Hermann Voss (born July 30, 1884, in Lüneburg; died April 28, 1969, in Munich) was a German art historian and museum director appointed by Hitler to acquire art, much of it looted by Nazis, for Hitler's planned Führermuseum in Linz, Austria.
Quick Facts Born, Died ...
Hermann Voss |
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 1943 |
| Born | (1884-07-30)July 30, 1884
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| Died | April 28, 1969(1969-04-28) (aged 84)
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| Nationality | German |
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| Alma mater | Universities of Heidelberg |
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| Occupation | Art historian |
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Hermann Georg August Voss was born in Lüneburg in July 1884 as the son of the businessman Johann Voss and his wife Sophie Voss née Erzgräber. He attended the grammar school in Lüneburg and Stralsund, obtaining his secondary school leaving certificate in March 1903. Voss studied art history at the Universities of Heidelberg and Berlin and received his doctorate in 1907 under Henry Thode on the old German Renaissance painter Wolf Huber. From 1908 he volunteered with Wilhelm von Bode and Max Jakob Friedländer at the Royal Prussian Art Collections. His interest was in the then little-noticed art of the late Renaissance and early Baroque in Italy, which led him to work as an assistant at the Art History Institute in Florence from 1911 to 1912.[1]
In December 1919, Voss married Marianne Boese, daughter of the painter Konrad Boese (1852–1938).
From 1912 to 1921, Voss was head of the drawing collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig and, from 1922 to 1935, curator and deputy director of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum in Berlin. From 1935 to 1945, he headed the municipal art collection at the Nassauisches Landesmuseum in Wiesbaden, which was renamed Museum Wiesbaden postwar. Voss examined and appraised confiscated Jewish art collections and, through his Nazi and art market connections, was deeply involved in selling so-called "Degenerate Art" removed from museums and plundered from Jewish collectors.[2] In March 1943 Voss was appointed, in addition, director of Sonderauftrages Linz (Special Commission: Linz), responsible for building the collections of Hitler's Führermuseum. Voss was, both before and after his appointment to direct Hitler's Führermuseum, a major player in the Nazi system of confiscations and forced sales of Jewish artworks.[3]
Director of the Führermuseum 1943-1945
In March 1943, on Hitler's instructions, Joseph Goebbels appointed Voss to succeed Hans Posse as director of the Dresden State Art Collections and director of the planned Führermuseum in Linz.[4] Voss, with his art consultant Gottfried Reimer and many art dealers, acquired artworks in Germany, Austria and countries occupied by Nazi Germany including massive quantities of art looted from Jews during the Holocaust.[5] Voss, like Posse before him, disposed of massive buying power and, after the Anschluss, the right of first refusal.[6] Auction houses such the Dorotheum which traded massively in looted Jewish property also provided art for Voss.[7][8] Voss frequently did business with Hildebrand Gurlitt,[9] who procured art from Paris[10][11] and Erhard Göpel, who was also an official Linz buyer. Many of the artworks destined for the Führermuseum also came through Maria Almas-Dietrich who had direct permission from Hitler to select artworks and acquired more art for Linz than any other dealer.[12] During the Nazi occupation of France, Voss obtained numerous artworks looted from French Jewish collectors like the looted Schloss collection.[13] According to Allied investigators, "VOSS' position in all this intrigue is the unenviable one of a professed lover of France who kept his hands clean by leaving the dirty work to others and not asking too many questions."[14]
S. Lane Faison, who interrogated Voss in 1945 for the OSS Art Looting Intelligence Unit, recommended in his official interrogation report that Voss "be detained as a potential war criminal for the forthcoming war trials".[14]
Interrogation of Voss in 1945
Voss, who was based in Dresden, was left as director by the Soviet occupying forces after the end of the war. In July 1945, he fled back to the museum in Wiesbaden in the American zone of occupation, where he was immediately arrested.[15]
Voss was interrogated from August 15 to September 15, 1945, in Altaussee by officers of the Art Looting Investigation Unit (ALIU), who were aware of his role as head of the special staff in Linz and his involvement in the acquisition of art looted from Jewish collectors.[16] However, he gave little useful information that would have allowed the works to be returned to their owners. Voss stated that he had made 3,000 new acquisitions in his two-year tenure.[17] Voss' statements can be found in the "Detailed Interrogation Report No. 12 Hermann Voss (DIR 12)" and in the report on the structure of the Führermuseum, "Consolidated Investigation Report No. 4 (CIR 4)",[18] entitled Linz: Hitler's Museum And Library.[19][20]
Voss underwent denazification, but avoided any punishment for his role in Nazi looting.[21] On the denazification questionnaire, Voss failed to mention that he had been head of Hitler's Führermuseum in Linz. The Chamber did not notice the omission and considered that Voss was not concerned by the Law for Liberation from National Socialism and Militarism of March 5, 1946. The Public Prosecutor of the Chamber of Appeal, who was aware that the US authorities held incriminating material about Voss, started a new case against him. For this purpose, the Appeals Chamber asked the US military government in Munich for the requested material, the content of which it did not know and which was located in the Central Collecting Point in Munich. The US authorities had difficulty finding the material. Finally, the military administration sent reports "DIR 12" and "CIR 4" to the Appeals Chamber. However, these reports were lost in transit between German judicial authorities. As a result, the proceedings against Voss were discontinued on March 24, 1949.[20]
Voss enjoyed a successful career in the artworld after the war.[22] An expert on the painting of the Seicento and Settecento, he wrote numerous essays, reviews and exhibition reviews that appeared in leading journals. He was recruited into the buying committee of the Bavarian State Painting Collections and acted as an advisor to the Bavarian State Government on art acquisitions.
