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this was once the center of the nazi party in munich and here where the nazis planned the systematic seizure of jewish assets today a belated restitution for those crimes is being worked on. the backs of documents that have arrived at the central institute for our history in munich are a treasure trove for the art world provenance researcher michael hopkins received the entire archive of the uli as buller are dealerships from the years 1933 to 1945 to work through. it could be a huge opportunity to locate lost art works from jewish collections. as this. this can be like looking for a needle in a haystack we have at least $1500.00 photos like this to digitize. we have a total of nearly $40000.00 of burleigh's transactions that we're working on and figuring out so we have a lot of work ahead of us i'm a gal microphone think. pick

up tempo big talk. a lot of masa. a hoot and stein james blish luda fritz goodman i got to 0 in on. these are important names but we must always remember that they're simply representative of very very many faiths and the nazi era. by them given the large number of objects we provenance researcher's work with and the many names we encounter that we can't even properly identify cases like these

are very important as examples they enable us to demonstrate how the mechanism of expropriation and looting functioned and how certain objects ended up in museums. and of course each object has a very moving story to tell of the fate of its former owners. and. the town of falling in is located in southwestern germany. this is where the jewish couple errands and a gateau zalman who were evident collectors loot from the late 1920 s. until they were forced to flee nazi germany in late 1935. providence researcher era's schmeiser was examining the collection of lead because museum in frankfurt. she was checking its legality when she found that the museum had a madonna figure that had belonged to the solomons. would force than. i think we can imagine how the solomons lived in the late 1920 s.

. what kind of a feeling it must have been to live in a house full of ott. i'm trying to imagine where the madonna might have stored and what he might have asked. of. the alabaster madonna and child dating from the 14th century was sold to levy house in 1936 by the munich art dealer us ruler and we have of his our minds the owners were forced to put it up for sale when they fled the country. that the housing the moment you can sense from this photo that the house was empty when it was taken and i recognize this knob on the stair well. now we have the carpeting in the wallpaper

it's hidden under the current decor and left on the well i got folks. that's enough not just finance on toys being funny isn't it about these are pictures that the rightwing tax office took in the couple's absence it's important to note that it was in their absence. and on and in but they are nonetheless extremely valuable sources because they provide a few puzzle pieces that allow us to reconstruct how this space looked. when. and agatha solomon lived here. i mentally. instant i got to zalman moved into the house called carolyn holes in the summer of 1927. in the neighboring town of ending in tears some one had a highly successful cotton weaving mill. his wife was the one who built up the ark

collection and she had another rather extravagant hobby. not apparently this is. a god too for my. plane and took off. from this field if there was a little. runway or not i don't know perhaps i was. but anyway this is the sport. felix damaris audience is the son of i got to solomon's 1st husband he lives in paris where he's an art dealer and an expert on rare books. he now represents a group of the zalman heirs. nationals. a mere shinsho us a fairy tale house only 11 objects from the family's considerable collection have been found so far in 5 german museums and 3 private collections abroad félix to

mary's audience is visiting ellen hope for the 1st time until now he only knew it from photographs. of the desk in this. picture which was a got to standing here tonight. it was from the desk that she started her correspondence with you use bhutto or the necessity in the planning of the. find some unique in 1036. on december 18th 1935 monk got in touch with art dealer. we are currently trying to sell our factory and liquidate our estate might you possibly be interested in selling our collection. before she received an answer the zalman has had to flee the country and leave behind everything they had built up here. on the moment at the moment it became

clear that the solomons had left the authorities imposed the so-called right flight tax that was nearly $140000.00 right mach's that the solomons had to scrape together and pay in a hurry. the tax originally enacted to stem the flight of capital from weimar germany became in the hands of the nazis a way of seizing jewish property these supposed debts to the state were posted in the official government bulletin the doj. this elements were also listed here. in 1936 more and more jews began to flee from germany. many of those who owned artworks turned to their longtime art dealer or in many cases they were being forced to hurriedly sell off works they had originally bought through him. in the spring of 1936 buller answered a good as old man's letter. regarding your collection in evan hoff i have looked at

the items in the catalogs and i would be happy to sell them for you. but this is the building where the birla are dealership was located back then. the dealership which had once been named antiquary to the royal prussian court had a reputation for trustworthiness among its clients. this shows how well established he already was in munich around 1900 and also that he had the financial clout to put up a building like this with more than 20 exhibition rooms alston's it could basically be called a miniature bavarian national museum and it shows how this trade was flourishing in those years under. the un soviet. in the early 20th century sales to wealthy jewish clients all over germany were booming for the

