Munich Central Collecting Point
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The Munich Central Collecting Point , also known as Munich Central Art Collecting Point , was the central collection point set up in the post-war period by the US military government in Munich for found works of art from the National Socialist art theft for southern Germany. It existed until September 1949. There were other important collecting points in Wiesbaden , Offenbach and Marburg .
Starting position
Towards the end of the Second World War and with the Allied occupation of Germany, the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas , which had been founded in August 1943, was founded, the American Commission for the Protection and Recovery of Art and Historical Monuments in War Zones , briefly named Roberts Commission after its first chairman Owen Roberts . Her active arm was the Department for the Protection of the Works of Art Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Section . The art protection officers who worked there were referred to as "Monuments Men". Their task was initially to locate depots and storage facilities for relocated art, then the art stolen from all over occupied Europe was to be returned to its rightful owner. As early as April 1945, people were surprised by the extent of the National Socialist art theft . Among other things, the holdings for the planned Führermuseum in Linz were found , some of which were temporarily stored in the Führerbau in Munich or housed in other locations to protect against war damage. A large part of in France by the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce confiscated (ERR) stocks were found in Neuschwanstein Castle in Buxheim Charterhouse and in Herrenchiemsee Abbey . Further camps existed in the salt mines of Altaussee and in the salt mountain of Bad Ischl . In addition, works of art were relocated to smaller towns from the German museum holdings to protect against war damage. Most of the depots were found in the American zone of occupation . In April 1945, for example, the Americans found works of art from the Berlin collections in the salt mine in the small Thuringian town of Merkers, including the man with the gold helmet attributed to Rembrandt and the bust of Nefertiti .
Based on the model of the first American art collecting point, the Marburg Central Collecting Point , the Americans set up further collecting points: in addition to Munich, which quickly became the largest facility of its kind due to the large collections found in southern Germany and Austria, also in the Wiesbaden Museum and initially in Frankfurt am Main in the Freiherrlich Carl von Rothschild'schen public library (today's Jewish Museum ); A short time later, due to lack of space, the latter was relocated to an empty IG Farben warehouse in Offenbach am Main and renamed the Offenbach Archival Depot (OAD). The OAD was the main collection point of the American occupation authorities for recovered holdings of stolen Jewish libraries, archives and ritual objects.
function
The Central Collecting Point in Munich mainly brought together looted art that the National Socialists had confiscated from across Europe and brought to Germany. The former administration building of the NSDAP , today the Munich House of Cultural Institutes , served as Gallery I , and the Führerbau , today the University of Music and Theater , on Königsplatz as Gallery II , as these were relatively intact in war-torn Munich. In addition, the two buildings offered sufficient space for storage, storage space, study and library, had heating and could be secured according to the new purpose.
From August 1945 works of art were brought in from the three western zones, centrally recorded and registered, origin and ownership, as far as possible, determined and then restituted . The works of art that were earmarked for the Führermuseum as part of the Linz special order and works from the Hermann Göring Collection have also been included in this inventory . The returns were made in trust to the states from which the cultural property was stolen. It was then up to the respective administrations to find the original owners or to decide how to proceed with the restitution.
The vast majority was restituted to foreign owners or foreign governments on trust. As early as August 1945, at the invitation of the Americans, the first governments sent experts to Munich to inspect the works and prepare for their return. According to the final report, 33,188 inventory numbers, which can also be entire library holdings, plus 58 meters of archive material were sent to foreign recipients. France, which was particularly heavily looted (15,706), was in the lead, followed by the Netherlands (5008), the Soviet Union (4875), Hungary (1497), Poland (1106), Belgium and Luxembourg (398 + 2). Czechoslovakia (322) and Yugoslavia (175) followed in numerical importance. Greece received a work of art back.
Demands from Italy and Austria had a special position, since Italy, as an Axis power, had been a war ally of the Reich and Austria had been part of the Greater German Reich from 1938 onwards. The US government in Washington issued several highly contradicting instructions on the question of the return of works to these two states, which were never fully followed in practice in Munich. After much back and forth, Italy received 263 works as part of regular restitution and 24 more as exceptional returns without formal recognition of the legal situation. Austria got 3,058 pieces restituted and 14 through extraordinary channels.
Expropriated German institutions and private individuals could apply for the return directly at the Collecting Point. A reimbursement was only possible to people who had been robbed “for reasons of race, religion, nationality, ideology or political opposition to National Socialism”. This law was interpreted broadly and also applied to emigrants who had acquired a new nationality of their host countries by the time they applied.
