Ethnic violence is a form of political violence which is expressly motivated by ethnic hatred and ethnic conflict. Forms of ethnic violence which can be argued to have the characteristics of terrorism may be known as ethnic terrorism or ethnically motivated terrorism.
"Racist terrorism" is a form of ethnic violence which is dominated by overt racism and xenophobic reactionism.
Care must be taken to distinguish ethnic violence, which is violence motivated
by an ethnic division, from violence that is motivated by other factors
and just happens to break out between members of different ethnic
groups (political or ideological).
Violent ethnic rivalry is the subject matter of Jewish sociologist Ludwig Gumplowicz's Der Rassenkampf ("Struggle of the Races", 1909); and more recently, it is the subject matter of Amy Chua's notable study, World On Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability.
Some academicians would classify all "nationalist-based violence" as ethnic violence, a classification which would include the World Wars and all of the major conflicts between industrialised nations which occurred during the 19th century.
Causality and characteristics
There
are various potential causes of ethnic violence. Research which has
been conducted by the New England Complex Systems Institute (NESCI) has
shown that violence results when ethnic groups are partially mixed:
neither clearly separated enough to reduce contact nor thoroughly mixed
enough to build common bonds. According to Dr. May Lim, a researcher
who is affiliated with NECSI, "Violence normally occurs when a group is
large enough to impose cultural norms on public spaces, but not large
enough to prevent those norms from being broken. Usually this occurs in
places where boundaries between ethnic or cultural groups are unclear."
This theory also states that the minimum requirement for ethnic
tensions to result in ethnic violence on a systemic level is a
heterogeneous society and the lack of a power to prevent them from
fighting.
In the ethnic conflicts that erupted after the end of the Cold War,
this lack of outer controls is seen as the cause; Since there was no
longer a strong centralized power (in the form of the USSR) to control
the various ethnic groups, they then had to provide defense for
themselves. This implies that once ethnicity is established, there needs to be strong distinctions, otherwise violence is inevitable.
Another theory supports the belief that a general feeling that
security is lacking can cause ethnic violence, particularly when
different ethnic groups live in proximity to each other. This feeling
can eventually cause different ethnic groups to distrust each other,
which leads to their unwillingness to peacefully coexist with each
other.
The emotions that tend to cause ethnic tensions, which can lead to ethnic violence, are fear, hate, resentment, and rage.
Individual identities might change throughout the years, but strong
emotional issues can lead to a desire to fulfill those needs above all
other concerns. This strong desire to satisfy individual needs, without harming your own group, can have violent results.
Assuming that ethnic groups can be defined as groups of people
which band together in order to protect material goods, while they are
also satisfying the need to feel that they are a part of a group,
violence which results from ethnicity can be a result of a violation
which is committed against either ethnic group. However, violence occurs
when the members of the opposing groups believe that there is no
peaceful solution to the tensions which are plaguing them.
Another theory states that ethnic violence is the result of past
tensions. Referring to the members of the other ethnic group based
solely on their previous offences tends to increase the probability of
future violence.
This is referenced in the literature on ethnic violence that tends to
focus on areas that have already had a history of ethnic violence,
instead of comparing them with areas that have had peaceful ethnic
relations.
Ethnic violence obviously does not exist in exactly the same
conditions in every example. Whereas one case of ethnic violence might
result in a drawn out genocide, another case might result in a race
riot. Different issues lead to different levels of intensity of
violence. The problem mainly comes down to issues of group security. In
situations when offensive and defensive actions are indistinguishable to
outsiders, and in situations when the offensive actions are more
effective in insuring group survival, then violence is sure to be
present and harsh.
This view of ethnic violence placed risk in areas where members of
ethnic groups feel insecure about their future, not as a result of
emotional tensions.
Ethnic violence frequently occurs as a result of individual
domestic disputes which spiral out of control and lead to large-scale
conflicts. When individual disputes occur between two members of
different ethnic groups, they can result in peace or they can result in
more violence. Peace is more likely when offended persons feel that the
offenders will be sufficiently punished by members of their own ethnic
group. Or peace is simply achieved through the fear of greater ethnic
violence. If the fear of retribution or the fear of violence is not
present, ethnic violence may occur.
Because ethnic violence is particularly extreme, there are
numerous theories on how it can be prevented, and once it starts, there
are numerous theories on how it can be ended. At the New England Complex
Systems Institute, Yaneer Bar-Yam suggests that "clear boundaries" or
"thorough mixing" can reduce the possibility of violence, citing Switzerland as an example.
Unfortunately, poorly planned separations do not lead to peace between members of different ethnic groups. the religious separation which occurred between India and Pakistan left large heterogeneous populations in India and since the separation, violence has occurred.
The United States
is often presented as the classic "melting pot" of ethnicities.
"Ethnic" tensions in the United States are more typically viewed in
terms of race.
Using the media to change perceptions of ethnicity might lead to a
change in the probability of ethnic violence. The use of media that
results in ethnic violence is usually a cyclical relationship; one group
increases messages of group cohesion in response to a perceived threat,
and a neighboring group responds with messages of their own group
cohesion. Of course, this only happens when outside groups are already
perceived as being potential threats.
Using this logic, ethnic violence might be prevented by decreasing
messages of group cohesion, while increasing messages of safety and
solidarity with members of other ethnic groups.
Outside forces may also be effective in decreasing the likelihood
of ethnic violence. However, not all interferences by outside forces
may be helpful. If not handled delicately, the possibility might
increase. Outside groups can help stabilize danger zones by imposing
gentle economic sanctions, develop more representative political
institutions that would allow for minority voices to be heard, and
encourage the respect of ethnically diverse communities and minorities. However, if done incorrectly, outside interference can cause a nationalistic lash-back.
