Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Karl Buchholz (art dealer)" in English language version.
Barr secretly enlisted Valentin as his agent in the Fischer auction, with funds supplied by his trustees. The museum acquired five artworks that day: Kirchner's Street Scene and Lehmbruck's Kneeling Woman, both confiscated from the Berlin National Gallery; Klee's Around the Fish, from the Dresden Gallery; Matisse's The Blue Window, from the Folkwang Museum in Essen; and Derain's Valley of the Lot at Vers, from the Cologne Museum. The day after the auction, Barr wrote to a MoMA colleague from Paris: "I am just as glad not to have the museum's name or my own associated with the auction. . . . I think it very important that our releases on our own German acquisitions should state that [the works] have been purchased from the Buchholz Gallery, New York." That is exactly what happened. Two months later, MoMA announced that it had purchased the five paintings through Valentin's gallery, which by then he owned in full, having bought out Buchholz. (He changed the name in 1951 to the Curt Valentin Gallery.) Art publications hailed the acquisition as a repudiation of the Nazi regime and its policies toward so-called degenerate art.
By November 1936, Valentin had made his deal with the Nazis that would allow him to emigrate to New York and to sell "degenerate art" to help fund the war effort. "The President of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts instructed me to tell you that it would be of no objection to him if you make use of your connections with the German art circle and thereby establish supplementary export opportunities, if [this is done] outside Germany," according to the authorization letter. "Once you are in a foreign country, you are free to purchase works by German artists in Germany and make use of them in America." In January 1937, with financing from Buchholz, Valentin left for New York and set up the Karl Buchholz Gallery at 3 West 46th Street. According to Buchholz's daughter Godula, who wrote a biography of her father, Valentin arrived in New York supplied with "degenerate art" from Germany. Normally, Jews allowed to leave Nazi Germany were permitted to take with them only ten reichsmarks, if that. But Valentin carried "baggage containing sculptures, [p]aintings, and drawings from the Galerie Buchholz in Berlin," Godula Buchholz wrote.
Hildebrand Gurlitt, Karl Buchholz, Ferdinand Moeller and Bernhard Boehmer set up shop in Schloss Niederschonhausen, just outside Berlin, to sell the near-16,000 cache of paintings and sculptures which Hitler and Goering removed from the walls of German museums in 1937-38.
Four art dealers were selected by the Ministry of Propaganda to obtain foreign currency for the Nazi regimes: Bernhard Böhmer, Karl Buchholz, Ferdinand Möller and Hildebrand Gurlitt - the father of Cornelius Gurlitt. "They landed a relatively small sum for the war fund," Hoffman says, adding that someone once calculated that the money would've been enough to buy one tank.But the sales to foreign investors had another side-effect: one of the four art dealers, Karl Buchholz, sold nearly 650 works to his Jewish business partner, Curt Valentin, who had emigrated to New York.
Buchholz, as is now well–known, was one of the dealers who sold off the purged "degenerate art" ("entartete Kunst") and who had a close working relationship with operatives in both the Nazi Foreign Ministry and the Reich Propaganda Ministry
Notably, Curt Valentin served as a conduit of the purged »degenerate« artwork that his partner Karl Buchholz directed to him. As one of the four dealers initially selected by Goebbels's Reich Ministry of People's Enlightenment and Propaganda to sell »degenerate« art purged from German state collections, Buchholz held an extraordinary position.34 When Buchholz received his formal contract with the Reich Propaganda Ministry to sell off »degenerate« art on 5 May 1939, the final provision was that Buchholz keep thecontract secret: Buchholz received a commission of 25% in Reichsmarks for the works he sold. Contemporaneous documents from Goebbels's Reich Propaganda Ministry – now located in the German Federal Archives – also list the works purged from German museums that were sent to Valentin for sale between 1939 and 1941.
Buchholz evidently ran afoul of certain Nazi authorities in 1942 and not only endured searches of his home and business, but was expelled from the Reich Chamber for the Visual Arts (but he was able to emigrate to Lisbon and open a business there in 1943.37 We therefore do not know the precise terms of the agreement between Buchholz and Valentin. After Valentin's death in 1954, Buchholz sued Valentin's heirs (his siblings), claiming that he was due a share of Valentin's New York gallery.3
Buchholz, Karl. Lisbon, 50 avda da Liberdade. Berlin book dealer who opened a branch in Lisbon in 1943. Suspected of having worked for von Ribbentrop and Goebbels, and of possible traffic in loot. Partner of Lehrfeld, Portuguese national. Pre-war Berlin partner of Curt Valentin, German refugee dealer now established in New York (Buchholz Gallery, East 57th Street). Valentin is believed to have had no contact with Buchholz during the war.
