2 games to come on sunday cologne take on byron munich and mines meet shaka this is of course to be w. news up next a shift living in the digital age it takes a look at fake videos don't forget you can get all the latest news around the clock on our website if you go to dot com on the sparser thanks for joining. us masa. wouldn't stein james black. fritz goodman i got to sell him on.

these are important names but we must always remember that they're simply representative of very very many fates 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 i gotto 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. forced and. 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 on behalf of the solomons the owners were

forced to put it up for sale when they fled the country. that's 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. well i got folks. that's enough now i'm the response on toy being funny isn't it about these are pictures that the right wing tax office took in the couple's absence it's important to note that it was in their absence. on. but they are nonetheless extremely valuable sources because they provide a few puzzle pieces that allow us to reconstruct how this space looked. when ernst

and agatha selman lived here. my mother lived. aaronson i got to zalman moved into the house called carolyn hoff in the summer of 1927. in the neighboring town of ending and there's 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. one apparently this is. a god. london plane and took off. from this field if there was a little. runway almost her don't know. it anyway this is the sport. felix tomorrow is the son of a 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 heirs. with.

a mission 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 timorous audience is visiting earl and hope for the 1st time until now he only knew it from photographs. which was a guy. standing here. it will snow from the desk of the tree startled her correspondence with you he's been at home. with a necessity in the planning of the. munich in 1036. on december 18th 1935. got in touch with art dealer harry builder. 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 zone ones 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 as oman's letter. regarding your collection ellen hoff i have looked at the items in the catalogs and i would be happy to sell them for you. 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. yes. it's 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 stemmons 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 moving for the dealership. reputable collectors like james. alford brings haim and james from bliss wrote a purchase start at buller's when the nazis seized power this clientele broke away practically overnight. when it's 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 and their predicament was. in the not funds that were involved in 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 works at alland hope should probably take place after our conversation. he's a correspondent for this correspondent shows who difficult situation the precious she was under. and her desperation looked 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. 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. because 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 193-321-9451 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. what this might well include questions about the zalman collection on the top and. to do the you'll

use perl or our 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. and so 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 your years harry really tell his family about his business dealings. as i scanned 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 had my name looked off though that's the way it

was october 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 for me the vix on my system today i wish it had been different but that's how it was. given isn't. that was a fairly unusual act to turn over all the company records for research purposes. did michael hop and her team have a hard time persuading him. 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 i mean 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 something

a 100 objects. 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 i mean if you took a call from. the archive from the burglar 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 earlier profited from the situation. among his biggest purchasers were the pinnacle take museums in munich the name unionist griller appears again and again on the lists of provenance in their

depositories. for instance for numerous subjects from the collection of the palin banker james fund life schrader provenance researcher andrea bambi has devoted a detailed study to the collection. and samsung's life chains from black crow to was the son of guess and 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 bly schroeder 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 glacier

at a 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 us brewer and he purchased the painting. we have the invoices from the let the auction house to the you list dealership here in munich. there it was sold to berlin for 3600 right marks and 3 quarters of a year later hermann goering bought it for the enormous sum of 8000 right marts. so it more than doubled in the space of 9 months ice market such as in and i for ya 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 nudes. for provenance researchers any hint that a work belong to the zaandam girl ring or during the election is a suggestion that it may be looted art. for you use for lobby for your list below 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. to unleash the market complet on the bottom as a class fast enough and as a service and that was something the nazis exploited. there was a tense financial situation at the time which became evident in the arc business.

after $933.00 the so-called arion dealers like vine miller exploited it to establish their own firms and pushed the jewish firms out of the markets. for months at a time. the mine miller auction house was berners 1st choice for auctioning off a zalman collection he didn't tell his armin's that since early 1936 he himself had been a 50 percent silent partner of the auction house and took a cut of its profits. 'd doesn't. that vine miller delton quote at little things or traded in looted art what is 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. got us going. 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. the museum visits. earlier was very familiar with his old man's 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 believe it 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. really so it's hard to separate. did he maybe want to help or guard his arm and 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. moralists factor to get our wives factors come on. 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 an 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 reasons are not in the moment as i think if they stick it 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 it. 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 yes of google's made clear the party was intent on ensuring

that all forms of culture would be subordinated to the regime. and by just going on and induction and deduction and this and i just didn't and adult should be. the kind to move. even if they're going to feed us now you. know if it. is. all. 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. i've had to close people to it and that's 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 dogs even got over it. in 1936 out of hitler visited the italian fascist leader benito mussolini in florence by then aronson are going to solomon 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 friends fell under german occupation czar months were interned in the grizz concentration camp. at the same time here and during had discovered france as a new source of art to loot he asked uli as biller to act on behalf of the 3rd

reich in france. were refused. reportedly left the art dealers mention in a rage and never bought works from him again. the market for the market was driven by the frenzy on the part of the nazi late. they developed this image of the great art collector who was also a representative of nazi ideology. causing someone having an especially valuable art collection was a mark of status. before so these people were prowling the art market although they weren't necessarily all that knowledgeable. all they didn't have the best advises. so that meant that the dealers who were there like vine for example were all able to sell me how to inferior goods to this nazi elite at

absurdly high prices to fuckoff. one blatant example was the painting girl feeding the true. my hands trauma. and i'm going and basically this painting is emblematic of that time. in accordance with this 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. to finance the purchases by giving girl or a number of valuable works in exchange. one set someone was strangely enough he made the decision to draw in works that had been 2nd sanct he gave away a renoir and i'm on a. one of those a basically missed gaps in our collection today in other words he took 2 significant works by artists of the caliber of renoir and monet and handed them over to bill or an art dealer they hadn't done much and then content.

