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Once Adolf Hitler's deputy and designated successor, he'd been in . Acting as Hitler's private secretary, he transcribed and partially edited Hitler's book Mein Kampf, and eventually rose to deputy party leader and third in leadership of Germany, after Hitler and Hermann Gring. Nevertheless, he found himself as Hitler's art dealer, responsible for selling masterpieces the Nazis had stolen from Jews. After being mobbed by paparazzi, he spent 10 days in his empty apartment without leaving it. Cornelius has hired three lawyers, and a crisis-management public-relations firm to deal with the media. He penetrated deep into Lohses worlda disquieting but intriguing cosmos of aging Nazis nostalgic for the good old days, of kaffee und kuchen in luxury hotels, of secretive Liechtenstein foundations, and of Swiss bank vaults stuffed with stolen art. Petropouloss research sheds important light on the post-war networks, radiating from Munich to Switzerland, Paris and even the US, that allowed Lohse to stay in business. There is a lot of interest among the descendants of Holocaust victims in getting back artworks that were looted by the Nazis, for getting at least some form of compensation and closure for the horrors visited upon their families. Hildebrand also entered the abandoned homes of rich Jewish collectors and carted off their pictures. It was the commissions job to sell the degenerate art abroad, which could be used for worthy purposes like acquiring old masters for the huge museumit was going to be the biggest in the worldthe Fhrer was planning to build in Linz, Austria. 2023 Cond Nast. He was to champion it yet again after the war. Rudolph J. Heinemann, also known as Rudolf J. Heinemann, (1901 - February 7, 1975) was a German-born American art dealer and collector of Old Masters. What was Hitler's view of art? Then there was that name. Why Moore of all people? It was at the Nuremberg prison that Kelley interviewed Rudolf Hess, beginning in October 1945. An amazing discovery in 21st-century Munich turns the story of art and the Nazis on its head.. Cornelius . But they proceeded cautiously. They also tell the immensely complicated story of that seizure and its subsequent impact, demonstrate how the provenance experts of Germany and Switzerland responded to its shock waves, and show off some of its best works by such modern masters as Klee, Munch, Dix, Marc, Nolde. Menu The gentleman,. Hermann Gring, one of Hitler's senior officers, . The only answer was to cosy up to the regime. Petropoulos is the author of several authoritative, lucidly written and important books about the arts in the Third Reich, including The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany. They hid themselves away, consumed by an inner darkness. He was chancellor of Germany from 30 January, 1933, and Fhrer and chancellor combined from 2 August 1934. He resumed his dad's story and brought his father's prized watch into the conversation. It was the greatest art theft in history: 650,000 works looted from Europe by the Nazis, many of which were never recovered. She smiles. He would have the official Nazi photographer supply him with pornographic films and play . Two additional pieces are strongly suspected of having been looted by the Nazis. It is wild, impulsively improvisatory, dangerously subjective, stylistically lawless and untameable. It was a Zurich bank vault that catapulted Lohse back into public view in 2007, just weeks after his death at the age of 95. Nobody had given Cornelius a second glance, but now he was a celebrity. The Swiss prosecutor seized a vault controlled by Lohse in the Zrcher Kantonalbank. It wasn't until fall 2013 that the Gurlitt case was made public. "There's a market here." Adolf Hitler was an artista modern artist, at thatand Nazism was a movement shaped by his aesthetic sensibility. There is nothing in German law compelling Cornelius to give them back. Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 - 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the Nazi Party from 1933 until his death in 1945. How he escaped conviction for war crimes is something of a mystery, but Lohse seems to have attracted important alliesincluding, bizarrely, some of the American Monuments Men who interrogated him in Nurembergand he assembled a crack defence team for his trial. German task force finds five Nazi-looted works in Gurlitt trove, How Germany has dealt with Nazi-looted art after spectacular Gurlitt case, Task force investigating art trove inherited from Nazi collector achieved 'embarrassing' results, Ukraine updates: Russia says defense minister visits Donbas, Russian mercenary chief says Bakhmut almost fully encircled, 'The future is now': Jewish war refugees in Ukraine. Though Adolf Hitler was without a doubt a vicious, inhumane leader, it seems he had one weakness in life: his half-niece, Geli Raubal. Yet he stole from Hitler too, allegedly . (Photo: