Glossary

On 23 July 1940, the Vichy regime promulgated a law which deprived French nationals, who left France without authorization, of their French citizenship. This had a calamitous impact on French Jews fleeing the Nazi Occupation.  In October 1940, the Vichy government began to enact anti-Semitic laws modelled on Nazi Germany’s anti-Semitic legislation. The ‘Law on the Status of Jews’ gave a legal definition of who would be considered as Jewish. It excluded Jews from public life and imposed ever-increasing restrictions on the professional and private lives of Jews in Nazi-occupied France, ultimately resulting in the seizure of property, internment, deportation and murder. In March 1941, a General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs’ (Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives), was established which implemented and coordinated anti-Semitic legislation and policy.

The ERR, named after its director, NSDAP party member Alfred Rosenberg (1893-1946), was a Nazi looting agency active in occupied France from summer 1940 to early August 1944. It comprised several sub-divisions (Sonderstäbe) that targeted all categories of fine and decorative art as well as books, archives and archeological artefacts.  The looted objects were sent to ERR storage depots in France and Germany.  

See glossary entries for Devisenschutzkommando, German Embassy and Möbelaktion

The ‘Devisenschutzkommando’ or DSK was an SS unit controlled by Hermann Göring (1893-1945) which located and seized Jewish financial and cultural assets, including fine art, from bank vaults and other locations in Nazi-occupied France, Belgium and the Netherlands.  In the first months of the Occupation of France, the Devisenschutzkommando, the German Embassy in Paris and the ERR competed regarding the spoliation of art collections. The Göring decree of 5 November 1940 established the ERR’s dominance.  

See glossary entries for ERR and Otto Abetz

Otto Abetz (1903-1958) was the German Ambassador in Paris from July 1940 to July 1944 and a major force in the collaboration between the Vichy regime and Nazi Germany. Together with Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893-1946), head of the German Foreign Office, Abetz instigated the systematic confiscation of the property of renowned Jewish art collectors and art dealers in Paris in the early days of the Occupation of France. The looted works were “safeguarded” in an annex of the German Embassy in the Rue de Lille. From November 1940, the ERR and Hermann Göring (1893-1946) dominated and most of the looted property was transferred from the Embassy to the Jeu de Paume, which had been requisitioned as the ERR’s central depot.

See glossary entry for Jeu de Paume

The Nazi term Möbelaktion or M-Aktion described the systematic confiscation of furniture, musical instruments and household items from early 1942 in occupied France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Headed by Kurt von Behr (1890-1945), the Möbelaktion was at first a division of the ERR and, in April 1942, became part of the newly created “Dienststelle Westen” (Western Agency). It targeted the property of Jews who had fled France or who had been deported. Everything from bedlinen to paintings was confiscated and local French removal companies were used to transfer the property to six storage depots across Paris, three of which had been transformed into internment camps. Teams of forced labourers separated the looted belongings by category. Most items were sent to Nazi Germany to replace property destroyed in Allied bombing raids. Valuable artworks and furniture were transferred to the ERR at the Jeu de Paume. Some of these objects can be identified by the ERR’s M-Aktion inventory numbers (for example ‘MA-B’ for paintings). The ERR sent unwanted items back to the Möbelaktion to be sold. In Paris alone, the Möbelaktion plundered around 38.000 apartments.

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Most of the objects looted by the Nazi looting agency Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) in Paris and beyond were transported to Nazi Germany and stored in repositories across Germany and Austria. The most widely known of these repositories is probably Neuschwanstein Castle (ERR code Hans), a 19^th century castle near the town of Füssen in Bavaria, where the Allied MFA&A officers would in May 1945 recover Philippe de Rothschild’s Largillierre portrait. Another major repository were the Altausee salt mines in Austria (ERR code Peter), where most of the artworks looted for Hitler’s planned ‘Linz Museum’ were found by the Allies after the war. Further ERR depots for cultural property looted in France include Buxheim monastery (ERR code Franz) and Hohenschwangau Castle, both in Bavaria; Kogl Castle (ERR code Karl) in Austria, and Nikolsburg Castle (ERR code Klaus) in the present-day Czech Republic, near the border with Austria.

See glossary entry for Monuments, Fine Arts & Archives program

The Munich Central Collecting Point or MCCP was the name given to the collection center for fine and decorative art that the Allied forces’ Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives program (MFA&A) set up in Munich after the end of World War II (May 1945). Its mission was to transfer artworks from a myriad of wartime repositories to the MCCP for inventorying and identification. This encompassed museum collections (and some private collections) placed into wartime storage as well as cultural property looted, confiscated and/or forcibly sold in Nazi Germany between 1933-1945 and in the territories occupied by Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1945. Once transferred to the MCCP, the artworks were inventoried, photographed and subsequently repatriated to their countries of origin and to museums and private individuals in and outside Germany. Further Collecting Points were established by the Allies notably in Wiesbaden, Marburg, Offenbach, Baden-Baden and Celle.

See glossary entry for Monuments, Fine Arts & Archives program

The Allied Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program (MFA&A) was established on the initiative of the “American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Historic and Artistic Monuments in War Areas”, also known as the Roberts Commission, founded in June 1943. The Allied MFA&A program comprised at least 348 men and women from 14 nations, who were assigned to Allied military units to record and protect historical monuments during World War II and, in the post-war period, helped locate, recover and restitute cultural property looted by Nazi German or displaced as a result of the war. The MFA&A program was essential to the discovery and restitution of looted art in post-war Europe.

