RIHA Journal 0283 | 15 September 2023

Collecting Classical Antiquities among the Nazi Elite

Irene Bald Romano

Abstract
Classical antiquity was appropriated by the Nazis and held up as the ideal in the rhetoric, propaganda, art, and architecture of National Socialism. In this article the rhetoric and preference for the classical aesthetic are examined against the practice of collecting antiquities among the Nazi elite, especially by Hitler and Göring. It would seem evident that Greek and Roman antiquities would have been much desired by Hitler and the upper echelons of the Nazi party and would have been sought after in the quest for great works of art for museums in the Reich, especially for the “Führermuseum” in Linz. Yet, there is only limited evidence to show that this was, in fact, the case. Insights and explanations for this discrepancy are gleaned from synthesizing the evidence for collecting classical antiquities during the Nazi era.

Contents

Introduction

National Socialism and the appropriation of classicism

Hitler’s antiquities

An Apulian column krater as a gift to Hitler

The Lancellotti Discobolus

Göring’s collection and the Capitoline Venus from Leptis Magna

Ancient art for the “Führermuseum” in Linz

The plunder of antiquities from the National Archaeological Museum, Naples

Conclusions

Introduction

[1] Much has been written about Hitler’s interest in Greek and Roman antiquity and its appropriation under National Socialism¹, but the question that has not been asked is this: Do the rhetoric/propaganda and preference for the classical aesthetic match what we know about the practice of collecting antiquities among the Nazi elite? It would seem evident that classical antiquities, in particular, would have been much desired by Hitler and the upper echelons of the Nazi party, would have been on center stage in “art as politics” under National Socialism, and would have been much sought after in the quest for great works of art for museums in the Reich, especially for the “Führermuseum” in Linz. Yet, there is only limited evidence to show that this was, in fact, the case². At first glance this discrepancy is difficult to comprehend, but there are various insights that can be gleaned from an examination of what we know about the collecting of classical antiquities during the Nazi era, especially by Hitler and Göring.

National Socialism and the appropriation of classicism

[2] There was a degree of tension and inconsistency with regard to the role of the ancient world and archaeology in the ideology of National Socialism. The ideological guru Alfred Rosenberg and Heinrich Himmler, for example, looked within prehistoric Europe for both theoretical and material evidence for the origins of the Aryan race³. Prehistoric European archaeology, therefore, was regarded as more fertile ground than classical archaeology for finding evidence of a superior Nordic/Germanic race. On the other hand, Adolf Hitler held a strong bias toward the ancient Greek world and its aesthetics. Greek and Roman history, classical architecture, and classical iconography were consciously appropriated as models for National Socialist ideals, and Hitler positioned himself in the lineage of German philhellenes such as Ludwig I of Bavaria (r. 1825–1848)⁴. Greek and Roman historical or mythological iconography was preferred in paintings and tapestries, especially for public places, such as the New Chancellery of the Reich in Berlin, and artists such as Arno Breker and Josef Thorak were commissioned to interpret Hellenism in their modern, neoclassical works of sculpture.

[3] Hitler’s speeches, his so-called Table Talk, and Mein Kampf are filled with references to the ancient world and, especially, to the link between Hellenism and “German-ness”^⁵.

Especially in historical instruction we must not be deterred from the study of antiquity. Roman history correctly conceived in extremely broad outlines is and remains the best mentor, not only for today, but probably for all time. The Hellenic ideal of culture should also remain preserved for us in its exemplary beauty. We must not allow the greater racial community to be torn asunder by the differences of the individual peoples. The struggle that rages today is for very great aims. A culture combining millenniums and embracing Hellenism and Germanism is fighting for its existence^⁶.

What makes the Greek ideal of beauty a model is the wonderful combination of the most magnificent physical beauty with brilliant mind and noblest soul^⁷.

[4] The celebration of the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936 was the perfect opportunity to showcase the supposed connection between ancient Greece and modern Germany—and ancient Greeks and the Aryan race. Acting on propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels’s idea, a Greek theater modeled on the ancient theater at Epidaurus was included in the Olympic complex, the Dietrich-Eckart-Bühne (named after a well-known anti-Semite and one of the founders of the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, and eventually renamed the Waldbühne)^⁸. A special exhibition of Greek art, “Sport der Hellenen”, was mounted in the Deutsches Museum (housed in the north wing of today’s “Pergamonmuseum”) on the Museum Island in Berlin in connection with the modern games; it comprised 157 objects, including original works of ancient art from German museums and modern copies of other objects in Athens, Delphi, Naples, Florence, Rome, London, New York, and Boston^⁹. Perhaps nothing, however, epitomizes the public demonstration of the false link between ancient Greece and Nazi Germany more so than the 1936 Olympic torch relay, with the torch lit by a Greek maiden from a flame at the site of Olympia as an Olympic ode of Pindar was recited to the tones of ancient Greek music, followed by the German national anthem and the Nazi Sturmabteilung’s (SS) marching song, the “Horst-Wessel-Lied”; the torch was then carried by some 3,000 runners across southeastern and central Europe to the Olympic stadium in Berlin^¹⁰. Archaeology and the site of Olympia were further exploited by the Nazis when Hitler announced at the opening ceremony of these Olympic Games the renewal of the German Archaeological Institute’s excavations at Olympia (on hold since 1929), subsequently described as the “Führergrabung”^¹¹.

[5] The catalog and posters for the “Große Deutsche Kunstausstellungen” (Great German Art Exhibitions) in Munich from 1937 to 1944 featured the helmeted head of Athena as the symbol of the exhibition (Fig. 1), and the exhibition was kicked off by a Day of German Art featuring a Roman-style grandiose triumphal parade with youth marching in ancient costumes and a float bearing the colossal head of Pallas Athena^¹². Hitler referred to the role of antiquity in modern (German) life in his speech at the opening of the 1937 exhibition: “Humanity has never been nearer to antiquity than it is today in appearance and its sense of purpose”^¹³.

Fig. 1. Covers of the catalogs for the “Great German Art Exhibition”, Munich 1937 and Munich 1938. University of Arizona Libraries, Tucson, Special Collections (photograph by the author)

[6] Munich’s Königsplatz, a prime example of 19th-century neoclassicism, framed by Leo von Klenze’s Glyptothek and Propylaea, and Georg Friedrich Ziebland’s Antikensammlung, was transformed into a sort of “Acropolis Germaniae” under the Nazi regime. After the lawns were replaced by slabs and “temples of honor” were added to house the sarcophagi of the “martyrs of the National-Socialist revolution” who died in the failed Beer Hall putsch of 1923, it was used for the staging of elaborate Nazi pageants^¹⁴. At the same time, the Roman Empire with its military might, its feats of engineering, and its monumental architecture provided Hitler with a model for German world power, as well as architectural and civic planning prototypes, especially endorsed and promoted by his Italian Fascist ally^¹⁵. Albert Speer, Paul Troost, Hermann Giesler, Roderick Fick, and other Nazi architects were commissioned to design suitably grandiose buildings and cityscapes inspired by ancient Rome, while consciously rejecting the modern Bauhaus style^¹⁶.

Hitler’s antiquities

[7] While there is a great deal of information about Adolf Hitler’s painting collection, a comprehensive list of antiquities in his collection is lacking^¹⁷. Some classical antiquities were exchanged within the well-orchestrated culture of gift giving among the upper echelons of the Nazi party. Hitler’s birthday on April 20 was an especially important occasion to present the “Führer” with gifts that would appropriately demonstrate that the gift giver shared Hitler’s vision and tastes, including for the classical ideal^¹⁸. A large collection of antiquities that included a Greek grave relief from Thasos^¹⁹, two ceramic East Greek sima fragments with relief decoration, ancient coins, and Greek and Roman jewelry were confiscated from Paul and Andy von Zsolnay, Jewish owners of a prominent Viennese publishing company. Bernhard Witke, a Gestapo treasurer and appraiser working with VUGESTA (Gestapo Office for the Disposal of the Property of Jewish Emigrants), was named trustee of the collection after the von Zsolnays fled to London^²⁰, and ten items were handed over to Hans Posse, the first head of the “Sonderauftrag Linz”, to be given as birthday gifts to Hitler in April 1940. These included pairs of Hellenistic gold earrings, finger rings, a gold diadem, and a gold necklace^²¹. Hermann Voss, Posse’s successor as head of the “Sonderauftrag Linz”, presented Hitler with an ancient silver diadem and a gold diadem for his birthday in 1944. These had been purchased by Voss from Karl W. Bümming (1899–1963), an American-born, German-American Nazi dealer based in Darmstadt and working as a business partner with the dealer/auctioneer Theodor Fischer in Lucerne^²². Bümming’s source for the items is not known, and we also do not know what happened to them or to most of Hitler’s birthday gifts of antiquities^²³.

An Apulian column krater as a gift to Hitler

[8] Well-publicized and -choreographed exchanges of meaningful diplomatic gifts between heads of state during this period included the presentation of classical antiquities^²⁴. For example, on the occasion of Hitler’s first state visit to Rome in 1938, among the 20 gifts presented to him by Mussolini, the Italian Fascist Party, and Italian royal family members were a silver replica of the famed bronze Capitoline She-wolf, whether Etruscan, medieval, Renaissance or a pastiche^²⁵, a symbol of Rome and the Fascists, and a fourth-century BC Greek South Italian (Apulian) red-figure column krater, formerly in the hands of Giuseppe Sisto from Ceglie and a professor of history and geography at the University of Bari. Sisto unsuccessfully tried to sell this vase in October 1937 to the well-known Greek vase specialist John Beazley for the collection at Oxford University, and in a letter to Beazley Sisto says the vase was excavated in Lucania^²⁶. We may never know its exact provenience, but it almost certainly came from a tomb context in Southern Italy, possibly in Ceglie^²⁷. Sisto’s shady archaeological activities were exposed in 2007 when his grandson in the US turned over antiquities and other cultural objects to the FBI that his grandfather and father had illicitly exported from Italy^²⁸.

[9] The moment of the presentation of the South Italian Greek vase on 4 May 1938 with an array of leading Nazi and Fascist leaders was captured by Hitler’s official photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, and publicized in the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung (BIZ), a mouthpiece for Goebbels’s Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda^²⁹. In the caption for the photograph in the BIZ, as well as in Hoffmann’s photo book memorializing Hitler’s trip to Italy, the vase is labeled “Etruscan”^³⁰ (Fig. 2). This misidentification of a Greek work for an Etruscan one might well be attributed to Hoffmann’s ignorance^³¹ or to the confusion in the 1930s about who the Etruscans were and the identity of the craftsmen responsible for the black-figure and red-figure vases found in Etruria, Magna Graecia, and elsewhere in Italy^³². It seems from the Hoffmann photograph that Joseph Goebbels was giddily eager to accept the gift, while Hitler was busy (to the right) examining what appears to be another antiquity, possibly a fragment of a Greek kylix^³³.