Ethnic cleansing and genocide
qualify as "ethnic violence" (of the most extreme sorts), because by
definition, the victims of a genocide are usually killed based on their
membership in a particular ethnic group.
Some of the world's ongoing conflicts are, however, fought along religious rather than ethnic lines; one such conflict is the Somali Civil War.
The Guatemalan Civil War
was fought along ideological lines (leftist rebel groups fought against
the Guatemalan government) but it acquired ethnic characteristics
because the rebels were primarily supported by the indigenous Mayan
groups.
Terrorism against Copts
in Egypt qualifies as both ethnic and religious violence but it isn't
occurring during an ongoing conflict, instead, it reflects a history of
sporadic and continuous attacks, over the years.
"Herzmansky is Purely Aryan Again!" - The Herzmansky department store in Vienna was confiscated after the Anschluss
Aryanization (German: Arisierung)
was the Nazi term for the seizure of property from Jews and its
transfer to non-Jews, and the forced expulsion of Jews from economic
life in Nazi Germany, Axis-aligned states, and their occupied territories. It entailed the transfer of Jewish property into "Aryan" or non-Jewish, hands.
"Aryanization" is , according to Kreutzmüller and Zaltin in Dispossession: Plundering German Jewry, 1933-1953, "a Nazi slogan that was used to camouflage theft and its political consequences."
The process started in 1933 in Nazi Germany with transfers of Jewish property and ended with the Holocaust.
Two phases have generally been identified: a first phase in which the
theft from Jewish victims was concealed under a veneer of legality, and a
second phase, in which property was more openly confiscated. In both
cases, Aryanization corresponded to Nazi policy and was defined,
supported, and enforced by Germany's legal and financial bureaucracy.
Michael Bazyler
writes that "[t]he Holocaust was both the greatest murder and the
greatest theft in history". Between $230 and $320 billion (in 2005 US
dollars) was stolen from Jews across Europe, with hundreds of thousands of businesses Aryanized.
Nazi Germany
Before
Hitler came to power, Jews owned 100,000 businesses in Germany. By
1938, boycotts, intimidation, forced sales, and restrictions on
professions had largely forced Jews out of economic life. According to Yad Vashem, "Of the 50,000 Jewish-owned stores that existed in 1933, only 9,000 remained in 1938."
Exclusion and dispossession of Jews starting in 1933
Starting in 1933, through the Aryan paragraph and later the Nuremberg Laws,
Jews were largely excluded from public life in Germany. Jews were
removed from jobs in the public sector, such as the civil service and
teaching, and further restrictions were introduced through the Nazi
period. Jewish university faculty were removed from departments in
German universities in cities including Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt am
Main, Breslau, Heidelberg, Bonn, Cologne, Würzburg, and Jena.
By 1 January 1938, German Jews were prohibited from operating
businesses and trades and offering goods and services. On 26 April
1938, Jews were ordered to report all wealth over 5,000 Reichsmarks,
and their access to bank accounts was restricted. On 14 June 1938, the
Interior Ministry ordered the registration of all Jewish businesses.
The state set the sales value of Jewish firms at a fraction of their
market worth, and used various pressure tactics to ensure sales only to
desired persons. Among the largest "Aryanization profiteers" were IG Farben, the Flick family,
and large banks. The proceeds from "Aryanized" firms had to be
deposited in savings accounts, and were made available to their Jewish
depositors only in limited amounts, so that in the final analysis,
Aryanization amounted to almost compensation-free confiscation.
In the autumn of 1938, only 40,000 of the formerly 100,000 Jewish
businesses were still in the hands of their original owners.
Aryanization was completed on 12 November 1938 with the enactment of a
regulation, the Verordnung zur Ausschaltung der Juden aus dem deutschen Wirtschaftsleben
(Regulation for the elimination of Jews from German economic life),
through which the remaining businesses were transferred to non-Jewish
owners and the proceeds taken by the state. Jewellery, stocks, real property,
and other valuables had to be sold. Either by direct force, government
interventions such as sudden tax claims, or the weight of the
circumstances, Jewish property changed hands mostly below fair market
value. Jewish employees were fired, and self-employed people were prohibited from working in their respective professions.
After Kristallnacht
After the "Kristallnacht" pogroms,
the pressure of Aryanization was drastically increased. On 12 November
1938, Jews were forbidden to function as business managers, forcing
Jewish owners to install "Aryan" surrogates. These people, who were
often promoted by the party, first took over the office, and soon
thereafter usually the whole business. "Compliant Aryans" (Gefälligkeitsarier)
were threatened with punishment according to the Regulation against
Complicity with the Camouflage of Jewish Firms (22 April 1938). Because
the Jews were burdened with heavy payments as "atonement" for the damage done by the SA
and antisemitic mobs during Kristallnacht, the selling off of Jewish
property was only a question of time. On 3 December 1938, the value of
Jewish landed property was frozen at the lowest level, and valuables and
jewels were permitted to be sold only through state offices. The
impoverishment of the Jewish population caused by Aryanization often
stood in the way of its goal – promoting emigration through
persecution – because those affected lacked the means to emigrate. They
became victims of the Final Solution.
The
term Aryanization is sometimes used to refer to eviction of Jewish
scientists and people engaged in the cultural sector and in a context of
cultural appropriation, for example the Nazi project to provide works such as Handel's Judas Maccabaeus with a new text removed from the intended Old Testament setting. The titles of artworks depicting Jewish people, such as Klimt's famous Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer were changed ("The Lady in Gold") to erase their Jewish connection.