dealership. reputable collectors like james. alford prince time and james from blush were to purchase start at buller's when the nazis seized power this clientele broke away practically overnight westgate naturist name is not i not only imagine you walking through here but also his clients including collectors who might have been in dire straits and bringing objects that they were being forced to sell in their predicament. in the not funds that were thrown back often was. from florence where she was living in exile got his own money again turned to her she still believed they might be able to meet. i'm considering selling the german artworks 1st i believe that if we could discuss this in person we could come to a satisfactory arrangement an appraisal of our work sad alan hope should probably take place after our conversation. he's

a correspondence this correspondence shows who a difficult situation the precious she was under. and her desperation. after they'd left all their property behind to have to carry on this correspondence from abroad with the dealer but also with the tax office as to how they could keep them from confiscating all of their property and. the object it is got a scandal and the objects i just scanned are all objects from this hour among collection that are registered in the online lost art database still missing these are not only works of fine art but also handicrafts furniture everyday objects. you can almost recreate in your imagination what the family home looked like its interior decor that's what makes this so moving.

we have a total of around $40000.00 transactions that we've been able to reconstruct for the period that the archive covers on of course only part of that dates from the period 1933 to 1905 so since many dealers work together including people like vinyl and burleigh i'm sure that this archive this trove of documents will allow us to shed light on more questions. on what this might well include questions about the zalman collection on the top and. to do the you'll use perl or art dealership is run from the family home in star in very near munich by the 5th generation of the dynasty trillion below turned over his grandfather's correspondence to the bavarian economic archives back in 1905. this is our true home and always will be. recently he handed over the company's

entire archive to the central institute for our history. as a top unix man i don't have any more records here it's all in public hands and it's important to me to make it all transparent i'm no friend of sweeping things under the rug we've tried to do that for far too long with them that be so hard. but what did you use harry really tell his family about his business dealings. yes i asked about it he liked to sit up there and look out of the lake and when he was there we usually head or try to stay out of the way. we weren't allowed to bother grandfather as walk ride for mama my name with that will go that's the way it was except for my mother would say grandpapa is there don't make so much noise. that seems normal if you've grown up with it i mean some of the vix on my system today i wish it had been different but that's how it was. i'm just curious movie

ever. that was a fairly unusual act to turn over all the company records for research purposes. did michael hart and her team have a hard time persuading him. i mean as we talked with him for a long time and he said we could come and visit. he still had the archive with the index cards and the portfolios of photographs. that was an amazing moment when we went down into the cellar and found these steel cabinets with the photo portfolios about the objects that were sold for being a 100. around 9000 photo portfolios were preserved in addition there are the index cards about the sold objects which can tell us from which collection or from which seller an object came and also who ultimately bought it and all of it i think of. the archive from the burner art

dealership is providing provenance researchers with essential data. for the years 1933 to 1945 the documents several 1000 transactions. in the summer of 1936 the u.s. burger art dealership saw its turnover climb to 6 times that of the previous years to nearly 1300000 rush marks brother profited from the situation. among his biggest purchasers were the pinnacle take museums in munich the name appears again and again on the lists of provenance in their depositories. for instance for numerous objects from the collection of the berlin banker james fund life schrader provenance researcher andrea bambi has devoted a detailed study to the collection. and samsung's life james from black crow to was the son of person from black rhoda who was an important banker in berlin the family

or he himself owned an art collection that is documented in an auction catalog from the auction house in berlin where the collection was sold in 1938. the sale included many paintings but also very valuable decorative objects such as pieces of furniture etc etc. after james found blish ritter died of natural causes in berlin in 1937 his entire collection was auctioned off by the auction house and the integrity of the collection that the family had accumulated over 2 centuries was lost forever. the rest of the blizzard of family was persecuted by the nazis and forced to sell off the estate under duress. among the objects sold at the auction was the raising of lazarus painted around $1530.00 by a southern german master. one of the most active bidders in the room was. and he

purchased the painting. we have the invoices from the let the auction house to the you list shipped here in munich there it was sold to berlin for 3600 rife marks and 3 quarters of the year light. hermann goering bought it for the enormous sum of 8000 right martz. saw it more than doubled in the space of 9 months ice market sets it in and i figure they are me are of course someone like burleigh knew that when he sold it to grrr he didn't need to ask a cheap price because. herrmann during a leading nazi who had been made supreme commander of the luftwaffe in 1935 was one of the biggest beneficiaries of looted art. cumulated a huge collection of artworks many of them from jewish owners. he was particularly keen to acquire medieval and renaissance art works especially female news. for