Gessmann, Wilhelm (alias Alexander, Joan Charles; Alendorf, Wilhelm). International spy; representative of the Buchholz art and bookselling establishments in Berlin and Lisbon.
Lehrfeld, Enrique. Lisbon, 50 avda da Liberdade. Partner of Buchholz in the New German Bookshop.
The Leger painting, however, remained in Kann's house until Nov. 5, 1942, when France's German-controlled government auctioned the house's contents. A Paris art dealer, Galerie Leiris, bought the Leger at that auction and subsequently sold it to Buchholz Gallery.
Between sometime between 1940 and 1941, the Corinth painting was located in the Buchholz Gallery operated by Curt Valentin. If that name sounds familiar to readers, it is because Valentin and Kurt Buchholz were a primary destination for much of the "degenerate art" seized by the Nazis and sold for hard currency abroad. Art dealer Sigfried Rosengart in Lucerne later wrote in a 1951 letter that he had heard reports from New York that Valentin "had acquired [the painting] about ten years ago at a Public Auction Sale." Rosengart sold the painting in 1949 on commission for the Buchholz Gallery to Prof. Dr. Max Huggler, director of the Kunstmuseum Bern (the same museum currently pondering its appointment as Cornelius Gurlitt's heir) and brought it to Bern. The Bavarian State Painting Collections (Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen) acquired the painting from Huggler in 1950.In 1959 Paula Levy, represented by attorney Henry Zacharias, brought a restitution claim for money damages against the Federal Republic of Germany as Fritz Levy's widow and heir.
Mondrian, also designated as "degenerate" and targeted by the Nazi regime, fled to London in 1938. As the Complaint further alleges, at the time Mondrian was living in exile in London, the Nazis transferred possession of the painting to Karl Buchholz, one of Hitler's art dealers appointed to sell "degenerate" art. Buchholz sent the painting to his New York-based business partner Curt Valentin, who, also authorized by the Nazis to sell "degenerate" art, sold it to a collector, Albert E. Gallatin, in 1939.
Much of Kann's art was returned to him after World War II, but not the Leger. That painting was bequeathed to the museum in 1961 by Minneapolis businessman Putnam Dana McMillan, a General Mills vice president who bought it from the Buchholz Gallery in New York in 1951. No one questioned the picture's history. Nazi-era archives were sealed in France and inaccessible in Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe.
But this much is clear: the painting appears in the Victoria & Albert's recently published copy of the official (and licensed) Degenerate Art register composed by the Nazi authorities themselves as having come from the National Gallery in Berlin, and sold by Karl Buchholz, another authorized "degenerate art" dealer (with my highlight).
Five of those Klees are now in the museum's permanent collection, two of them with provenance linking them to Flechtheim through two dealers—Karl Buchholz and Curt Valentin—who were fencing works for the Nazi propaganda ministry.
It was both deplorable and deeply cynical—after declaring certain art to be contraband, Nazi Germany created a monopoly in its trade for four art dealers (Hildebrand Gurlitt, Karl Buchholz, Ferdinand Möller, and Bernhard Böhmer), thus driving up the price for sale abroad (proceeds that the Nazi state kept for itself)
Buchholz, Karl 1901–1992; Buch- und Kunsthändler, Berlin (Hauptsitz), New York, Bukarest, Lissabon, Bogotá, "Galerie Buchholz", "Buchhandlung Karl Buchholz Kunstausstellung", "Antiquariat Buchholz", gegründet vor 1926, 1934-43 Adresse: Berlin W8, Leipziger Straße 119/120 (Galerieleiter: 1934–36 Curt Valentin (1902–1954), 1936-37 Ulrich Riemerschmidt, 1937-44 Georg von Hülsen), 1937-55 New York, "Buchholz Gallery - Curt Valentin", "Valentin Gallery", unter der Leitung des emigrierten Curt Valentin, 1940-45 Bukarest, Adresse: Calea Victoriei 45, "Libraria si Expozitia de Arta Buchholz" (Geschäftsführerin: Catharina Gosch), 1943-92 Lissabon, Adresse: Avenida da Liberdade 50, "Livraria Buchholz Exposicoes" (Geschäftsführerin: Katharina Braun), 1945-67 Madrid, Adresse: Paseo de Recoletos 3, "Libreria Buchholz, S.A., Exposiciónes" (Geschäftsführerin: Gerda Luedde-Neurath), 1951-1983 Bogotá, Adresse: Avenida Jiménez des Quesada 8, "Libreria Buchholz Galeria", zwischen 1951 und 1992 Gründung und Auflösung diverser Filialen, zeigte und verkaufte Gegenwartskunst, insbesondere Skulptur und Zeichnungen, weniger Malerei, präsentierte in der NS-Zeit eine "gemäßigte" Moderne, im Geheimen fanden Ausstellungen von verbotenen Künstlern statt: u.a. Beckmann, Schmidt-Rottluff, Kollwitz, 1934-45 verkaufte daneben Kunst des 19. Jh. und frühere; 1938-41 involviert in "Verwertung" von "Entarteter Kunst", die der NS-Regierung zur Devisenbeschaffung diente
