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| Status: The object is looted. Its current location is unknown. | |
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| Additional Information | |
| Alfred Boedecker received Boy with a Butterfly Net in exchange for a Ludwig Knaus painting entitled Painter Seated on Bough of Tree, Surrounded by Children on 7 April 1943. Boedecker initially offered the paintings to Bruno Lohse, Göring’s agent in Paris. Lohse subsequently sent photographs of the paintings through Robert Scholz, director of the Amt Bildende Kunst (Department for the Fine Arts) of the ERR, to the Reichskanzlei (Reich Chancellery), where they were viewed by Leiter der Parteikanzlei (Head of the Party Chancellery), Martin Bormann. Bormann wished to acquire the Knaus painting and Lohse arranged the particulars of the exchange. Boedecker and his associate, the Zurich art dealer Neupert, met with Miss Tomforde, a researcher for the ERR, and exchanged the paintings at the Basle train station on the German side of the Swiss border. Boedecker had initially insisted upon Lohse personally delivering the Knaus from Paris and that he bring a Cezanne chalk and water colour study, in case the Renoir painting did not ‘meet expectations.’ A letter from Lohse to Scholz, dated 12 April 1943, stated that he was sending the Knaus with an ERR agent named Beyer as its courier, to be presented to Adolf Hitler as a birthday present. This was the sixth of seven formal exchanges undertaken by the ERR on behalf of the Reich Chancellery, Martin Bormann, and Adolf Hitler. The ERR was a special unit of the German Foreign Political Office under Reichsleiter Alfred Rosenberg whose primary function was the looting and confiscation of so-called “ownerless” Jewish art collections. Approximately 21,903 objects from 203 collections are believed to have been seized by the ERR in France. The ERR conducted twenty-eight formal exchanges of confiscated paintings with six dealers between February 1941 and November 1943. In most of the cases, the paintings were French paintings of the late 19th and 20th century, which were exchanged for Old Master paintings. Transportation of confiscated Impressionist and 20th century paintings to Germany was forbidden, as these were formally regarded as Entartete Kunst (degenerate art) by the Nazis. Instead, the ERR used these highly saleable paintings in the interest of commercial exploitation or to obtain Old Master and other paintings. Many of the exchanged paintings were smuggled to Switzerland from where they were sold into private collections. The information provided was taken from a 1945 US Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Report. The object may since have been restituted to its rightful owner and its current location might be known. If you can provide further information about the post-war provenance of this object, please contact the Central Registry of Information on Looted Cultural Property 1933-1945. | |
| Source of Information | |
| Activity of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg in France (Consolidated Interrogation Report No. 1). Office of Strategic Services, Art Looting Investigation Unit, APO 413, US Army, 15 August 1945 The Göring Collection (Consolidated Interrogation Report No. 2). Office of Strategic Services, Art Looting Investigation Unit, US Army, September 1945 Gustav Rochlitz (Detailed Interrogation Report No. 4). Office of Strategic Services, Art Looting Investigation Unit, US Army, August 1945 Contact Central Registry of Information on Looted Cultural Property 1933-1945 76 Gloucester Place London W1U 6HJ England Tel: +44 (0)20 7487 3401 Email: info@lootedart.com https://www.lootedart.com | |
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