What is it that keeps us riveted, 80 years removed, to the stories of Nazi art theft? Perhaps it is that they allow us to learn more about these tragic histories while avoiding the more excruciating details of the destruction of European Jewry. Perhaps it is that these tales of National Socialist crime sometimes have a satisfying, if not entirely “happy,” ending, in the form of restitutions. Or perhaps there is some archetypal or elemental aspect to exploring how some of the greatest artworks of European culture were sought out and collected by a regime set on destroying the legacy of Western civilization. Whatever the reason, the fascination persists, and in the hands of Jonathan Petropoulos we can always be certain to find new illuminations and complexities in mining this material.
Over the last two decades, Petropoulous has shown that there is no-one who knows their way around the Nazi artworld and its tangled, treacly weave of dealers, collectors, artists, and administrators better than he does. Neither an apologist for the unethical and criminal acts of many of these figures, nor overly zealous in condemning those faced with impossible decisions in a lawless, vicious world, there is no one better suited to navigate these treacherous waters. His latest book, however, is too densely packed with minutiae to make for a completely compelling read or to form a gripping trajectory.
This time around, Petropoulos turns his unwavering eye and profound intelligence on Bruno Lohse (1911–2007), one of the most systematic and far-ranging art looters of all time, responsible for moving over 30,000 stolen works during the period of Nazi rule. That Lohse lived surrounded by the fruits of his crime and largely unpunished well into the age of Internet databases, stolen art organizations, and myriad Holocaust restitution networks is a fact that boggles the mind and enrages the heart. Lohse served as the art agent for Hermann Göring, who as Reichsmarschall, chief of the Luftwaffe, President of Prussia, and head of the Four-Year Plan is often regarded as the most powerful figure in the Third Reich, after Hitler. A petty, unsophisticated figure, Göring's insatiable lust for all the accoutrements of luxury, from chalets to wine cellars to one of the most expensive art collections ever assembled, was epitomized by his hunting lodge-cum-aristocratic estate Karinhalle. Trained as an art historian, Lohse came into Göring's orbit in 1941, when he enlisted in the Fallschirm Panzer (Parachute Division); he would also rise to the rank of Obersturmführer (First Lieutenant) in that year, having joined the SS in November 1933 (29). Meeting each other on a private tour of the Jeu de Paume on March 3, 1941, Göring rewarded Lohse for his profound cunning and obsessive focus by making him deputy director of the Special Task Force of Reich Leader Rosenberg (Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg), the infamous ERR. With cold-blooded determination, the ERR plundered French Jewry, whether dealers or collectors, of one-third of all their art possessions. At the height of his powers, organizing private exhibits for Göring's “shopping sprees” among the stolen works in the Jeu de Paume, or arranging for the 700 works from the ERR to pass into his boss' hands, Lohse “felt himself to be the king of Paris” (13).
The book opens with Petropoulos' fascinating accounts of interviewing Lohse, a man who at eighty-seven was still “imposing,” “intimidating,” and “imperious,” prone to lose his temper when confronted with questions he did not like. In the following chapters, Petropoulos obsessively traces every step of Lohse's encounters and actions within the Nazi artworld, acknowledging that nevertheless large parts of his story remain elusive, in part due to Lohse's own dissimulations and dishonesties. Petropoulos then tracks Lohse through the postwar period, through his denazification, his acquittal by the Permanent Military Tribunal of Paris in 1950 (15), and his continuing maneuvers in the artworld. It is truly disconcerting to picture Lohse, photographed often in the 1940s with his elegant suit and crisp pocket handkerchief, still living surrounded by masterpieces in his Munich apartment building in the age of iMacs and cell phones.
As in so many of his excellent books, Petropoulos fills in all the details from thorough archival research, along with personal interviews and the documents left to him by Lohse himself, eager to control his posthumous reputation. At times the larger story seems to disappear beneath a surfeit of dates, agencies, acronyms, and details. Petropoulos' normally lucid prose gets bogged down with so much intra-agency information, each page introducing so many new figures and machinations that we soon lose track of them. It is in the prologue and epilogue, where Petropoulos returns to form and assumes a self-reflective voice, that the book is at its most compelling. In the opening pages, Petropoulos wonders to what extent such figures are accountable for their fates. Lohse maintained that “it was pointless to talk about, let alone study, the Holocaust,” and often shared with Petropoulos his favorite prognostication: “Es ist alles Scheisse.” (“It's all crap.”) (7) Petropoulos notes, “That said, the linkage between plundering—especially taking a people's cultural property—and genocide was evident to Lohse and many contemporaries during the war, even if they did not know all the details of what was transpiring” (14). The epilogue includes a short meditation on what it means for a historian to personally engage with—even “befriend”—old Nazis and how to wrestle with the abhorrent and charming sides of these individuals. Petropoulos articulates the question thus: “What do his experiences during the war tell us about the nexus of culture and barbarism?” (21) Indeed, the ever-growing library on studies of art and aesthetics in the Third Reich must inevitably confront this question. If we cannot actually answer the question―and may never be able to—we are lucky to have books like Göring's Man in Paris that remind us, nevertheless, to continue to ask it.
