War art returned to a hesitant W. Germany

Press, 24 July 1986, Page 38

War art returned to a hesitant W. Germany

By

Paul Holmes

of Reuters through NZPZ Bonn More than 6000 war paintings and drawings from Hitler’s Nazi Germany are being turned over to West Germany by the United States 40 years after they were shipped across the Atlantic Ocean. West German officials said the collection was the biggest of its type to be handed back by the Americans since the end of World War II and probably the last. But they say they are at something of a loss about what to do with it and that the Government, which regards the collection as State property, may face legal action from some of the artists who want their work returned.

“We were not exactly wild about getting them back,” said Mr Eberhard Hubrich, a senior Finance Ministry official who has been put in charge of managing the collection. The works — sketches, water-colours, about 300 oils and some sculptures — are being set back to West Germany at the initiative of the United States.

They are being kept at the Bavarian Army Museum in Ingolstadt, north of Munich, to be catalogued. The first- arrived in late April on West German airforce flights and about fourfifths of the collection is already in the country. They have not been put on display. Many of the works were produced by military art unit dispatched to the war front as part of the Nazi propaganda machine to glorify the exploits of Hitler’s armies. But the museum director, Mr Ernst Aichner, said the collection also included drawings by ordinary soldiers and.

could not be dismissed outright as idologically inspired. “One has to be careful with the term “Nazi art,” said Mr Aichner. “Many of the works, particularly those of 1944 and 1945, express a state of despair and the horrors of war.”

The paintings and drawings had spent 40 years in the United States in military museums or storage and some, according to Mr Hubrich, “on the walls of offices in the Pentagon as war booty.” About 500 more, including five or six painted by Hitler, are still in the United States. “We will probably never see those,” said Mr Hubrich, explaining that Washington considered the remaining works overtly Nazi and best left where they were. The agreement on the return of the paintings contained a clause committing Bonn to ensuring the works were not used to inflame neo-Nazi sentiment.

Mr Aichner said most of the works were still in good condition. He could not estimate how much they were worth but said, “I would say that in many cases the historical value is greater than the artistic value.”

He said he hoped the museum could stage an exhibition in two to three years using selected works to depict army life under the Nazi regime. But Mr Hubrich and other officials said they believed such a show could be a problem.

“We will not be able to keep them in a cellar forever. But we could never mount a normal exhibition. The works would have to be accompanied by a commentary,” one official said. Most of the works were seized by occupying United States forces from

a Bavarian castle where they had been hidden by the defeated Nazis in the dying days of the war. They were taken to the United States as part of the victorious allies’ "denazification” programme which set out to eradicate Hitler’s National Socialist ideology. The Finance Ministry has ruled out returning any of the works to the artists. Officials acknowledged a keen collectors’ interest in such memorabilia, but said the Government could hardly act as auctioneer and sell them. The official line has angered some of the artists.

“I have waited 40 years to get back my paintings. I would prefer not to go to court but what would you do? ... I am not convinced the German State has the right to keep them,” Mr Herbert Agricola, of Munich, told Reuters.

Mr Aichner confirmed that 157 works in the collection were by Mr Agricola, who is now 74 years old and still painting.

Mr Agricola said his paintings were confiscated by the Americans in 1947 — two years after then end of the war — and were based on sketches for works commissioned for the German Army Musuem in World War 11.

He insisted his work was not ideologically motivated and said that while he was officially regarded as a war artist, he was not part of Hitler’s special propaganda unit. “My only task was to document what I saw. My works were completely neutral and I had no political mission,” he said.

The least he now wants is financial compensation from the Government if it holds |n to his work.