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The term “Degenerate Art” designated artworks which did not fit Nazi ideology. In 1937–1938, the Nazis confiscated around 20,000 works of modern art from around 100 public German museums. In 1937, a selection of the artworks was shown in a propaganda exhibition in Munich with smaller exhibitions taking place across Germany. Four prominent Nazi art dealers were appointed to sell or trade these works. They were Ferdinand Möller (1882–1956), Hildebrand Gurlitt (1895–1956), Karl Buchholz (1901–1992) and Bernhard A. Böhmer (1892–1945). The 'Law on Confiscation of Products of Degenerate Art' (31 May 1938) was not repealed by the Allied Control Council.

During World War II in France, looted artworks brought to the Jeu de Paume in Paris and deemed to be ‘degenerate art’ by the Nazis, were kept in a separate room (the ‘Salle des Martyrs’). They were notably used as currency in exchanges against art favoured by the Nazi regime.

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The Jeu de Paume in Paris’ Tuileries Gardens takes its name from its original purpose as a 19^th Century sports hall for the Jeu de Paume (lit. palm game), a precursor to tennis. From 1922, the building housed France’s Museum of Foreign Contemporary Art. During World War II, the Jeu de Paume became the central Paris storage depot of the Nazi art-looting agency Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR). Some of the most precious artworks, predominantly looted from French Jewish collections, were stored and inventoried there before being transferred to ERR depots in Nazi Germany. After the war, between November 1944 and August 1946, the Jeu de Paume was the first office of France’s restitution agency, the Commission de Récuperation Artistique (CRA). In that capacity, it was used to store looted cultural property which had been repatriated to France. The building later became an annexe to the Musee d’Orsay and is today an exhibition space dedicated to photography.

See glossary entry for ERR

Established by French government decree on 24 November 1944 and active until 1949, the Commission de Récuperation Artistique (CRA) had the task to register, search and restitute cultural property which had been looted from French collections during World War II. The CRA reported to the Office des Biens et Intérêts Privés (OBIP) - which eventually became its successor in 1949. The CRA archives, which notably include claim files, card indexes, photographs and Rose Valland’s Papers, are located at France’s Diplomatic Archives (Archives Diplomatiques) in Paris and are partly accessible online.

See glossary entry for OBIP

In 1947–1949, the BCR (Bureau central des investigations) - the CRA’s satellite office in Baden-Baden and Berlin - published the Répertoire des Biens Spoliés compiled on the basis of claims received by the Commission de Récuperation Artistique (CRA) and the Office des Biens et Intérêts Privés (OBIP). The Répertoire is an eight-volume register of cultural property looted from French collections during World War II, except for volume V which concerns means of transport. There is also an artist index, three supplements from the late 1940s and three further supplements from the mid-1950s. The Répertoire was notably distributed to the art market, embassies and other institutions in France and internationally. Today, scans are accessible online (see links in reference below).  

On 13 November 1944, France’s Office of Private Property and Interests, which had originally been established in World War I, was reactivated. The OBIP was part of France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and oversaw all restitution matters.  It registered claims for private property looted or displaced during World War II and coordinated restitution efforts in cooperation with the Commission de Récuperation Artistique (CRA). The OBIP was, after 1953, succeeded by the Department of Private Property and Interests (SBIP). The OBIP and SBIP archives are located at France’s Diplomatic Archives (Archives Diplomatiques) in Paris.

See glossary entry for CRA

The SRPOA oversaw the repatriation of Nazi-looted artworks from Germany to France. Located in Berlin-Schulzendorf and Baden-Baden, the office worked under the direction of the Division ‘Réparations-Restitutions’ of the French Occupation Zone in Germany (1945-1949) and was later affiliated with the High Commission of the Republic of France in Germany (Haut-Commissariat de la Republique francaise en Allemagne, 1949-1952). Headed by Rose Valland, the SRPOA was active between June 1949 and the end of 1951.

France’s Department for the protection of artworks was created in 1955 to continue restitution efforts and compile a comprehensive list of looted cultural property that remained missing. It was headquartered at the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild in Paris. After Rose Valland returned from Germany in 1953, she was appointed director of this department and and remained at its helm until 1968. The SPOA had a staff of five tasked to respond to claims and to develop an innovative strategy to protect French public collections in the event of a new conflict. The SPOA archives are located at France’s Diplomatic Archives (Archives Diplomatiques) in Paris.

Throughout the war, a resistance movement had formed in France opposing the Nazi occupation. From her position at the Jeu de Paume, Rose Valland relayed information to the Resistance, notably through Jacques Jaujard, Director of France’s National Museums. Within the culture sector, one of the most prominent acts of resistance was the stopping of one of the last ERR trains to leave Paris bound for Germany in the summer of 1944. The train’s cargo consisted predominantly of modern art. Intelligence provided by Valland enabled the French Resistance to divert and then to attack and stop the train on 27 August 1944 at Aulnay-sous-Bois railway station in the outskirts of Paris. The Free French forces who took control of the train included Alexandre Rosenberg (1921-1987). Among the art recovered from the train was part of the collection of his father, the renowned art dealer Paul Rosenberg (1881-1959). A 1964 Hollywood film The Train drew inspiration from Rose Valland’s 1961 memoirs Le Front de l’Art and focused on this episode.

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