Complicity in Aryanization
The heads of the public 'Landessippenämter' (state offices of mores) and in particular the Protestant pastors and the Evangelical Lutheran Church
played an important role in the preparation of Aryanization. They were
responsible for Aryan evidence, family and rural farm research,
migration movements as well as biographical and local cultural research.
In these functions, they were significantly involved as desk clerks and
responsible for the ideological propaganda of the Nazi regime in
general and the implementation of Nazi racial policy in particular.
Poster of Aryanization of Jewish businesses, after the Nazi ordinance of October 1940A cartoon presentation of the "Measures for the defense of the Italian race"
Austria
After
Austria merged into the Third Reich in the Anschluss on March 12, 1938,
Austrian Jews were plundered and thousands of properties seized through
Aryanization. Major landmarks owned by Jews, like the Wiener Riesenrad, which had belonged to Eduard Steiner, were Aryanized and their owners murdered.
Large and small businesses, from the biggest banks to the smallest
family run businesses, were seized from Jews under the guise of
Aryanisation. The Vugesta Nazi looting organisation played a key role in disposing of assets of plundered Jews.
France
In Vichy France,
Aryanization was governed by a July 22, 1941 law of the French state,
which was following the October 18, 1940 Nazi ordinance for the occupied
zone. Historian Henry Rousso gives the number 10,000 for the Aryanized businesses.
In 1942 the Jewish Telegraphc Agency (JTA) reported that the Nazis
claimed that 35,000 French businesses had already been Aryanized. Since the 1990s, there has been considerable research on the subject, and several monographs have been published.
Large and small businesses, including art galleries, were transferred to non-Jews. Examples of companies Aryanized in France include Galeries Lafayette.
Italy
In July 1938, the Manifesto of Race, which declared the Italians to be descendants of the Aryan race. In October 1938, it was followed by the Racial Laws in the Kingdom of Italy, which stripped the Jews of Italian citizenship and governmental and professional positions.
The aim of these measures was to achieve the "Aryanization" of Italian
society by excluding Jews from various areas of economy, education and
social life and having to emigrate.
Romania
In
Romania, the Aryanization process was encouraged by tax incentives, as
well as outright confiscation. Hardliners complained that some Jews were
able to evade the regulations by transferring their businesses to
Romanian owners (only on paper). Although Aryanization was to an extent
inspired by similar policies in Germany, the Romanian authorities made
the key decisions with regards to the implementation of Aryanization.
Aryanization also occurred in the Slovak State.
About 12,300 Jewish businesses existed in 1940. By 1942, 10,000 had
been liquidated, and the remainder "Aryanized" by transfer to non-Jewish
owners.
The looting of Jewish property beginning in 1933 in Germany was a key part of the Holocaust.
Nazis also plundered occupied countries, sometimes with direct
seizures, and sometimes under the guise of protecting art through Kunstschutz units. In addition to gold, silver, and currency, cultural items of great significance were stolen, including paintings, ceramics, books, and religious treasures.
Many of the artworks looted by the Nazis were recovered by the Allies' Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program
(MFAA, also known as the Monuments Men), following the war; however
many of them are still missing or were returned to countries but not to
their original owners. An international effort to identify Nazi plunder
which still remains unaccounted for is underway, with the ultimate aim
of returning the items to their rightful owners, their families, or
their respective countries.
Background
Jean Metzinger, 1913, En Canot (Im Boot), oil on canvas, 146 cm × 114 cm (57 in × 45 in), exhibited at Moderni Umeni, S.V.U. Mánes, Prague, 1914, acquired in 1916 by Georg Muche at the Galerie Der Sturm, confiscated by the Nazis c. 1936, displayed at the Degenerate Art show in Munich, and missing ever sinceAlbert Gleizes, 1912, Landschaft bei Paris, Paysage près de Paris, Paysage de Courbevoie, oil on canvas, 72.8 cm × 87.1 cm (28.7 in × 34.3 in), missing from Hannover since 1937
Adolf Hitler was an unsuccessful artist who was denied admission to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. Nonetheless, he thought of himself as a connoisseur of the arts, and, in Mein Kampf, he ferociously attacked modern art as degenerate, including Cubism, Futurism, and Dadaism, all of which he considered the product of a decadent 20th-century society. In 1933 when Hitler became chancellor of Germany,
he enforced his aesthetic ideal on the nation. The types of art that
were favored among the Nazi party were classical portraits and
landscapes by Old Masters, particularly those of Germanic origin. Modern art that did not match this was dubbed degenerate art by the Third Reich and all that was found in Germany's state museums was to be sold or destroyed. With the sums raised, the Führer's objective was to establish the European Art Museum in Linz. Other Nazi dignitaries, like ReichsmarschallHermann Göring and Foreign Affairs minister von Ribbentrop, were also intent on taking advantage of German military conquests to increase their private art collections.
Plunder of Jews
The
systematic dispossession of Jewish people and the transfer of their
homes, businesses, artworks, financial assets, musical instruments, books, and even home furnishings to the Reich was an integral component of the Holocaust. In every country controlled by Nazis, Jews were stripped of their assets through a wide array of mechanisms and Nazi looting organizations.