provenance researchers any hint that a work belong to the zaandam girl ring or the ring collection is a suggestion that it may be looted art. for you used for your list burleigh as for a lot of them such as the vinyl auction house the fact that the jewish art dealerships which had had a strong presence and which were the big players no longer existed meant the market was completely turned around. the market complet on the bought on the us it was fast enough in a sense of this and that was something the nazis exploited. there was a tense financial situation at the time which became evident in the art business. after $933.00 the so-called arion dealers like exploited it to establish their own firms and push the jewish firms out of the market. for months with. the mine miller auction house was burners 1st choice for auctioning off

a zalman collection he didn't tell his arm months that since early 1936 he himself had been a 50 percent silent partner of the auction house and took a cut of its profits. the. that vine miller delton quote little things or traded in looted art what it's called looted are today back then they didn't have that term i think. and why my grandfather was involved in it and when. i don't know anything about that going all the way from typing to rise he got his gun. in the summer of 1936 items from the zalman collection were sold at an auction billed as an old german our collection the proceeds of 40000 russian marks were not enough for those all months to pay their rice flight tax. in addition to that you picked out

a number of especially valuable pieces from the collection and bought them himself at the auction that was in order to sell them later for many times the price that he paid at the auction some of the buyers were public museums. because it's. earlier was very familiar with the zones collection since his dealership had helped them assemble it now he was dismantling it and profiting all the more. at the big auction in the summer of 1936 he bought the madonna and child and sold it just a year later at a profit to the levy house museum in frankfurt. and for the 6 he sold it for 6 times the amount. the money that flowed in from the sale of the art collection went to regularly to the tax office or to the art dealer who had been commissioned with the sale. and the solomons themselves didn't see any of it.

so it's hard to separate. did he maybe want to help a garter salmond by saying you're under time pressure and i know a way we can get this done quickly at the same time he was a dealer and making a profit that's the morally questionable element that has not released the morals factor to get our drive factors. factually you can imagine that if a dealer can get hold of more goods or has a chance at getting high quality goods cheaply he would be acting on economically if he didn't take advantage of the situation. on the other hand dealers like us burleigh and i. and many more were quite aware of the predicament the jewish collectors were in at the time the unisons are now in the moment as if that is to get in there were instances in which he brought the artworks of persecuted owners

to the most broad and then there were cases in which he was clearly a profiteer. once we're finished with the buddha project i think we'll be able to put a percentage to his actions to what extent was he a prophet tia how much did he help people. and how much did he do people. and how to heal that. it's still unclear how closely you'll see his brother was connected with the nazi regime. what is clear is that none of the participating partners in his dealership were nazi party members but as a propaganda minister yosef google's made clear the party was intent on ensuring that all forms of culture would be subordinated to the regime. beyond and by just beyond induction and deduction and this and by just an adult should be. off. gave a kind of a move. even if he did them to feed it.

to me not if it. is the fault. thanks to the nazis cultural policies numerous works of dubious provenance have ended up in the holdings of german museums. this dark legacy in public collections is something that to this day imposes a burden of responsibility. to the crew. and one of the bizarre aspects of the nazis alongside the genocide alongside the holocaust. is that the leaders try to deck themselves out with art. that's long been a tradition among those who hold power. but in this case the humanity that is essentially the basis of art is coupled with the inhumanity of the political and military actions. and we will never entirely resolve this paradox via convenience

or through. in 1936 out of hitler visited the italian fascist leader benito mussolini in florence by then aronsen doggett a zalman had once again been forced to flee this time to france. they left behind there for a vacation home in florence and other valuable art objects. not long after their arrival france fell under german occupation examines were interned in the gore's concentration camp. at the same time here and during had discovered france as a new source of art to loot. his bill or to act on behalf of the 3rd reich in france. were refused and during reportedly left the arc dealers mention in a rage and never bought works from him again. that mocked the market was driven by the frenzy on the part of the nazi elite. they developed

this image of the great collector who was also representative of nazi ideology. causing someone having an especially valuable art collection was a mark of status image of a boss so these people were prowling the art market although they weren't necessarily all that knowledgeable. all they didn't have the best advisors. so that meant that the dealers who were there like vine for example were all able to sell mediocre to inferior goods to this nazi elite at absurdly high prices so fuck all. one blatant example was the painting girl feeding the chickens by hands trauma. and them going and basically this painting is emblematic of that time. in accordance with his new taste in art and spoken or the