Stringer/AFP/Getty Images). Von Plnitz invited the two of them to bring their personal collections and take refuge in his picturesque castle in Aschbach, in northern Bavaria. COLLECTION AGENT Josef Gockeln, the mayor of Dsseldorf; Corneliuss father, Hildebrand; and Paul Kauhausen, director of Dsseldorfs municipal archives, circa 1949., from picture alliance/dpa/vg bild-kunst. Was his work not the very epitome of Germanness? No one takes art that seriously now. Cosmopolitan Vienna incubated his peculiar genius as well as . Yes, it was one respectable man's fear of the consequence of having been condemned as a Mischling (a man of mixed race, one quarter Jew) and sent to the camps, which caused the Dresden art dealer and museum director Hildebrand Gurlitt to work with the Reich Ministry in order to save his own skin. Posted at 02:28h in kevin zhang forbes instagram by 280 tinkham rd springfield, ma michael greller net worth Likes On January 29, two of the lawyers filed a John Doe complaint with the public prosecutors office in Munich, against whoever leaked information from the investigation to Focus and thus violated judicial secrecy. According to Der Spiegel, the last movie he saw was in 1967. Cornelius Gurlitt was a ghost. But compliance is voluntary, and few institutions in any of the signatory countries have complied. Too much remains to be found. Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Hildebrand bought, sold, and acquired work for German museums and other collectors, and amassed works for his own private collection, enriching himself in the process. Adolf Hitler's favorite artists and artwork, promoted throughout Nazi Germany and shunned as a result by the world for decades, is now on fire, with art collectors in America and Europe paying more than $150,000, to twice that. He reportedly told the officer that the purpose of his trip was for business, at an art gallery in Bern. Hunting seasons were established. Meanwhile, the collection remained in Garching, with no one the wiser, until word of its existence was leaked to Focus, a German newsweekly, possibly by someone who had been in Corneliuss apartment, perhaps one of the police or the movers who were there in 2012, because he or she provided a description of its interior. A lot of black moneyoff-the-books cashis taken back and forth at this crossing by Germans with Swiss bank accounts, and officers are trained to be on the lookout for suspicious travelers. Skilled art dealers were sought for the Nazis' newly founded business. Chancellor Angela Merkels office was inundated with complaints and declined to make a statement about an ongoing investigation. The Reich desperately needed foreign currency to fund the war effort. Hildebrand had a Nazi colleague, Baron Gerhard von Plnitz, who had helped him and another art dealer, Karl Haberstock, put deals together when von Plnitz was in the Luftwaffe and stationed in Paris. Hildebrand Gurlitt applied for a job in what was advertised as Department IX of the Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Its contents included Le Quai Malaquais, Printemps (1903), a painting by Camille Pissarro that the Jewish family from whom it had been looted in Vienna had been trying to trace for 70 years. The total number of works plundered has been estimated at around 650,000. Expressionist and other avant-garde films were bannedsparking an exodus to Hollywood by filmmakers Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, and others. After their deaths, the eggs were believed to be myths for centuries. Share Article topics Art Crime Kate Brown Europe Editor And yet with a little more digging they discovered that he had been living in Schwabing, one of Munichs nicer neighborhoods, in a million-dollar-plus apartment for half a century. As an "official dealer" for Hitler and Goebbels, Hildebrand Gurlitt became one of the Third Reich's most prolific art looters. The Nazis confiscated the art they condemned, or bought it at rock-bottom prices. The customs and tax investigators, following up on the officers recommendation, discovered no state pension, no health insurance, no tax or employment records, no bank accountsGurlitt had apparently never had a joband he wasnt even listed in the Munich phone book. It almost beggars believe that the fate of Expressionism was decided at a rally in Nuremberg. Hitler's phone, 'the most destructive 'weapon' of all time,' sold for $243,000. And after the war, under close scrutiny at the denazification tribunal, he slipped through the net that appeared to be closing around him by characterising himself as a victim. Published 6:15 AM EST, Mon February 20, 2017. As the dictator of Nazi Germany, he ordered the Holocaust and helped start . The Holocaust Records Preservation Project Summer 2002, Vol. But all forms were targeted in his aesthetic cleansing campaign. Without admirers like that, art is nothing. Every time he stepped out of his building, microphones were thrust in his face and cameras started to roll. Examples of these will be the strongest proof for the necessity of a radical solution to the Jewish question.. The eggs were originally given to Cleopatra by Roman general Mark Antony on their wedding day to show his undying devotion to her. 