Sale of art confiscated from German museums
Art dealers Hildebrand Gurlitt, Karl Buchholz, Ferdinand Moeller, and Bernhard Boehmer set up shop in Schloss Niederschonhausen,
just outside Berlin, to sell a cache of nearly 16,000 paintings and
sculptures which Hitler and Göring removed from the walls of German
museums in 1937–1938. They were first put on display in the Haus der Kunst
in Munich on 19 July 1937, with the Nazi leaders inviting public
mockery by two million visitors who came to view the condemned modern
art in the Degenerate Art Exhibition. Propagandist Joseph Goebbels
in a radio broadcast called Germany's degenerate artists "garbage".
Hitler opened the Haus der Kunst exhibition with a speech. In it, he
described German art as suffering "a great and fatal illness".
Public burning of art
Hildebrand
Gurlitt and his colleagues did not have much success with their sales,
mainly because art labeled "rubbish" had small appeal. So, on 20 March
1939, they set fire to 1,004 paintings and sculptures and 3,825 watercolors, drawings, and prints in the courtyard of the Berlin Fire Department, an act of infamy similar to their earlier well-known book burnings. The propaganda act raised the attention they hoped. The Basel Art Museum of Switzerland arrived with 50,000 Swiss francs
to spend. Shocked art lovers came to buy. What is unknown after these
sales is the number of paintings kept by Gurlitt, Buchholz, Moeller,
Boehmer, and later sold by them to Switzerland and America—ships crossed
the Atlantic from Lisbon—for personal gain.
Public auctions and private sales in Switzerland
The most notorious auction of Nazi looted art was the "degenerate art" auction organized by Theodor Fischer on 30 June 1939 at the Grand Hotel National in Lucerne, Switzerland.
The artworks on offer had been "de-accessioned" from German museums by
the Nazis, yet many well known art dealers participated alongside
proxies for major collectors and museums.
In addition to public auctions, there were many private sales by art
dealers. The Commission for Art Recovery has characterized Switzerland
as "a magnet" for assets from the rise of Hitler until the end of World
War II.
Researching and documenting Switzerland's role "as an art-dealing
centre and conduit for cultural assets in the Nazi period and in the
immediate post-war period" was one of the missions of the Bergier Commission, under the directorship of Professor Georg Kreis.
While the Nazis were in power, they plundered cultural property from
Germany and from every territory they occupied, targeting Jewish
property in particular.
This was conducted in a systematic manner with organizations
specifically created to determine which public and private collections
were most valuable to the Nazi Regime. Some of the objects were
earmarked for Hitler's never realized Führermuseum, some objects went to other high-ranking officials such as Hermann Göring, while other objects were traded to fund Nazi activities.
In 1940, an organization known as the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg für die Besetzten Gebiete (Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce), or ERR, was formed, headed for Alfred Rosenberg by Gerhard Utikal [de]. The first operating unit, the western branch for France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, called the Dienststelle Westen (Western Agency), was located in Paris. The chief of this Dienststelle was Kurt von Behr. Its original purpose was to collect Jewish and Freemasonic books and documents, either for destruction or for removal to Germany for further "study". However, late in 1940, Hermann Göring,
who in fact controlled the ERR, issued an order that effectively
changed the mission of the ERR, mandating it to seize "Jewish" art
collections and other objects. The war loot had to be collected in a central place in Paris, the Museum Jeu de Paume. At this collection point worked art historians
and other personnel who inventoried the loot before sending it to
Germany. Göring also commanded that the loot would first be divided
between Hitler and himself. Hitler
later ordered that all confiscated works of art were to be made
directly available to him. From the end of 1940 to the end of 1942,
Göring traveled 20 times to Paris. In the Jeu de Paume museum, art dealer Bruno Lohse
staged 20 expositions of the newly looted art objects, especially for
Göring, from which Göring selected at least 594 pieces for his own
collection.
Göring made Lohse his liaison-officer and installed him in the ERR in
March 1941 as the deputy leader of this unit. Items which Hitler and
Göring did not want were made available to other Nazi leaders. Under
Rosenberg and Göring's leadership, the ERR seized 21,903 art objects
from German-occupied countries.
Albert Gleizes, 1911, Stilleben, Nature Morte, Der Sturm postcard, Sammlung Walden, Berlin. Collection Paul Citroen, sold 1928 to Kunstausstellung Der Sturm, requisition by the Nazis in 1937, and missing since
Other Nazi looting organizations included the Führermuseum, the organization run by the art historian Hans Posse, which was particularly in charge of assembling the works for the Führermuseum, the Dienststelle Mühlmann, operated by Kajetan Mühlmann
which operated primarily in the Netherlands and in Belgium, and a
Sonderkommando Kuensberg connected to the minister of foreign affairs Joachim von Ribbentrop, which operated first in France, then in Russia
and North Africa. In Western Europe, with the advancing German troops,
were elements of the "von Ribbentrop Battalion", named after Joachim von
Ribbentrop. These men were responsible for entering private and
institutional libraries in the occupied countries and removing any
materials of interest to the Germans, especially items of scientific,
technical, or other informational value.
Art collections from prominent Jewish families, including the Rothschilds, the Rosenbergs, the Wildensteins,
and the Schloss Family, were the targets of confiscations because of
their significant value. Also, Jewish art dealers sold art to German
organizations—often under duress, e.g., the art dealerships of Jacques Goudstikker, Benjamin and Nathan Katz, and Kurt Walter Bachstitz. Also, non-Jewish art dealers sold art to the Germans, e.g., the art dealers De Boer and Hoogendijk in the Netherlands.
By the end of the war, the Third Reich amassed hundreds of thousands of cultural objects.
