Mysterious discovery of 1500 works stolen by the Nazis, Matisse, Renoir and many others. They were hidden in an apartment in Munich. I think this is the biggest discovery of paintings stolen during the holocaust in recent years. The dispossession of the Jews of Central Europe. With an estimated value of one billion euros. France's moral duty is to restore these works, even 60 years later. The Gurlitt affair gave a worldwide impact to the still discreet story of the spoliation of works of art by the Nazis. 1500 paintings buried in a Munich apartment, including Matisse, Chagall, Renoir... It is this story that made the hidden, stolen and looted works of art appear as a serial novel , an incredible detective novel, even though it was part of a whole process of dehumanization, of deculturization of Europe. The Bern Museum was appointed depository of what was called the Gurlitt collection. It is now up to him to reveal to us the trajectories of these works and return them to their rightful owners. The spoliation of works is one of the last liabilities of the Second World War. 100,000 works of art stolen and 1 million books destroyed in France alone. Here is the exemplary story of 3 works of art, three major paintings stolen from three major European collectors: Profile in front of the fireplace by Henri Matisse, heritage of Paul Rosenberg, Soleil d'Automne by Egon Schiele, by the Austrian collector Karl Grünwald, and The Man with the Guitar by George Braque, property of Alphonse Kann. Three works symbolizing this modern art described by the Nazis as degenerate art, the art that Hitler had undertaken to completely eradicate in the name of purifying culture, while using it as a bargaining chip. Even if this art was not appreciated, was completely denigrated publicly by the Nazi regime, If was perfectly aware that there was an important financial dimension and that these paintings could not be destroyed. It was necessary to monetize them better and contribute to the war effort. In Paris, many art collectors are Jewish. They will therefore be primarily targeted by spoliation. The capital was pre-war and remained the hub of the art market during the occupation. Alphonse Kann is a great English collector living in Paris. In its collections there is The Man with the Guitar by George Braque, a major work and founder of Cubism. In 1940, he had already fled to England... Alphonse Kahn was an elegant dandy, banker, art collector, who began by collecting old paintings, pre-Columbian and African art objects, and furniture. JI had a very eclectic and very safe taste. He's a pretty astonishing man, he has, he has a fascination with modern art from 1910-15, after the war, just after the First World War, and he buys it. Alphonse Kahn bought Picassos, a pure cubist, knowing full well that they were extremely difficult paintings and not taken from the general public but with determination and in an unprecedented volume. At the time of the occupation, the specialized German services arrive, if necessary the French police help, because even so, we are in full collaboration, we have to call things by their name. And Kahn was robbed, he left for England a year before or 2 years before, Kahn was robbed in his house in Saint Germain en Laye. It’s October 40, it’s very early days. On these lists, Paul Rosenberg, a central figure in the Parisian art market, naturally appears . At the beginning of 1940, wanting to shelter his family and his most important works, including Profile in front of the Fireplace by Matisse. He flees the capital for the southwest. The collector is one of the priority targets of the Nazis as his collection is renowned and recognized. In its famous gallery, major impressionists and masterpieces of modern art coexist. With Picasso, Braque and Matisse, Paul Rosenberg developed merchant ties and bonds of friendship. He wasn't just the one who made orders and sold, he wasn't a merchant, he was perhaps also an impresario. He promoted it, he accompanied them and he also sent them messages, in any case he followed them. In 1939 the Nazis organized a large sale in Lucerne of degenerate art looted from German museums. All profits are used to fuel the war effort. Collectors from all over the world and museum directors from all over the world flocked to this sale because there were magnificent works put on the market at an unbeatable price. There was a crowd, and my grandfather said “we will not buy these works, we will not give a penny to the Nazis because in any case this money will fall on our heads with bombs”. So he was identified as being resistant to the Nazis and he was on a blacklist. And so much so that he closed his gallery and they retreated towards Bordeaux. And what is completely fascinating is that the illusion that we were going to be able to go back to Paris, to reopen the gallery was present. That is to say, he wrote to Matisse, “you will see I am going to return to Paris in April or May”, he was thinking of April or May 40 and reopening the gallery and make a great exhibition etc. He brought many of his paintings to the south-west of France, near Bordeaux and he rented a safe from the BNCI, Banque Nationale du Commerce et de l'Industrie, which was, which had a safe in Libourne, a strong room, saying to