On his 80th birthday, Voss was celebrated with a festschrift published by his (former) business partner, the art dealer Vitale Bloch.
Obituaries written about him were laudatory in nature.[23]
After the war, the Allies photographed and catalogued each of the 4,731 pieces, including paintings and sculptures as well as furniture and works in porcelain.[24] However, the investigative reports into Voss' role in acquiring Nazi looted art were classified secret for more than fifty years after the war. At the end of the Allied occupation of Germany, management of looted artworks recovered by the Monuments Men was returned to Germany which was supposed to restituted them to their original owners. Many artworks acquired by Voss for Hitler's museum ended up being distributed to museums in Germany and across Europe.[25] Some were returned to their original owners, many were not. The families of Nazi officials and dealers in Nazi-looted art such as Hildebrand Gurlitt, Heinrich Hoffmann and Maria Almas-Dietrich submitted claims to looted artworks[26] and in many cases were successful.[27] Responding to demand for transparency, the German Historical Museum published a Linz database in 2008 and republished it in 2021 in order to assist researchers in tracking Nazi-looted art.[28]
In recent years,[when?] many of the artworks Posse or Voss acquired have been found to have been looted.
Since August 2009, the Wiesbaden Museum has been researching the origins of more than 200 paintings that Voss bought for the museum between 1935 and 1944.[29]
- Deutsche Selbstkritik, Bachmair, Starnberg am See 1947.
- Gemäldesammlung Heinrich Scheufelen : Stuttgart-Oberlenningen, Bearb. unter Mitw. v. Juliane Harms. Hrsg. aus Anlaß d. Ausstellg d. Gemäldesammlg. H. Schleufelen in d. Gemäldegalerie d. Nassauischen Landesmuseums zu Wiesbaden im Sommer 1938. Stuttgart 1938.
- Amtlicher Katalog der Gemäldegalerie Wiesbaden, Nassauisches Landesmuseum, Wiesbaden 1937–1939.
- Sammlung Geheimrat Josef Cremer, Dortmund, (mit Friedrich Winkler) Wertheim, Berlin 1929.
- Die Malerei des Barock in Rom, Propyläen-Verlag, Berlin 1925.
- Geschichte der italienischen Barockmalerei, Propyläen-Verlag, Berlin 1925.
- Die Malerei der Spätrenaissance in Rom und Florenz, 2 Bände. G. Grote, Berlin, 1920.
- Der Ursprung des Donaustiles – Ein Stück Entwicklungsgeschichte deutscher Malerei, Hiersemann, Leipzig 1907.
- Kathrin Iselt: „Sonderbeauftragter des Führers“: Der Kunsthistoriker und Museumsmann Hermann Voss (1884–1969) (= Studien zur Kunst, Band 20). Böhlau, Köln/Weimar/Wien 2010, ISBN 978-3-41220572-0 (Dissertation an der Technischen Universität Dresden 2009, 516 Seiten).
- Hanns Christian Löhr: Das Braune Haus der Kunst: Hitler und der Sonderauftrag Linz, Visionen, Verbrechen, Verluste. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 978-3-05004156-8, S. 51 ff.
- Birgit Schwarz: Hitlers Museum. Die Fotoalben Gemäldegalerie Linz. Dokumente zum „Führermuseum“. Böhlau, Wien 2004, ISBN 3-205-77054-4.