Art Looting Investigation Unit
On 21 November 1944, at the request of Owen Roberts, William J. Donovan created the Art Looting Investigation Unit (ALIU) within the OSS to collect information on the looting, confiscation, and transfer of cultural objects by Nazi Germany, its allies and the various individuals and organizations involved; to prosecute war criminals and to restitute property.
The ALIU compiled information on individuals believed to have
participated in art looting, identifying a group of key suspects for
capture and interrogation about their roles in carrying out Nazi policy.
Interrogations were conducted in Bad Aussee, Austria.
ALIU reports and index
The
ALIU Reports detail the networks of Nazi officials, art dealers, and
individuals involved in the Hitler's policy of spoliation of Jews in
Nazi-occupied Europe.
The ALIU's final report included 175 pages divided into three parts:
Detailed Interrogation Reports (DIRs), which focused individuals who
played pivotal roles in German spoliation; Consolidated Interrogations
Reports (CIRs); and a "Red Flag list" of people involved in Nazi
spoliation. The ALIU Reports form one of the key records in the US Government Archives of Nazi Era Assets
A
second set of reports detail the art looting activities of Göring (The
Goering Collection), the art looting activities of the Einsatzstab
Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), and Hitler's Linz Museum.
ALIU List of Red Flag Names
The
Art Looting Intelligence Unit published a list of "Red Flag Names",
organizing them by country: Germany, France, Switzerland, The
Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, and Luxembourg.
Each name is followed by a description of the person's activities, their
relations with other people in the spoliation network and, in many
cases, information concerning their arrest or imprisonment by Allied
forces.
After the dissolution of the USSR, the Government of the Russian Federation
formed the State Commission for the Restitution of Cultural Valuables
to replace the Soviet Commission. Experts from this Russian institution
originally consulted the work of the Soviet Commission, yet continue to
catalog artworks lost during the war museum by museum. As of 2008, lost artworks of 14 museums and the libraries of Voronezh Oblast, Kursk Oblast, Pskov Oblast, Rostov Oblast, Smolensk Oblast, Northern Caucasus, Gatchina, Peterhof Palace, Tsarskoye Selo (Pushkin), Novgorod, and Novgorod Oblast, as well as the bodies of the Russian State Archives and CPSU
Archives, were cataloged in 15 volumes, all of which were made
available online. They contain detailed information on 1,148,908 items
of lost artworks. The total number of lost items is unknown so far,
because cataloging work for other damaged Russian museums is ongoing.
Alfred Rosenberg commanded the so-called ERR, which was
responsible for collecting art, books, and cultural objects from invaded
countries, and also transferred their captured library collections back
to Berlin during the retreat from Russia. "In their search for
'research materials' ERR teams and the Wehrmacht visited 375 archival
institutions, 402 museums, 531 institutes, and 957 libraries in Eastern
Europe alone".
The ERR also operated in the early days of the blitzkrieg of the Low
Countries. This caused some confusion about authority, priority, and the
chain of command among the German Army, the von Ribbentrop Battalion
and the Gestapo, and as a result of personal looting among the Army
officers and troops. These ERR teams were, however, very effective. One
account estimates that from the Soviet Union alone: "one hundred
thousand geographical maps were taken on ideological grounds, for
academic research, as means for political, geographical and economic
information on Soviet cities and regions, or as collector's items".
After the occupation of Poland by German forces in September 1939, the Nazi regime committed genocide against Polish Jews and attempted to exterminate the Polish upper classes as well as its culture.
Thousands of art objects were looted, as the Nazis systematically
carried out a plan of looting prepared even before the start of
hostilities. 25 museums and many other facilities were destroyed.
The total cost of German Nazi theft and destruction of Polish art is
estimated at 20 billion dollars, or an estimated 43 percent of Polish cultural heritage;
over 516,000 individual art pieces were looted, including 2,800
paintings by European painters; 11,000 paintings by Polish painters;
1,400 sculptures; 75,000 manuscripts; 25,000 maps; 90,000 books,
including over 20,000 printed before 1800; and hundreds of thousands of
other items of artistic and historical value. Germany still has much
Polish material looted during World War II. For decades, there have been
negotiations between Poland and Germany concerning the return of the
looted Polish property.
The Anschluss (joining) of Austria and Germany began on 12 March 1938. Looting of Jewish properties began immediately.
Churches, monasteries, and museums were home to many pieces of art
before the Nazis came but after, the majority of the artwork was taken. Ringstrasse, which was a residence for many people but as well as a community center, was confiscated and all of the art inside as well. Between the years 1943 and 1945, salt mines in Altaussee
held the majority of Nazi looted art. Some from Austria and others from
all around Europe. In 1944, around 4,700 pieces of art were then stored
in the salt mines.
After Hitler became Chancellor, he made plans to transform his home city of Linz, Austria,
into the Third Reich's capital city for the arts. Hitler hired
architects to work from his own designs to build several galleries and
museums, which would collectively be known as the Führermuseum.
Hitler wanted to fill his museum with the greatest art treasures in the
world and believed that most of the world's finest art belonged to
Germany after having been looted during the Napoleonic and First World wars.
Hermann Göring collection
The Hermann Göring collection, a personal collection of Reichsmarschall
Hermann Göring, was another large collection including confiscated
property, consisted of approximately 50 percent of works of art
confiscated from the enemies of the Reich.
Assembled in large measure by art dealer Bruno Lohse, Göring's adviser,
and ERR representative in Paris, in 1945, the collection included over
2,000 individual pieces including more than 300 paintings. The US National Archives and Records Administration's
Consolidated Interrogation Report No. 2 states that Göring never
crudely looted, instead he always managed "to find a way of giving at
least the appearance of honesty, by a token payment or promise thereof
to the confiscation authorities. Although he and his agents never had an
official connection with the German confiscation organizations, they
nevertheless used them to the fullest extent possible."
