Hitler's Art: How the Nazis Plundered Europe

The full story behind art in Nazi Germany.

A failed artist

Hitler dropped out of school at age 16 to pursue an art career in Vienna. In 1907 and 1908, his sample drawings were rejected by Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts. The director said Hitler was unfit for painting. It was suggested that he instead become an architect. But young Adolf remained in Vienna for five years. 

There, Hitler became rabidly anti-Semitic. Still, he continued to embrace the world of painting, opera, and architecture. His own personal painting style embraced tradition and realism. He painted buildings and landscapes, but these were rejected by the art establishment, which favored more abstract styles. 

Hitler moved to Germany in 1913. He settled in Munich, just before WWI. He was part of a Bavarian regiment. He did not become a German citizen until 1932, but he clearly identified with the country. When Germany was humiliated in 1918, he was one of many Germans who claimed their country had been stabbed in the back. 

In the mid-1920s, Hitler expressed some of his artistic views in Mein Kampf. Although he admitted his failures as an artist, he vocally condemned art that he deemed communist. He hated modern abstract art, such as Cubism and Dada. He blamed this art on the Jews. 

Nazi aesthetics

Hitler was one among many Germans who regarded abstract art as a degeneration from Europe’s traditional high culture. Paul Schultze-Naumburg wrote Art and Race in 1928, where he argued that only racially pure artists could create works of timeless classical beauty, whereas other forms of art reflected the inferiority and corruption of their creators. He joined the Nazi Party in 1930, and became one of Nazi Germany’s leading architectural theorists. 

In his book The Myth of the 20th Century, Alfred Rosenberg urged the Nazis to shun all forms of Jewish art. Rosenberg’s book sold a million copies in Nazi Germany, and he won the State Prize for Science and Art from Hitler in 1937. 

Once Hitler became Germany’s Chancellor in 1933, he was able to implement some of his Nazi aesthetic theories. At the Nuremberg Rally of 1934, he mocked modern art in front of his massive crowds of supporters. In 1937, two exhibits were opened to glorify the art ideals of National Socialism. 

House of German Art

Hitler’s first exhibit was the new House of German Art. Opened on July 18, 1937, Hitler attended in person. He called for a war of cultural genocide and purification in the world of art. Nazi art depicted muscular Roman and Greek gods. Neo-Classical paintings celebrated ancient mythology. The opening parade had a meager showing of 6,000 participants. To avoid embarrassment, the Nazis had to purchase many of their own art pieces to give the illusion of success. The House of German Art, or Haus der Kunst, is still in use today. 

Degenerate Art

When the Nazis came to power, Hitler ordered his Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels to target the galleries and museums of so-called Degenerate Art, produced since 1910. Around 16,000 works were seized by the German state. Over 600 pieces were selected for a special exhibit, held at a former archaeology museum in Munich. This included the works of German Modernists, such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Paul Klee.  Also included were the works of foreign artists, such as Jean Matzigner and Pablo Picasso. 

Hitler was there to personally attend the exhibit’s opening. In his speech, he decried the works of modern art. It was a massive public success. It was visited by over three million people, as it toured around Germany. After the exhibition, much of the art was auctioned off. 

Selling art

Hermann Göring, an ex-fighter pilot from WWI, realized the lucrative potential of the art market. He chose works by Van Gogh, and sold them off to a German banker in Amsterdam. He pillaged the collection for his own benefit. So did the Nazi regime, which formed a Commission for the Exploitation of Degenerate Art. 

From a warehouse in Berlin, four Nazi dealers sold off confiscated works at undervalued prices. In 1939, 125 artworks were auctioned off at the Grand Hotel in Lucerne, Switzerland. This took place under the auspices of Theodor Fischer, a Swiss art dealer. He played a key role in Nazi Germany’s trade of looted artworks. In Lucerne, Van Gogh’s Self Portrait sold for the highest price, alongside The Acrobat and Young Harlequin by Picasso. 

On March 20, 1939, 5,000 works of degenerate art were burned in a bonfire in the courtyard of the Berlin Fire Department. 

Many Modernist artists fled Germany, including Paul Klee and Max Beckmann. Otto Dix, a partner and printer from the Weimar period, went into self-imposed exile. One of German Expressionism’s earliest pioneers, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, committed suicide on June 15, 1938. 

Looting

On March 12, 1938, Nazi troops marched unopposed into Vienna. After annexing Austria, the Germans pillaged the art. The rich banker and landowner, Baron Louis de Rothschild, was arrested. Almost 4,000 works were taken from his house and hunting lodge. The Nazis took the artworks to the faux-Romanesque castle of Neuschwanstein in Bavaria. Rothschild himself escaped and fled to the US, but only after being jailed by the Nazis for a year and being stripped of all his assets. 80,000 other Jews were forced out of Austria. The Nazis permitted them to flee with their lives, on the condition that they surrender their assets to the government and pay a large fine. 