Fig. 2. Red-figured Apulian column krater presented to Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler by Mussolini (with his back to the camera) on 9 May 1938 in Rome, labeled by Hoffmann “an Etruscan vase” (photograph reprod. from Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler in Italien, Munich 1938, 65)

[10] Hoffmann’s commentary in the BIZ, as well as the details of Hitler’s schedule for 4 May 1938, explains the propaganda minister’s glee. It is recorded that at 11:00 a.m. in a small memorial chapel in the Palazzo Littorio, home of the Fascist Party, Hitler was presented with “eine antike Vase mit Hakenkreuzen aus dem 4. Jahrhundertv. Chr.” (an ancient vase with swastikas of the fourth century BC)^³⁴. The interest in the vase was, therefore, probably not in whether it was Greek or Etruscan but in the two swastika motifs depicted as large clothing ornaments on the breast and lower torso of a native Oscan youth, second from left on the obverse of the vase, wearing a very short, belted chitoniskos and chlamys and holding a nestoris^³⁵ (Fig. 3a). The swastika motif was a typical ornament on the garments of native Italic warriors in South Italian vase painting iconography^³⁶, but it is interpreted in this case by the Nazis as a link between antiquity and National Socialism and possibly between Fascism and Nazism. Presumably, the vase was taken to Germany in 1938, but we do not know where it went (perhaps to the Führerbau, Hitler’s office building near the Königsplatz in Munich^³⁷), what happened to it during or at the end of the war (destroyed or looted?), or where it might be today^³⁸. In 1961, never having seen the vase but using photographs of both sides of it—probably (cropped) copies of the photos Sisto had sent to Beazley—South Italian Greek vase specialists Cambitoglou and Trendall published the krater as that of one of the early Apulian vase painters, the Tarporley Painter (360–340 BC)^³⁹ (Fig. 3b).

Fig. 3a. Obverse of red-figured Apulian column krater given to Hitler by Mussolini and the Italian Fascist Party in Rome on 9 May 1938 (photograph sent by Giuseppe Sisto to John Beazley, 8 October 1937, in: University of Oxford, Classical Art Research Centre, Beazley Archive)

Fig. 3b. Red-figured Apulian column krater given to Hitler by Mussolini and the Italian Fascist Party in Rome on 9 May 1938 (reprod. from: A. Cambitoglou and A. D. Trendall, Apulian Red-Figured Vase-Painters of the Plain Style, New York 1961, pl. 12, figs. 55-56)

The Lancellotti Discobolus

[11] Also directly resulting from Hitler’s 1938 trip to Rome was the most notable acquisition of an ancient work of art during the National Socialist era—a Roman copy of Myron’s fifth-century BC Discobolus, found on 14 March 1781 on the property of the Massimo (later Lancellotti) family at their Renaissance Villa Palombara on the Esquiline Hill in Rome; the statue was almost certainly originally part of the decorative program of a Roman villa or imperial palace on that site^⁴⁰ (Fig. 4). When the financially bereft Lancellotti family made the statue actively available for sale after January 1937^⁴¹, intense interest was expressed by various foreign entities, including the Nazi government and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (The Met), the latter of which had, in fact, been vitally interested in it for nearly two decades. Documents in the files of The Met’s Greek and Roman Department and archives show its deep interest in acquiring the statue as early as August–September 1917, and internal discussions about the possible acquisition continued in 1918, 1920, 1925, 1930, and into 1936. On 4 May 1936 it was recorded that the asking price had reached four million lire. On 5 May 1936 curator of the Greek and Roman Department Gisela Richter sent a letter and dossier to Herbert E. Winlock, The Met’s director (1932–1939), in which she wrote:

We have long tried to acquire this statue. There is no doubt that it would be a very desirable acquisition and one that would give great prestige to the Museum. As you well know, it is a world-famous piece, the best and most complete copy of Myron’s celebrated bronze Discobolus (c. 450 B.C.). I think we ought to make a great effort to acquire it. It is just the sort of thing that our collection—and the Museum—needs. Mr. Brummer thought that perhaps Mr. Rockefeller might help. Perhaps we can talk it over.

The dossier continues with references to the statue in letters to and from John Marshall (buying agent for The Met in Rome), Edward Robinson (director 1910–1931), and Richter—its quality, the price the museum might expect to pay the “very difficult” Lancellotti family, who “could not agree among themselves to sell”—and indicating that the Lancellottis expected to realize at least $100,000 for the statue^⁴².

Fig. 4. Lancellotti Discobolus. Roman marble copy of Myron’s fifth-century BC statue, H. 1.55 m. Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo, Rome, inv. 126371 (photograph from Wikimedia Commons)

[12] On 1 February 1937 Richter sent an official request to the museum’s director and Committee on Purchase to receive permission to start the negotiations for the statue at $200,000 with a cap of $300,000, including export fees, even though the last price sought by the sellers was supposedly as high as the equivalent of $700,000. Joseph Brummer was to act as The Met’s purchasing agent through the Roman antiquities’ dealers, the Jandolos, who were said “to have special pull” (presumably with the Lancellottis)^⁴³. Yet, The Met’s committee did not act on the proposal^⁴⁴. Despite Richter’s efforts to get approval for the purchase, there was a lack of clarity about the correct amount to offer the Lancellotti family, and The Met moved too slowly. Richter was still trying on 23 April 1938 to get the director to authorize a check for $250,000 so their agents could buy the statue outright from the Lancellottis^⁴⁵, but The Met was disappointed to learn that the German government had purchased the statue on 18 May 1938 for five million lire ($252,000, as calculated later by the US Office of Military Government [OMGUS]).

[13] The Italian Supreme Council on Antiquities and Fine Arts and the Minister of Education, Giuseppe Bottai, had officially denied the request for exportation of the statue on the basis that it was protected under Law 364/1909^⁴⁶. Nevertheless, Mussolini forced the hand of Bottai by tacitly approving an export waiver and not stepping in to deny its export^⁴⁷. The German government paid an additional 1,485,000 lire in export tax ($74,844) for a total equivalent of around $326,844 for the acquisition^⁴⁸. Carl Weickert, director of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (1934–1945), had taken the lead in making arrangements for this purchase. Yet, it was only when he arrived in Rome to settle the matter that he learned that Hitler had ordered the statue to be sent to Munich, leaving the Berlin museum with only a plaster cast^⁴⁹.

[14] The Discobolus arrived in Germany on 29 June 1938 and was put on display by 10 July 1938 in the Munich Glyptothek, just as the Bavarian philhellene Ludwig I had envisioned it some 100 years earlier (Fig. 5, and see historic colour slide introducing the table of contents of this special issue)^⁵⁰. Hitler must have been aware that the nearly complete statue had once been sought by Ludwig I for his collections, making Hitler’s personal appeal to Mussolini to allow Germany to purchase it all the more meaningful and urgent^⁵¹. Hitler dispelled (or disguised) any notion that the statue would enter his personal collection by emphasizing in a speech on 10 July that the acquisition was made for the German people^⁵². In that speech Hitler refers to the ideal beauty of the Discobolus as a model for German art:

And may all of you take this to heart as a standard for the tasks and accomplishments of our time. May you all strive for the beauty and perfection so that you shall also stand the test of time both before the Volk and [before] the ages^⁵³.

Fig. 5. Adolf Hitler in the Munich Glyptothek with the Lancellotti Discobolus, 10 July 1938 (photograph from Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Prints and Photographs Division, lot 2970)

[15] The Discobolus statue made a prominent appearance, morphing into a human discus thrower, near the beginning of Leni Riefenstahl’s highly propagandistic 1938 film Olympia, documenting the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games^⁵⁴. Photographic evidence shows that Riefenstahl was filming this scene in the dunes of the Curonian Spit with a copy of the Discobolus on 30 September 1936, nearly two years before the acquisition of the Lancellotti Discobolus^⁵⁵. The film was first released in Germany on Hitler’s birthday on 20 April 1938, about a month before the Nazis’ purchase of the statue. The inclusion of a copy of the statue in Riefenstahl’s film and the film’s release date during the negotiations for the statue’s purchase must have incentivized its acquisition. At the same time, that purchase would have enhanced the propaganda value of the film.

[16] The Lancellotti Discobolus remained in Germany for 10 years, though during the bombing of Munich, when the Glyptothek was badly destroyed, it must have been in a protected storage location and not on display. The statue was ordered to be returned, somewhat controversially, to Italy on 16 November 1948, along with 17 other works of art in a repatriation that Allied authorities called an “Exceptional Return of Works of Art”^⁵⁶ (Fig. 6). Rodolfo Siviero, Italy’s postwar representative seeking the repatriation of art taken from Italy since 1937, pushed hard for the return of the Discobolus and other works of art, all of which had been purchased by the National Socialist government, on the grounds that the export permits were illegal and violated the law of 1909^⁵⁷. On the German side, there were letters of protest and calls for the repeal of the decision directed to OMGUS and President Truman in 1948 and 1949, and arguments were still being formulated in March 1950 about why the restitution was unjustified and the decision incorrect^⁵⁸. Herbert S. Leonard resigned his position as director of the Munich Central Collecting Point (CCP) over this matter^⁵⁹. One wonders if the same decision to return the Discobolus to Italy would have been reached if The Met had succeeded in purchasing the statue^⁶⁰. The Lancellotti Discobolus was included both in the 1950 Palazzo Venezia exhibition in Rome of works of art recovered from Germany and in an analogous exhibition in 1952 in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence^⁶¹ before finally being installed in 1953 in the Museo Nazionale Romano in Rome; it remains on display today in the museum’s main location, the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme^⁶².

Fig. 6. "Exceptional Return of Works of Art" document signed by Dr. H. K. Rothel, curator at the Bayerischen Staatsgemäldesammlungen in Munich. Number 18 on the list is the Lancellotti Discobolus. Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich, 17a13/6, MK 51500: Akten des Bayer. Staatsministeriums für Unterricht und Kultus, Einziehung u. Restitution von Kunstwerken im einzelnen, vol. 1, p. 5 (photograph by the author)

Göring’s collection and the Capitoline Venus from Leptis Magna

[17] After Hitler, Hermann Göring held the second-largest privately-owned art collection in Nazi Germany, with some 4,350 works acquired between around 1928 and 1945. Only a fraction of these (ca. 71 objects) were antiquities, while another 12 or more were modern copies of famous ancient works^⁶³, including the so-called Terme Ruler in the Museo Nazionale Romano^⁶⁴ and the pair of bronze deer from the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum in the Naples Archaeological Museum; the originals were later stolen by the 1st Paratroop Panzer Division “Hermann Göring” and brought to Göring’s country estate of Carinhall^⁶⁵. One of the replicas of the deer appears in 5 July 1935 photographs of Hitler and Göring together at Carinhall^⁶⁶ (Fig. 7), while copies of the pair are shown in the background of a 5 April 1936 photograph of Göring with his pet lion cub^⁶⁷. In both cases the deer are displayed outdoors on a wall surrounding a patio, but in other photos they also appear in other locations, suggesting that Göring may have had more than one set of copies.

