Bruno Lohse
Encyclopedia
Bruno Lohse was a German
art dealer who, during World War II
, became the chief art looter
in Paris for Hermann Göring
, helping the Nazi
leader amass a vast collection of plundered artworks
. During the war, Göring boasted that he owned the largest private art collection in Europe.
in 1936, worked as an art dealer in Berlin from 1936 to 1939, selling paintings out of his father's home. Having joined the SS
in 1933, Lohse became a member of the Nazi Party in 1937. He would eventually be drafted into Göring's Luftwaffe
, then appointed by Göring to the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), Hitler's special art looting unit.
Lohse arrived in Paris by November 1940 to help catalog the celebrated and eclectic collection of Alphonse Kann
, which numbered 1,202 items. Though Lohse reported to Paris ERR chief Kurt von Behr (1890-1945), he enjoyed "special agent" status conferred on him by Göring. Among other privileges, Lohse was not required to wear a uniform for the nearly four years he lived in occupied Paris. As the ERR's Deputy Director in Paris from 1942 to 1944, Lohse helped supervise the systematic theft of at least 22,000 paintings and art objects in France, most of which were taken from Jewish families.
Although Lohse set aside the most highly-prized Old Master
s for Hitler's
Führer Museum (planned in Linz), he helped Göring develop his own enormous private art collection, which accumulated during the war at Göring's vast German estate, Carinhall
. Between November 1940 and November 1942, Lohse staged 20 exhibitions of looted art
for Hitler's second-in-command in the Jeu de Paume
, from which Göring selected at least 594 pieces for his own collection.
family jewels) had been safely stored. Lohse was ordered by Robert Scholz to protect Nazi art holdings and records from destruction, and to "turn them over to the American authorities at such time as Füssen
[a nearby town] might be occupied."
Facing a possible death sentence for crimes witnessed in Paris by Rose Valland
(and others), Lohse underwent a two-month interrogation, during which he shared a cell with two other notorious Nazi art looters, Karl Haberstock and Walter Hofer. The suicide of Baron Kurt von Behr proved to be a godsend to Lohse, permitting him to blame the systematic confiscation of French art collections on his former ERR chief in Paris. Lohse cooperated with American occupiers and repeatedly traded his encyclopedic knowledge of the Nazi art trade for further leniency—he testified, for example, in the Nuremberg trials
in November 1945, providing evidence against his superiors and professing a personal distaste for activities of the ERR.
After being transferred from American to French custody in 1948, Lohse was acquitted in a 1950 military tribunal in Paris against some officials of the Einsatzstab Reichleiter Rosenberg. Lohse never conceded responsibility for art looting, admitting only to possessing furniture stolen from deported Jewish families which Lohse had abandoned in his Paris apartment.
(Munich
) in the early 1950s. An unrepentant Nazi, Lohse was among several former Nazi art dealers who, after the war, pressed their own restitution claims for work they claimed to have lost during the years of conflict. Lohse's legitimately acquired collection of Dutch
old masters
and Expressionist
paintings was said to be valued in the "millions." Lohse's death in March 2007 was little-noticed, apparently because few realized one of the Third Reich's most notorious art looters was still alive.
bank vault (under Lohse's control since 1978) turned up a valuable Camille Pissarro
painting stolen by the Gestapo
from a prominent Jewish publisher in Vienna in 1938, as well as paintings of uncertain provenance by Monet
and Renoir
. According to U.S. historian and looted art expert Jonathan Petropoulos
, who "got to know [Lohse] well" in the last decade of his life, the existence of the vault makes it "not only possible, but likely" that Lohse had sold looted artworks in recent decades. Painted in 1903 and the first in Pissarro's last series of Paris city views, "Le Quai Malaquais, Printemps" was restituted
later in 2007 by a Liechtenstein
court to an heir of Gottfried Bermann Fischer
, and ultimately auctioned in November 2009 for $1,850,000 ($2,154,000 with Christie's
premium) under its new title, "Le Quai Malaquais et l'Institut".
European prosecutors seized documents confirming that at least 14 paintings left Lohse's safe since 1983, including paintings by Corot
and Sisley
as well as-yet-unnamed works by Dürer
and Kokoschka
, among others. An international investigation of Lohse's activities (as well as possible collusion with galleries and auction houses) was opened as of 2006 and currently involves three European countries: Germany
, Switzerland
, and Liechtenstein
. According to widely accepted estimates, of the 600,000 artworks looted by the Nazis in World War II, up to 100,000 were destroyed or are still missing.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
art dealer who, during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, became the chief art looter
Art theft
Art theft is usually for the purpose of resale or for ransom . Stolen art is sometimes used by criminals to secure loans.. One must realize that only a small percentage of stolen art is recovered. Estimates range from 5 to 10%. This means that little is known about the scope and characteristics of...
in Paris for Hermann Göring
Hermann Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring, was a German politician, military leader, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. He was a veteran of World War I as an ace fighter pilot, and a recipient of the coveted Pour le Mérite, also known as "The Blue Max"...