admin (2018-02-21). "Voss, Hermann". Dictionary of Art Historians. Retrieved May 18, 2021. "Hermann Voss - Ein Kunsthistoriker und Museumsmann im Kontext des nationalsozialistischen Kunstraubs | Weiterdenken | Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Sachsen". Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (in German). Retrieved May 17, 2021. Als „Sonderbeauftragter des Führers" agierte Voss ab 1943 als wichtigster Kunstbeschaffer Hitlers, der im österreichischen Linz an der Donau ein öffentliches Kunstmuseum von europäischem Rang zu errichten plante. Ein nicht unwesentlicher Teil der vom „Sonderauftrag Linz" beschafften Kunstwerke stammte aus jüdischen Sammlungen; sie wurden ihren Eigentümern geraubt oder abgepresst. Von diesem Kunstraub profitierten nicht nur nationalsozialistische Institutionen, Kunsthändler und Auktionshäuser, sondern auch einige Museen. Doch machte sich Voss die nationalsozialistischen Machtinstrumentarien schon lange vor seiner Ernennung zum „Sonderbeauftragten für Linz" zunutze. Im großen Stil tauschte er als Direktor der Städtischen Gemäldegalerie Wiesbaden, deren Leitung er 1935 übernommen hatte, die 1933 vom Reichsministerium für bildende Kunst sichergestellte und vorerst in die Galeriedepots eingelagerte „entartete Kunst" gegen „ausstellungsfähige" Kunst. Voss hatte beste Kontakte zum deutschen Kunsthandel, der sich das florierende Geschäft mit der „entarteten Kunst", die dankbare Abnehmer im Ausland fand, freilich nicht entgehen ließ.
"HCPO: Führermuseum". Department of Financial Services. Archived from the original on 2021-05-18. Retrieved May 18, 2021. Immediately after the Anschluss, Hitler began putting in motion his plans for Linz. On June 26, 1939, he appointed Hans Posse, one of his chief advisors and the highly respected director of the Dresden Gemäldegalerie, to take charge of the Sonderauftrag Linz (Special Project Linz). This project entailed the creation of a cultural complex in Hitler's hometown of Linz. The focal point of this scheme was to be the Führermuseum, a museum housing the most celebrated European artwork. Posse was granted enormous power as he was authorized to make decisions on behalf of Hitler for works of art discovered throughout the Reich. By 1941, Posse's mission was aligned with the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) confiscations. In just over three years, until his death in 1942, Posse acquired about 1,200 paintings. Voss succeeded Posse as both Director of the Dresden Gemäldegalerie and head of the Sonderauftrag Linz.
Petropoulos, Jonathan (January 29, 2014). "Inside the Secret Market for Nazi-Looted Art". ARTnews. Retrieved May 20, 2021. Lohse was also friendly with Maria Almas-Dietrich, who sold more works to Hitler than any other dealer during the war.
Plaut, James S. (October 1, 1946). "Hitler's Capital". The Atlantic. Retrieved May 20, 2021. Posse was succeeded in April, 1943, by Hermann Voss, Director of the Wiesbaden Gallery, who assumed the Dresden portfolio as well as the Linz directorship. Far less energetic and capable than his predecessor, he was nevertheless caught squarely in the flow of loot. With the pattern already established and the machinery smoothly in motion, Voss, a weakly scholar, simply went along. Under interrogation, Voss boasted that he had purchased over 3000 paintings for Linz in 1943 and 1944, at a total cost of 150,000 marks. The figure was probably embroidered substantially by his vanity (the official Linz records place his numerical "contribution" much lower), but that he was fully as active as Posse in swelling the total is clear.
Pierre Schneider (May 11, 1972). "Mystery of La Tour on Display in Paris". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 20, 2021. The German scholar Hermann Voss rediscovered La Tour in 1915. Since then, the international brotherhood of scholars has gradually reconstructed his work. Voss has unearthed La Tour's socalled nocturnes: the intimate scenes of people huddled around a candle that have made the Lorraine painter famous.
"Sites of looted or missing artworks". Looted Art. Retrieved May 17, 2021. – GERMAN HISTORICAL MUSEUM In 2008, the German Historical Museum in Berlin published an online catalogue of Hitler's famous Linz Collection. Hitler bought and stole the artworks between the mid 1930s and 1945 with the aim of exhibiting the collection in a museum in Linz, Austria. After the war, the Alies photographed and catalogued each of the 4,731 pieces, including paintings and sculptures as well as furniture and works in porcelain. In the six decades since, the works have been scattered, distributed to museums in Germany and across Europe or returned to their original owners. The collection appears online, in German only, with information about the original owner and current location of each work of art, when available, and is fully searchable. Click here to visit the catalogue. (https://www.dhm.de/datenbank/linzdb/) Cohen, Patricia (November 6, 2013). "Documents Reveal How Looted Nazi Art Was Restored to Dealer". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 20, 2021. On Dec. 15, 1950, the leader of the Allied unit, Theodore Heinrich, an American, signed the papers releasing the art to Gurlitt. The names and descriptions of a handful of paintings in the cache returned to Hildebrand Gurlitt — including gems by Otto Dix, Max Beckmann and Marc Chagall — appear to match those once hidden in the cluttered apartment of his son. The State Department in Washington says it is pushing the German authorities to make public a list of the seized works. Without the list, it is impossible to confirm with certainty that any of the pieces returned in 1950 to Hildebrand Gurlitt are the same as those seized last year. Mr. Masurovsky, however, said he believes that at least some of the works returned by the Allies in 1950 are the same. What can be confirmed is that at least eight of the paintings that were returned in 1950, and that the elder Gurlitt maintained he had legitimately acquired were, in fact, stolen by the Nazis. These eight are currently listed in a database of looted art that the Nazis had stored at the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris after they occupied France.