himself, “well, there they will be safe” and Braque, who visits him, rents the safe next to him. Libourne was then in an occupied zone, and persecutions against Jews became more and more frequent. And then my grandfather, my grandmother and my mother, thus breaking apart the families, crossed the border at Hendaye to flee through Spain and reach Portugal. They were able to miraculously save themselves, take the boat, in the middle of mines, submarines and reach America. Paul Rosenberg will crystallize the jealousy, so there are intermediaries who will denounce Paul Rosenberg. So much so that when the Nazis in 41, the Gestapo, helped by the French authorities , broke into the bank's vaults, to loot what was inside, well they looted both my grandfather's vault and the vault by Braque. The collection and stock of Paul Rosenberg was transferred on September 5, 1941 to the Jeu de Paume museum. Hermann Goering, No. 2 of the Reisch and head of the Lufftwaffe, used the Musée du Jeu de Paume to make it a large repository for all stolen works. This is where, at the end of 1941, the Man with the Guitar, the Braque by Alphonse Kann and Profile in front of the Chimney, the Matisse by Paul Rosenberg will be found a few meters from each other ... To ensure the transfers of thousands of stolen works to the Musée du Jeu de Paume, Goering has the ERR at his disposal, the official organ of spoliation... Göring takes the ERR under his wing, which will give the opportunity to ERR to have means of transport and men available to send things to Germany. Göring had a personal train, the entire last carriage was solely a warehouse for looted works of art. And Göring spent a good part of his time searching all over Europe for masterpieces that he could loot from families to build up a huge collection, in his house for him, personally. The grand master of this villainous chessboard, Herman Goering, arrogates to himself all the rights over the fate of the stolen works. The Man with the Guitar and Profile in front of the Chimney pass through his personal networks which are also responsible for supplying his private collection. I discovered these photographs, they are incredible. Göring comes to visit the Jeu de Paume museum, it is the storage place for works that were looted and despoiled from Jewish families. Göring's arrival, Göring came to the Jeu de Paume museum more than 20 times. In the month of November 42, February 41, in March 41, in April 41, in May 41, in July 41, in August 41, December 41, February 42, March 42, May 14, 42 and November 42. It's quite astonishing. The man spends his life there, he comes incognito. And Göring, this kind of horrible character, likes degenerate art, and he has a reserved room, called "the martyrs' room", where all the paintings that may interest him are exhibited. And there he helps himself. We are here in a photograph which represents the “martyrs’ room”. And in this room, all the works considered to be part of a degenerate art are opposed, hung even in the English room, we recognize works by Chagall, works by Matisse, works by Picasso, numerous works by Dali, Fernand Light, Torres Garcia. In our opinion, the Braque is there, we can clearly see both the position and the size because it is a painting which is very high and very narrow. The Jeu de Paume becomes the hub of Nazi spoliation and its parallel market. A young museum employee will, at the risk of her life, track down and record the traceability of the paintings. She will play a decisive role in the post-war restitutions The boss of the Louvre museum, Jaujard asked a young woman of very modest origins, who is Rose Valland who will play a decisive role, to be on site and to see what the Nazis are doing. She observes, she is going to search, it is said, in the trash, to obtain duplicates of everything that is registered, she is going to try to obtain the addresses of the robbed collectors. At night at the Orangery, she listed in her little notebook a complete summary of all the works she had seen passing by, where it came from, where it was going as far as she knew. It was a gold mine for French museums, French collectors, after the liberation. Rose Volland reports that this Braque painting is going to be exchanged, so we have the documents of the exchange. This is a document found in the archives of the Louvre, and the same document exists in the archives of the Musée d'Orsay. And it's quite interesting to see the correlation between the exchanges that Rose Valland notes over this period and the arrival of Goering. For example, we have our exchange which interests us, it is from February 1942, and Göring is there on February 25, 42. And this is how we find Braque, “the man with the guitar” , item 1062 with reference HG, Hermann Göring. So “The Man with the Guitar” disappears, disappears in 1942. . me le Braque, Profile in front of the fireplace by Matisse will also be the subject of a barter. It is part of a lot of four Matisses that Goering exchanged to a collaborating art dealer for a painting by Jan Bruegel. Here, we see that a member of the ERR, this staff which is dedicated to the spoliation of works of art, is preparing to serve him a glass of champagne, and this work which he has in his hands , it is the Antwerp port of Jan