Bruno Lohse

Bruno Lohse (September 17, 1911 – March 19, 2007) 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. [Petropoulos, Jonathan. "Art As Politics in the Third Reich", University of North Carolina Press, 1999, p. 187. ISBN 0807848093]

World War II

Lohse, who published a scholarly thesis on painter Jacob Philipp Hackert in 1936, worked as an art dealer in Berlin from 1936 to 1939, selling paintings out of his father's home. Joining the Nazi Party in 1937, Lohse 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 eclectic collection of Alphonse Kann, which numbered 1,202 items. [Feliciano, Hector. "The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World's Greatest Art", Basic Books, 1997, p. 110. ISBN 0465041949] 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 Masters 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. [Petropoulos, Jonathan. "Art As Politics in the Third Reich", University of North Carolina Press, 1999, p. 190.]

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 Rothschild family jewels) had been safely stored.Nicholas, Lynn. "The Rape of Europa", Knopf, 1994, pp. 292, 341. ISBN 0679400699] 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." [Petropoulos, Jonathan. "The Faustian Bargain: The Art World In Nazi Germany", Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 139. ISBN 0195129644]

Facing a possible death sentencecite news|first=Tobias|last=Timm|title=Beraubt und betrogen|url=http://images.zeit.de/text/2007/24/Beraubt_und_betrogen|publisher=Die Zeit|date=2007-06-06|accessdate=2008-01-01] 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. [Petropoulos, Jonathan. "The Faustian Bargain", Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 94.] 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 [Feliciano, Hector. "The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World's Greatest Art", Basic Books, 1997, p. 168. ISBN 0465041949] 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,cite news|first=Catherine|last=Hickley|title=Nazi Art Dealer's Will Disperses Dutch Masters, Expressionists|url=http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=a1pbz19FN.G0&refer=home|publisher=Bloomberg News|date=2007-07-12|accessdate=2008-01-01] 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 released in 1950 after again helping authorities locate works of stolen art (precise details of a French military tribunal's agreement were sealed for 100 years). [Petropoulos, Jonathan. "The Faustian Bargain", Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 143.] Lohse never conceded responsibility for art looting, and was found guilty only of 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 Bavaria (Munich) in the early 1950s. 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. [Nicholas, Lynn. "The Rape of Europa", Knopf, 1994, p. 435.] Lohse's legitimately acquired collection of Dutch old masters and Expressionist paintings was said to be valued in the "millions."cite news |first=Catherine|last=Hickley|title=Nazi-Looted Pissarro in Zurich Bank Pits Heiress Against Dealer|url=http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=email_en&refer=&sid=aXl1sXh0uiAw|publisher=Bloomberg News|date=2007-06-06|accessdate=2008-01-01] 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 Zurich bank vault (under Lohse's control since 1978) turned up a valuable Camille Pissarro painting stolen by the Gestapo from a Jewish family in Vienna in 1938, as well as paintings of uncertain provenance by Monet and Renoir.cite news|first=Stefan|last=Koldehoff|title=Pissarro Lost and Found|url=http://www.museum-security.org/lohse.pdf|publisher=ARTnews|date=Summer 2007|accessdate=2008-01-01] 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. [cite web | title = Professor Petropoulos Featured in Documentary About Nazi Art Thefts | url = http://www.claremontmckenna.edu/news/pressreleases/article.asp?article_id=904 | date = 2007-10-18
accessdate = 2008-01-01 | publisher = Claremont McKenna College] European prosecutors seized documents confirming that at least 14 paintings left the safe since 1983, including paintings by Corot and Sisley as well as 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.cite news|first=Stephan|last=Handel|title=Ein Safe voller Bilder|url=http://www.sueddeutsche.de/,tt7m4/kultur/artikel/601/116485/|publisher=Süddeutsche Zeitung|date=2007-06-01|accessdate=2008-01-01] [cite news|author=Barret, Anne-Laure and Koralek, Marie|title=La saga du trésor nazi|url=http://www.lejdd.fr/cmc/societe/200722/la-saga-du-tresor-nazi_25310.html|publisher=Journal du Dimanche|date=2007-06-03|accessdate=2008-01-01] [cite news|first=Lorraine|last=Rossignol|title=Le trésor du « pilleur attitré » de Göring découvert dans une banque en Suisse|url=http://www.lemonde.fr/cgi-bin/ACHATS/acheter.cgi?offre=ARCHIVES&type_item=ART_ARCH_30J&objet_id=992488&clef=ARC-TRK-D_01|publisher=Le Monde|date=2007-06-08|accessdate=2008-01-01] [cite news|title=Swiss raid Nazi art thief's bank safe|url=http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/swissinfo.html?siteSect=43&sid=7886334|publisher=Swiss Info|date=2007-06-05|accessdate=2008-01-01] 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.

References