Carvajal, Doreen; Smale, Alison (July 15, 2016). "Nazi Art Loot Returned ... to Nazis". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 20, 2021. The discreet art trade with Nazi relatives emerged in 1949, four years after the war, when the American military transferred responsibility for restitution of looted works to the West Germans and Austrians. Munich became the hub of a network of art dealers and state officials who had helped drive Nazi looting and then after the war fostered trafficking in those works.
"Datenbank Frageformular" (in German). DHM. Retrieved May 17, 2021.
- "Sites of looted or missing artworks". Looted Art. Retrieved May 17, 2021. GERMAN HISTORICAL MUSEUM In 2008, the German Historical Museum in Berlin published an online catalogue of Hitler's famous Linz Collection. Hitler bought and stole the artworks between the mid 1930s and 1945 with the aim of exhibiting the collection in a museum in Linz, Austria. After the war, the Alies photographed and catalogued each of the 4,731 pieces, including paintings and sculptures as well as furniture and works in porcelain. In the six decades since, the works have been scattered, distributed to museums in Germany and across Europe or returned to their original owners.
"Research in the Museum Wiesbaden - Museum Wiesbaden". Wiesbaden Museum. Retrieved May 18, 2021.
- "Kunst Museum Wiesbaden Restitution". Kunstmarkt. Retrieved May 18, 2021. Die im Jahr 1935 erfolgte Liquidierung der Galerie van Diemen und die unrechtmäßige Versteigerung ihrer Bestände durch den Auktionator Paul Graupe Berlin gilt als Paradebeispiel einer nationalsozialistischen Kunstenteignung. Hier erwarb die Galerie Stern das Gemälde Grebbers und gab es an die Wiesbadener Galerie Wilhelmine Heinemann weiter, wo der damalige Museumsdirektor Hermann Voss die innige Szene am 11. August 1937 für das Museum ankaufte. Nachdem das Museum seine Recherchen der Koordinierungsstelle für Kulturgutverluste in Magdeburg mitgeteilt und sie wiederum das Gemälde in der Datenbank „Lost Art" publiziert hatte, meldete die Pariser Nachtragsliquidatorin Eva Sterzing Ansprüche auf Restitution an. Ihr wird das Gemälde nun am kommenden Dienstag in Wiesbaden überreicht.
- "A backwards way to sell Nazi-looted paintings". The Jerusalem Post. November 2014. Retrieved May 18, 2021. HR Online reported that Wiesbaden Museum was a repository for art robbed from Jewish owners during the Third Reich. The museum has been researching the provenance of works in its collection, with an aim to providing restitution. It already has returned two paintings to their proper heirs, or bought them back, HR reported.
- "Wiesbaden Museum restitutes two paintings to the heirs of Martin Tietz". Looted Art. Retrieved May 18, 2021. The Wiesbaden Museum has restituted two architectural paintings by Gennaro Greco (1663-1714) following three years of research. Both were acquired at the Hans W Lange Berlin auction of 16–17 April 1943 by Hermann Voss, director of Wiesbaden. Martin Tietz was one of the owners of Hermann Tietz department store which was "aryanised" in 1934. He emigrated with his wife to Liechtenstein in 1939 and his assets were seized by the Gestapo.
[ "ART CHANGE IN WIESBADEN". Art-scene. October 5, 2020. Retrieved May 18, 2021. Museum Wiesbaden has appropriated the guidelines of the Washington agreement and set up a project called "provenance research" in 2009. In the course of the project, all works which became part of the collection between 1933 and 1945 were checked. For example, two paintings of Gennaro Greco from the second half of the 17th century and a picture of Dutch Baroque painter Pieter de Grebber could have been restituted and purchased by the museum in the past. Museum Wiesbaden assumes its responsibility and handles topics like provenance research and restitution very proactively and with enormous care and sensibility. This is, among other things, due to the fact that the museum held a special position during the Third Reich as Hermann Voss, museum director between 1935 and 1945, played a leading role in the National Socialist art business. He removed many works of the classic modern art from the museum and modified the collection within the terms of the Nazi art policy. During his term, more than 200 works of dubious origin became part of the museum collection. On behalf of Hitler, Joseph Goebbels appointed Voss as special agent for the construction of the "Führer Museum" in Linz in 1943.
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