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Maria Almas-Dietrich

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German art dealer

Maria Almas-Dietrich, nee Dietrich (born 27 June 1892 in Munich; died 11 November 1971 in Dachau) was one of Hitler's most important art suppliers for his planned Führermuseum which was to be built in Hitler's hometown of Linz, Austria.

Life

The daughter of a butcher from Munich's West end, Maria Dietrich became a force in the French art market thanks to her connection to German Führer Adolf Hitler. In 1920 she gave birth to an illegitimate child. In 1921 she married Ali Almàs, a Turkish journalist of Jewish origin born in Izmir on 1 May 1883, who also wrote under the name “Diamant”.

Dietrich owned Galerie Almas in Munich located on Ottostrasse 9 next to the Swiss and American embassies, the gallery mainly dealt in antiques and paintings from the 15th to 19th centuries. She divorced Almas in 1937, but kept the name for the gallery.

On 15 January 1940 she became a naturalized citizen of the German Reich after swearing that she was not of Jewish ancestry.

Art dealer for Hitler

Dietrich was introduced to Adolf Hitler through his photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, and Hitler eventually authorized her to purchase works of art for him without asking permission first. Between 1936 and 1944 Dietrich acquired more than one thousand pieces of art for Hitler and his planned Führermuseum, making her one of the most important dealers in Nazi Germany. Much of the art she acquired had been stolen from the private collections of displaced, deported or executed Jewish citizens.

Arrest and interrogation

In autumn 1945 Almas-Dietrich was arrested and interrogated by the OSS Art Looting Intelligence Unit (ALIU). A special interrogation report about her was drafted. However, it was not published. She was mentioned 22 times in the ALIU Final Report on Nazi-looting of art which noted "Dietrich, Frau Maria Almas. Munich, Gustav Freytagstr 5. Art dealer; personal friend of Hitler, and for a time his principal buyer of works of art. One of the most important purchasing agents for Linz. Was under house arrest at Grafing, Bavaria, autumn 1945."

The Allies suspected that Almas-Dietrich '"like many other dealers" had stashed away quantities of Nazi-looted art. Monuments Man S. Lane Faison recommended that her licence be suspended.

Postwar

After the war, Maria Almas Dietrich returned to Munich and lived in a neighborhood close to other dealers of Nazi-looted art. Despite her deep involvement in Nazi-looted art, she was not troubled by the German authorities. She even made claims for artworks that had been found by the Monuments Men. On 4 March 1949 she addressed claims to Occupation Costs Office because paintings by Grützner, Defregger, Horemans and Braith as well as “5 wooden sculptures of male saints” could no longer be found in the Collecting Point and were presumably stolen. She was one of the exhibitors at the Munich art and antiques fair co-founded by Otto Bernheimer.

Mimi tho Rahde continued the art business after the death of her mother.

Nazi-looted art acquired via Dietrich

The number of Nazi-looted artworks acquired through Dietrich is so great that it requires databases to track them, including the Hitler's Linz Museum database, the Lostart database, the Central Collecting Point Database, the ERR database and others. Many of the artworks she acquired were destined for Hitler's personal collection or his museum in Linz. Others entered the private market for Nazi-looted art via dealers in Switzerland or other intermediaries. A few examples include:

  • The oil painting Fiat Justitia by Carl Spitzweg came to Almas-Dietrich in 1938 from the Heinemann Gallery, under the Nazis. The work was not returned to the Heinemann family, but served from 10 June 1949 as a decoration in the office of the Federal President in Bonn for eight presidents. It ended up in the Berlin art depot of the Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues.
  • The allegory of Hygieia by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller came from the persecuted Hermann Eissler in Vienna to the Munich gallery “Almas”. "As early as June 1938, the Munich art dealer Maria Almas-Dietrich asked for permission to export the 4 pharmacy signs intended for the driver's cab in Munich."
  • Chalk and pencil drawings by Adolph von Menzel came to Almas-Dietrich from the gallery of Anna Caspari. After the war, the sheets were distributed to various German museums. Moritz von Schwind's Nymphe Genoveva was procured inexpensively for the Führermuseum in 1940 from the property of the politically unpopular Richard von Kühlmann. In 1966 it was transferred to the von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal.

Importance as an art looter

The Austrian Lexicon of Provenance Research places Almas-Dietrich among the top dealers in Nazi looted art under the Third Reich: "Alongside Karl Haberstock and Maria Almas-Dietrich, the art dealer Bruno Lohse was probably one of the most important art dealers in the service of the National Socialist government."