'Gurlitt Status Report: Nazi Art Theft and its Consequences', Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn until 11 March 2018; 'Gurlitt Status Report: Degenerate Art: confiscated and sold', Museum of Fine Arts, Bern, until 11 March 2018, Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies. An international task force, under the Berlin-based Bureau of Provenance Research and led by the retired deputy to Germanys commissioner for culture and media, Ingeborg Berggreen-Merkel, was appointed to take over the task. But still, the authorities seemed hesitant to execute it. Genres. At The History Place - A short biography of Nazi Rudolf Hess. He acquired one masterpieceMatisses Seated Woman (1921)that Paul Rosenberg, the friend and dealer of Picasso, Braque, and Matisse, had left in a bank vault in Libourne, near Bordeaux, before he fled to America, in 1940. They went into exile. Aschbach Castle had been made into a displaced-persons camp. He oversaw operations at the Jeu de Paume, where the Nazis stored art looted from Jews by the infamous Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce (known as the ERR). For the last 45 years, he seems to have had almost no contact with anybody, apart from his sister, until her death, two years ago, and his doctor, reportedly in Wrzburg, a small city three hours from Munich by train, whom he went to see every three months. After his fathers death, Booth found that watch inside one of his fathers desk drawers. Hildebrand explained that they were legitimately his. What fascinates us above all things else is the realisation that Hitler, a poor artist himself, took art so seriously, that he believed in its power to transform human lives. August 12, 2022 5:14pm. But the Nazis reneged on the deal. Ten days after the Focus story, Cornelius managed to escape the paparazzi in Munich and took the train for his tri-monthly checkup with his doctor. Booth also knew that Zeich was allegedly the last person who was seen with the third egg, which the rest of the world thinks is lost to history. Did not Jung describe the works of Picasso as pathological in 1932? Hildebrand claimed that he had inherited it from his father, but he had actually bought it for far less than it was worth in 1935 from Julius Ferdinand Wollf, the Jewish editor of one of Dresdens major newspapers. That seems unlikely. This creative pogrom helped spawn the Weltanschauung that made the racial one possible. Then the press got wind of it. These included not only paintings but tapestries and furniture. He is an embarrassment. It was the greatest art theft in history. His reputation sufficiently rehabilitated, he was elected the director of the Kunstverein, the citys venerable art institution. At the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, we see a much broader range of works from the Gurlitt trove altogether, from Durer and Holbein to Monet, Degas and Picasso. Haberstock was described on the O.S.S.s red-flag name list as the leading Nazi art dealer, the most prolific German buyer in Paris, and regarded in all quarters as the most important German art figure. He had been involved in the campaign against Degenerate Art from 1933 to 1939 and in 1936 had become Hitlers personal dealer. The artists were culturally Judeo-Bolshevik, and the whole modern-art scene was dominated by Jewish dealers, gallery owners, and collectors. All rights reserved. ", Hoffmann told DW in an interview that it was important for her to portray the beginning of Gurlitt's development and to find out "how he got sucked in by Naziism, how he was corrupted and how he got involved in these complicated mechanisms.". As reported in Der Spiegel, after France fell, in 1940, Hildebrand went frequently to Paris, leaving his wife, Helene, and childrenCornelius, then eight, and his sister, Benita, who was two years youngerin Hamburg and taking up residence in the Hotel de Jersey or at the apartment of a mistress. Max: Directed by Menno Meyjes. He led them to become the most powerful political party in Germany after the 1932 . In the books prologue, he asserts: For me, our meetings were strictly fact-finding missions I do not want to give the impression that I befriended him or in any way seem to whitewash his deeds. By the epilogue, he has apparently changed his mind. This proves to be a good idea in hindsight as the watch turns out to be the key that unlocks the main chamber of the bunker. Gurlitt was behaving so nervously that the officer decided to take him into the bathroom to search him, and he found on his person an envelope containing 9,000 euros ($12,000) in crisp new bills. When the film ends, all three eggs are in the custody of the authorities. Years on, there