, helping the Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
leader amass a vast collection of plundered artworks
Nazi plunder
Nazi plunder refers to art theft and other items stolen as a result of the organized looting of European countries during the time of the Third Reich by agents acting on behalf of the ruling Nazi Party of Germany. Plundering occurred from 1933 until the end of World War II, particularly by military...
. During the war, Göring boasted that he owned the largest private art collection in Europe.
World War II
Lohse, who published a scholarly thesis on painter Jacob Philipp HackertJacob Philipp Hackert
Jacob Philipp Hackert was a landscape painter from Brandenburg, who did most of his work in Italy....
in 1936, worked as an art dealer in Berlin from 1936 to 1939, selling paintings out of his father's home. Having joined the SS
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
in 1933, Lohse became a member of the Nazi Party in 1937. He would eventually be drafted into Göring's Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....
, then appointed by Göring to the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), Hitler's special art looting unit.
Lohse arrived in Paris by November 1940 to help catalog the celebrated and eclectic collection of Alphonse Kann
Alphonse Kann
Alphonse Kann was a prominent French art collector of Jewish heritage. He was a childhood playmate and adult friend of the writer Marcel Proust, who incorporated several of Kann's features into the character Charles Swann .The name Kann, written with double "nn", was said in Paris to be "le plus...
, which numbered 1,202 items. Though Lohse reported to Paris ERR chief Kurt von Behr (1890-1945), he enjoyed "special agent" status conferred on him by Göring. Among other privileges, Lohse was not required to wear a uniform for the nearly four years he lived in occupied Paris. As the ERR's Deputy Director in Paris from 1942 to 1944, Lohse helped supervise the systematic theft of at least 22,000 paintings and art objects in France, most of which were taken from Jewish families.
Although Lohse set aside the most highly-prized Old Master
Old Master
"Old Master" is a term for a European painter of skill who worked before about 1800, or a painting by such an artist. An "old master print" is an original print made by an artist in the same period...
s for Hitler's
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
Führer Museum (planned in Linz), he helped Göring develop his own enormous private art collection, which accumulated during the war at Göring's vast German estate, Carinhall
Carinhall
Carinhall was the country residence of Hermann Göring, built on a large hunting estate northeast of Berlin in the Schorfheide forest between the Großdöllner See and the Wuckersee in the north of Brandenburg....
. Between November 1940 and November 1942, Lohse staged 20 exhibitions of looted art
Looted art
Looted art has been a consequence of looting during war, natural disaster and riot for centuries. Looting of art, archaeology and other cultural property may be an opportunistic criminal act, or may be a more organized case of unlawful or unethical pillage by the victor of a conflict."Looted art"...
for Hitler's second-in-command in the Jeu de Paume
Jeu de paume
Jeu de paume is a ball-and-court game that originated in France. It was an indoor precursor of tennis played without racquets, though these were eventually introduced. It is a former Olympic sport, and has the oldest ongoing annual world championship in sport, first established over 250 years ago...
, from which Göring selected at least 594 pieces for his own collection.
Interrogation and imprisonment
Lohse fled Paris in August 1944, and briefly served in one of Göring's safe Berlin regiments before travelling to Neuschwanstein Castle in February 1945, where a major cache of art looted in France (as well as the RothschildRothschild banking family of France
The Rothschild banking family of France was founded in 1812 in Paris by James Mayer Rothschild . James was sent there from his home in Frankfurt, Germany by his father, Mayer Amschel Rothschild...
family jewels) had been safely stored. Lohse was ordered by Robert Scholz to protect Nazi art holdings and records from destruction, and to "turn them over to the American authorities at such time as Füssen
Füssen
Füssen is a town in Bavaria, Germany, in the district of Ostallgäu situated from the Austrian border. It is located on the banks of the Lech river. The River Lech flows into the Forggensee...
[a nearby town] might be occupied."
Facing a possible death sentence for crimes witnessed in Paris by Rose Valland
Rose Valland
Rose Antonia Maria Valland was a French art historian, a member of the French Resistance, a captain in the French military, and one of the most decorated women in French history...