Recent historical research emphasizes Almas-Dietrich's connection to powerful Nazi art looters such as Bruno Lohse, describing her as part of the "solar system that included Nazi art traders such as Alois Miedl, Walter Andreas Hofer, Maria Almas Dietrich and Karl Haberstock"

Literature

  • Günther Haase: Kunstraub und Kunstschutz. Eine Dokumentation. Band 1: Kunstraub und Kunstschutz. 2. erweiterte Auflage. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2008, ISBN 978-3-8334-8975-4, S. 133ff.
  • Jonathan Petropoulos: The Faustian bargain. The art world in Nazi Germany. Oxford University Press, New York NY 2000, ISBN 0-19-512964-4
  • Birgit Schwarz: Auf Befehl des Führers. Hitler und der NS-Kunstraub. Darmstadt 2014
  • Lynn H Nicholas, Der Raub der Europa. Das Schicksal europäischer Kunstwerke im Dritten Reich, ISBN 9783426772607, München 1997
  • Commission for Protection and Restitution of Cultural Material, London 1945, National Archives M1947, Art Dealers-Vaucher Commission Lists, 16 July 1945

See also

References

  1. Petropoulos, Jonathan (January 2021). Göring's man in Paris : the story of a Nazi art plunderer and his world. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-25192-0. OCLC 1230528211.
  2. von Puttkamer, Alberta. "ANNO, Neue Freie Presse, 1916-05-15, Seite 1". anno.onb.ac.at. Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  3. "Zeitungsausschnitt zum Vortrag "Halbmond und Adler", 6. März 1913, Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Signatur: 331-3, Abl. 38, Bestand 12, SA 14 Türken". {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
  4. Köse, Yavuz. "Katalog, Osmanen in Hamburg – eine Beziehungsgeschichte zur Zeit des Ersten Weltkrieges" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2016-08-14. Ali Almas war ein Schriftsteller (geb. 1883 in Smyrna). Er hielt sich mehrfach in Deutschland auf, um Vorträge zur Förderung der Deutsch-Türkischen Vereinigung zu halten*. Er heiratete 1921 die Münchner Galeristin Maria Dietrich, die nach ihrer Scheidung 1937 den Namen Almas für ihre Kunstgalerie in München weiterführte. Dietrich ist bekannt durch ihre Bildverkäufe an Hitler (insgesamt 270 Bilder).
  5. "Geburtsurkunde 5447/1892 des Standesamtes München I im Stadtarchiv München". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  6. "Bundesarchiv R 9361-II/10205". {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
  7. Stadtarchiv München, Gewerbekartei (GEW-GK II/18). Stadtarchiv München.
  8. "KVDB - Startseite - Großmutter mit drei Enkelinnen". kunstverwaltung.bund.de. Retrieved 2021-05-19. Maria Almas-Dietrich (1892–1971), geborene Dietrich, betrieb nach eigenen Angaben seit 1918 eine Kunsthandlung in München. Im Jahre 1921 heiratete sie den türkischen Staatsbürger Ali Almàs-Diamant und trat zum Judentum über. Seit 1926 lebten sie jedoch in Trennung, 1937 erfolgte die Scheidung. Der Name „Almas" blieb jedoch für die Galerie erhalten
  9. "Münchener Stadtadreßbuch 1941 Datei:Muenchen-AB-1941.djvu – GenWiki". wiki-de.genealogy.net. p. 480. Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  10. "KVDB - Startseite - Großmutter mit drei Enkelinnen". kunstverwaltung.bund.de. Retrieved 2021-05-19. Nach eigenen Angaben lernte Almas-Dietrich im Jahre 1936 Heinrich Hoffmann (1885–1957), den Fotografen Adolf Hitlers, kennen und erhielt über diesen erste Aufträge, Kunst für Hitler zu erwerben. Fortan entwickelte sie sich zu den aktivsten Vermittlern von Kunst an die Nationalsozialisten. Zwischen 1936 und 1944 verkaufte Almas-Dietrich über eintausend Kunstwerke an Hitler und zählt damit zu den Kunsthändlern mit der größten Anzahl an Hitler verkauften Kunstwerken
  11. Petropoulos, Jonathan (2014-01-29). "Inside the Secret Market for Nazi-Looted Art". ARTnews.com. Retrieved 2021-05-19.
  12. Petropoulos, Jonathan (2017). "Art Dealer Networks in the Third Reich and in the PostWar Period". Journal of Contemporary History. 52 (3): 546–565. doi:10.1177/0022009416637417. ISSN 0022-0094. JSTOR 44504062. S2CID 159830753.
