61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

was merely the first phase leading to the complete break-up of the German
Jewish collections. In 1938, a second phase began in which the German authorities
and party units systematically confiscated and resold Jewish art collections
– or what was left of them. In 1939, the «Führermuseum» was founded in Linz.
With the attack on France, Belgium and the Netherlands in summer 1940,
other notorious art looting organisations were established, such as the «ERR»
Task Force (Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg) set up by Operations Headquarters
Reichsleiter Alfred Rosenberg and the Künsberg Special Commando Unit
(Sonderkommando Künsberg), which was answerable to the Foreign Office. These
looting teams were closely linked, both causally and chronologically, with
Germany’s policy of expansion; they therefore operated mainly in the occupied
countries.
For the «expropriation phase» on the whole, no evidence was found of direct
links between German Reich authorities/museums and Swiss authorities or
other public institutions. However, until the outbreak of war in 1939, Swiss
museums, collectors and dealers acquired Jewish-owned works of art, in some
cases directly from «Jew auctions» («Judenauktionen»). For example, the art
dealer and gallery-owner Theodor Fischer purchased a number of porcelain
artefacts from the Emma Budge collection. Otto Fischer, the director of the
Basler Kunstmuseum, also bought graphic works locally between 1933 and
1937, either through direct purchase arrangements or via middlemen.
Trade probably expanded during the years when transactions intensified as a
result of persecution; the same applies to non-professional opportunist dealing,
which is difficult to investigate and quantify. Contrary to expectations, in the
category of high-quality and therefore well-documented cultural assets, far
more cases involving flight assets than looted assets were noted.
The trade in flight assets
It also happened that legal owners, as a result of persecution by the National
Socialists, brought collections to Switzerland themselves. The transfer of flight
assets took place on a substantial scale, especially during the early 1930s. These
flight assets, mainly owned by wealthy and cultured people among the Jews,
found their way to countries all over Europe and also overseas. The «looting
taxes» levied on emigration and the foreign exchange transfer regulations were
tightened up only gradually, and initially the obstacles to exporting assets were
even less of a hurdle. Some Jewish collectors decided to emigrate to Switzerland
primarily because of the contacts they had established with Swiss museums or
collectors prior to 1933. Swiss museums were in a position to offer collectors a
very attractive opportunity to transfer their assets, as they were able to arrange
the import of artworks from the Reich with «free passage» into Switzerland
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