Looted art rescued from Nazis by Monuments Men was later ‘sold for profit’
ART STOLEN by the Nazis and rescued by the US military’s “Monuments Men” was not returned to its rightful Jewish owners at the end of the war but sold for profit by the Bavarian authorities, according to explosive new claims.
American forces recovered thousands of pieces of art and entrusted them to the Bavarian state government in 1949. But instead of returning the art to its owners, the Bavarian authorities kept several works to display in government buildings and sold others at auction, according to the Süddeutsche
Zeitung newspaper. In several cases, the art was sold to the families of Nazi war criminals.
The real-life Monuments Men were the inspiration behind the 2014 film starring George Clooney and Matt Damon. A unit of art historians served on the front line alongside American troops in the Second World War, with a mission to save Europe’s cultural heritage from destruction. They tracked down more than 10,000 works. But an investigation by the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, an NGO based in London, discovered that many of the pieces were never returned.
Picture of a Dutch Square, a 300year-old copy of a painting by Jan van der Heyden looted from a Jewish collector in Vienna was not returned to his family. Instead it was sold to Henriette Hoffmann, the daughter of Hitler’s personal photographer and former wife of Baldur von Schirach, the Nazi governor of Vienna, who was convicted of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials. Hoffmann sold the painting a few months later for a considerable profit to Xanten Cathedral in North Rhine-Westphalia, where it hangs today. She died in 1992.
In another instance, a copy of a Canaletto from Hitler’s private collection was not returned to its owners but instead hangs in the German Parliament Association’s offices in Bonn.
Another looted painting from Hermann Göring’s private collection was not returned but hangs in an official government guesthouse.
The Bavarian State Art Collection has not co-operated with investigations and has refused historians and the families of former Jewish owners access to its archives, Süddeutsche Zeitung alleged. Margit Knom-Marcon, director of the Bavarian State Archive, said: “All governmental agencies are required by law to make their documents accessible. And the State Art Collection is a governmental agency. But we do not have a single document from the State Art Collection’s archive.”