The Third Reich amassed hundreds of thousands of objects from
occupied nations and stored them in several key locations, such as Musée Jeu de Paume in Paris and the Nazi headquarters in Munich. As the Allied forces
gained advantage in the war and bombed Germany's cities and historic
institutions, Germany "began storing the artworks in salt mines and
caves for protection from Allied bombing raids. These mines and caves
offered the appropriate humidity and temperature conditions for
artworks." Well known repositories of this kind were mines in Merkers, Altaussee, and Siegen.
These mines were not only used for the storage of looted art but also
of art that had been in Germany and Austria before the beginning of the
Nazi rule. Degenerate art
was legally banned by the Nazis from entering Germany, and so ones
designated were held in what was called the Martyr's Room at the Jeu de
Paume. Much of Paul Rosenberg's professional dealership and personal
collection were so subsequently designated by the Nazis. Following Joseph Goebbels's
earlier private decree to sell these degenerate works for foreign
currency to fund the building of the Führermuseum and the wider war
effort, Hermann Göring
personally appointed a series of ERR approved dealers to liquidate
these assets and then pass the funds to swell his personal art
collection, including Hildebrand Gurlitt. With the looted degenerate art sold onward via Switzerland,
Rosenberg's collection was scattered across Europe. Today, some 70 of
his paintings are missing, including: the large Picasso watercolor Naked Woman on the Beach, painted in Provence in 1923; seven works by Matisse; and the Portrait of Gabrielle Diot by Degas.
Plunder of Jewish books
One
of the things Nazis sought after during their invasion of European
countries was Jewish books and writings. Their goal was to collect all
of Europe's Jewish books and burn them. One of the first countries to be raided was France, where the Nazis took 50,000 books from the Alliance Israélite Universelle;
10,000 from L'Ecole Rabbinique, one of Paris's most significant
rabbinic seminaries; and 4,000 volumes from the Federation of Jewish
Societies of France, an umbrella group. From there, they went on to take
a total of 20,000 books from the Lipschuetz Bookstore and another
28,000 from the Rothschild family's personal collection, before scouring
the private homes of Paris and coming up with thousands of more books.
After sweeping France for every Jewish book they could find, the Nazis
moved on to the Netherlands
where they would take millions more. They raided the house of Hans
Furstenberg, a wealthy Jewish banker and stole his 16,000 volume
collection; in Amsterdam, they took 25,000 volumes from the Bibliotheek
van het Portugeesch Israelietisch Seminarium; 4,000 from Ashkenazic Beth
ha- Midrasch Ets Haim; and 100,000 from Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana. In Italy,
the central synagogue of Rome contained two libraries, one was owned by
the Italian Rabbinic College and the other one was the Jewish community
Library. In 1943, the Nazis came through Italy, packaged up every book
from the synagogue, and sent them back to Germany.
The Allies created special commissions, such as the MFAA organization to help protect famous European monuments from destruction and, after the war, to travel to formerly Nazi-occupied territories
to find Nazi art repositories. In 1944 and 1945, one of the greatest
challenges for the "Monuments Men" was to keep Allied forces from
plundering and "taking artworks and sending them home to friends and
family"; When "off-limits" warning signs failed to protect the artworks
the "Monuments Men" started to mark the storage places with white tape,
which was used by Allied troops as a warning sign for unexploded mines. They recovered thousands of objects, many of which had been pillaged by the Nazis.
The Allies found these artworks in over 1,050 repositories in
Germany and Austria at the end of World War II. In summer 1945, Capt.
Walter Farmer became the collecting point's first director. The first
shipment of artworks arriving at Wiesbaden Collection Point included cases of antiquities, Egyptian art, Islamic artifacts, and paintings from the Kaiser Friedrich Museum. The collecting point also received materials from the Reichsbank and Nazi-looted, Polish, liturgical
collections. At its height, Wiesbaden stored, identified, and
restituted approximately 700,000 individual objects, including paintings
and sculptures, mainly to keep them away from the Soviet Army and
wartime reparations.
The Allies collected the artworks and stored them in collecting points, in particular the Central Collection Point in Munich
until they could be returned. The identifiable works of art, that had
been acquired by the Germans during the Nazi rule, were returned to the
countries from which they were taken. It was up to the governments of
each nation if and under which circumstances they would return the
objects to the original owners.
When the Munich collection point was closed, the owners of many
of the objects had not been found. Nations were also unable to find all
the owners or to verify that they were dead. There are many
organizations put in place to help return the stolen items taken from
the Jewish people. For example: Project Heart, the World Jewish
Restitution Organization, and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. Depending on the circumstances, these organizations may receive the art works in lieu of the heirs.
Later developments
Although
most of the stolen artworks and antiques were documented, found, or
recovered "by the victorious Allied armies [...] principally hidden away
in salt mines, tunnels, and secluded castles", many artworks have never been returned to their rightful owners. Art dealers, galleries, and museums worldwide have been compelled to research their collection's provenance in order to investigate claims that some of the work was acquired after it had been stolen from its original owners.
Already in 1985, years before American museums recognized the issue and
before the international conference on Nazi-looted assets of Holocaust
victims, European countries released inventory lists of works of art,
coins, and medals "that were confiscated from Jews by the Nazis during
World War II, and announced the details of a process for returning the
works to their owners and rightful heirs." In 1998, an Austrian advisory panel recommended the return of 6,292 objets d'art to their legal owners (most of whom are Jews), under the terms of a 1998 restitution law.