director of the been a critic museums but numerous works by hands to him are a darling of the regime. he financed the purchases by giving bill or a number of valuable works in exchange. once said someone was strangely enough he made the decision to draw in works that had been set resect he gave away a renoir and the monterey. county those of beastly missed gaps in our collection today in other words he took 2 significant works by acis of the caliber of renoir and monet and handed them over to a girl or an art dealer there. and then contemporary. in the mass of records we received we have reports of several 1000 transactions by the huge art dealership in the years 1933 to $945.00 alone so it will be

a huge amount of effort to digitize all this and it will be a huge effort if we're going to analyze and assess all of the transactions. but we have to do it because any one of these transactions could provide a decisive clue to an expropriated looted or in some way illegitimately traded piece of art. that. when world war 2 ended in 1945 germany was in ruins. gradually the crimes of the nazis came to light in that summer him and during his remaining our treasures were discovered hidden in a train your back to scotland. but that was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to the plunder of artworks. as soon as the cleanup of the ruins began it was clear that how to deal with looted cultural assets was going to be an issue and so was restitution of real estate or material goods to the

persecuted families and at the time ways were found of addressing it. in august 1905 allied forces set up to munich central collecting point it was a depot for looted art works and cultural artifacts with a view to restoring them to their owners or possible errors. it was located in a former nazi party administration building which today houses the central institute for art history. its laws lytle so regrettably the topic of looted art under national socialism was somewhat for cochran's least as a whole soft. focus and hide the heart of office while it may have been on people's minds immediately after the war during the reparation process. but then over the decades it fell into oblivion in the public consciousness for the.

tide of course there were people in the museums who knew that there was a problem but they weren't really interested in following up on the topic i said it's a decent team so we'll. my predecessor 3 generations back as it were played an active role in the old and new take museums at a period when they had been bombed and the ruins had to be rebuilt. then that was definitely a mistake given his intense involvement with the nazi system. i feel as if he's so blind but at the same time there were clearly people here in bavaria who wanted him as someone who was knowledgeable about the museum business so they wanted him to help rebuild the collection rebuild the buildings revive the institutions and organizations so we also have to keep in mind that at the time west germany wanted to enjoy its post-war economic miracle and wanted to believe that the nazi era and

nazi guilt had been overcome. and showed. in 1998 more than 4 decades after the end of the war the washington conference on holocaust era assets marked a decisive moment for the families affected by expropriation. they must dig to find the truth this means that researchers must have access to all the archives and by that i don't mean crush or sporadic or eventual access i mean access in full everywhere. the american diplomat stuart eizenstat had initiated the gathering 44 countries signed the washington declaration committing themselves to a set of 11 principles regarding artworks confiscated by the nazis. to create a sense of urgency it's a moral obligation these are not moral brussels we're not a legally binding treaty we created a moral obligation to fan trust and fair solution the so washington accord friends

until the washington conference the topic of nazi looted art was not on the agenda but apart from the descendants or the errors or in some cases survivors who had been forced to flee no one was really interested in it. coop. the washington conference fundamentally change that. representatives of non-governmental organizations and 4 dozen governments came together to talk about this topic. and that put it back on the agenda to talk us off as. it is perhaps regrettable that it wasn't germany where these deeds were carried out that provided the 1st impetus in 1998. but overall because it came from the jewish community it ended up generating huge momentum. the whole course was not only the greatest genocide in history 6000000 jews and millions of others

it was the greatest in history and 3rd reich didn't steal all the smart works and cultural objects and books and instruments just to get more money for the right that was a part of it but that wasn't good it was that this was a part and parcel of the genocide it was cultural genocide it was to eliminate everything connected to jewish culture jewish ownership root and branch. and many of the art works that we're talking about when the press gets it ok they read about the masterpieces but most of the art that was luther had much more sentimental of family value added to value on the open market and so the washington principles were designed to find what we called fair and trust solution we gather here this week not to achieve miracles but rather to do everything within our power

to replace dark with light injustice with fairness contention with consensus and falshood with truth. the jointly agreed search for truth and justice continues to this day a global digital network has provided new opportunities for provenance researchers in recent years germany puts more than 10000000 euros a year into. digitization in providence projects related to looted art. after the catalogs of the vine miller auction house had been digitized researchers in the summer of 2014 became aware of an object that for years had been part of the collection at berlin's boded museum. in the tradition every artifact has a biography of course so this is not just the sculpture collection it's also an

archive he. when he is in and here we've come to the 3 angles from the collection called s. in our. district is a no no and this piece has been in the collection since 1999. 2 or 3 years ago a colleague drew my attention to the fact that it appears in the catalogue of the vine you know auction house labeled s. in our collection no i'm wrong as in that was code for solomon in writing and solomon in new york in. the digital vine knew a catalogue had made it possible to link the item in the museum to the solomon collection. it would be popping into about what's next then nothing was known about its provenance and people weren't intensely concerned with provenance. once we started to research it but it soon became clear that there was this connection was