Fig. 7. Göring and Hitler at Carinhall with a copy of one of the pair of bronze deer from the Villa dei Papiri, Herculaneum, on the wall, 5 July 1935 (photograph from Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Prints and Photographs Division, Göring Photo Albums, lot 3128, vol. 9, p. 7, no. 1)

A copy of one of the bronze runners from the Villa dei Papiri is shown along a pathway at Carinhall in photos of 7 July 1939^⁶⁸ (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8. Göring walking with a Bulgarian minister at Carinhall with a bronze replica of one of the runners from the Villa dei Papiri, Herculaneum, along the side of the path, 7 July 1939 (photograph from Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Prints and Photographs Division, Göring Photo Albums, lot 3128, vol. 33, p. 96, no. 8)

In addition, reproductions (in bronze) of the marble Ludovisi Ares, Versailles Diana, and Apollo Belvedere are shown outdoors against a stone wall of a wing of Carinhall^⁶⁹, while copies in bronze of the bust of Artemis from the Villa dei Papiri and of Athena Lemnia are displayed indoors^⁷⁰.

[18] Among Göring’s collection of ancient Roman sculptures^⁷¹ is one that was presented to him in November 1938 by Italo Balbo, the Fascist governor of Libya, acting on behalf of Mussolini^⁷². This gift was a Roman copy of a Capitoline Venus type, discovered in 1924 in excavations of the Hadrianic bath complex in Leptis Magna conducted by Italian archaeologists and supported by Mussolini’s Fascist government^⁷³ (Fig. 9). It functioned both as a personal gift to Göring and as a diplomatic gift for Germany, serving to cement the ties between the two powers and to illustrate the (faux) ancient origins of both Fascism and Nazism^⁷⁴.

Fig. 9. Capitoline Venus from Leptis Magna. Since 1999 in the Jamahiriya Museum, Tripoli, Libya (photograph by the author, 2005)

[19] Photographs of Göring’s Carinhall (ca. 1940) show the Venus statue displayed indoors in an opening along a long gallery that served as a main artery and a public showcase of Göring’s collection^⁷⁵ (Fig. 10). When the bombing of Berlin put Carinhall in danger, in February 1945 Göring began to move the most valuable of his art collections to southern Germany, especially to a bunker at his residence in Veldenstein^⁷⁶ and to the Altaussee mines in Austria, leaving behind some objects, including some antiquities that were later recovered, such as Greek vases^⁷⁷, very large paintings, and some of the heavier pieces such as marble sculptures; the latter were said to have been buried in a bunker near the estate^⁷⁸. The Venus from Leptis Magna was one of those sculptures left behind at Carinhall, according to the report written in September 1945 by Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) officer Theodore Rousseau Jr. indicating that it had been recovered by that date^⁷⁹. Documentation of the specific details of its rediscovery, however, has not been found^⁸⁰. The Bergungsamt beim Magistrat von Groß-Berlin (Salvage Office of the Magistrate of Greater Berlin), directed by Kurt Reutti, turned over the statue in or around 1947 to the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, and the Antikensammlung took custody of it along with other ancient objects whose ownership was unknown or unclear^⁸¹. In 1950 a report records the location of the statue as “Am Kupfergraben, im Freien stehend” (standing outdoors on the Museum Island side facing the street “Am Kupfergraben”)^⁸².

Fig. 10. Capitoline Venus from Leptis Magna displayed in the Festhalle of Göring’s estate at Carinhall, ca. 1940 (photograph print stamped "Robert", in Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Prints and Photographs Division, lot 3810-1)

[20] In Morozzi and Paris’s 1995 account of works of art lost from Italy during World War II, the Venus is recorded as “Dono di Balbo a Goering; illecitamente esportata nel 1940”, suggesting that Balbo and Mussolini had no right to give the statue away or allow it to be exported from Italian-controlled territory to Germany^⁸³. There is no reference in Morozzi and Paris to the end of Italian colonial rule in Libya following the Axis’s defeat there in 1943, to the establishment of an independent state in 1951, or to who should claim cultural property removed from Libya⁸⁴. Indeed, there were no provisions for the return of cultural materials in the treaty that ended Italian colonial rule in Libya^⁸⁵. Rather than repatriating the statue directly to Libya, the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz turned it over to Italy on 22 July 1999. Though this repatriation came seven months after the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art of December 1998, to which both Germany and Italy were signatories^⁸⁶, there was no reference to the Washington Principles in the speeches and reports of the repatriation; instead, it was reported that Germany’s decision to repatriate the Venus statue and two other ancient sculptures was in the spirit of the Wiesbaden Manifesto, a 1945 MFAA document citing “obligations to common justice, decency, and the establishment of the power of right, […] among civilized nations”^⁸⁷. Mario Bondioli-Osio, president of the Italian interministerial commission responsible for stolen art, emphasized in his speech at the repatriation ceremony the “moral, political and judicial significance” of the repatriation and highlighted that this was the first repatriation from Germany to Italy since those immediately after World War II, for which the famed Rodolfo Siviero was responsible^⁸⁸. Five months later, in December 1999, Italy repatriated the Venus statue to Libya, meeting its obligations under a 1998 bilateral agreement between Italy and Libya to make amends for Italy’s colonial occupation and to return manuscripts, documents, monuments, and archaeological objects^⁸⁹. The statue was put on display in the Jamahiriya Museum in Tripoli, where it remains today (Fig. 9).

Ancient art for the “Führermuseum” in Linz

[21] If we examine the documentation and existing plans for Hitler’s favorite project, the never-realized “Führermuseum” in Linz, we find that ancient art played a very minor or no role. In the database of the “Sonderauftrag Linz” there are 6,700 entries for works of art that Hitler’s agents acquired between the end of the 1930s and 1945, the majority of which are paintings, sculptures, furniture, porcelain, and tapestries^⁹⁰. We know that the list is not complete; nevertheless, it is significant that there are only around 30 entries for antiquities—a hodgepodge of Greek and Roman sculptures, vases, bronze and terracotta figurines, jewelry, and gems. In the Munich CCP database, there are many more Greek or Roman objects that are marked with Linz numbers, however—the majority of them coins^⁹¹. We know that a numismatic collection was developed for a coin cabinet in the Linz complex, and it included a small number of ancient Greek and Roman coins^⁹². In the photo albums prepared for Hitler, highlighting works of art for the Linz museum, only seven antiquities are included^⁹³ (Figs. 11a, 11b). This corroborates the conclusion that ancient art was not a high priority for the Linz museum itself. Among the tens of thousands of works of art confiscated in France and Belgium by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) and held in the Jeu de Paume in Paris, only 53 were designated for Hitler’s private collection or for the Linz museum. None of these are antiquities^⁹⁴.

[22] One of the ancient objects shown in the Linz album is a Roman mosaic with a scene of the Rape of Europa, found in 1676 in ancient Praeneste, modern Palestrina, east of Rome, and exhibited from 1691 until 1934 in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome (see Fig. 11a, upper left; Fig. 11c). In June 1941 the mosaic was sold to the “Sonderauftrag Linz” for 150,000 lire by the Barberini family through the Roman art dealership Galleria Sangiorgi. It was shipped to Munich with an export permit and stored with the Linz collections^⁹⁵. The mosaic was moved to the mines in Altaussee, where it was recovered by the Allies and sent to the CCP in Munich. According to the CCP catalog cards, the mosaic was turned over in June 1949 to the Bavarian minister president for further investigation and management of its disposition, along with many other collections remaining in the CCP^⁹⁶. In 1968 it was sent to the Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte in Oldenburg (inv. LMO 14.008), where it remains today on loan from the Federal Republic of Germany^⁹⁷.

Figs. 11a, 11b. Antiquities in Linz album XX. Album on loan from the Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues (BADV) to the Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin (photographs reprod. from Birgit Schwarz, Hitlers Museum: Die Fotoalben Gemäldegalerie Linz: Dokumente zum "Führermuseum", Vienna 2004, 327-328, with permission of Birgit Schwarz)

Fig. 11c. Barberini mosaic of The Rape of Europa, Roman period, from ancient Praeneste. Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Oldenburg, LMO 14.008 (© Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Oldenburg; photograph by Sven Adelaide, courtesy of Marcus Kenzler)

[23] Prince Philipp von Hessen, great-grandson of Queen Victoria and husband of Princess Mafalda, daughter of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, was an enthusiastic member of the Nazi Party from 1930 and a major art agent for the Nazis in Italy, especially for purchases for the Linz Museum from 1940 to 1942^⁹⁸. According to an inventory of May 1942, he spent more than 40 million lire (5,022,467 Reichsmark) in Italy for acquisitions for the Linz museum. In 1939 Philipp von Hessen also gave assistance to Göring in some of his acquisitions in Italy, including for the purchase of a marble female statue^⁹⁹. In 1941 he tried to acquire for the Nazis the more famous Nilotic mosaic found in Praeneste and belonging to the Barberini family. He was foiled in his attempt to secure this prize for Germany when the Italian minister of education, Giuseppe Bottai, refused to allow an export permit for it on the basis that it was a nationally important work of art protected under the new cultural heritage law of 1939^¹⁰⁰. Today the mosaic is in the Museo archeologico prenestino, housed in Palazzo Colonna Barberini in Palestrina.

[24] Schwarz makes it clear in her exhaustive study of the Linz museum that there was never a plan on the part of either Hans Posse, the first head of the “Sonderauftrag Linz” (July 1939–1942)^¹⁰¹, or Hermann Voss (1942–1945)^¹⁰², the second head, to make it an encyclopedic museum with the best art of all periods represented. Even though Hitler initially wished to have prehistoric and ancient art at the beginning of the exhibits, Posse had more practical considerations^¹⁰³. In an October 1939 memo Posse outlines his concept for the museum and notes that it would not be possible, even with major resources, to put together a universal art collection from antiquity to modern times and that only an introduction would be possible for the earlier periods, especially of the Germanic and Migration (Early Medieval) periods. The concept was for the ground floor to display art from the 12th through 18th centuries, while the upper floor would be devoted to 19th-century Austrian and German painting. Posse understood it would be hopeless to try to compete with Munich or Vienna to create a comprehensive museum^¹⁰⁴.

