Expert Opinion - Nazi Looted Art

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November 1936 “she would negotiate with the foreign exchange office and all the
other associated organizations” regarding this matter.
Evidence: Correspondence Thekla Hess – Kunsthaus Zurich dated September
23 and 30, 1936
Until this point in time efforts to have the artworks in Switzerland regarded as loans
had been successful. Nevertheless, German authorities could learn at any time that
the artworks originally sent for exhibition (1933 in Basel, 1934 in Zurich) - at least
since the end of the Zurich exhibition (due to an extension only in August 1934) -
were no longer being kept by them as pieces for exhibition. Since then, Thekla Hess
had continuously lived under the threat of being accused of having brought her
possessions into a foreign country or at least of having them left there in order to
protect them from access by German officials. Her September 23, 1936 letter
demonstrated that she had already provided an affidavit to German authorities
responsible for foreign exchange matters to the effect that no foreign exchange was
paid for the artworks stored in Switzerland. Accordingly, the German officials were
already aware prior to September 1936 of the Swiss whereabouts of the Hess
collection artworks.
In early November 1936 Thekla Hess was to have discussed the disposition of the
artworks stored in Switzerland with the German foreign exchange office and to clarify
legal foreign exchange payments. This is reflected in the Hess letter dated
September 23, 1936. Based on the circumstances as related by Thekla Hess, it can
be deduced that she was requested by the German authorities to repatriate the
artworks no longer needed for exhibition in Switzerland back to Germany. If not, she
faced the threat of repressive measures by the Nazi regime, a situation that
portended the greatest dangers for her and her family members.
Similar fates of other Jewish art collectors during the Nazi regime have already been
documented.
In the mid-thirties Walter Westfeld, the art collector and dealer in Duesseldorf, had
brought some of his works of art to Paris, in anticipation of his emigration. This did
not go unnoticed by the Nazi authorities. They arrested Westfeld, accusing him of
having committed a foreign exchange deception. They sentenced him to prison and
to pay a large fine which was settled by their auctioning off his entire art collection.
Having completed his prison term, Westfeld was deported because his release
would have posed “a threat to the existence and security of the people and the
state.” Westfeld later perished in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Carl Sachs, the Jewish industrialist and art collector from Breslau, had succeeded in
shipping 22 works of art from his high-caliber collection of French impressionists to
Switzerland for exhibition purposes. In 1939 he emigrated to Switzerland with only
RM 10 in his pocket and sustained himself by sales of pictures. One year later the
Economics Ministry of the Reich demanded the repatriation of the artworks and
seized as “settlement” all assets remaining in Germany.
Evidence: Schnabel/Tatzkow, Nazi Looted Art, worldwide Art Restitution
Handbook, 476-478 (Berlin, 2007), Tatzkow/Hinz, Citizens, Victims