When the American military government came to an end in September 1949, responsibility for the securing and restitution of the looted art was transferred to the German authorities; the fiduciary management ended in May 1951. By then, 250,000 works of art had been returned to all of Europe. The remaining stock of around 10,000 items then went to the Munich Regional Finance Office, which stored the items in the Munich main customs office until 1998 . By 1962, around half of the works could be returned to entitled persons. The stocks were then divided between the federal government and the federal states. Pieces in the possession of Nazi organizations and individuals went to the country in which they were based; the Göring collection was divided between the federal government and Bavaria. Individual, less significant pieces from it were auctioned for the benefit of the Free State of Bavaria. Until 1998 there were still around 3,500 inventory numbers left with the Oberfinanzdirektion München, which were handed over to the German Historical Museum in Berlin, to whose collection they have belonged ever since. It makes suitable works from them available on loan to museums and federal authorities.
development
During the war, the “Third Reich” had collected works of art from various sources. On the one hand, works for the planned Führer Museum in Linz were bought at market prices or under pressure and threats; on the other hand, individual actors in the regime bought and stole works for their private collections, such as Hermann Göring in particular. The third complex was looted art from museums, collections and private individuals in the states and areas occupied by the Wehrmacht. The regime brought these works together in the “Reich”, because of the grand plans for Linz, mainly in southern Germany and especially in the Munich “Führerbau”, where rooms on the first floor were reserved for viewing. As the war progressed, the Führerbau became more and more important because it had a particularly secure air raid shelter, in which many works of art were stored. The premises were far from being sufficient, the scope of the art theft was too great. When it was reported from Paris in February 1941 that 25 railroad cars full of works of art were ready to leave for Munich and that the works were intended to be stored in the Führerbau, this was an illusion, since all capacities there were already completely exhausted at this point. Therefore, in addition to the works from public museums, collections, galleries and archives, the purchased and stolen works of art were distributed to over 1,800 so-called "salvage depots", which were intended to protect the holdings from war destruction in the cities and to simply provide additional storage space. These, too, were mainly in southern Germany and Austria.
After the Americans took over government , the salvage camps were searched for, viewed and the factories were brought together again in an operation known internally as Noah's Ark . The "Central Collecting Points" were used for this purpose, and Munich became the most important because of the special importance of southern Germany. It was set up at the turn of the month of May / June 1945 and was officially confirmed on June 14, 1945. The facility included the Führerbau, the administration building and auxiliary and supply buildings connected to the south. They had already served the empire's art program, were hardly damaged and could be well secured thanks to their compact design. The Munich architect Dieter Sattler was the first German employee to carry out the repairs and he would accompany the work in the future. The team consisted of art historians from the USA and Germany; the Americans were initially members of the army who were drafted for military service and, because of their training, were assigned to this special use. Later they were civilian employees of the US military government.
- ladder
- June 4, 1945 - April 1946: Craig Hugh Smith
- March 23, 1946 - June 1, 1946: Edgar Breitenbach (civilian, acting)
- June 1, 1946 - November 20, 1946: Frederick R. Pleasants (civilian)
- From November 1946 the Colleting Point MFA & A department of the OMGUS was under the management until summer 1947 Captain Edwin C. Rae and until September 1948 Herbert Stewart Leonhard (civilian)
In September 1948 the military government handed over the administration to the Bavarian Prime Minister Hans Ehard , the ministry of education took over the management.
Examples
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Jan Vermeer van Delft: The Art of Painting , around 1666
This painting was acquired in 1940 by the art dealer Hans Posse on behalf of Adolf Hitler for his private collection from the Austrian Count Czernin. Stored in the Bad Aussee depot towards the end of the war, secured there by American troops, it was transferred to the Central Collecting Point in Munich in 1945. From there it was handed over to the Austrian authorities, and since 1946 it has been exhibited in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna. Count Czernin asserted return claims that were not taken into account. |
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Abraham van den Tempel: Family Portrait (Princesses from the House of Orange) , around 1668 The painting came from the Dr. N. Beets in Amsterdam and was sold to the special order Linz in 1940 via the Friedrich Muller auction house ; Delivered to the Central Collecting Point in Munich in 1945, later restituted to The Hague. Today it is on loan to the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden . |
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Emanuel de Witte: Interior with a woman at the piano , around 1642 The painting came from the Lanz collection in Amsterdam (private collection) and came to the special order collection in Linz in 1941 ; In 1945 it was transferred to the Central Collecting Point in Munich and from there restituted to the Stichting Nederlands Kunstbezit in The Hague. Today it is on display in the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam . |
See also
literature
- Iris Lauterbach: The Central Collecting Point in Munich. Art protection, restitution, a new beginning. Publications of the Central Institute for Art History in Munich Vol. 34, Deutscher Kunstverlag 2015, ISBN 978-3-422-07308-1
Web links
- Angelika Enderlein, Monika Flacke: The database of the "Central Collecting Point Munich" - description of the database at the German Historical Museum (PDF; 99 kB)
- CCP database of the German Historical Museum
Individual evidence
- ↑ Iris Lauterbach: The Central Art Collecting Point in Munich. In: Inka Bertz, Michael Dorrmann (eds.): Looted art and restitution. Jewish property from 1933 to the present day. Frankfurt a. M. 2008, p. 197.
- ↑ Lauterbach 2015, p. 194
- ↑ Lauterbach 2015, pp. 144 ff.
- ↑ Law No. 59 of the US Military Government, November 1947
- ↑ Lauterbach 2015, p. 160 f.
- ↑ Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues: Central Collecting Point ( Memento of the original dated January 22, 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.
- ↑ Lauterbach 2015, p. 191 ff.
- ^ Sabine Brantl: House of Art, Munich. A place and its history under National Socialism . Edition Monacensia, Allitera 2007, ISBN 978-3-86520-242-0 , p. 109
- ↑ Unless otherwise stated, the presentation of the story is based on: Lauterbach 2015, p. 31 ff.