[25] The only architectural plan that exists for the interior of the museum that has labels associated with rooms is one from 1941 by architect Roderich Fick. Two labels indicate the nature of the works of art within: the “Saal der Gotik” (10) and the “Saal der Renaissance” (11); there is no hall of ancient art labeled^¹⁰⁵. Moreover, in Hermann Voss’s signed statement as part of his interrogation report in 1945, he says the main emphasis of the Linz museum was on German 19th-century painting (and that of the Netherlands, Italy, and France), and he confirms that there was no intention of trying to rival the first-class galleries of Vienna and Dresden; he makes no reference to ancient art^¹⁰⁶.

[26] Yet, as early as 1939 Hans Posse took a close interest in the major collection in Vienna of Count Karol Lanckoroński (1848–1933), an aristocrat of Polish descent who sponsored major archaeological expeditions in Asia Minor (in Pamphylia and Pisidia) in the mid-1880s^¹⁰⁷. After the annexation of Austria in March 1938, the Lanckoroński palace at Jacquingasse 18 was subject to expropriation because Karol’s heir, his son Antoni, was a Polish citizen; the palace and its collection were confiscated in 1939 as enemy “Polish property”. Posse oversaw an inventory of some 3,500 works of art and objects in Lanckoroński’s palace in November 1942^¹⁰⁸. The collection was diverse and impressive, including more than 350 ancient objects (Greek and Roman marble sculpture, Greek vases, bronzes, terracotta figurines, glass, mosaic and fresco fragments, some Etruscan objects, and a few Egyptian antiquities)^¹⁰⁹, many of which were displayed in the Freskensaal in the palace^¹¹⁰. Despite the limited interest in ancient collections for the “Führermuseum”, it seems Hans Posse had his eye on this collection to see what might be useful among the marble sculptures (e.g., the third-century AD Roman sarcophagus with Erotes from Cilicia)^¹¹¹ for display in parts of the extensive Linz complex (e.g., a planned Theatermuseum). Other museums in the Ostmark (Austria) or in the greater German Reich may have been the intended recipients of confiscated or purchased works of art, including probably some of the antiquities, acquired by the “Sonderauftrag Linz”^¹¹².

The plunder of antiquities from the National Archaeological Museum, Naples

[27] In addition to many random cases of plunder in Italy during the Fascist and Nazi periods^¹¹³, there were also illegal exports of antiquities, facilitated by permits awarded by the Fascist government, such as the purchase of the Lancellotti Discobolus, discussed above. A major case of deliberate looting involved objects from the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. In September 1943, one hundred eighty-seven crates of works of art, including antiquities and archaeological objects from the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, had been moved from museums in Naples to the abbey at Montecassino for safekeeping. There, the 1st Paratroop Panzer Division “Hermann Göring” seized the crates and moved the cultural artifacts first to a “Göring” division’s base at the villa of Colle Ferretto near Spoleto. Following intense negotiations between Italian, Vatican and German authorities in the fall of 1943, the works of art were moved to the Vatican property of Castel Sant’Angelo and to the Palazzo Venezia in Rome, where their “return” to Italy was effectively visually orchestrated by German propaganda officials. While the collections were en route in October 1943, the “independently minded” “Göring” division absconded with 15 crates of paintings and antiquities and took them to their headquarters in Berlin, arriving in December 1943, according to the testimony of Göring’s main art adviser/dealer, Walter Andreas Hofer^¹¹⁴. Among the Naples collections were five ancient bronze sculptures—the Apollo from the House of the Citharist in Pompeii^¹¹⁵, the Resting Hermes^¹¹⁶ (Fig. 12), two deer^¹¹⁷, and one of the peplophoroi from the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum^¹¹⁸—as well as six bronze vessels^¹¹⁹, gold jewelry from Pompeii and Herculaneum^¹²⁰, and ancient coins^¹²¹. The “Göring” division intended to present the works of art to Göring for his birthday on 12 January 1944, but Göring supposedly refused to accept them, keeping up the appearance of correctness by not wanting to include overtly confiscated works of art in his collection, a fiction since Göring’s plundering activities are well-documented. According to Allied reports, the crates had already been moved to Carinhall, and, thus, Göring ordered a temporary exhibition to be set up there; we have no details, however, about what was included in this display^¹²². In February 1945, Göring ordered Hofer to have all of the “Montecassino collections” moved to the Chancellery of the Reich in Berlin; Martin Bormann was instructed to send them to Munich, but the next we hear of the collection is that it had arrived on 28 March 1945 in the Steinberg mine at Altaussee, where the works of art were eventually discovered by the Allies, transported to CCP Munich, cataloged by the MFAA, and returned to Italy^¹²³.

Fig. 12. Resting Hermes from the Villa dei Papiri, Herculaneum (Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 5625), without its head, which was damaged in the course of its plunder. Photograph by Herbert List in the Munich CCP [Mü no. 2448], March 1946 (reprod. from print in Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Johannes Felbermeyer Collection, box 79, folder 8)

Conclusions

[28] Let us return to the question of the discrepancy between National Socialist rhetoric and its supposed preference for classicism versus the relatively small number of antiquities that were collected by Hitler and Göring, as compared to the large numbers of other categories of works of art, especially paintings, that were plundered, purchased, or transferred during this period. If classical antiquity was so key to Hitler and the National Socialists’ worldview, one would expect his collection, the Linz collection, and Göring’s collection to have contained many notable ancient objects, including portraits of the great figures in Greek and Roman history^¹²⁴, but this does not seem to be the case. Why?

[29] First, as indicated above, National Socialism was filled with inconsistencies and contradictions, with competing ideological views regarding the origins of the Aryans within prehistoric Europe versus the ancient Greek world. Hitler’s interest in the classical world arose from a schoolboy’s romantic vision of ancient Greece and Rome, influenced by Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s racist views and Wagnerian-type mythical operatic heroes, not from any intellectual basis or direct engagement with ancient texts or art history knowledge^¹²⁵. Other than the major diplomatic gifts of sculpture and Greek vases, the ancient objects gifted to Hitler were small items of jewelry or coins suitable for a Kunst- und Wunderkammer. The acquisition of the Discobolus is unusual—it was a kind of obsession with Hitler, possibly because the statue was once coveted by the philhellene Ludwig I for the Munich Glyptothek^¹²⁶; Hitler could boast of an accomplishment that the ambitious Bavarian king was unable to achieve.

[30] Classicism played only a modest role in Hitler’s daily life—he had a cutlery set designed for the Berghof on the Obersalzberg with a meander pattern around the perimeter, for example^¹²⁷. His carefully crafted persona as a cultured and morally upright man of the people called for a cultured and elegant, yet spare (Spartan) style in the décor of his private spaces. This style was curated by architect Gerdy Troost and disseminated by Heinrich Hoffmann’s photographs^¹²⁸. Nude females in paintings and neoclassical sculpture (e.g., Girl Tying a Headscarf by Eugen Henke^¹²⁹) appear in the Great Hall of the Berghof residence as signals of Hitler’s strong masculinity and rejection of his rumored homosexuality. Neoclassical statues by Munich sculptor Josef Wackerle are displayed in niches in the dining room of the Old Chancellery in Berlin^¹³⁰ (Fig. 13).

Fig. 13. Neoclassical statues by Munich sculptor Josef Wackerle displayed in niches in the dining room of the Old Chancellery in Berlin, 1935–1945. Photograph by Atelier Troost (reprod. from print in Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Prints and Photographs Division, lot 3940, no. 23)

There is, however, very little evidence of genuine classical antiquities on display in Hitler’s photographically well-documented residences or offices; there are only two visible in a curio cabinet in the main administrative offices of the Chancellery (Fig. 14)^¹³¹ and a bronze nude male (Hermes?) statuette on a pedestal in the sitting room near the door to the ladies salon^¹³². None are on tables or on Hitler’s desk. European and Chinese porcelains are much more prominent in the décor. Neoclassical works of art seem almost to have been preferred over genuinely ancient objects, as the former could be manipulated and appropriated with greater ease than flawed or partial ancient artifacts or ancient sculptures, which are not always pure white.

Fig. 14. Antiquities (bronze figurine of Aphrodite Anadyomene [second shelf from top on left] and an Attic red-figure kylix [third shelf from the top on the right]) in a curio cabinet in the main administrative offices of the Old Chancellery in Berlin, dated 1935–1945. Photo by Atelier Troost (reprod. from print in Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Prints and Photographs Division, lot 3940, no. 46 [LC-USZ62-135831])

[31] Göring’s motivations for the acquisition of his art collection are very transparent. His eagerness to acquire works of art could be described as pathological greed, as he sought to win social status as a Renaissance man or a medieval baron, with all the trappings, including art^¹³³. Göring had little interest in cultivating an image of a simple man of the people—he preferred flamboyance, nude Aphrodite statues, hunting imagery (lions, deer, wild boar)^¹³⁴, swastikas^¹³⁵, and any works of art of high monetary value. Like Hitler, he had no knowledge of classical art or ancient history, but he knew that Greek and Roman art had “value”, including monetary value and value for the cultivation of his self-image as a cultured man. Unlike Hitler, Göring chose to display his ancient collection, as well as reproductions of famous works of ancient sculpture, as ostentatious decoration in his estate Carinhall north of Berlin. When the end was in sight with the Soviets moving in from the east and Carinhall in danger of being seized, in February–March 1945 Göring moved much of his collection south for safekeeping. The fact that he left behind his collection of easily portable Greek vases (probably in a bunker on the property) and then ordered Carinhall to be destroyed^¹³⁶ suggests that he did not hold these antiquities among the most precious of his artworks. No one else in the circle of the upper echelons of the Nazi party could or dared to compete on the same scale as Hitler and Göring for art collections—and we know very little about ancient art in the collections of other elites of the Nazi party^¹³⁷.

[32] With regard to the development of ancient collections for the so-called “Führermuseum” in Linz, those put in charge of collecting for the Linz museum took into account that there already were great collections of antiquities in Munich, Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, and elsewhere in the Reich, and made no real attempts to compete with these collections. Classical antiquities were scooped up in the general confiscations from large private Jewish collections, but they were rarely sought. Contemporary works of art based on classical models and copies of ancient works of art mostly served Nazi purposes, even though original classical works were readily available in museums and at archaeological sites in occupied countries. After the German occupation of Greece in 1941, for example, it would certainly have been possible for Hitler to have ordered the removal to Germany of selected famous works of ancient art for German museums or his private collection. That did not occur, however, for after the Nazis’ envisioned “Endsieg” (final victory), antiquities collections all over Europe would have been available for plunder if the Nazis would have so wished.