(and others), Lohse underwent a two-month interrogation, during which he shared a cell with two other notorious Nazi art looters, Karl Haberstock and Walter Hofer. The suicide of Baron Kurt von Behr proved to be a godsend to Lohse, permitting him to blame the systematic confiscation of French art collections on his former ERR chief in Paris. Lohse cooperated with American occupiers and repeatedly traded his encyclopedic knowledge of the Nazi art trade for further leniency—he testified, for example, in the Nuremberg trials
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
in November 1945, providing evidence against his superiors and professing a personal distaste for activities of the ERR.
After being transferred from American to French custody in 1948, Lohse was acquitted in a 1950 military tribunal in Paris against some officials of the Einsatzstab Reichleiter Rosenberg. Lohse never conceded responsibility for art looting, admitting only to possessing furniture stolen from deported Jewish families which Lohse had abandoned in his Paris apartment.
Later years
Although the conditions of Lohse's release forbade him ever to work again as an art dealer, German officials quietly allowed Lohse to resume his profession in BavariaBavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
(Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
) in the early 1950s. An unrepentant Nazi, Lohse was among several former Nazi art dealers who, after the war, pressed their own restitution claims for work they claimed to have lost during the years of conflict. Lohse's legitimately acquired collection of Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
old masters
Old Master
"Old Master" is a term for a European painter of skill who worked before about 1800, or a painting by such an artist. An "old master print" is an original print made by an artist in the same period...
and Expressionist
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
paintings was said to be valued in the "millions." Lohse's death in March 2007 was little-noticed, apparently because few realized one of the Third Reich's most notorious art looters was still alive.
Secret vault
In May 2007, the seizure of a secret ZurichZürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
bank vault (under Lohse's control since 1978) turned up a valuable Camille Pissarro
Camille Pissarro
Camille Pissarro was a French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas . His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, as he was the only artist to exhibit in both forms...
painting stolen by the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
from a prominent Jewish publisher in Vienna in 1938, as well as paintings of uncertain provenance by Monet
Claude Monet
Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...
and Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to...
. According to U.S. historian and looted art expert Jonathan Petropoulos
Jonathan Petropoulos
Jonathan Petropoulos is an American historian who writes about National Socialism and, in particular, the fate of art looted during World War II. He is John V. Croul Professor of European History at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California...
, who "got to know [Lohse] well" in the last decade of his life, the existence of the vault makes it "not only possible, but likely" that Lohse had sold looted artworks in recent decades. Painted in 1903 and the first in Pissarro's last series of Paris city views, "Le Quai Malaquais, Printemps" was restituted
Restitution
The law of restitution is the law of gains-based recovery. It is to be contrasted with the law of compensation, which is the law of loss-based recovery. Obligations to make restitution and obligations to pay compensation are each a type of legal response to events in the real world. When a court...
later in 2007 by a Liechtenstein
Liechtenstein
The Principality of Liechtenstein is a doubly landlocked alpine country in Central Europe, bordered by Switzerland to the west and south and by Austria to the east. Its area is just over , and it has an estimated population of 35,000. Its capital is Vaduz. The biggest town is Schaan...
court to an heir of Gottfried Bermann Fischer
Gottfried Bermann
Gottfried Bermann, later Gottfried Bermann Fischer was a German publisher. He owned the S. Fischer Verlag....
, and ultimately auctioned in November 2009 for $1,850,000 ($2,154,000 with Christie's
Christie's
Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766...
premium) under its new title, "Le Quai Malaquais et l'Institut".
European prosecutors seized documents confirming that at least 14 paintings left Lohse's safe since 1983, including paintings by Corot
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot was a French landscape painter and printmaker in etching. Corot was the leading painter of the Barbizon school of France in the mid-nineteenth century...
and Sisley
Alfred Sisley
Alfred Sisley was an Impressionist landscape painter who was born and spent most of his life, in France, but retained British citizenship. He was the most consistent of the Impressionists in his dedication to painting landscape en plein air...
as well as-yet-unnamed works by Dürer
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...
and Kokoschka
Oskar Kokoschka
Oskar Kokoschka was an Austrian artist, poet and playwright best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes.-Biography:...
, among others. An international investigation of Lohse's activities (as well as possible collusion with galleries and auction houses) was opened as of 2006 and currently involves three European countries: Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, and Liechtenstein
Liechtenstein
The Principality of Liechtenstein is a doubly landlocked alpine country in Central Europe, bordered by Switzerland to the west and south and by Austria to the east. Its area is just over , and it has an estimated population of 35,000. Its capital is Vaduz. The biggest town is Schaan...
. According to widely accepted estimates, of the 600,000 artworks looted by the Nazis in World War II, up to 100,000 were destroyed or are still missing.