Pieces of art looted by the Nazis can still be found in Russian/Soviet and American institutions: the Metropolitan Museum of Art revealed a list of 393 paintings that have gaps in their provenance during the Nazi Era, the Art Institute of Chicago
has posted a listing of more than 500 works "for which links in the
chain of ownership for the years 1933–1945 are still unclear or not yet
fully determined." The San Diego Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art provide lists on the internet to determine if art items within their collection were stolen by the Nazis.
Stuart Eizenstat,
the Under Secretary of State and head of the US delegation sponsoring
the 1998 international conference on Nazi-looted assets of Holocaust
victims in Washington conference stated that "From now on, [...] the
sale, purchase, exchange and display of art from this period will be
addressed with greater sensitivity and a higher international standard
of responsibility."
The conference was attended by more than 49 countries and 13 different
private entities, and the goal was to come to a federal consensus on how
to handle Nazi-Era Looted Art. The conference was built on the
foundation of the Nazi Gold Conference held in London in 1997. The US Department of State hosted the conference with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum from 30 November to 3 December 1998.
After the conference, the Association of Art Museum Directors
developed guidelines which require museums to review the provenance or
history of their collections, focussing especially on art looted by the
Nazis. The National Gallery of Art in Washington identified more than 400 European paintings with gaps in their provenance during the World War II era. One particular piece of art, "Still Life with Fruit and Game" by the 16th-century Flemish painter Frans Snyders, was sold by Karl Haberstock, whom the World Jewish Congress describes as "one of the most notorious Nazi art dealers." In 2000, the New York City's Museum of Modern Art still told the US Congress that they were "not aware of a single Nazi-tainted work of art in our collection, of the more than 100,000" they held.
In 1979, two paintings, a Renoir, Tête de jeune fille, and a Pissarro, Rue de village,
appeared on Interpol's "12 Most Wanted List", but, to date, no-one
knows their whereabouts (ATA Newsletter, Nov. '79, vol. 1, no. 9, p. 1.
'78, 326.1–2). The New Jersey owner has asked the International Foundation for Art Research
(IFAR) to republish information about the theft, with the hope that
someone will recognize the paintings. The owner wrote IFAR that, when
his parents emigrated from Berlin in 1938, two of their paintings
"mysteriously disappeared". All of their other possessions were shipped
from Germany to the US via the Netherlands, and everything except the
box containing these two paintings arrived intact. After World War II,
the owner's father made a considerable effort to locate the paintings
but was unsuccessful. Over the years, numerous efforts have been made to
recover them, articles have been published, and an advertisement
appeared in the German magazine, Die Weltkunst, 15 May 1959. A considerable reward has been offered, subject to usual conditions, but there has been no response.
However, restitution efforts initiated by German politicians have
not been free of controversy, either. As the German law for restitution
applies to "cultural assets lost as a result of Nazi persecution,
"which includes paintings that Jews who emigrated from Germany sold to
support themselves,
pretty much any trade involving Jews in that era is affected, and the
benefit of the doubt is given to claimants. German leftist politicians Klaus Wowereit (SPD, mayor of Berlin) and Thomas Flierl (Linkspartei) were sued in 2006 for being overly willing to give away the 1913 painting Berliner Straßenszene of expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, which was in Berlin's Brücke Museum. On display in Cologne in 1937, it had been sold for 3,000 Reichsmark
by a Jewish family residing in Switzerland to a German collector. This
sum is considered by experts to have been well over the market price.
The museum, which obtained the painting in 1980 after several ownership
changes, could not prove that the family actually received the money.
It was restituted to the heiress of the former owners, and she had it auctioned off for $38.1 million.
In 2010, as work began to extend an underground line from Alexanderplatz through the historic city centre to the Brandenburg Gate,
a number of sculptures from the degenerate art exhibition were
unearthed in the cellar of a private house close to the "Rote Rathaus".
The sculptures, including a bronzecubist style statue of a female dancer by the artist Marg Moll, are now on display at the Neues Museum.
From 2013 up to 2015, a committee researched the collection of the Dutch Royal family.
The committee focussed on all objects acquired by the family since 1933
and which were made prior to 1945. In total, 1,300 artworks were
studied. Dutch musea had already researched their collection in order to
find objects stolen by the Nazis. It appeared that one painting of the
forest near Huis ten Bosch by the Dutch painter Joris van der Haagen came from a Jewish collector. He was forced to hand the painting over to the former Jewish bank Lippmann, Rosenthal & Co. in Amsterdam, which collected money and other possessions of the Jews in Amsterdam. The painting was bought by Queen Juliana in 1960. The family plans to return the painting to the heirs of the owner in 1942, a Jewish collector.
Effects of Nazi looting today
Approximately
20 percent of the art in Europe was looted by the Nazis, and there are
well over 100,000 items that have not been returned to their rightful
owners.
The majority of what is still missing includes everyday objects such as
china, crystal, or silver. The extent to which looted art was taken was
seen according to Spiegler as, "The Nazi art confiscation program has
been called the greatest displacement of art in human history."
At the end of World War II, "The United States Government has estimated
that German forces and other Nazi agents before and during World War II
had seized or coerced the sale of one fifth of all Western art then in
existence, approximately a quarter of a million pieces of art."
Because of such wide displacement of Nazi looted art from all over
Europe, "to this day, some tens of thousands of artworks stolen by the
Nazis have still not been located."