out among and in fact the catalogue describes a group of angels with the infant jesus and. even. the repercussions on the upper door when we compared the images in the catalog with the object itself we saw that the object was missing the wing on the left seen from our perspective. this is off the top. it's symbolic in a way what we have here is an angel that cannot fly it's you know seen. once the provenance was confirmed the museum had to act. that's true he's consistent. form and. this is an important piece of art history and we were hoping to keep it for our sculpture collection. includes mark mark so i looked up prices on the art market for comparable works and we made the heirs a fair offer. and came up and they accepted and so we were able to purchase the

piece i'm going home and one of these advisory quantum via distributor never happened because then time how can it be that the institution that has the work in its position is the want to decide they will keep it as a someone who has a claim that institution can never be independent and impartial it's very problematic and does that. country that's money that's for the quote was your obvious lee it's hard for the curators into rector's of the museum to return artworks that have played a central role in their collection when they discover that they have been wrongly acquired off. but there's no question they must be returned in many cases we have found ways of telling the heirs how important it is for us to keep the work in the collection and asking if we can either keep the artifact or

artifacts or collection on permanent loans eyes at least for the time being. or can we buy it back. but these options are only possible if the legitimate owner agrees to it. since the restitution and subsequent purchase from the heirs a plaque on the work makes a brief reference to its former owners and. we were impressed by the fact they've taken this initiative and that was a. somewhat moving movement because it was an acknowledgement of want it happened. a genuine attempt to. not only to rescue to it but to. to put something right that

was clearly part of a terrible wrong. collection is indeed a small. and i want to see you explore creations very important connection. unlike the angel sculpture of the madonna and child in frankfurt museum was sold at auction by subsidies in london after its restitution to the zalman heirs in 2015 it went 422000 pounds slightly below its appraised value. may be recovered. just about. items out of hundreds. a couple were quite interesting maybe perhaps even reasonably important most of them weren't terribly important. to us it's all of interest with the beginnings of restitution germany's restitute did 16000 art and in books austria 30000

dozens of united states hundreds and hundreds and the now lives but we still have that rest of the class to fill before we implement and honor the watchman principles and more important are the memories of those who were killed and those from whom these works were brutally stolen as part and parcel of the whole. 10 restitute it artifacts out of more than $200.00 in the salomon collection is terribly few or at least it sounds like terribly few and you also have to keep in mind that these were pretty prominent collectors with large collections and with a real culture of art collecting. at the same time though there were many families that owned only one or 2 works of emotional importance antiquities

a portrait of their grandmother maybe a vase that had been passed on for generations. and those were also confiscated by the nazis for. when you reflect on that it becomes apparent what a massive number of objects we're talking about but it's also clear that each individual object is representative of the larger issue and that it's important to fight for the true provenance of each and every object for us i mean it is our. in 1948 look up that fight after her husband died she began her legal battle for restitution her claims were successful at 1st. in march 1950 a court ordered the return of the cotton weaving mill the company grounds in the era when whole faust who i got as a woman but there was nothing left to recall the life she had once led here.

it would have been. pretty heart rending. to come here and be reminded of it all. right. i guess as all men hoped to turn over this is still it is an ending into the united nations to house child refugees from around the world. and her return. to the area. and her claims that the time gold card would have been stripped. of her name because of. itself potentials and striking characters she sort of mine a celebrity in the area. then owner of the mill appealed against her restitution claim and the court decision during the appeal i got to salmond committed suicide involving biden on june 18th 1900. if she won it was her 4th attempt.

to force. after i got as our months death her daughter nino took up the restitution claims félix tamara's audiences half sister continue to do detailed research on the fate of the family's art collection. in the 1960 s. she asked to see the catalogues of the vine miller auction house but was told that they had been destroyed during the war now we know they were rediscovered. by national still when my sister came here again in 62 and. 63 it was to try to track down the artworks.

and she didn't succeed. ot. learning merged reality wait a 2nd we want the whole picture our facts instead of make ideas shift deliver us. from other reality to cryptocurrency your topics for live in an ever changing digital world let's start with digitalisation there. shift. for 30 minutes on.

i'm secure in that of my work that's hard and in the end it's a me you're not allowed to stay here anymore we will send you back. are you familiar with this. with the smugglers were alliance of the what's your story ready. i mean when i was a women especially in victims of violence and. take part and send us your story we are trying in all ways to understand this new culture. are not given a turn i think yes you want to become a citizen. in for migrants your platform for reliable information.

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