in the mass of records we received we have reports of several 1000 transactions by the you are dealership in the years 1933 to 1905 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 here mind during his remaining our treasures were discovered hidden in a train your best discarded. but that was only the tip of the iceberg when it came

to the plunder of artworks. 100 from some talk as soon as the clean up of the room . began it was clear 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. regrettably the topic of looted art under national socialism was somewhat forgotten as

a whole soft. focus and hide the heart of ottis 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 height. 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 have one very. different 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. and feel like if these supplies 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. 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 it. in 1998 more than 4 decades after the end of the war the washington conference take given his intense involvement with the nazi system. i feel as if these supplies 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. 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 it. 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. the mistake to find the truth this means that researchers must have access to all archives and by that i don't mean crush or sporadic or eventual access i mean access in for 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 question of brussels we're not a legally binding treaty we created a moral obligation to trust and fair solution is so washington

a conference until the washington conference the topic of nazi looted art was not on the agenda. apart from the descendants or the heirs or in some cases survivors who have been forced to flee no one was really interested in it. the washington conference fundamentally changed 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. but. it is perhaps regrettable that it wasn't germany where these deeds were carried out that provided the 1st impetus in 1908. 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 theft 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 was lewd or had much more sentimental and family value that it did value on the open market and so the washington principles were designed to found what we called fair and just 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 providence 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 divine 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 boated museum. no tradition of every artifact has a biography of course so this is not just the sculpture collection it's also an

archive and he. when he is in view 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. and 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 labelled s. in our collection. i'm wrong. that was code for solomon in writing in his own mind in new york in. the digital vine you know catalog had made it possible to link the item in the museum to the solomon collection. it would be probing into what's next then nothing was known about its provenance and people weren't intensely concerned with provenance. once we started to research it 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. bush leaving. the repercussions on the up and 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 for. this is often it's symbolic in a way what we have here is an angel that cannot fly as you see in. the provenance was confirmed the museum had to act. the streets consistent wish to see. the this is an important piece of art history and we were hoping to keep it for our sculpture collection. includes mark marks so i looked up prices on the art market for comparable works and we made the errors a fair offer. came up and they accepted and so we were able to purchase the piece

i'm going on and on these advise a continuity a distributor have happened because then signed 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 not necessary to quote the museums obviously it's hard for the curators and directors 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. 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 then ignored which would have happened. a genuine attempt to. not only to rest. but to. to put something right that

was clearly part of a terrible wrong. connection is only a small. want to see you will explode creations very important connections. 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 10. items hundreds. and. 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 and in books austria 30000 dozens of united states hundreds and hundreds and then ellen's but we still have that rest of the class to fill before we implement and honor the washington principles and more important part of the memories of those who were killed and those from whom these works were brutally stolen as part and parcel of the whole course. of 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. 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. in 1948 about zalman took 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 house 2 are on but there was nothing left to recall the life she had once led here. with would have been. pretty heart rending.

to come here and be reminded of it all. i guess as our man hoped to turn over their facilities in ending into the united nations to house child refugees from around the world. to return. to the area. claims that the time got quite a bit of history. journey because of. itself horsemanship and a striking current sort of minor celebrity in the area. then owner of the mill appealed against her restitution claim and the court decision during the appeal to salmond committed suicide involving biden on june 18th 1900. 51 it was her 4th attempt.

to force. after i got to solomon's death her daughter nina 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 divine miller auction house but was told that they had been destroyed during the war now we know they were rediscovered. as was mine to trust when my sister came here again in 62 and. 63 it was to try to track down the artworks.

and she didn't succeed. wellington biden is the savior of the forest. because 210 acres of land in central gonna his own is recall debating and conserving wood and teaching how to practice sustainable forestry it's all about training empowering people to also go on their doorsteps. so often that i have enemies come fall and. for. like 30 minutes on t w. is

the world becoming less western and what does it mean for the moral of the west to leave the stage to others key questions at this year's munich security conference and join us for our coverage of the security conference 2020 today on d w. i was fishing when i arrived here i slept with 6 people in a room. it was hard i was fit. i even got white hair is that. benjamin language then. this gets me and they go punch me again to entrap the flame you want to know their story the muslims her fighting and reliable information for margaret.

this is deja vu news law from berlin dealing with the world's top conflicts world leaders have wrapped up the munich security conference with a new valve to crack down on if anyone providing weapons to the warring parties in little. sambo strife in brazil the reigning savage champions are stirring up controversy their show us people.