Some objects of great cultural significance remain missing,
though how much has yet to be determined. This is a major issue for the art market,
since legitimate organizations do not want to deal in objects with
unclear ownership titles. Since the mid-1990s, after several books,
magazines, and newspapers began exposing the subject to the general
public, many dealers, auction houses, and museums have grown more
careful about checking the provenance of objects that are available for
purchase in case they are looted. Some museums in the US and elsewhere
have agreed to check the provenance of works in their collections.
In addition to the role of courts in determining restitution or
compensation, some states have created official bodies for the
consideration and resolution of claims. In the UK, the Spoliation Advisory Panel advises the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on such claims. IFAR, a not-for-profit educational and research organization, maintains a database of looted art.
In 2013, the Canadian government created the Holocaust-era
Provenance Research and Best-Practice Guidelines Project, through which
they are investigating the holdings of six art galleries in Canada.
1992 International Archives for the Women's Movement discovery
On 14 January 1992, historian Marc Jansen reported in an article in NRC Handelsblad
that archival collections stolen from the Netherlands including the
records of the International Archives for the Women's Movement (Dutch: Internationaal Archief voor de Vrouwenbeweging (IAV)), which had been looted in 1940, had been found in Russia. The confiscated records were initially sent to Berlin and later was moved to Sudetenland for security reasons. At the end of the war, the Red Army took the documents from German-occupied Czechoslovakia and, in 1945–1946, stored them in the KGB's Osobyi Archive [de] (Russian: Особый архив), meaning special archive, which was housed in Moscow.
Though agreements were drafted almost immediately after the discovery,
bureaucratic delays kept the archives from being returned for 11 years.
In 2003, the partial recovery of the papers of some of the most noted
feminists in the prewar period, including Aletta Jacobs and Rosa Manus, some 4,650 books and periodicals, records of the International Council of Women and International Woman Suffrage Alliance, among many photographs were returned. Approximately half of the original collection is still unrecovered.
In early 2012, roughly 1,500 pieces of art were discovered at the home of Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of Hildebrand Gurlitt. About 200–300 pieces are suspected of being looted art, some of which may have been exhibited in the degenerate art exhibition held by the Nazis before World War II in several large German cities. The collection contains works by Marc Chagall, Otto Dix, and Henri Matisse, Renoir, and Max Liebermann among many others.
2014 Nuremberg artworks discovery
In
January 2014, researcher Dominik Radlmaier of the city of Nuremberg
announced that eight objects had been identified as lost art with a
further 11 being under strong suspicion. The city's research project was
started in 2004 and Radlmaier has been investigating full-time since
then.
In Wałbrzych,
Poland two amateur explorers—Piotr Koper and Andreas Richter—claimed to
have found a rumored armored train believed to be filled with gold,
gems, and weapons. The train was rumored to be sealed in a tunnel in the
closing days of World War II. Only 10% of the tunnel has been explored
because much it has collapsed. Finding the train would be an expensive
and complicated operation involving a lot of funding, digging, and
drilling. However, to support their claims the explorers said experts
have examined the site with ground-penetrating, thermal, and magnetic
sensors that picked up signs of a railway tunnel with metal tracks. The
explorers requested 10% of the value of whatever is within the train if
their findings are correct. Poland's deputy culture minister, Piotr
Zuchowski, said he was "99 percent convinced" that the train had finally
been found, but scientists claim that the explorers' findings are
false.
Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project
The Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project
(JDCRP) is a comprehensive database that focusses on the Jewish-owned
art and cultural objects plundered by the Nazis and their allies from
1933 to 1945. The JDCRP was initiated in May 2016 by the Conference on
Jewish Material Claims Against Germany in collaboration with the
Commission for Art Recovery.
Their goal was to further expand on the already existent database of
objects stolen by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, one of the
primary Nazi agencies involved with the plunder of cultural artifacts in
Nazi-occupied nations during World War II.
By creating this database, the JDCRP is positioned to accomplish
numerous goals. The collection of this data on looted Jewish objects
during WWII can provide a deeper understanding of various looting
agencies employed by the Nazi party, current whereabouts of individual
artifacts, and details on persecuted Jewish artists. In addition, the
information collected by the JDCRP can provide further guidance to
families and heirs of art, museums, and the art market. Lastly, the
JDCRP can serve as a way to memorialize Jewish artists that were victims
of the Nazi party's looting and celebrate their artistic legacies.
Overall, the goal of the JDCRP is not to replace existing databases and
publications regarding stolen art during the Third Reich but rather to
supplement the already available information and build upon it with a
focus on art plundered from Jews.
Furthermore, the mission of the JDCRP is not only to establish a
central database for this information and make it easily accessible but
also to develop a network of institutions that can work to promote
additional research on this topic.
The JDCRP accumulates data from a variety of sources. A few
examples include inventories of looted objects found by Allied forces,
lists of stolen objects submitted by victims, and lists of looted and
restituted cultural objects compiled by governments. Once data is
gathered on a specific object, the JDCRP strives to exhibit the
following pieces of information: details regarding the stolen object,
background on the perpetrators and victims of the theft, information on
those who profited from the thefts, and specifics on the locations at
which the stolen object(s) were held.
On 1 January 2020, the JDCRP launched its Pilot Project centered
around the famous art collection of Adolphe Schloss. The purpose of this
initial launch is to test the feasibility of a central database for
stolen Jewish artifacts and to determine the manner in which the JDCRP
database will be constructed and maintained. This venture is funded by
the European Union and is intended to establish the framework necessary
for the JDCRP.
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