One painting that fell into Nazis was painted by Gustav Klimt. It was his Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. Klimt made the painting for Adele’s father, the rich Jewish banker Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, in 1903. Ferdinand fled Austria in 1938. Klimt’s portrait was seized by the Nazis and displayed in a public gallery in Vienna. In an effort to conceal Adele’s Jewish identity, the painting was simply renamed Lady in Gold. The painting remained in Austria for 60 years, before being repatriated to Ferdinand’s heirs in 2006. It now resides at the Neue Galerie in New York. 

Fürhermuseum

After annexing Austria and invading Czechoslovakia, Hitler now had his hands on some of Europe’s finest artworks. The Fürher made plans to organize a grand museum in his home town of Linz, devoted to Europe’s greatest artworks and the glory of the Third Reich. It would be called the Fürhermuseum. 

Hitler tasked this project to Hans Posse. It was codenamed Special Operation Linz. Posse was an odd choice. He had been removed by the Nazis from his previous art director job because of his affinity for Modern Art. Regardless, Posse was enthusiastic about the assignment. He carried a personally signed note from Hitler, which demanded complete cooperation for anything Posse asked for. 

With the outbreak of WWII in 1939, Posse’s project got even more ambitious. As Hitler subdued Poland and France, more and more galleries, museums, and private collections were opened up. By the war’s end in 1945, Posse had gathered over 8,000 works of art for Hitler’s museum in Linz. This is a staggering amount! As a point of comparison, London’s National Gallery only holds 2,300 works of art today. 

Posse short-listed the works to just 324 paintings. One of them was Vermeer’s Art of Painting, made in 1668. It was owned by a German aristocrat named Count Jaromir Czernin, and his uncle Eugene. Because they were Germans, the Nazis refused to simply confiscate the painting. The family tried to sell it to an American buyer, but the Nazi regime blocked it. They tried to sell it to a German industrialist. Under unclear circumstances, Hitler managed to buy Vermeer’s masterpiece at an undervalued price. Even German nobles were not immune to Hitler’s plundering of art. 

Occupied France

In September 1940, Rosenberg was called over to Nazi-occupied France. He began by stealing France’s artworks and holding them at the Louvre. When space filled up, the art was moved to a larger location. 

Otto Abetz was the Reich High Commissioner for Occupied France. His mission was to protect all public and private art in France, particularly those owned by Jews. He moved quickly in 1940 to confiscate the private collections of France’s top 15 art dealers, including many Jews. Nazi art historians and photographers appraised the works. 

Vermeer’s Astronomer fell into Abetz’s hands. In February 1941, he took it to Berlin. It became Hitler’s favorite painting. 

Rose Valland, an art historian and member of the French Resistance, secretly kept details of the Nazi plundering of France’s national and private Jewish-owned artworks. She saved thousands of artworks. 

Many officers of the Wehrmacht were conservative Germans, and they hated the plundering of French galleries and museums. They argued it violated The Hague of Convention of 1907, which prevented looting in wartime. They chose Count Franz von Wolff-Metternich, a German aristocrat and art historian, to lead the legal case against stealing French art and monuments. Some restrictions were placed on the Nazis’ looting, which prevented Goebbels from stealing a thousand objects out of France. But the Count was dismissed when he stood in the way of Hitler’s desire to obtain the Ghent Altarpiece, by Jan van Eyck. 

Salt mine

Hitler seized the Ghent Altarpiece, and moved it across Europe toward the Vatican. It was found at the Altaussee  salt mine after the war. Artwork from Austria’s museums and churches were taken to the mine in August 1943 to protect against Allied bombing. Other works obtained by the Nazis included Michelangelo’s Madonna of Bruges, Vermeer’s Astronomer, and Nazi looted works from Italy. As the war came to an end, the salt mine was laced with explosives. 

Hitler passed his Nero Decree, which demanded the absolute destruction of the Reich’s values. In the confusion after Hitler’s death, the bombs were removed by a team of German officers. 

The mine was later discovered by accident. While in Trier, Captain Robert Posey of the Monument Unit visited a German dentist, whose son-in-law was a SS fugitive. He told Posey about the pillaging of art. Posey stumbled across the collection of Nazi art. It took 80 truckloads, over the course of a month, to move these artworks 150 miles away to Munich, where they could be examined by experts. The problems of tracking the art continue to be an issue. 

Learn More