The Art of Adolf Hitler

[Phil]

"Harold Covington" <haroldc...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<wRLx7.102064$3d2.2...@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>...
> Hitler Art Brings Court Case
> By WILLIAM H. HONAN
>
> WASHINGTON, May 7 - In a climate- controlled basement downtown,
> at a location that the United States Army has insisted on keeping secret
> since the end of World War II, is a carefully executed, traditional
> watercolor of a quaint, empty courtyard. Measuring about 16 by 21 inches,
> it lies in a steel-gray cabinet along with three others by the same hand.
>
> The government maintains that the very brush strokes of the
> painter have such incendiary potential that they must be guarded from the
> gaze of all but screened experts.
>
> The works are signed, "A Hitler."
>
> But the need to keep them hidden is challenged in a lawsuit that
> has been making its way through the courts for 18 years and was heard today
> in the federal appeals court here, where a panel of three judges barely let
> lawyers state their cases before subjecting them to a barrage of questions
> on jurisdiction, statutes of limitation and other technical matters. The
> name Hitler was never mentioned. His artworks were discreetly referred to
> as "the watercolors."
>
> The paintings were owned by Hitler's friend and personal
> photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, and confiscated as propaganda after the
> war along with Hoffmann's vast archive of photographs. The 2.5 million
> photographs include rare images of Hitler rehearsing his flamboyant style
> of oratory, as well as various intimate moments.
>
> The United States seized the material along with thousands of
> other Nazi artworks; they were used as evidence at the Nuremberg war crimes
> trials and then sent to Washington. In the 1950's most were returned to
> Germany, leaving only a few hundred deemed the most inflammatory in the
> secret vault.
>
> The complaint, brought by the photographer's heirs and a Texas
> collector, contends that the Hoffmann material has long since lost its
> power to incite and should be returned - not to Germany but to the
> plaintiffs. They say the military promised Hoffmann that he would get his
> property back. Thus, the lawsuit says, the works are being "wrongfully
> retained" - tantamount to theft - because of "politics."
>
> The United States is arguing its case mainly on narrow legal
> grounds: that federal statutes and postwar agreements with the Germans
> allowed it to seize German property and that all deadlines for restitution
> claims passed long ago. But Jeffrey Axelrad, a senior lawyer at the Justice
> Department who has led the government's defense for more than a decade,
> said that an overarching principle applied: "The United States government
> is entitled to retain Hitler memorabilia which came into our nation's
> possession because we won the war."
>
> Others go further. In an affidavit for the United States, Sybil
> H. Milton, an authority on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, argued that the
> paintings and photographs "make Hitler look harmless, and they could be
> used to disguise the horror and murderous brutality of Nazi Germany." Her
> statement was submitted before her death from cancer last year.
>
> Mr. Axelrad was drawn into the case in 1989 when a district court
> in Texas ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. He was outraged, he said, that
> the court would allow the Hoffmann heirs "to wait beyond the two-year
> statute of limitations until they found someone who could litigate the case
> for them."
>
> The reference is to the unlikely alliance of Hoffmann's daughter,
> Henrietta, and Billy Price, a wealthy American collector of Hitler
> memorabilia with a fascination for trying to understand the dictator's
> personality. The daughter was once married to Baldur von Schirach, the
> architect of Hitler's powerhouse youth movement and part of the intimate
> circle in which the Nazi leader forged his public persona.
>
> Hoffmann served not only as Hitler's photographer but also as his
> confidant and public-speaking coach. Hitler met his future mistress, Eva
> Braun, during visits to the Hoffmann studio, where she worked.
>
> Hitler had presented the courtyard scene, titled "Der Alte
> Hof-München" ("The Old Courtyard in Munich"), to Hoffmann in 1936 as a
> 50th- birthday gift. Nine years later, as Nazi Germany crumbled, Hoffmann
> chose a medieval castle outside Munich and a church in Bavaria as hiding
> places for the courtyard picture and three other Hitler watercolors he had