[33] In the end, the answer to our question about this discrepancy between rhetoric and reality may lie in the hollowness of National Socialist ideology and in the hypocrisy of its chief architects. It was all smoke and mirrors, and classicism was a mere façade that only sometimes served a useful purpose.

Acknowledgments
I am very grateful to the Provenance Research Exchange Program (PREP) for bringing me together in 2018 and 2019 with a group of committed scholars focused on Nazi-era provenance issues, many of whom assisted me with research for this paper and the introduction to this publication. I also thank Demi Andrianou, Giacomo Bardelli, Judith Barr, Daria Brasca, Thomas H. Carpenter, Martine Denoyelle, Christian Fuhrmeister, Sven Haase, Maurizio Harari, Meike Hopp, Birgit Jooss, Alexandra Kankeleit, Sophie Lillie, Claire Lyons, Thomas Mannack, Kimberly Mast, Ian McPhee, Jane Milosch, Jim Moske, Lynn Nicholas, Nigel D. Pollard, Laura Puritani, David Saunders, Emanuele Sbardella, Birgit Schwarz, Carola Thielecke, Jean Turfa, and Elena Vlachogianni for their assistance with specific research questions and images. I am deeply appreciative to archivists, librarians, and curators who facilitated my research at various repositories in Germany, Greece, and the US, especially the American School of Classical Studies at Athens; Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; German Archaeological Institute, Berlin; Getty Research Institute (GRI) and J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Library of Congress, Photographs and Prints Division, Washington, DC; Archives of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), College Park, Maryland; Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Library and Archives, Washington, DC; University of Arizona Libraries and Special Collections, Tucson; and Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte (ZI), Munich. I am especially grateful to Lauren Gendler at the GRI Publications Office, copy editor Elizabeth Asborno, and Andrea Lermer, Christian Fuhrmeister, Johannes Griebel, and Stephan Klingen for their editorial and content assistance at the ZI. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support for this project from the Mellon 1984 Foundation, Philadelphia; American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia; German Archaeological Institute, Berlin; Getty Research Institute and J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Loeb Classical Library Foundation, Cambridge, MA; PREP with funding from the Smithsonian Institution and Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin; and University of Arizona’s School of Art, College of Fine Arts Small Grants Program, and the College of Fine Arts Fund for Excellence and its donors.

Special Issue
Irene Bald Romano, ed., The Fate of Antiquities in the Nazi Era, in: RIHA Journal 0282-0294 (15 September 2023), DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/riha.2022.2.

License
The text of this article is provided under the terms of the Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0.

1 E.g., Gunnar Brands, “Zwischen Island und Athen, Griechische Kunst im Spiegel des Nationalsozialismus”, in: Bazon Brock and Achim Preiss, eds., Kunst auf Befehl? Dreiunddreissig bis Fünfundvierzig, Munich 1990, 103-136; Johann Chapoutot, Greek, Romans, Germans: How the Nazis Usurped Europe’s Classical Past, Oakland, CA 2016.

2 Hermann Göring’s antiquities collection stands out as an exception in terms of its documentation, yet the low number of ancient objects compared to paintings and other categories of art he acquired is noteworthy. See Laura Puritani, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Dokumentation des Fremdbesitzes, vol. 3: Antikensammlung. Antiken aus Carinhall aus dem Eigentum der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Berlin 2017, 133-183, and her paper in this special issue, “Göring’s Collection of Antiquities at Carinhall”, RIHA Journal 0285, DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/riha.2022.2.92769. See also Daria Brasca, “The Role of Antiquities between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany”, RIHA Journal 0284, DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/riha.2022.2.92761, for some additional information about antiquities from Italy and Italian colonies.

3 Martin Maischberger, “German Archaeology during the Third Reich, 1933–45: A Case Study Based on Archival Evidence”, in: Antiquity 76 (2002), no. 291, 209-218: 210. See also Stefan Altekamp, “Classical Archaeology in Nazi Germany”, in: Helen Roche and Kyriakos N. Demetriou, eds., Brill’s Companion to the Classics, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, Leiden 2017, 289-324: 306-307, 311; Bettina Arnold, “The Past as Propaganda: Totalitarian Archaeology in Nazi Germany”, in: Antiquity 64 (1990), no. 244, 464-478.

4 Suzanne L. Marchand, Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750–1970, Princeton, NJ 1996, 349-352; Chapoutot (2016), 88-91, 95.

5 Birgit Schwarz, Geniewahn: Hitler und die Kunst, Vienna 2009, 189-201; Hugh Trevor-Roper, Hitler‘s Table Talk 1941–1944, trans. Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens, London 1953 (2nd ed. 1972; 3rd ed. 2000; 4th ed. 2013).

6 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf [original edition Munich 1925], trans. Ralph Manheim, New York 1943, 423; Hitler, Mein Kampf. Eine kritische Edition, ed. on behalf of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte Munich-Berlin by Christian Hartmann, Thomas Vordermayer, Othmar Plöckinger and Roman Töppel, 2 vols., Berlin 2016, https://www.mein-kampf-edition.de/.

7 Hitler ([1925] 1943), 408.

8 Thomas Schmidt, Werner March: Architekt des Olympia-Stadions, 1894–1976, Basel/Berlin 1992, 59-61: “an important instrument for the fulfillment of cultural tasks, spiritual and political popular advertising”. The cover of Die Woche, a weekly program guide for the 1936 Olympic Games, featured the head of Apollo from the west pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, a copy of which was displayed in the “Sport der Hellenen” exhibition; the original statue remained in Greece throughout the Nazi period and is still on display today in the Archaeological Museum of Olympia in Greece.

9 Sport der Hellenen. Ausstellung griechischer Bildwerke [in the Deutsches Museum, Berlin], exh. cat., eds. Organisationskomitee der XI. Olympiade and Generaldirektion der Staatlichen Museen, artworks described by Carl Blümel, Berlin 1936; Stefan Lehmann, “‘Sport der Hellenen‘: Die Berliner Ausstellung von 1936 und der jüdische Archäologe Alfred Schiff (1863–1939)“, in: Stadion 29 (2003), special issue: Olympische Spiele – Olympic Games – Jeux Olympiques, ed. Andreas Höfer, 199-220.

10 Iain Boyd Whyte, “National Socialism, Classicism, and Architecture”, in: Helen Roche and Kyriakos N. Demetriou, eds., Brill’s Companion to the Classics, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, Leiden 2017, 417-418; David Clay Large, Nazi Games: The Olympics of 1936, New York 2007, 3-11. For the lighting of the Olympic torch before the 1936 Olympics and the idea of the torch relay, likely by a Greek member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Angelos Volanakis, and institutionalized at the 1936 games by IOC president Carl Diem, see Ioannis Moutsis, “Germany Meets Olympia: Archaeology and Olympism”, in Christina Koulouri and Konstantinos Georgiadis, eds., The International Olympic Academy: A History of an Olympic Institution, Athens 2007, 106-139: 137-138. See also Jeffrey O. Segrave and Robert K. Barney, “From Ritual Invention to Ritual Entrepreneurship: The Olympic Torch Relay and Enveloping Commercialism”, in: Stadion 29 (2003), special issue: Olympische Spiele – Olympic Games – Jeux Olympiques, ed. Andreas Höfer, 323-340. I am grateful to Alexandra Kankeleit for calling these articles to my attention.

11 Marchand (1996), 351-352: Hitler allocated some 50,000 Reichsmark per year for six years from the proceeds of Mein Kampf. See also Alexandra Kankeleit, “The German Archaeological Institute at Athens in the Nazi Era”, 2016, http://www.kankeleit.de/pdfs/occupation_greece.pdf (accessed 20 January 2020). See my introduction to this special issue for a discussion of the Nazi occupation of Greece and the official attitudes toward confiscations versus the widespread plunder and illicit excavations by the occupying Germans (as well as Italians and Bulgarians): Irene Bald Romano, “Antiquities in the Nazi Era: Contexts and Broader View“, RIHA Journal 0282, DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/riha.2022.2.92735; and Alexandra Kankeleit, also in this special issue, “Stolen and Returned: The Marble Statue of Philippe from Samos”, RIHA Journal 0286, DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/riha.2022.2.92770.

12 Whyte (2017), esp. 415-416. The notion that the Nazi and Fascist straight-armed salute, the so-called saluto romano, is derived from an ancient Roman power gesture is a fallacy, as shown, for example, by Martin M. Winkler in The Roman Salute: Cinema, History, Ideology, Columbus, OH 2009, 17-41.

13 Recorded in the illustrated monthly Die Kunst im Dritten Reich (July–August 1937), 60 (quoted in Brands [1990], 103).

14 See Frederic Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, Woodstock, NY 2003, 104-107; Frances Livings, “Ephemere Kulträume. Raum und Material nationalsozialistischer Masseninszenierungen 1933–1939,” PhD diss., University of Hamburg, 2003, https://ediss.sub.uni-hamburg.de/handle/ediss/3404, 85-97; Whyte (2017), 408; Hans Lehmbruch, “‘Acropolis Germaniae’. Der Königsplatz – Forum der NSDAP“, in: Iris Lauterbach, ed., Bürokratie und Kult: Das Parteizentrum der NSDAP am Königsplatz in München. Geschichte und Rezeption, Munich 1995, 17-45. Two major National Socialist Party buildings lay just beyond the square to the east, one of which was used for the Munich Central Collecting Point (CCP) and today houses the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte.

15 See Daria Brasca in this special issue (as n2).

16 James J. Fortuna, “Neoclassical Form and the Construction of Power in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany”, in: Helen Roche and Kyriakos N. Demetriou, eds., Brill’s Companion to the Classics, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, Leiden 2017, 435-456; Whyte (2017).