was to be a final solution. The result: Of 499 works with uncertain provenance, only four were determined with complete certainty to be looted art. Cornelius had mentioned the art gallery on the train. Subscribe to The Art Newspapers digital newsletter for your daily digest of essential news, views and analysis from the international art world delivered directly to your inbox. In 1937, out of favor and expressing his disgust with Nazi philistinism, Laban fled to France and then England, where he found refuge at Dartington Hall, a progressive school in Devon. Six! "Even today, nearly all of the museum archives in Germany, but also in Switzerland, France and England, contain Hildebrand Gurlitt's correspondence because he maintained such intensive contact with all the museums at the time," Hoffmann told DW. One of the heirs is Rosenbergs granddaughter Anne Sinclair, the ex-wife of Dominique Strauss-Kahn and a well-known French political commentator who runs Le Huffington Post. His works were taken away for processing. Link Copied! List of all 20 artworks by Adolf Hitler. In the last few years of her life, Geli became Hitler's world, his obsession, and potentially his prisoner. Sign up for our essential daily brief and never miss a story. Should it have been wrapped in plain brown parcel paper in order to avoid any stranger's eye connecting with that malign, gilded swastika on the front cover? Rudolph Zeich, Hitler's art and antiquities dealer, took virtually all the treasures that his government had accumulated and traveled via a steamer ship to Argentina. After the war, with his collection largely intact, Hildebrand moved to Dsseldorf, where he continued to deal in artworks. If you are wondering who among the main characters finds the third egg, this is what you need to know. Adolf Hitler's two life-sized bronze horse sculptures have been recovered by German police after being missing for decades. Eva Braun, (born February 6, 1912, Munich, Germanydied April 30, 1945, Berlin), mistress and later wife of Adolf Hitler. These paintings were often taken from existing art galleries in Germany and Europe as Nazi forces invaded. He set himself up as an art dealer in Munich to supplement the benefits he received from the German government as a former prisoner of war. Long before he rose to become a ruthless dictator, the Nazi leader was a struggling young artist. Mary K. Jacob. Although part Jewish, Hildebrand Gurlitt loved the Modern art the Nazis banned. On February 19, Corneliuss lawyers filed an appeal against the search warrant and seizure order, demanding the reversal of the decision that led to the confiscation of his artworks, because they are not relevant to the charge of tax evasion. In 1938, they recognized the financial potential of these masterpieces and, instead of simply exhibiting them in the name of propaganda, they decided to sell them abroad and fill their pockets with the revenues. The Rosenberg heirs have its bill of sale from 1923 and have filed a claim for it with the chief prosecutor. The author, who was never investigated by police, says he received no compensation from the eventual restitution and sale of the painting. On April 14, 1945, with Hitlers suicide and Germanys surrender only weeks away, Allied troops entered Aschbach. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Griebert was investigated but never charged or convicted, Petropoulos writes. By 1944, Gurlitt had closed thousands of art deals for the Nazis and collected numerous artworks for the museum Hitler himself was planning to found in the small city of Linz on the Rhine River. Paintings by Adolf Hitler: 40 Rarely Seen Artworks Painted by the Fhrer From the 1910s May 10, 2017 1900s, 1910s, celebrity & famous people, Germany, work of art Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party in Germany in the years leading up to and during World War II, was also a painter. In December, the German television show Kulturzeit reported that as many as 30 claims have been made on the same Matisse, which illustrates the problem Ronald Lauder described to me: When you put them up on the Internet, everybody says, Hey, I remember my uncle had a picture like this. . But these tortuous events, described in the book, compelled Petropoulos to step down as the director of the centre for Holocaust studies at Claremont McKenna College, California, in 2008. Before and after the Second World War, he had championed the cause of modern art that he was complicit in denouncing during the years of the Reich. Remaining in Hamburg, he opened a gallery that stuck to older, more traditional and safe art. But he was also quietly acquiring forbidden art at bargain prices from Jews fleeing the country or needing money to pay the devastating capital-flight tax and, later, the Jewish wealth levy. In brief: Rudolf Hess (1894-1987), Deputy Fhrer and considered to be the number 3 man in Hitler's Germany after Gring. Nolan describes that his father is a