This resulted from Karl Buchholz (still in Berlin) being one of four dealers—together with Ferdinand Möller (Berlin), Hildebrand Gurlitt (Hamburg), and Bernhard A. Böhmer (Güstrow)—tasked by Hitler's Propaganda Ministry with the disposal of such art for profit. Many such works were sold between 1937 and 1941 through Valentin's midtown Buchholz Gallery. After the U.S. declared war on Germany in December 1941, Valentin was forced to sever ties to Buchholz. Valentin was considered an enemy alien and, pursuant to the Trading with the Enemy Act, the Alien Property Custodian seized approximately 400 artworks from his gallery stock on 29 May 1944. The works were sold at auction in January 1945.
Buchholz stored the painting in several locations between 1941 and 1948. It remained in Berlin until November 1943, when Buchholz sent it to his longtime friend Karl-Heinz Brandt in Gramzow, Germany. In March 1945, the painting was transferred to the Rosgartenmuseum in Konstanz, Germany, where it remained until December 1945, when Buchholz moved it to his family's estate at Überlingen, Germany, where his wife Marie-Louise was staying with their children. In April 1948, Buchholz brought the painting to his Madrid gallery, Galería Buchholz. He consigned it Buchholz Gallery Curt Valentin in New York five months later.
In Switzerland alone, Susan Ronald recounts, the four favored art dealers used by the Third Reich—Ferdinand Möller, Bernhard Bohmer, Karl Buchholz, and Hildebrand Gurlitt—sold some 8,700 objects between 1937 and 1941. Curt Valentin, a half-Jewish refugee from Germany who operated the Karl Buchholz Gallery in New York and who died in 1954, has long been considered the conduit for a number of looted artworks that found their way to the U.S.
From February 2013 to April 2016, the research team of Gesa Jeuthe and Anja Tiedemann worked on the project The Art Trade under National Socialism. A comprehensive survey analysis with an accompanying documentation of the activities of the galleries Alex Vömel, Düsseldorf, and Karl Buchholz, Berlin, was undertaken.
Four art dealers were selected by the Ministry of Propaganda to obtain foreign currency for the Nazi regimes: Bernhard Böhmer, Karl Buchholz, Ferdinand Möller and Hildebrand Gurlitt - the father of Cornelius Gurlitt. "They landed a relatively small sum for the war fund," Hoffman says, adding that someone once calculated that the money would've been enough to buy one tank.But the sales to foreign investors had another side-effect: one of the four art dealers, Karl Buchholz, sold nearly 650 works to his Jewish business partner, Curt Valentin, who had emigrated to New York.
This resulted from Karl Buchholz (still in Berlin) being one of four dealers—together with Ferdinand Möller (Berlin), Hildebrand Gurlitt (Hamburg), and Bernhard A. Böhmer (Güstrow)—tasked by Hitler's Propaganda Ministry with the disposal of such art for profit. Many such works were sold between 1937 and 1941 through Valentin's midtown Buchholz Gallery. After the U.S. declared war on Germany in December 1941, Valentin was forced to sever ties to Buchholz. Valentin was considered an enemy alien and, pursuant to the Trading with the Enemy Act, the Alien Property Custodian seized approximately 400 artworks from his gallery stock on 29 May 1944. The works were sold at auction in January 1945.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)In Switzerland alone, Susan Ronald recounts, the four favored art dealers used by the Third Reich—Ferdinand Möller, Bernhard Bohmer, Karl Buchholz, and Hildebrand Gurlitt—sold some 8,700 objects between 1937 and 1941. Curt Valentin, a half-Jewish refugee from Germany who operated the Karl Buchholz Gallery in New York and who died in 1954, has long been considered the conduit for a number of looted artworks that found their way to the U.S.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)