17 Except for a specific painting collection, documented in a photo album with 74 photos (“Katalog der Privat-Gallerie Adolf Hitlers”) in the Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Prints and Photographs Division, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004676971/ [accessed 20 January 2020]), it is not always clear what should be regarded as Hitler’s collection and what were state or party assets. The distinction was blurry, since Hitler could easily claim and appropriate whatever works of art he desired for his private residences, his offices, or the art museum planned in Linz (regarding the “Führervorbehalt”, see Birgit Schwarz: “Sonderauftrag Linz und ‘Führermuseum’”, in: Inka Bertz and Michael Dorrmann, eds., Raub und Restitution. Kulturgut aus jüdischem Besitz von 1933 bis heute, exh. cat., Göttingen 2008, 127-132). The collection of paintings and other works of art designated for the Linz museum is sometimes referred to as Hitler’s collection, but in his final private will and testament of 29 April 1945 he indicated that the paintings he had bought over many years were only intended for the Linz gallery (Hitler’s Private Testament and Political Testament, April 29, 1945, File: 3569 PS, United States Evidence Files, 1945–1946, National Archives Collection of World War II War Crimes Records, RG 238). Hitler gave up on the notion of a personal collection by 1941; financial efforts and a special fund, controlled by Martin Bormann, were set aside for the Linz museum. The collection of paintings was cataloged by the US Army in Altaussee in May 1945. See Günther Haase, Die Kunstsammlung Adolf Hitler. Eine Dokumentation, Berlin 2002, 191-304; Birgit Schwarz, Hitlers Museum: Die Fotoalben Gemäldegalerie Linz. Dokumente zum “Führermuseum”, Vienna 2004; Hanns Christian Löhr, Das Braune Haus der Kunst. Hitler und der “Sonderauftrag Linz”. Visionen, Verbrechen, Verluste, Berlin 2005; Angelika Enderlein, Monika Flacke and Hanns Christian Löhr, Database on the “Sonderauftrag Linz (Special Commission: Linz)”, Berlin 2014, https://www.dhm.de/datenbank/linzdb/indexe.html (accessed 20 January 2020).

18 Jonathan Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich, Chapel Hill, NC 1996, 262-282, esp. 278-279. See Gerald Aalders, Nazi Looting: The Plunder of Dutch Jewry during the Second World War, Oxford 2004, 81-82, for a discussion of the system set up by Göring whereby works of art that he desired would be earmarked for his collection and then “gifted” to him.

19 Now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (Antikensammlung, I 1553), purchased from the heirs in 1951 (“Funerary relief: woman with servant”, https://www.khm.at/objektdb/detail/50637/ [accessed 18 April 2022]).

20 For Witke’s association with VUGESTA, see “The VUGESTA (The Gestapo Office for the Disposal of the Property of Jewish Emigrants)”, updated 11 July 2022, in: ArtDatabase. National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism, https://www.kunstdatenbank.at/the-vugesta-the-gestapo-office-for-the-disposal-of-the-property-of-jewish-emigrants (accessed 18 September 2020).

21 Sophie Lillie, Was einmal war: Handbuch der enteigneten Kunstsammlungen Wiens, Vienna 2003, 1356-1364, esp. 1364 n25. See also Österreichisches Bundesministerium Kunst, Kultur, öffentlicher Dienst und Sport (Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Art and Culture, Public Service and Sport), Beschlüsse des Kunstrückgabebeirats (Decisions of the Art Restitution Advisory Board), 73rd Advisory Board Meeting, 26 September 2014, for the decision regarding the restitution of the Zsolnay collection, https://provenienzforschung.gv.at/en/empfehlungen-des-beirats/beschluesse/?decisions-year=2014 (accessed 9 August 2022). See also Bald Romano, introduction to this special issue (as n11).

22 Löhr (2005), 193 and n67: These wreaths are not in the “Sonderauftrag Linz” database; their existence is known from the Wiedemann list made by the cataloger of the “Sonderauftag Linz” in Dresden (original in Bundesarchiv, Berlin; copy in Archiv der Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Bestand Sonderauftrag Linz, Wiedemann-Liste, Transkription Frau Köhn, 2004, 10: “5th century B.C. Italian work”. Spotts ([2003], 193) records that there were three items given to Hitler on his birthday in 1944: a gold diadem, a silver wreath with gold leaves, and a gold medallion with a Silenus head, all fifth-century BC. The latter is not listed in the Wiedemann list, and Spotts does not provide an endnote reference on this point. See also Kathrin Iselt, “Sonderbeauftragter des Führers”: Der Kunsthistoriker und Museumsmann Hermann Voss (1884–1969), Cologne 2010, 166-167, n26 regarding the Wiedemann list. For more about Bümming, see Löhr (2005), 144-146; Jonathan Petropoulos, Göring’s Man in Paris: The Story of a Nazi Art Plunderer and His World, New Haven 2021, 137.

23 In her memoir, Hitler’s secretary, who was with the “Führer” in his last days, mentions a room in the bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery where the birthday gifts given to Hitler were stored (Traudl Junge, Hitler’s Last Secretary: A Firsthand Account of Life with Hitler, New York 2011, 68). These would likely have been looted or destroyed after the suicide of Hitler.

24 See the recent online exhibit “Diplomatic Gift Giving in the Age of Fascism – the Case of the Independent State of Croatia”, 2018, created within the framework of the international research project “TransCultAA: Transfer of Cultural Objects in the Alpe Adria Region in the 20th Century” (2016–2020), https://exhibit2.transcultaa.eu/#literature (accessed 20 January 2020). See also Daria Brasca, in this special issue (as n2) for a discussion of transfers between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

25 For recent debates about the Etruscan versus medieval chronology of the bronze statue, see Anna Maria Carruba, La lupa capitolina: un bronzo medievale, Rome 2006; Gilda Bartoloni, ed., La lupa capitolina: nuove prospettive di studio. Incontro-dibattito in occasione della pubblicazione del volume di Anna Maria Carruba, “La lupa capitolina: un bronzo medievale”, La Sapienza, Università di Roma, 28 febbraio 2008, Rome 2010 (= Monografie della rivista Archeologica classica, 5); Maria Radnóti-Alföldi, Edilberto Formigli and Johannes Fried, Die römische Wölfin: ein antikes Monument stürzt von seinem Sockel, Stuttgart 2011; Dale Kinney, “Book Review of The Lupa Romana: An Antique Monument Falls from Her Pedestal, by Alföldi, Formigli and Fried (2011)”, in: Speculum 88 (2013), no. 4, 1063-1065.

26 Thomas Mannack, “An Oxford Reject”, in: Faculty of Classics Newsletter (2013), 12-13, https://www.academia.edu/4778451/Newsletter_2013_Faculty_of_Classics_Faculty_of_Classics_2013_Newsletter_In_this_issue_Introduction_from_the_Chair (9 August 2022).

27 Alexander Cambitoglou and Arthur Dale Trendall, Apulian Red-Figured Vase-Painters of the Plain Style, New York 1961, 35, no. 23, pl. XII, figs. 55-56; Arthur Dale Trendall and Alexander Cambitoglou, The Red-Figured Vases of Apulia, vol. 1: Early and Middle Apulian, Oxford 1978, 51, no. 42. It also may have come from Ceglie del Campo. For the history of discoveries in Ceglie, see Arcangelo Fornaro, “Storia dei Rinvenimenti”, in: M. Miroslav Marin et al., eds., Ceglia Peuceta I, Bari 1982, 47-59. For other vases from Ceglie del Campo and the history of excavations in the necropolis and other graves there, see Ursula Kästner and David Saunders, eds., Dangerous Perfection: Ancient Funerary Vases from Southern Italy, Los Angeles 2016, especially Marie Difková and Ursula Kästner, “The History of the Ceglie Vases”, 21-41. Carpenter points out that Apulian column kraters are never found in Greek tombs but always in native Italic tomb contexts, predominantly in the Peucetian region (Thomas H. Carpenter, “Prolegomenon to the Study of Apulian Red-Figure Pottery”, in: American Journal of Archaeology 113 (2009), 27-38, esp. 32, 29, fig. 29 for a map with the location of Ceglie del Campo). See Petropoulos (1996), 271 and 376 n26 for citations of the archival documents with the list of these gifts (Bundesarchiv Koblenz [hereafter BArch], NS10/6, BL 41-47; BArch, NS10/92). A large painting of a classical ruin by Giovanni Paolo Panini, which S. Lane Faison records was for a time displayed at Hitler’s home in Berchtesgaden, was also among the gifts given on that occasion (United States Office of Strategic Service’s [OSS] Art Looting Investigation Unit [ALIU], Consolidated Interrogation Report [CIR] No. 4, 26, 64, in archival data collection Fold3.com, https://www.fold3.com/image/232002499/232002793 [accessed 3 February 2023]). No such painting was recovered by the MFAA. See also Alexander Scobie, Hitler’s State Architecture: The Impact of Classical Antiquity, University Park/London 1990, 32-33, fig. 7; Max Domarus, Hitler, Reden und Proklamationen, 1932–1945, vol. 1, Würzburg 1962, 857.

28 “Stolen Cultural Artifacts Found in Berwyn Residence Returned to Italian Authorities”, 8 June 2009, FBI Chicago, https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/chicago/press-releases/2009/cg060809.htm (accessed 7 December 2020).

29 Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung no. 19 of 12 May 1938, 698.

30 Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler in Italien, Munich 1938, 65: “a valuable Etruscan vase“. On Hoffmann and his role as Hitler’s official photographer (“Reichsbildberichterstatter der NSDAP”, as he calls himself on the cover page of Hitler in Italien), see Aalders (2004), 46.

31 Theodore Rousseau Jr., the American interrogator of Hoffmann in June 1945, characterized Hoffmann as “almost illiterate”, with no real expertise in matters of art, and a “parasite of the Nazi regime” who established a virtual monopoly on photographs related to the NS party (Art Looting Investigation Unit [ALIU], Detailed Interrogation Report No. 1, in: Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Otto Wittmann Papers, 910130, box 2, folder 1 [hereafter: ALIU, DIR No. 1]).

