Alois Miedl

Alois Miedl (3 March 1903 - 11 June 1970) was a naturalized Dutch art dealer, originally a German Nazi banker, born in Munich, who had moved to and was mainly active in the Netherlands, involved with the sales of properties stolen from Jews who had fled or had been deported.

[4] At the same time, he was a friend of many prominent Nazi leaders, including Hermann Göring and Ferdinand aus der Fünten, the head of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Amsterdam.

[6] Right from the start of the war, Miedl tried to acquire art works from Jewish owners, threatening them that they had the choice between selling to him at severely reduced prices, or being looted by the Gestapo.

Alois Miedl acquired for himself the Goudstikker estate Oostermeer in Ouderkerk a/d Amstel, where he would live in splendour, and the gallery including Nijenrode Castle.

Among the pictures sold to Göring were Two Philosophers by Rembrandt and works by Salomon van Ruysdael, Hans Memling, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Gerard ter Borch, Jacopo del Casentino and Frans Hals.

In return he protected the Jewish mother of Goudstikker, who hadn't fled the Netherlands with the rest of the family and now faced the same risks as all Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe.

His heirs claimed that the artworks were sold under duress, similar to that of many other clients of Miedl, but this was disputed by the Dutch government, which had recovered many of the paintings from the Nazis after the war.

[7][8] In 1942, Miedl bought Christ with the Adulteress, a painting supposedly by Johannes Vermeer but actually a forgery by Han van Meegeren, for 1.65 million Dutch guilders.

He then sold it to Hermann Göring in exchange for an undisclosed sum of money and 150 other looted paintings, 54 of them originally from the Goudstikker collection, totalling about 2 million guilders worth.

His most ambitious plan was to buy, according to the source, either the coast of Labrador[7] or Anticosti Island,[3] or both[5] to have a constant supply of wood for Germany, or alternatively as a foothold to spy on Canada or the United States.

It has also been speculated, based on claims made by SS officer Otto Ohlendorf, that he transferred part of Göring's collection to Spain as well, as a safeguard against the fall of the Third Reich.

He sold a painting he had bought during the war from Émile Renders, a copy of a wing of the Braque Triptych by Rogier van der Weyden, perhaps made by Hans Memling, to a private collector in Norway in 1966.