Maria Almas-Dietrich

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Maria Almas-Dietrich , nee Dietrich , (born June 27, 1892 in Munich , † November 11, 1971 in Dachau ) was a German art dealer who was one of Hitler's most important art suppliers with regard to his private rooms and his planned Führer Museum in Linz .

Life

The daughter of a master butcher in Munich's Westend claims to have had her own art gallery in Munich since 1918, the later Galerie Almas (Maria Dietrich). She gave birth to an illegitimate child in 1910 and in 1921 married the journalist and writer Ali Almàs, who was born in Izmir on May 1, 1883 and who also wrote under the name “Diamant” and was “apparently an educated, witty Turk”.

Dietrich's art gallery was located next to the embassies of Switzerland and the United States in the Palais Schönborn-Wiesentheid, built in 1846 in Munich's Ottostr. 9. The focus was on antiques and paintings from the 15th to 19th centuries. Although her husband was refused membership in the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts (RBK), she was stateless herself and had a foreign passport, she continued her art trade. Paul Vaucher , who already headed a commission against art theft in London before the end of the war, knew that she could only join the RBK after a heavy fine and the death of her husband.

On January 15, 1940, she was naturalized in the German Reich on the basis of an affidavit that she was not Jewish. After their gallery was destroyed in an air raid on April 20, 1944, the company moved to their own villa on Gustav-Freytag-Str. 5 relocated to Herzogpark.

When she came into contact with Adolf Hitler through photographer Heinrich Hoffmann , she sold a total of 270 works of art to him between 1936 and 1944, making her one of the art dealers with the largest number of works of art sold to Hitler. In 1936 she sold Hitler the well-known picture Die Toteninsel by Arnold Böcklin and the portrait of Nanna by Anselm Feuerbach . The latter is said to have been Hitler's favorite picture.

On New Year's Eve 1935/36 she was probably photographed by Hoffmann as a guest in the box of the German Opera House in Berlin next to Reich Chancellor and Minister of Propaganda. On August 7, 1937, Dietrich appeared in another group photo of Hoffmann and Hitler.

"The dealer Maria Almas Dietrich was not the only one who knew how to put pressure on the Jewish collectors who were ready to flee in order to then sell the pressed pictures on to Bormann at much higher prices."

- Ira Mazzoni : Süddeutsche Zeitung

Almas-Dietrich was in competition with Karl Haberstock , who supplied Hitler with works of art from the mid-1930s and gradually ousted Almas-Dietrich. As one art historian said, “Your great strength is selling. She has little knowledge of finance and even less of art. Their ignorance of art is legendary among dealers. "

In autumn 1945 she was under house arrest in Velden near Landshut. In a letter dated October 30, 1945 to Edwin C. Rae , the head of the Central Collecting Point in Munich, she described Almàs as a “Turkish Israelite” and complained about the collection of “4 sculptures and 2 Bayr. Rokokospiegel ”without confirmation of receipt by an American officer. On March 4, 1949, she turned to the Occupation Costs Office regarding “claims for damages against the USA” because her paintings by Grützner, Defregger, Horemans and Braith as well as “5 wooden sculptures of male saints” could no longer be found in the Collecting Point and were probably stolen. After the war, Maria Dietrich was one of the exhibitors at the Munich art and antiques fair, which Otto Bernheimer co-founded. "But at the same time, it only bothered a few that Hitler and Göring's purveyor Maria Dietrich and her gallery Almas were among the exhibitors with a prominent stand at the 1956 German Art and Antiques Fair in Munich ..."

The connection to Bruno Lohse and Heinrich Hoffmann remained. “Alongside Karl Haberstock and Maria Almas-Dietrich, the art dealer Bruno Lohse was probably one of the most important art dealers in the service of the National Socialist government.” In 1944, Lohse organized the secret “seizure” of the Adolphe Schloss collection in unoccupied France. After the war he admitted that he had kept a number of works and that he first offered them to Walter Andreas Hofer for Göring before negotiating with Maria Almas Dietrich.

Mimi tho Rahde continued the art business after her mother's death.

Works

The oil painting “ Fiat Justitia ” by Carl Spitzweg came to Ms. Dietrich in 1938 from the Heinemann Gallery, which was oppressed by the National Socialists. The work was not returned to the Heinemann family, but served from June 10, 1949 as a decoration in the office of the Federal President in Bonn. It later ended up in the Berlin art depot of the Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues .

