Theodor Fischer (auctioneer)
On the instructions of Joseph Goebbels, German Reich Minister of Propaganda, attempts were made to sell some of the more valuable "degenerate" works abroad to raise foreign currency to help the war effort.
[3][4][5][6] Among the 126 pictures offered were Franz Marc's Three Red Horses, Paul Gauguin's Landscape of Tahiti with Three Female Tigers, Pablo Picasso's The Harlequins and a self-portraits by Paula Modersohn-Becker and Vincent van Gogh.
Some people were in the audience only out of curiosity and a number of bidders, who might have been expected to attend, were absent because they were worried the proceeds would be used to prop-up the Nazi regime.
Marianne Feilchenfeldt and her husband were shocked to discover that one of the canvases for sale was Cathedral of Bordeaux (1924/25) by Oskar Kokoschka, a painting that they had donated to the Nationalgalerie in Berlin but which had been deaccessioned in 1937.
[10] The paintings were: "André Derain's "Valley of the Lot at Vers," stolen from the Cologne Museum; E. L. Kirchner's "Street Scene" and Wilhelm Lehmbruck's "Kneeling Woman," both taken from the Berlin National Gallery; Paul Klee's "Around the Fish," pilfered from the Dresden Gallery, and Henri Matisse's "Blue Window," seized from the Essen Museum.
"[11] Fischer's auctioneering was reported by Beaux Arts of France to be efficient but the journal couldn't help noting his disdainful attitude to the lots.
Of Man with a Pipe[12] by Max Pechstein they reported that, "he said with a little sneer, "This must be a portrait of the artist" ... when he withdrew other lots, which he had started at rather a high minimum, he took wicked pleasure in observing loudly, "Nobody wants that sort of thing," or "This lady doesn't please the public" ... and he smiled when he said the word "withdrawn".
The wife of Jewish collector Julius Freund, for instance, who had been forced to flee Germany, sold part of his collection through Galerie Fischer as she urgently needed to raise funds.
[16][17] The Nazi regime in Germany sold looted art in order to raise foreign currency and collectors and dealers sought to profit from sales forced by wartime exigencies.
In Switzerland, Fischer used the services of Swiss-resident German dealer Hans Wendland to import large quantities of looted art into the country for onward sale.
[20] The ALIU and Bergier commission Reports also point to the importance of German refugee art dealers such as Fritz Nathan who acted as an intermediary between Fischer, Hofer and Emil Georg Bührle.
The Cranach paintings were Madonna and Child in a Landscape, Crucifixion with a Knight as Donor, St. Anne and the Virgin, and Portrait of a Bearded Kurfurst.
[24] Among these were works by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Charles Cottet, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Alfred Sisley, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Vincent van Gogh.
[33] After the end of the Second World War, the descendants and original owners of looted art began to try to recover their property in a process that is still continuing.
[35] In 1974 a painting by Jacopo del Sellaio, "Madonna and Child, Saint John the Baptist and two angels," which had been looted in 1942 from Anna and Fritz Unger in Nazi occupied France turned up at the Galerie Fischer.
