paintings from the Prince of Furstenberg collection, seven crates of paintings from the Imperial Museum of Vienna, two crates with paintings by Moreau le Jeune [Jean-Michel Moreau] from the Maurice de Rothschild collection, 29 paintings including two Fragonards and one Degas, and other objects from the Prince of Furstenberg collection such as manuscripts, incunabula and tapestries.