> acquired, along with his own extraordinary collection of photography. After
> Germany surrendered, Allied investigators discovered and seized the work
> under the terms of the Potsdam Conference of 1945.
>
> In time the photographs and paintings went their separate ways.
> The photographs, some 2.5 million images of Germany from the 1860's to a
> few days before Hitler committed suicide in 1945, were transferred to the
> National Archives and have been accessible to the public ever since. The
> paintings were retained by the Army's Center of Military History.
>
> The Hoffmann archive is contained in albums filled with contact
> prints, glass plate negatives, miscellaneous prints and nearly 500 rolls of
> 35-millimeter nitrate negatives.
>
> Fritz Redlich, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Yale
> University and the author of "Hitler: Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophet"
> (Oxford University Press, 1998), who interviewed Hoffmann's daughter, said,
> "Hoffmann had absolute access to Hitler and could capture his whims,
> prejudices and character."
>
> Noting the propagandistic nature of the work, he added, "He could
> also manipulate the images to create whatever impression he wished."
>
> Hoffmann was tried by a German court as a Nazi profiteer - he had
> received huge royalties for the use of his photographs - and imprisoned for
> five years.
>
> After his release, he sought to regain what the Americans had
> seized. He died in 1957, and his daughter pursued the claim.
>
> Decades later, when Mr. Price, the Texas collector, was
> researching his privately published book "Adolf Hitler: The Unknown Artist"
> (1985), he learned of the confiscated Hitler material and Hoffmann's
> daughter.
>
> According to court documents, the two met in 1982 in Munich.
> There they arranged to transfer title to the works from the photographer's
> heirs to Mr. Price, who as an American citizen might have a better chance
> in a lawsuit against the United States.
>
> Mr. Price then began making demands of various agencies, and in
> 1983 he brought suit in a federal court in Texas for the return of the
> material. In 1989, the court ruled that the United States was indeed liable
> for damages and set a date for a trial to decide the amount that the United
> States would have to pay.
>
> Experts say paintings by Hitler - there are hundreds attributed
> to him - are being traded over the Internet for around $10,000 each. The
> photographic archive was valued some years ago for the Justice Department
> at nearly $3 million.
>
> But Mr. Price and the surviving heirs - the daughter died in 1992
> - are now seeking $99 million in damages for having been denied the use of
> the material for so many years.
>
> Mr. Price did not return repeated telephone calls. Within the
> subculture of dealers in Nazi-era memorabilia, his interest is regarded as
> mainly financial. But Larry A. Campagna, one of the Houston lawyers who has
> represented Mr. Price in his lawsuit, said his client had a scholarly
> mission, to help the world understand Hitler's personality.
>
> "He has been interested in the fact that three of the major
> leaders during World War II - Churchill, Roosevelt and Hitler - were
> painters, and he believes that much can be learned by studying their
> paintings," Mr. Campagna said.
>
> In 1990 Mr. Price told The Dallas Morning News that, after being
> insulted and even shot at for his avocation, he had sold his entire
> collection of Hitler artworks to an anonymous American collector.
>
> The 1989 liability ruling touched off a welter of claims and
> counterclaims. But, perhaps most important, it captured the interest of Mr.
> Axelrad at the Justice Department.
>
> "I can't get involved in every case, obviously," he said. "But
> when I read the judge's decision on the government's liability in the case
> in 1989 I became convinced that something had gone terribly wrong."
>
> As the case heated up, the plaintiffs tried to bring it to the
> Supreme Court, but failed. At another point, the Texas judge ordered the
> United States to pay $7.8 million in damages. But Mr. Axelrad succeeded in
> moving the case to the federal district court here, which ruled in the
> government's favor, leading to the current appeal.
>
> Robert I. White, the Houston lawyer who represents Mr. Price and
> the Hoffmann heirs, said he hoped the case would be sent back to Texas. "In
> Texas," he said, "we'll win."
>
> Mr. Axelrad, however, is confident. "I think we've got a very
> strong case," he said. "You could add another `very' to that if you like."

FYI

Phil