Swiss police officer who is obsessed with finding the missing egg and believes that it's hidden in a Nazi bunker in Argentina. German restitution laws that apply to looted art are highly complex. . Vile stuff - but the Nazi attitude to modern art may have been radically misunderstood. He died impoverished in 1937. The investigators became curious as to what was in apartment No. The president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Dieter Graumann, responded that the prosecutor should rethink his plans to return any of the works. Adolf Hitler replaced Anton Drexler as party chairman of the Nazi Party in July 1921, and soon after he acquired the title fhrer ("leader"). Cosmopolitan Vienna incubated his peculiar genius as well as his hideous ideas. He had told the officer that he had an apartment in Munich, although his residencewhere he pays taxeswas in Salzburg. In response, the German government put together a so-called taskforce to research the provenance of the Gurlitt collection and determine how many of the artworks had been looted or misappropriated by the Nazis and whether they should be returned to their lawful heirs. That accusation led to the discovery of an extraordinary trove of art in his apartment in a very respectable part of Munich. Age has not faded them one whit. In 1937, Joseph Goebbels, the Reich minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, seeing the opportunity to make some money from this garbage, created a commission to confiscate degenerate art from both public institutions and private collections. The Monuments Men eventually returned 165 of Hildebrands pieces but kept the rest, which clearly had been stolen, and their investigation of his wartime activities and his art collection was closed. Most of them came from his father, an avid collector of modern art, he said. He was, the writer says, a skilled liar, dissimulator, and schemer. He listed how each of them had come into his possession, and, according to Der Spiegel, falsified the provenance of the ones that were stolen or acquired under duress. In the 400-page biography, Hoffmann recounts how Gurlitt worked to achieve the highest possible profit for the Nazis in his art deals. Petropoulos portrays himself as a victim of Grieberts intrigue, and says he did not know the painting was controlled by Lohse. The fact that the works were kept in the dark means that so many of them have retained their colourful vibrancy. Germany steps up fight against child obesity, Belgian court paves way for Iran prisoner swap treaty, Palestinians in occupied West Bank live with uncertainty, Biden thanks Scholz for 'profound' German support on Ukraine, Thousands of migrants have died in South Texas. The Art Newspapers Book Club shines a light on art books in their myriad forms and brings you exclusive extracts, interviews and recommendations from leading art world figures. Hitler . Furthermore, there is a 30-year statute of limitations on making claims on stolen property, and Cornelius has been in possession of the art for more than 40 years. After finding out about the coordinates, Booth had the watch repaired. They had fired him from two museums. Though he had done nothing illegalamounts under 10,000 euros dont need to be declaredthe old mans behavior and the money aroused the officers suspicion. Yet he stole from Hitler too, allegedly to save modern art. In 2012, over 1,000 artworks were found in his apartment, including masterpieces by Marc Chagall, Max Liebermann, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. 'Entartete Kunst': The Nazis' inventory of 'degenerate art', "Hitler's Speech at the Opening of the House of German Art in Munich", "HIGH ART AND NATIONAL SOCIALISM, PART I: The Linz Museum as ideological arena", "Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Art_collection_of_Adolf_Hitler&oldid=1099392443, This page was last edited on 20 July 2022, at 14:36. He left Munich two days before the appointment and returned the day after and had made the hotel reservation months ahead of time, posting the typed request, signed with a fountain pen. Fortunately for them, the Nazis documented everything, and Booth finds the third bejeweled egg in a box marked as Cleopatra. However, although Booth finds the third egg, its Hartley and the Bishop who deliver it to the Egyptian billionaire. After all, how could anybody have filed claims for Corneliuss pictures if their existence was unknown? Adolf Hitler's art dealer ordered the painting, along with others from the famous Gutmann collection, shipped to Germany in exchange for the couple's safe passage from the Netherlands to Italy. After arriving in Argentina, the Nazis built a bunker and stored all the treasures there. To this date, Cornelius has not been charged with any crime, bringing into question the legality of the seizurewhich was probably not covered by the search warrant under which authorities entered his apartment. The Monuments Menapproximately 345 men and