Brueghel, and Göring is sealing the agreement, which is to recover the Jan Brueghel and exchange to the art dealer the 4 Matisses looted from Jewish families. We work in a network, it's an illegal market, it's a parallel market. We will work in a network with sectors that will emerge. Everyone, everyone, I say this in all honesty, French gallery owner during the occupation, everyone benefited from the spoliation. And besides, it is October 31, 1942, Sale of the goods of the Israelite Kahn, 3 Days of sales. Gazette of the Drouot hotel, 3 days of sales. Do you know what 3 days of sales are? It's hundreds of canvases, and that's the French part. The two paintings by Braque and Matisse stolen from Alphonse Kann and Paul Rosenberg disappear into the parallel market. The Nazis imperturbably continued the plundering of European artistic heritage. Throughout Europe, the Nazis put an industrialized system at the service of spoliation, intended not to let any work escape... In 1942, in Austria, an enlightened collector, Karl Grünwald, fled the country with some of his works, including Soleil Autumn Egon Schiele... He himself managed to obtain and buy a visa to leave Austria and had the hope of crossing France to reach the United States via Spain, but the rest of his family did not failed to obtain visas, purchase visas in time and was deported. We don't know whether it was bought, or whether it remained unsold. We just don't know what happened, what happened between 1942 and now. In 1943 the three paintings were stolen into the lucrative parallel market. At the end of the war we took stock: the spoliation by the Third Reich concerned more than 600,000 works of art. Karl Grünwald took refuge in New York from where he will not return, Alphonse Kann will remain in London. Only Paul Rosenberg will return to Paris at the end of the war... When my grandfather arrives in 45, well he starts looking for his paintings, and tongues begin to loosen. And my grandfather I would have liked if he would maybe take real legal action. Now he went a little Monte-Christo, saying I'm going to take revenge. And he would go to the galleries, and he would say “this is mine, and this is mine, and this is mine, this is mine”. I even think one of them said to him “Ah no no no, I haven’t seen a single one of your paintings. Of course, if you think that I had seen one of your paintings I would have reported it, I would have ensured that it was protected. » And my grandfather said to him “Well, that one ’s mine”, “Oh well, well that must be a mistake” and he gave it back to him. We are in artistic collaboration, if we want to find, and if we want to trace this era, we just need to look at the catalogs of Paul Rosenberg. The merchants who collaborated during the war and who made their fortune, at that time pretended that he did not know. Now a merchant, by definition knows that, or maybe it's a second-hand dealer from the street corner. This was obviously bad faith. In the post-war years, collectors set out in search of their stolen goods, in an international market flooded with works with a troubled past. An artistic recovery mission was established on November 24, 1944. 45,400 paintings were identified and returned via this mission after the war, but there remained more than 50,000 of which no trace could be found. In the 50s and 60s, we didn't ask ourselves these questions. There is a lack of memory of these lootings. When you realize that we don't, it 's only the historian Paxton, who uncovered the complicity of the Vichy regime in the deportations of Jews in the 70s, so 30 years or 25 years after the end of the war, you can imagine that the itinerary of the paintings could be ignored. The looting of works of art was nevertheless considered by the Nuremberg Tribunal to be a war crime. Alphonse Kann died in 1948 in London without it being known whether he got his hands on The Man with the Guitar. Paul Rosenberg in 1959, ignoring what had become of Profile in front of the fireplace... And Karl Grünwald in 1964, charging his son to search again and again for Autumn Sun, his favorite painting. 9 million francs is the price paid by the Georges Pompidou center to acquire a painting by Braque “the man with the guitar”. It is a painting which was therefore actually sold at the Lefebvre sale of 1975. We had to wait 36 years after the end of the war to see one of the three paintings resurface in the open in a very famous French museum. In 1981, the Center Pompidou attracted the media thanks to the spectacular acquisition of Man with a Guitar, a cubist gem by George Braque. At this time, there is no longer any mention of Alphonse Kann. In the 1980s, stories of dispossession did not yet arouse interest. It was only in the mid-1990s that the question of restitution finally became acute. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has decided to open its archives to the public, and in particular the ERR report which scrupulously records the lists and references of all the works and families despoiled... We are in 96. I have a client who came to see me one fine morning, a distant Kahn heir, reporting this, this report from the ERR, it is given to each of the families. There you go, that's exactly how it happened. I went to foreign affairs, I got the ERR list, look what I found, and it’s in Beaubourg! It sleeps quietly on a wall in Beaubourg. The Kann heirs therefore began in 1996 to ask Pompidou for the return to their family of The Man with the Guitar, a painting stolen from their ancestor Alphonse Kann. We contacted the head of the museum at the time Aillagon. And here it is true that we have a somewhat sinister moment since the Beaubourg museum does not want to hear anything. It took us a while to react because we felt that if indeed this work had indeed suffered for a moment from the Nazis' policy of spoliation. It reappeared at the end of the war, in conditions which could suggest that there had been a transaction between Alphonse André Lefèvre is a figure on the Parisian art market with whom the painting reappeared after the war, it that is to say after it was robbed... The Pompidou center suggests that André Lefebvre could have acquired the painting quite legitimately. If he had done it, we would have a record of it. Curiously, the archives of André Lefebvre, given to the Pompidou center, are very complete until 1939. From the spoliation to 1945 there is nothing. me by chance, they evaporated. André Lefèvre nevertheless remained associated with The Man with the Guitar from the reappearance of the painting after the war since it was he who officially lent the work for a 1948 exhibition in Germany in Freiburg im Bresgau. We can think that the Friborg exhibition was a way of making the painting appear to belong to André Lefebvre. me a whitening. There you have it, the work reappeared, and belonged to the great collector and patron André Lefebvre. This really suggests that the organizers of these exhibitions have very, very perverse intentions . It really is to attribute extremely dark intentions to them to imagine that they engaged in laundering operations of looted paintings, looted works. It is unthinkable that André Lefebvre would have completely openly owned this painting during Alphonse Kahn's lifetime without there having been an agreement between Alphonse Kahn and André Lefebvre. What was the nature of this agreement? Was it a sale, was it a trade or anything else. There is no trace of it. There is an article in 1974 in "Connaissance des arts" by his godson Jérôme Peignat, who very often went to lunch with André Lefebvre and who himself said that he never knew where the paintings came from. And Lefebvre never spoke about it. Alphonse Kahn, post-war, claims many works that belonged to him. Why doesn't he claim this one when it's one of the most important works he's owned? We can say possibly, but it is only a hypothesis, that he considered having transferred this work to a third party, to André Lefebvre. Everything that we brought to my document gave rise to "we're going to do some research too, we'll see you later" and they came back with a ready-made answer to say "well no that's not possible". For 2-3 years we tried to negotiate with them and when he heard nothing we had to take the bull by the horns. We filed a complaint for receiving stolen goods. The family considers that there is concealment since it has been shown that the painting was stolen but that the museum is keeping it. And so the next session was one or two representatives of the Kahn family and myself with Aillagon, in the judge's office, and it was a great moment of pleasure for us. Me for them. The first spoliation was by the Nazis in 40, and the second was when the Pompidou center refused to return the painting. The complaint for receiving stolen goods triggers an investigation lasting several years, led by an investigating judge ...It was at that moment, in 2005, that chance filled another 60-year gap... Karl Grünwald's painting by Egon Schiele, Autumn Sun, mysteriously reappears in a gray suburb from the east of France... Grunwald was an extraordinary collector, who recognized, but well before others, the incredible talent of Schiele whose production is relatively limited because he died at only 27 years old, therefore very, very young. And Grunwald bought a large part of his production and many paintings, supporting him not only artistically but also morally. In 2005 there were very few works by Schiele in circulation. The artist died at the age of 27, and his unknown paintings are now very rare. Soleil d'Automne reappears to me by enchantment in the surroundings of Mulhouse, in the furnished apartment purchased a few years earlier as a life annuity by a working-class family. For some actors and observers of the art world, the story of this magical reappearance orchestrated by Christie's is almost a little too good to be true. 21.7 million Euros. Whatever the mysterious arrangement, it was on this sum that the auction concluded. Meanwhile, the investigating judge's investigation into Braque's Man with the Guitar drags on, the dialogue remains electric between the Center Pompidou and the heirs of Alphonse Kann. The complaint for concealment triggered lengthy research which failed to elucidate the historical vagueness surrounding the journey of the painting just after its spoliation. Meanwhile, the investigating judge's investigation into Braque's "man with the guitar" drags on. The dialogue remains electric between the Center Pompidou and the heirs of Alphonse