Piece
Transferred to T 2/209
Catalogue reference: IND 1/12652
Transferred to T 2/209
Item
Interrogation reports of collectors of looted works of art. Folder 1: Detailed Interrogation...
Catalogue reference: T 209/29/1
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This record is about the Interrogation reports of collectors of looted works of art. Folder 1: Detailed Interrogation... dating from 1945 in the series British Committee on the Preservation and Restitution of Works of Art, Archives and.... It is held at The National Archives, Kew.
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Full description and record details
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Reference (The unique identifier to the record described, used to order and refer to it)
- T 209/29/1
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Date (When the record was created)
- 1945
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Description (What the record is about)
- <p>Interrogation reports of collectors of looted works of art. </p> <p>Folder 1:</p> <p>Detailed Interrogation Report No 2 by the Art Looting Investigation Unit of the Office of Strategic Services [OSS] on the subject of Ernst Buchner divided into five sections, dated 31 July 1945. Part I includes an overview of Buchner's career. Interrogated at a special interrogation centre in Alt Aussee in June-July 1945, Buchner was, between 1928 and 1932, director of the Wallraff-Richartz Museum in Cologne and in July 1932 was appointed general director of the Bavarian State Painting Collections, becoming a member of the NSDAP in May 1933. After serving on the Western front from the outbreak of war until July 1940, he returned to his job in Munich, where he was responsible for a total of 15 museums located in Southern Germany, including the Schloss Neuschwanstein from where he supervised the evacuation of the Ghent altarpiece and other objects to the Steinberg mine in Alt Aussee, Austria, which had been chosen as 'final refuge for the Linz and ERR collections' by a commission to which Buchner, Reimer, von Hummel and Jurashek belonged. Part II includes information on Buchner's role as advisor to Posse and later Voss for the authentication of works destined for the Linz museum, with details of art historians, museum personnel and art dealers involved in the selection and administration of works of art intended for the Fuehrermuseum. Includes a list of ten pictures submitted to Buchner for assessment for the Linz museum, including Cranach's 'Venus and Cupid' and Brueghel the Younger's 'Massacre of the innocents', from the von Gutenberg collection. Part III comprises a summary of the detailed account [in English and German] of Buchner's trip to bring the Ghent altarpiece to Germany 'for safekeeping', enclosed as Attachment E. Part IV summarises Buchner's dealings with the ERR, which, according to his statement, were very infrequent and of a merely official nature. Part V focuses on Buchner's activity at the Bavarian museums during the war, with details of the confiscated collections and artdealerships which were taken over by the Nazis, as in the case of Helbing, Bernheimer, Heinemann and Fleischmann. Includes details of the acquisitions - mostly paintings - made from German dealers who were buying in the occupied countries, in particular Plietzsch, Bruenschwiller, Frau Maria Dietrich, Baron von Poellnitz, Frau Maria Gillhausen and Karl Haberstock as well as the Dorotheum auction house, Vienna, and the Munich Kunsthandels Gesellschaft. Concludes that 'Ernst Buchner is probably honest when he says that he was out of sympathy with such manifestations of Nazism as the persecution of the Jews and the campaigns against "degenerate" art. [...] He was one of the very few German museum directors who succeeded in holding on to their collections of "degenerate" art. He protested publicly against the Party condemnation of Rembrandt as a Jew, and he is known to have personally protected at least one Jewish collection. [...] For the world at large and for the German public in particular, the outstanding fact [...] is that he, the son of a well-known Munich painter, and himself reputedly the most important living authority on German painting, held the position of head of the Bavarian State collections, as a member of the Nazi Party, under the Nazi regime. [...] Buchner, one of the countless "white" Germans, prominent men in their communities who, in spite of an inner dislike for Nazism and a realization of its evils, nevertheless agreed to act as its representative, through a mixture of personal ambition and fear of the consequences of standing aside. These men bear a heavy responsibility to the mass of their compatriots, for they provided the fanatics and criminals with the necessary cloak of respectability'. Includes five attachments. Attachment A is a detailed list provided by their former owners of paintings including Canalettos, van Dycks and Cranachs acquired by the Bavarian State museums from a total of around 50 private Jewish collections including those of Martin Aufhaeuser, Ernst and Otto Bernheimer, Haas, Franziska Heinemann and Uhlfelder, with information on the paintings' value and provenances. Attachment B is a list of 28 paintings, originally belonging to several Jewish collections, listed alphabetically according to the artist's name, and with the address of the former owner and the value of each painting, including works by Lenbach, Hals, Daubigny, Molijn, Truebner and Spitzweg which had been 'secured' by the Bavarian State Collections. Attachment C is a list of paintings from Jewish collections kept in the art repositories of the Bavarian State Collections with details of their size, approximate value and former owner. Attachment D is a list of all paintings from confiscated Jewish collections or dealers' stocks bought by Buchner for his museums, including their provenance, inventory number and the name of the depository where they were located. Attachment E is a detailed account of the trip made by Buchner to bring the Ghent Altarpiece to Germany 'for safekeeping'. </p>
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Held by (Who holds the record)
- The National Archives, Kew
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Legal status (A note as to whether the record being described is a Public Record or not)
- Public Record(s)
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Language (The language of the record)
- English
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Closure status (Whether the record is ‘open’ (available to the public) or ‘closed’ (not available due to a legal exemption))
- Open Document, Open Description
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Record URL
- https://beta.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/id/C11645677/
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Series information
T 209
British Committee on the Preservation and Restitution of Works of Art, Archives and...
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Interrogation reports of collectors of looted works of art. Folder 1: Detailed Interrogation...
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