  13. Zeitung, Süddeutsche (28 July 2015). "Hitlers Lieblingsmaler Rudolf von Alt: Belastete Kunst". Süddeutsche.de (in German). Archived from the original on 2015-08-01. Retrieved 2021-05-12. Auch der privilegierte Münchner Kunsthandel bediente sich in Wien. Die Händlerin Maria Almas Dietrich war nicht die einzige, die sich darauf verstand, Druck auf die fluchtbereiten jüdischen Sammler auszuüben, um dann die abgepressten Bilder zu weitaus höheren Preisen an Bormann weiterzuverkaufen.
  14. "Art Looting Intelligence Unit (ALIU) Reports 1945-1946 and ALIU Red Flag Names List and Index". www.lootedart.com. Retrieved 2021-05-19. One set of reports are called Detailed Intelligence Reports (DIR). This series consists of reports dealing with the activities of various agents employed by Hitler, Göring and Rosenberg to acquire artworks for them in Axis-occupied countries. DIR No. 8 on Kajetan Muehlmann was not issued. DIR No.14 on the activities of Maria Dietrich was planned. It was not issued, but a full accounting of her activities was incorporated into Consolidated Interrogation Report No. 4.
  15. "Art Looting Intelligence Unit (ALIU) Reports 1945-1946 and ALIU Red Flag Names List and Index". www.lootedart.com. Retrieved 2021-05-21.
  16. Petropoulos, Jonathan (January 2021). Göring's man in Paris : the story of a Nazi art plunderer and his world. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-25192-0. OCLC 1230528211.
  17. Rothfield, Anne (2016). Unscrupulous Opportunists: Second-Rate German Art Dealers as Nazi Functionaries during World War II (Phd Diss., American University 2016. p. 96.
  18. "Wolfgang Christlieb, Kunsthändlerin Maria Almas Dietrich, Nachruf, Abendzeitung, München 16.11.1971". {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
  19. "Vierge de Pitié". www.pop.culture.gouv.fr (in French). Retrieved 2021-05-24. D'après une note rédigée le 8 septembre 1999, par le conservateur général chargé du département des Sculptures, se fondant sur le dossier Almas-Dietrich (1), en 1950/1951, Mimi Tho Rahde, fille (naturelle ?) et héritière de Maria Almas-Dietrich, a revendiqué le groupe comme ayant été récupéré à tort par la France ; selon la demanderesse, l'oeuvre n'avait pas été spoliée mais achetée régulièrement par sa mère lors d'une vente à Berlin ; elle fournissait à l'appui de cette démarche une attestation de Gustav Rochlitz, du 12 avril 1950, précisant que deux caisses appartenant à Madame Dietrich (ou à Mimi Tho Rahde ?) avaient été séquestrées à Füssen avec les caisses appartenant à lui-même. D'autre part, Alois Lang, le 15 novembre 1949, atteste "sous serment" que les deux caisses lui avaient été confiées par Madame Dietrich (ou Mimi Tho Rahde ?), avec celles de Gustav Rochlitz. Par ailleurs, ce dernier atteste que la sculpture avait été mise en vente par lui chez Hans W. Lange, à Berlin, en 1941 ou 1942, et qu'elle avait été achetée par Maria Almas-Dietrich (ou Mimi Tho Rahde ?).
  20. "artwork database, search request | art sales munich". www.neumeister.com. Retrieved 2021-05-15.
  21. "La folle histoire de cette peinture offerte à Hitler et vendue pour 700 000 euros". Konbini Arts - Photographie et arts sans filtre par Konbini (in French). 13 May 2020. Retrieved 2021-05-15.
  22. Brown, Kate (2020-05-05). "The Nazis Wanted to Put This Painting in a Museum Dedicated to Hitler. Now It's the Star Lot of One of the First Live Auctions Since Lockdown". Artnet News. Archived from the original on 2020-06-12. Retrieved 2022-01-26.
  23. "Provenance Research | Belvedere Museum Vienna". www.belvedere.at. Archived from the original on 2020-07-11. Retrieved 2022-01-26.
  24. "Almas Dietrich, Maria | Lexikon der österreichischen Provenienzforschung". www.lexikon-provenienzforschung.org. Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  25. Siegal, Nina (2021-01-17). "How a Historian Got Close, Maybe Too Close, to a Nazi Thief". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2021-01-21. Retrieved 2021-05-22. "The Rape of Europa," positions Lohse as one of several agents working for the SS in Paris who controlled "exchanges" of modernist art (which the Nazis called degenerate) for their more prized old masters. "Göring's Man in Paris" sets him as one of the primary planets orbiting Göring, in a solar system that included Nazi art traders such as Alois Miedl, Walter Andreas Hofer, Maria Almas Dietrich and Karl Haberstock.

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