32 See Martin Miller, “Archeologi e linguisti tedeschi e l’Istituto di Studi Etruschi prima della Seconda Guerra Mondiale”, in: Marie-Laurence Haack, ed., La construction de l’étruscologie au début du XXe siècle, Bordeaux 2015, 107-120: 113; Giovanna Bagnasco Gianni, “Massimo Pallottino’s ‘Origins’ in Perspective”, in: Jean Turfa, ed., The Etruscan World, London 2013, 29-35; Lucy Shipley, Experiencing Etruscan Pots, Oxford 2015, 14-16. The mistaken label may also be interpreted as deliberately pejorative, in light of the intense distaste for the Etruscans by the influential National Socialist ideologue Alfred Rosenberg and the framing of the Etruscans as a racially inferior and degenerate population with eastern origins—losers to the superior Romans. See Alfred Rosenberg, Der Mythus [sic] des 20. Jahrhunderts. Eine Wertung der seelisch-geistigen Gestaltenkämpfe unserer Zeit, 2. ed. Munich 1931, 63-72; Martin Miller, “Alfred Rosenberg, die Etrusker und die Romfrage“, in: Marie-Laurence Haack, ed., Les Étrusques au temps du fascism et du nazisme, Bordeaux 2016, 81-95; Marie-Laurence Haack, “The Invention of the Etruscan ‘Race’. E. Fischer, Nazi Geneticist, and the Etruscans“, in: Quaderni di storia 39 (2014), no. 80, 251-282; Marie-Laurence Haack, “Les Étrusques dans l’idéologie national-socialiste. À propos du ‘Mythe du XXe siècle’ d’Alfred Rosenberg”, in: Revue historique 673 (janvier 2015), 149-170; Chapoutot (2016), 85. The Fascists also rejected the Etruscans, especially in their history of the origins of the city of Rome. For example, in the important 1937–1938 exhibition in Rome, the “Mostra Augustea della Romanità” (attended by Adolf Hitler during that same visit on 6 May 1938), Augustan Rome was promoted over Etruscan Rome in Fascist propaganda relating to the founding of the city. See the photograph of Hitler accompanied by Mussolini and archaeologist/co-curator of the “Mostra”, Giulio Quirino Giglioli, in the exhibition (Laura M. Michetti, “La première chaire d’Étruscologie a l’Université de Rome”, in: Haack (2015), 48, fig. 10, and 52-53 on Giglioli’s biography and ties to fascism); Francesca R. Serra Ridgway, “Giglioli, Giulio Quirino”, in: Nancy T. de Grummond, ed., Encyclopedia of the History of Classical Archaeology, vol. 1, Westport, CT 1996, 502; Shipley (2015), 15; Bagnasco Gianni (2013), 29; Joshua Arthurs, “Bathing in the Spirit of Eternal Rome: The Mostra Augustea della Romanità”, in: Roche and Demetriou (2017), 157-177. Therefore, the gift of an “Etruscan” vase might have been regarded by some Nazis and Fascists alike as inappropriate and symbolic of a culture that Nazi ideologues considered decadent and inferior.

33 See below, n131 and fig. 14, for a repaired Greek red-figure kylix in the Old Chancellery in Berlin, though it may not be the same one.

34 Domarus (1962), 857.

35 I am grateful to Thomas H. Carpenter (personal communication, 19 June 2019) and Ian McPhee (personal communication, 19 November 2019) for their discussions regarding this vase and to Thomas Mannack at the Beazley Archive for sharing high-resolution scans of the photographs with me.

36 Edward G. D. Robinson, “Reception of Comic Theatre Amongst the Indigenous South Italians”, in: Craig Barker and Lesley A. Beaumont, eds., Festschrift in Honour of J. Richard Green, Sydney 2004 (= Mediterranean Archaeology, 17), 193-212: 210-211; see n114 for a reference to another vase by the Tarporley Painter with an Oscan youth wearing a tunic with a swastika.

37 Most of the works of art designated for the Linz museum were stored in the so-called Führerbau. A theft at the end of April 1945 that involved these as well as artworks that had once been acquired for the decoration of the “Führerbau”, was investigated in a research project conducted by the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich, from 2014–2018: “Rekonstruktion des ‘Führerbau-Diebstahls’ Ende April 1945 und Recherchen zum Verbleib der Objekte”, https://www.zikg.eu/forschung/projekte/projekte-zi/fuehrerbau-diebstahl [accessed 20 January 2020]).

38 I am grateful to Ian McPhee for checking the archives at the A.D. Trendall Research Centre for Ancient Mediterranean Studies at La Trobe University in Melbourne for any further information about this vase and for confirming that there is nothing else in their files (personal communication, 18 June 2018). Dr. Denis Zhuravlev, senior keeper of Greek and Roman antiquities at the State Historical Museum in Moscow, confirmed that this vase is not among those he curates that were formerly in Germany (personal communication, 3 April 2019).

39 Cambitoglou and Trendall (1961), 35, no. 23, pl. XII, figs. 55-56; Trendall and Cambitoglou (1978), 51, no. 42.

40 Ennio Q. Visconti and Francesco Cancellieri, Dissertazioni epistolari sopra la statua del discobolo scoperta nella villa Palombara, Rome 1806; Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500–1900, New Haven 1981, 199-201; Beatrice Paolozzi Strozzi and Firenza Scalia, eds., L’opera ritrovata: omaggio a Rodolfo Siviero, exh. cat., Florence 1984, 49-51; Adriano La Regina, Museo Nazionale Romano: Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Milan 1998, 130-131 for other bibliography; Hara Thliveri, “The Discobolos of Myron: Narrative Appeal and Three-Dimensionality”, in: Fiona C. Macfarlane and Catherine Morgan, eds., Exploring Ancient Sculpture: Essays in Honour of Geoffrey Waywell, London 2010 (= Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 104), 7-70.

41 Michael Krumme and Marie Vigener, “Carl Weickert (1885–1975)”, in: Gunnar Brands and Martin Maischberger, eds., Lebensbilder. Klassische Archäologen und der Nationalsozialismus, vol. 2, Rahden 2016, 207. Following the death of Elisabetta Aldobrandini on 25 January 1937, Gisela Richter sent a letter (on 29 January 1937) to The Met’s director, Herbert E. Winlock, informing him of the death of “the very difficult old lady at the head of the house”, the Princess Lancellotti, and alerting him that the sale of the Discobolus was likely to be an immediate issue (document in: The Met, Greek and Roman Department).

42 Documents in: The Met, Greek and Roman Department. In a letter dated 7 May 1936 from Baron Robert Gendebien in Brussels to William Hallam Tuck (an American businessman married to a Belgian heiress, owners of the Argenteuil estate in Waterloo, Belgium), there is a reference to other possible offers for the Discobolus from museums in Kansas City (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, though no documentation has been found in their archives to support this: personal communication, Tara Laver, 25 July 2019) and in Detroit (Detroit Institute of Arts), with Jandolo (presumably Aldo) acting as the go-between in Rome (document in: The Met, Greek and Roman Department).

43 Letter from Gisela Richter to Herbert E. Winlock, 11 February 1937, in: The Met, Greek and Roman Department.

44 Document dated 15 February 1937, in: The Met, Greek and Roman Department.

45 Letter from Gisela Richter to Herbert E. Winlock, 23 April 1938, in: The Met Archives.

46 National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD (hereafter NARA), “Ardelia Hall Collection, Munich Administrative Records, Restitution Claim Records, compiled 1945–1951. Italy Claims for Paintings Filed by Italian Government”, catalog id. 3725265, 9-14, 15, 26-27, https://www.fold3.com/image/115/269993972 (accessed 9 August 2022). The 1909 statute declared that “all manner of things movable or immovable” that are at least 50 years old and “of historical, archaeological, paleo-anthropological interest” fall under the government’s protection. In the wake of the sale of the Discobolus and other works of art in private and public hands, Italy passed another law in 1939 (Law No. 1089, 1 June 1939) to add strength to protect national treasures that were being sold and exported; see Francesca Coccolo, “Law No. 1089 of 1 June 1939: The Origin and Consequences of Italian Legislation on the Protection of the National Cultural Heritage in the Twentieth Century”, in: Simona Pinton and Lauso Zagato, eds., Cultural Heritage. Scenarios 2015–2017, Venice 2017, 195-209: 198-199 for the Discobolus.

47 It seems that it was the personal appeals to Mussolini by Hitler and through foreign minister Count Galeazzo Ciano (Mussolini’s son-in-law) to Minister Bottai (19 May 1938 letter) that pushed Mussolini to approve the export permit “for administrative reasons” (NARA [as n46], 15). See also Rodolfo Siviero, L’arte e il nazismo: esodo e ritorno delle opere d’arte italiane, 1938–1963, ed. Mario Ursino, Florence 1984, 20. See more details in Daria Brasca, in this special issue (as n2).

48 Bundesarchiv Koblenz R 43 II/1649; BArch 323/180; Ernst Kubin, Raub oder Schutz? Der deutsche militärische Kunstschutz in Italien, Graz 1994, 17-24; Schwarz (2009), 254.

49 Krumme and Vigener (2016), 209-211.

50 The historic colour slide introducing the table of contents of this special issue was taken by Joseph Eschenlohr and is preserved in the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich, Photothek. On the Glyptothek see Adrian von Buttlar and Bénédicte Savoy, “Glyptothek and Alte Pinakothek, Munich: Museums as Public Monuments”, in: Carole Paul, ed., The First Modern Museums of Art: The Birth of an Institution in 18th- and Early 19th-Century Europe, Los Angeles 2012, 304-329: 310-312; Raimund Wünsche, “Ludwigs Skulpturenerwerbungen für die Glyptothek”, in: Klaus Vierneisel and Gottlieb Leinz, eds., Glyptothek München, 1830–1980: Jubiläumsausstellung zur Entstehungs- und Baugeschichte, exh. cat., Munich 1980, 23-83; Kubin (1994), 17, 24; Raimund Wünsche, Glyptothek, Munich: Masterpieces of Greek and Roman Sculpture, Munich 2007, 174; Chapoutot (2016), 88-91, 95.

51 See Siviero (1984), 20-24. Haskell and Penny state that the French were also keen to acquire the famous statue for the Musée Napoléon ([1981], 200 n15), but I could not confirm this. The archival source cited by Haskell and Penny is a letter of 31 January 1806 from museum director Dominique Vivant, Baron Denon to Napoléon, in which he is encouraging the acquisition of sculpture for the Musée Napoléon from the Borghese collection, as well as other notable Roman statues; the Discobolus is not among them, however (Paris, Archives Nationales de France, AF IV 1050). Hitler may also have been aware that another Discobolus (the Townley Discobolus in the British Museum [GR 1805.7-3.43], found at Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli in 1791, restored with a head that does not belong and in the incorrect forward position), was used as a symbol of the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games, including on a five-cent US postage stamp.

52 Domarus (1962), 878; Spotts (2003), 209. There is also no evidence that the statue was destined for the “Führermuseum” in Linz. Petropoulos ([1996], 181-182) emphasizes that any clear distinction between state and private property was not relevant for Hitler, becoming increasingly blurrier in the course of the National Socialist era. See above n17. Thus, it is difficult to sort out what was encompassed in “Hitler’s collection”. Heinrich Hoffmann told interrogators at Altaussee that once Hitler conceived of the Linz museum idea in 1938, he gave up the idea of amassing a private collection; see ALIU, DIR No. 1 (as n31).

53 Translation by Chapoutot (2016), 176; Domarus (1962), 878. For the entire speech, see the monthly Die Kunst im Dritten Reich (July–August 1937), 47-61.

54 Original title of the relevant part of the film: Olympia, 1. Teil: Fest der Völker; see Michael Mackenzie, “From Athens to Berlin: The 1936 Olympics and Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia”, in: Critical Enquiry 29 (2003), 302-336; Daniel Wildmann, “Desired Bodies: Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia, Aryan Masculinity and the Classical Body”, in: Roche and Demetriou (2017), 60-81.

