This was once a center of the nazi party in the unit. 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 hop has received the entire archive of the uli as buller our dealership from the years 1933 to 1945 to work through. It could be a huge opportunity to locate lost artworks from jewish collections. As this said that. 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 burleighs transactions that were working on and figuring out so we have a lot of work ahead of us on making our microphones the. Picked up 10. Masa. Feet lend. Out to a wooden stein james blish without Fritz Goodman i got to sell and none. These are important names but we must always remember that theyre simply representative of very very many fates and the nazi era. By them given the large number of objects we provenance researchers work with and the many names we encounter that we cant 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 to end are gateaux zalman who were evident collectors loot from the late 1920 s. Until they were forced to flee nazi germany in late 1935. Providence researcher eras 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. Some kinds of cowboys they would force there and. I think we can imagine how the silence lived in the late 1920 s. What kind of a feeling it must have been to live in a house full of ott. Im 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 leave the house in 1036 by the munich artillery us ruler on behalf of the czar months 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 stairwell. Now we have the carpeting in the wallpaper its hidden under the current decor left on the well i got folks. Thats enough not just finance some toy thing from the simply about these are pictures that the rightwing tax office took in the couples absence its 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 Salmond lived. In money i mentally. Aronsen i got to zalman moved into the house called erlend holes in the summer of 1027. In the neighboring town of ending in paris 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 girl to. London plane and 2 off. From this field if there was a little. Runway one of her i dont know perhaps i was. But anyway this is the sport. Felix damaris orients is the son of a mans 1st husband he lives in paris where hes an art dealer and an expert on rare books. He now represents a group of this element errors. A mission schloss a fairy tale house only 11 objects from the familys considerable collection have been found so far in 5 german museums and 3 private collections abroad felix damaris audience is visiting erlend 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 google or the necessity in the planning of the. The civil suit. In 1936. 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 this all months 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 socalled right flight tax that was nearly 140000. 00 right machs that the solomons had to scrape together and pay in a. 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 door to. The solomons 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 omans letter. Regarding your collection alan 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 art 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. Its 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 with all stones 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 prince haim and james from blacks were to purchase start at bullers when the nazis seized power this clientele broke away practically overnight escaped naturists 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 in fact all fools. 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. Im 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. Hes a correspondent this correspondent shows her difficult situation the pressure she was under. And her desperation. After theyd 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. Object it is caught again and up 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 thats what makes this so moving. We have a total of around 40000. 00 transactions that weve been able to reconstruct for the period that the archive covers and of course only part of that dates from the period 1933219051 since many dealers Work Together including people like vinyl and burleigh im 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 youll 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 dollar turned over his grandfathers correspondence to the bavarian economic archives back in 1905. There so this is our true home and always will be. Recently he handed over the companys entire archive to the Central Institute for our history. As a top unix man i dont have any more records here its all in public hands and its important to me to make it all transparent im no friend of sweeping things under the rug weve tried to do that for far too long with them that we thought i think. But what did you use harry bill or tell his family about his business dealings. As i scan 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 werent allowed to bother grandfather as well but its all my heart mind and with that with all thats the way it was. My mother would say grandpapa is there dont make so much noise. That seems normal if youve grown up with it i mean some of the vix on my system today i wish it had been different but thats how it was. Just give us a movie ever. That was a fairly unusual act to turn over all the Company Records for research purposes. Did michael huff and her team have a hard time persuading him. 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 for being a 100. And 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 if you dont recall. The archive from the burner art dealership is providing provenance researchers with essential data. For the years 1933 to 1945 the document 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 Eunice Miller 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 james long life james from ply frodo 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 by 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 paid around 1530. 00 by a southern german master. One of the most active bidders in the room was you use brewer and he purchased the painting. We have the invoices from the let the auction house to the you list ship here in munich there it was sold to build a for 3600 rife marks and 3 quarters of the year light. Hermann goering bought it for the enormous sum of 8000 right marts. So it more than doubled in the space of 9 months ice marked in and i figure they are me are of course someone like burleigh knew that when he sold it to grrr he didnt need to ask a cheap price. Herr mongering 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 zam longer ring or during collection is a suggestion that it may be looted art. For you used for usually a spoiler 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. And that the market complet on the bottom the sec was fast enough of this 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 area dealers like exploited it to establish their own firms and pushed the jewish firms out of the markets. And in 4 months of time. The mine miller auction house was berners 1st choice for auctioning off a zalman collection he didnt tell those are 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. Doesnt. That vine miller tell to end quote at local things or trade it in looted art what its called looted are today back then they didnt have that term i think. And why my grandfather was involved in it and when. I dont know anything about that going all the way from typing to rise he got his gun and. 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 almost 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. Or was very familiar with his own hands 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 because museum in frankfurt. At that and he sold it for 6 times the amount. The money that flowed in from the sale of the Art Collection went directly to the tax office or to the art dealer who had been commissioned with the sale. And the solomons themselves didnt see any of it. So its hard to separate. Did he maybe want to help a garter salmond by saying youre 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 thats the morally questionable element. 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 didnt 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. In the moment as 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 were finished with the buddha project i think well be able to put a percentage to his actions to what extent was he a prophet. How much did he help people. And how much did he do people. And. Its still unclear how closely youll 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 googles made clear the party was intent on ensuring that all forms of culture would be subordinated to the regime. Jonathan and die just because of an induction and deduction bonus and budgets and adult should be. Off. Its gave a kind of move you didnt. Even begin to think theyre going to feel as though you. Know if its. The fault. Thanks to the nazis cultural policies numerous works of dubious provenance have ended up in the holdings of german museums. The stark legacy in public collections is something that to this day imposes a burden of responsibility. And its a curse. Thats one of the bizarre aspects of the nazis alongside the genocide alongside the holocaust. Is that the leaders tries to deck themselves out with art. Thats 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 i get to 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 the czar minds were interned in the corps concentration camp. At the same time here and during had discovered france as a new source of art to loot he asked julius biller to act on behalf of the 3rd reich in france. Were refused and during reportedly left the art 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 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. But also these people were prowling the art market although they werent necessarily all that knowledgeable. All they didnt have the best advisors. So that meant that the art 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. 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 this new taste in art and spoken or the director of the been a critic museums bought numerous works by hans tomar a darling of the regime. He finance the purchases by giving bill 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 sacked was saying he gave away a renoir in the morning. And wanted those of basi