The allegory of “Hygieia” by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller came from the persecuted Hermann Eissler in Vienna to the Munich gallery “Almas”. "As early as June 1938, the Munich art dealer Maria Almas-Dietrich asked for permission to export the 4 pharmacy signs intended for the driver's cab in Munich."

Chalk and pencil drawings by Adolph von Menzel came to Maria Dietrich from the racially oppressed Anna Caspari gallery . After the war, the sheets were distributed to various German museums. Moritz von Schwind's “Nymphe Genoveva” was procured inexpensively for the “Führermuseum” in 1940 from the property of the politically unpopular Richard von Kühlmann and transferred to the von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal in 1966.

literature

  • Günther Haase: Art theft and art protection. A documentation . Volume 1: Art theft and art protection . 2nd expanded edition. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2008, ISBN 978-3-8334-8975-4 , pp. 133ff.
  • Jonathan Petropoulos: The Faustian bargain. The art world in Nazi Germany . Oxford University Press, New York NY 2000, ISBN 0-19-512964-4
  • Birgit Schwarz: On orders from the Führer. Hitler and the Nazi art theft . Darmstadt 2014
  • Lynn H Nicholas, The Rape of Europe. The fate of European works of art in the Third Reich, ISBN 9783426772607 , Munich 1997

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Birth certificate 5447/1892 of the registry office Munich I in the Munich city archive
  2. ^ Alberta von Puttkamer , Ali Almas, German Turkish. Neue Freie Presse, Vienna May 15, 1916, p. 1
  3. ↑ Newspaper clipping for the lecture "Halbmond und Adler", March 6, 1913, Hamburg State Archives, call number: 331-3, ed. 38, stock 12, SA 14 Turks
  4. ↑ Yavuz Köse (ed.), Catalog, Ottoman in Hamburg - a relationship history at the time of the First World War , Hamburg 2016.
  5. ↑ Munich City Archives, commercial index (GEW-GK II / 18)
  6. ^ Commission for Protection and Restitution of Cultural Material, London 1945, National Archives M1947, Art Dealers-Vaucher Commission Lists, July 16, 1945
  7. ^ Munich city address book 1941, p. 480
  8. ↑ Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung , [Jhg. 45.1936], No. 2, January 9, 1936, p. 34
  9. ↑ Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Hoffmann photo archive L.60
  10. ↑ Ira Mazzoni: Burdensome art, Hitler's favorite painter Rudolf von Alt. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. July 28, 2015, accessed June 15, 2016 .
  11. ^ National Archives, Washington, M1946. Administrative records, correspondence, denazification orders, custody receipts, property cards, Jewish restitution claim records, property declarations, and other records from the Munich CCP. Category: Dietrich, Maria Almas: Interrogation, Date Range: 1945–1950, p. 47
  12. ↑ National Archives, Washington, Fold3, Page 20, Records Concerning the Central Collecting Point, Ardelia Hall Collection, Munich Central Collecting Point 1945-1951
  13. ↑ Wolfgang Christlieb, art dealer Maria Almas Dietrich, obituary, Abendzeitung, Munich November 16, 1971
  14. ↑ C. Herchenröder, 60 Years of Art Trading, Collecting and New Prosperity, Handelsblatt, 2006
  15. ↑ Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Department of Manuscripts and Old Prints, Department of Maps and Pictures, Photography 1950, Hoffmann Photo Archive, picture number hoff-19
  16. ↑ Klaus Weschenfelder (Ed.), Provenance research on the old German images of the Schäfer Collection in the Art Collections of the Veste Coburg, 2015 ( Memento of the original from June 21, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kunstsammlungen-coburg.de
  17. ^ Ministère des Affaires étrangères, Archives et patrimoine [France diplomatie], Collection Castle
  18. ^ IB, On the death of Maria Dietrich-Almas, Süddeutsche Zeitung 20./21. November 1971, p. 12.
  19. ^ Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, Central Collecting Point database
  20. ^ German Historical Museum, Berlin, database
  21. ^ Ministry of Education Vienna, bm: ukk - Art Restitution Advisory Board recommends returning the 4 pharmacy signs from Waldmüller, (2012-05-10)
  22. ^ A b German Historical Museum, Berlin, database
personal data
SURNAME Almas-Dietrich, Maria
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dietrich, Maria
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art dealer
DATE OF BIRTH June 27, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH November 11, 1971
Place of death Dachau