women with fine-arts expertise who were charged with protecting Europes monuments and cultural treasures, and the subject of the George Clooney filmwere brought in. Together with "Tagesspiegel" journalist Nicola Kuhn, she recently published his biography in German, titled "Hitlers Knsthndler," or "Hitler's Art Dealer. Emil Nolde had 1,052 works seized from German museums. They first double-cross Booth, revealing that they are lovers and partners-in-crime, and then they betray the billionaire by contacting Interpol. Die Wiener Rothschilds. Jonathan Petropoulos first met Lohse in 1998, when the dealer was 87. How the collection had ended up in Cornelius Gurlitts Munich apartment is a tragic saga, which begins in 1892 with the publication of the physician and social critic Max Nordaus book Entartung (Degeneration). It is amazing that much of this story did not come to light until recently. On his release in 1950, living in Munich, he became part of a shadowy network of former Nazis who continued to deal in looted art, largely untroubled by law enforcement or public attention. There is such self-righteousness, such a dangerously overweening level of self-belief in his words: 'by standing guard against the Jew I am defending the handiwork of The Lord.' "That's when I started to think about publishing something on Hildebrand Gurlitt," recalled the author. How to prevent the spread of 'the moral mildew of the chosen race?' Just before the American army marched into Munich where the works were being stored, the locals looted it. They called him a mongrel because of his Jewish grandmother. The twin Walking Horses, by Josef Thorak (1889-1952), were among . The collection could be worth more than a billion dollars. June 23, 2022. in Paintings. In Saturday's Mail, we told how in 2014 Arthur Brand the Indiana Jones of the art world was drawn into a shadowy world of neo-Nazis, ex-Stasi agents and crooked art dealers, after a . Perhaps the 13 years since Lohses death needed to pass for the author to view him with detachment. Even Henry Moore was condemned. They were his whole life. What exactly does it mean though, this word degenerate? You could even call much of it pessimistic or even schizophrenic. Adolf Hitler was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, serving as dictator and leader of the Nazi Party, or National Socialist German Workers Party, for the bulk of his time in power. Hermann Gring and Bruno Lohse looking at a book on Rembrandt in the Jeu de Paume Archives des Muses Nationaux/Archives Nationales. During the Third Reich, he had amassed a large collection of Raubkunst, much of it from Jewish dealers and collectors. In early 1908, after the death of his mother, 18-year-old Adolf Hitler left his provincial . In U.S. dollars, the three . His family has been trying to reclaim the collection, including The Lion Tamer, for years. Meike Hoffmann was also a member of the taskforce, which was dissolved after two years. 1 Artur-Kutscher-Platz, and Cornelius Gurlitts life as a recluse was over. As part of his settlement with the Flechtheim estate, according to an attorney for the heirs, Cornelius Gurlitt acknowledged that the Beckmann had been sold under duress by Flechtheim in 1934 to his father, Hildebrand Gurlitt. Cornelius was an extremely sensitive, desperately shy boy. As a tall, young, athletic SS officer with fluent French and a doctorate in art history, Bruno Lohse captured Hermann Grings attention during one of his visits to the Jeu de Paume art gallery in Paris, where the Reichsmarschall would quaff champagne and select paintings looted from French Jews. Works from the 1937 Degenerate Art show, as well as some Nazi-approved art from The Great German Art Exhibition, will be on display at New Yorks Neue Galerie through June. The previous day's press conference had allowed ample time for questions, and many of the press in the audience would have wished to interrogate this man on the record. Hildebrand got a 5 percent commission on each transaction. What they didnt know was that Hildebrand had lied about his collection having been destroyed in Dresdenmuch of it had actually been hidden in a Franconia water mill and in another secret location, in Saxony. The old man produced an Austrian passport that said he was Rolf Nikolaus Cornelius Gurlitt, born in Hamburg in 1932. A Nuremberg Law of 1935 had characterised and therefore condemned him as a 'second-degree half-caste'. The art of Adolf Hitler: watercolor attributed to Adolf Hitler during his time in Vienna (1911-1912). Booth's father purchases famed Nazi antique and art dealer Rudolf Zeich's watch at an auction. Later in 1945, Baron von Plnitz was arrested and the Gurlitts were joined by more than 140 emaciated, traumatized survivors of the concentration camps, most of them under 20. My great-grandfather, Paul Byk, was a Jewish art dealer who lived and worked in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s, and he was extremely lucky to .