Kann. The complaint for concealment triggered lengthy research which failed to elucidate the historical vagueness surrounding the journey of the painting just after its spoliation. This complaint did not have legal action, you know, the case was closed by the judge. The judge at the time heard me, this study took a certain number of years, it was never able to formally establish that at a given moment, a deed of transfer had been organized between Alphonse Kahn and a third party . So there, we ended up concluding that the doubt should benefit Alphonse Kahn's beneficiaries. The Pompidou Center kept the painting and compensated the family. There was a memorandum of understanding. The Kahn family certainly made the right decision, that the painting remains at Pompidou. I think she made an extremely generous and fair gesture by not monetizing this work to the maximum of her possibilities. I think that today a painting would easily cost me between 70 and 80 million euros, that wouldn't be surprising. We find more. It's impossible to find, it's very rare and it's still one of the symbols of a movement if not the most important movement of the 20th century. I take museums. We have difficulty getting rid of these works, because they have been on their walls for 30 or 40 years, and all of a sudden, we ask them to return them. Yes, ultimately it didn't belong to them, they were its custodians. I take their frustration but it also makes sense that they would give back things that didn't belong to them. It is, yes, when you are the custodian of something that is not yours. The case of the Braque still remains today a very sensitive affair in the memory of the Center Pompidou which had to pay, after the purchase in 1981, a second very large sum of money, confidential this one, to keep the work in national collections . The case of Paul Rosenberg's Matisse tells us another story. The painting reappeared in 2012 ironically in the same Pompidou museum during a Matisse retrospective, 67 years after his disappearance. On loan from a Norwegian foundation in Oslo, Profile in front of the fireplace is exhibited among dozens of other Matisses... It turns out that I didn't know the list of missing paintings by heart, so I'm missing out. And fortunately certain specialists, notably Emmanuel Pollack, notice it, point it out, and the family, our family is informed there is a painting which belongs to the family. As with the Braque, the heirs must demonstrate that Profile in front of the Chimney really belonged to Paul Rosenberg. We must therefore provide proof that it was in his safe in Libourne. In the Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we can trace the steps of Paul Rosenberg who left to find his paintings at the end of the war... There is a very important little note there. So, Libourne safe,” as I informed you in my letter of the 15th, the safe was broken into on April 28, 1941, in the presence of the occupying authorities. And so this chest will be transferred to another chest and an inventory will be drawn up by the director of the Bordeaux School of Fine Arts, Mr Rogano. So here we can clearly see that a painting by Matisse of a woman in profile in front of a fireplace, the dimensions are 60 by 81, appears in this inventory drawn up by Rogano from the Libourne chest. And we know that in September 1941, these works will arrive at the Jeu de Paume museum. On the back of a box documenting a drawing by Matisse I see a list, an inventory with “Profile in front of the fireplace>) with the inventory number of the Paul Rosenberg collection and the fact that it is presented with this sentence “pray either in Floirac or in Paris” makes me think that it was not recovered after the war but that he is indeed in the process of looking for these works. The presence of Profil in front of I Cheminée in the Libourne trunk therefore confirms its belonging to Paul Rosenberg. It remains to be determined whether the Heni-Onstad couple, at the time they acquired it, knew that it was a looted painting... In the Norwegian foundation, he entered before the 1960s since Between 60 and 63, I tracked it in the exhibition catalogs about 17 times, which makes me say that the spouses, owners of the work, are in good faith because when we lend a work we are not afraid to expose it, we do not fear the demands of a family, so they ignore it. Above all, it’s very moving to find a painting like that because, what did she see pass by? What a vicissitude since it was painted in Matisse's studio and went directly from Matisse's studio to my grandfather's gallery, and then suddenly the war arrived and there it ended. is found in a maestrium, passing from a Gestapo van to warehouses guarded by the Nazis, from there to crooked dealers who sold it and she finds herself with an incredible story at the bottom The looting of works of art still remains one of the symbols of what the Nazis wanted to do, what the Nazis failed to do and of what the Allies tried to restore, the European culture which had been pillaged. There would remain several tens of thousands of works to be returned to Europe. Of the three paintings, only The Man with a Guitar by Georges Braque remains accessible to the public. It hangs on the walls of the Center Pompidou in Paris.
