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Nazi-Looted Art from East and West in East Prussia: Initial Findings on the Erich Koch Collection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2015

Patricia Kennedy Grimsted
Patricia Kennedy Grimsted*
Affiliation:
Ukrainian Research Institute and Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University. Email: grimsted@fas.harvard.edu
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Abstract:

The article contrasts long-suppressed details of German art seizures during the Second World War from Ukrainian state museums and Western Jewish dealers, ordered to Königsberg by Erich Koch, Gauleiter of East Prussia and Reich Commissar of Ukraine. While most of the art from Kyiv was destroyed by retreating Germans when the Red Army arrived (February 1945), here we investigate “survivors.” Initial provenance findings about the collection Koch evacuated to Weimar in February 1945 reveal some paintings from Kyiv. More, however, were seized from Dutch and French Holocaust victims by Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring and his cohorts, including Jewish dealers Jacques Goudstikker (Amsterdam) and Georges Wildenstein (Paris). Many paintings deposited in Weimar disappeared west; others seized by Soviet authorities were transported to the Hermitage. These initial findings draw attention to hitherto overlooked contrasting examples of patterns of Nazi art looting and destruction in the East and West, and the pan-European dispersal of important works of art.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Cultural Property , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , February 2015 , pp. 7 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © International Cultural Property Society 2015 

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