55 Photograph of 30 September 1936: “Leni Riefenstahl filming with a discus thrower the prologue to the Olympia film in the dunes of the Curonian Spit”, photo by Austrian Archives/Imagno/Getty Images, see https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/leni-riefenstahl-filming-with-a-discus-thrower-the-prologue-news-photo/503034583 (accessed 8 September 2020).

56 OMGUS, Exceptional Return to Italy, November 10, 1948, in: NARA, KND 775057; German version of the list in: Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich, 17a13/6, 51500 MK: Akten des Bayer. Staatsministeriums für Unterricht und Kultus, Einziehung u. Restitution von Kunstwerken im einzelnen, vol. 1, 1-5. See also an image of this document in Kubin (1994), 50.

57 Siviero (1984), 154-168. Spotts (2003), 209*. Both Spotts and Iris Lauterbach (Der Central Collecting Point in München. Kunstschutz, Restitution, Neubeginn, Munich 2015, 148-149; published in English as The Central Collecting Point in Munich. A New Beginning for the Restitution and Protection of Art, Los Angeles 2018, 157-158) indicate that the OMGUS decision to repatriate the statue was guided by a desire to influence the 1948 Italian general elections in favor of the pro-Western Christian Democrats. See also Francesca Coccolo, “Rodolfo Siviero between Fascism and the Cold War: Negotiating Art Restitution and ‘Exceptional Returns’ to Italy after Second World War”, in: Daria Brasca, Christian Fuhrmeister and Emanuele Pellegrini, eds., The Transfer of Jewish-Owned Cultural Objects in the Alpe Adria Region, Florence 2019 (= Studi di Memofonte. Rivista on-line semestrale, no. 22 [2019]), 198-209, esp. 200, https://www.memofonte.it/studi-di-memofonte/numero-22-2019/ (accessed 2 August 2022).

58 Interim report written by Hans Konrad Röthel, Konservator, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen (former curator at the Munich CCP, 1945–1949), to Walter Keim, Regierungsdirektor, Bavarian State Ministry of Culture, on 10 March 1950, on letterhead of the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich, in: Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich, 17a13/6, 51500 MK: Akten des Bayer. Staatsministeriums für Unterricht und Kultus: Einziehung u. Restitution von Kunstwerken im einzelnen, vol. 1.

59 Lauterbach (2015), 150; Lauterbach (2018), 158.

60 Indeed, in the report by Röthel (see n58), appendix, 4, no. 6, cases were cited in which institutions in other countries (e.g., The Met and the Louvre) had made purchases in Italy during the Fascist period and were not made to return the works of art.

61 Rodolfo Siviero, Seconda mostra nazionale delle opere d’arte recuperate in Germania, exh. cat., Florence 1950, 34-35, sala VI, no. 1, pl. 1; Rodolfo Siviero, Catalogo della seconda mostra nazionale delle opere d’arte recuperate, exh. cat., Florence 1952, 2-3, no. 2, pl. 2.

62 Inv. no. 126371. For bibliography see La Regina (1998), 130-131.

63 Puritani (2017), 114. See the online database of Göring’s art collection—“Die Kunstsammlung Hermann Göring”—on the website of the Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, 19 June 2012, https://www.dhm.de/datenbank/goering/dhm_goering.php?seite=18 (accessed 10 July 2019), where 4,263 works of art are recorded. See also Petropoulos (1996), 187-195; Günther Haase, Die Kunstsammlung des Reichsmarschalls Hermann Göring: eine Dokumentation, Berlin 2000; Nancy H. Yeide, Beyond the Dreams of Avarice: The Hermann Goering Collection, Dallas 2009, and Puritani in this special issue (as n2).

64 Puritani (2017), 164-165, no. B.27.

65 See below for more on the Naples collections brought to Carinhall.

66 Jean-Marc Dreyfus, ed., Le Catalogue Goering: Les Archives Diplomatiques, Paris 2015, 22.

67 Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, lot 3128-12. We do not know when and from which source(s) Göring acquired these replicas; the Fonderia Chiurazzi in Naples was supplying copies of many bronze works from Pompeii and Herculaneum since the 19th century, and these replicas could readily have been purchased from that foundry.

68 For a recent discussion of the runners, see Kenneth Lapatin, ed., Buried by Vesuvius: The Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum, Los Angeles 2019, 170-171, nos. 18-19. See also P. Gregory Warden and David Gilman Romano, “The Course of Glory: Greek Art in a Roman Context at the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum”, in: Art History 17 (1994), no. 2, 228-254.

69 Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, lot 3810, box 3; photographer: Ernst H. Börner, Berlin. Other photos recording the visit of Mussolini and Hitler to Carinhall on 27–28 September 1937 show the copies of the Apollo Belvedere and Diana in the background (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, microfilm lot 3128, 21-28, no. 4).

70 Artemis bust from Herculaneum (Museo Nazionale, Naples, no. 5592). Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, lot 3810, box 3, unnumbered photograph by Ernst H. Börner of Berlin. In another photo dated 27–28 September 1937, the Apollo and Diana appear in the background (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, lot 3128, 21-28, no. 4).

71 See Puritani (2017) for Göring’s ancient collection, esp. 4-6, 115-118 for his ancient sculptures, including those that have been restituted; Haase (2000), 252-253: ancient marble sculptures in the inventory of Carinhall on 1 February 1940, including the Venus from Leptis (no. 7) and a marble reproduction of the Venus Anadyomene in the Vatican (no. 12). In the inventory of 4 August 1945, taken by the MFAA officers of his Berchtesgaden residence, five other ancient statues are listed (Haase 2000, 296-297). Göring had at least three large-scale Aphrodite/Venus statues in his collection (see also Puritani [2017], 4-5).

72 In the inventory of the artworks in Carinhall of 1 February 1940, the statue is recorded as a gift of Balbo in October 1938 (Haase [2000], 253). There is a discrepancy in the secondary sources about the date of the gift. According to Nancy C. Wilkie (“Colonization and Its Effects on the Cultural Property of Libya”, in: James A. R. Nafziger and Ann M. Nicgorski, eds., Cultural Heritage Issues: The Legacy of Conquest, Colonization and Commerce, Leiden 2009, 169-184, esp. 178-180), the gift was made to Göring when he visited Libya in 1939, whereas in Luisa Morozzi and Rita Paris, L’opera da ritrovare. Repertorio del patrimonio artistico italiano disperso all’epoca della seconda guerra mondiale, Rome 1995, 27, the date of export is given as 1940. Both are incorrect.

73 Renato Bartoccini, Le terme di Lepcis (Leptis Magna), Bergamo 1929, 104-107, figs. 94-95, 98-100 (Capitoline Aphrodite statue). Maria Floriani Squarciapino, Leptis Magna, Basel 1966, 89-94: baths are no. 23 on plan, pls. 40-51, 53 (built between AD 126–127, renovated under Commodus and Septimius Severus).

74 Haase (2000), 12-13. See also Daria Brasca, in this special issue (as n2).

75 Puritani (2017), 115-116 for a discussion of the location of the sculpture collection and photos of Carinhall.

76 Puritani (2017), 111, n188 for antiquities moved to Veldenstein.

77 Puritani (2017), esp. 111-114, and Puritani, in this special issue (as n2).

78 Haase (2000), 155.

79 Theodore Rousseau Jr., Art Looting Investigation Unit [ALIU] of the United States Office of Strategic Services [OSS], “Consolidated Interrogation Report” [CIR] No. 2: “The Goering Collection”, 15 September 1945 (hereafter: CIR No. 2), in: NARA, digitally available at https://www.fold3.com/image/231998973 (accessed 3 February 2023), and in: Bundesarchiv Koblenz, digitally available at https://www.proveana.de/en/link/arv00000096. See also Otto Wittmann papers relating to the Art Looting Investigation Unit in: Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 910130, box 1, file 8, 172.

80 Puritani (2017), 111; personal communication, Laura Puritani, 11 July 2019.

81 Laura Puritani, “Eigentümer unbekannt”, in: Antike Welt 1 (2015), 35-37; Puritani (2017), 4-5: sk 1947 (number assigned to it by the Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin).

82 Puritani (2017), 14, no. 4 on chart. Other ancient sculptures are shown in this same location in 1949 in Puritani, 22, nos. 1-3. Wilkie’s history ([2009], 179) that the Venus statue was taken by the Soviet Trophy Brigades to Moscow and returned in 1958 is incorrect.

83 Morozzi and Paris (1995), 27.

84 Morozzi and Paris (1995), 26-27, no. 11.

85 Wilkie (2009), 176.

86 “Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art”, December 3, 1998, US Department of State, https://www.state.gov/washington-conference-principles-on-nazi-confiscated-art/ (accessed 8 July 2019).

87 Lynn H. Nicholas, The Rape of Europa, New York 1994 (paperback ed. 1995), 394-395. For a journalist’s report on this repatriation occasion, see Philip Willan, “Looted Venus Returns to Italy”, in: The Guardian, 23 July 1999: https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/jul/23/philipwillan1 (accessed 8 July 2019). The title of this article belies the fact that the statue was never in Italy. A press release published by the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (SPK) on 22 July 1999 (“Pressemitteilung. Die Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz gibt im Zweiten Weltkrieg aus Italien nach Deutschland verbrachte Kunstwerke zurück”) lists the Venus from Leptis Magna and the two other sculptures that were returned to Italy on that day in aceremony in the Pergamon-Museum: a draped Venus (Sk 1948), also from Göring’s Carinhall, purchased by him in Florence and exported in 1939 (Morozzi and Paris [1995], 26-27, no. 10; Puritani [2017], 4, 22, fig. 3), and a fake torso purchased by Carl Weickert for the Berlin Antikensammlung in 1941 (Sk 1986; Morozzi and Paris [1995], 24, 26, no. 9; Krumme and Vigener [2016], 211-213; Puritani [2017], 3, n13). There is no reference to or acknowledgment of Libya’s claim on the Venus from Leptis Magna in the Berlin press release (document in archives of the SPK press office; I am grateful to Carola Thielecke for locating the document for me).

88 Willan (1999).

89 Caterina Miele, “Force Fields between Libya and Italy: Camps, Air Power and Baroque Geopolitics Challenging the Geography of the Mediterranean”, in: Politics. Rivista di Studi Politici 5 (2016), no. 1: Mediterraneo in polvere / Mediterranean at Large, eds. Marta Cariello and Iain Chambers, 35-51, esp. 37.

90 Löhr (2005), 117-122, esp. Abbs. 4 and 123, showing the percentages of the sources of the collection. They were mostly purchased through the foreign art market or directly from private owners or, less often, from seizures or forced sales. The Linz database does not include coins, for example, which had apparently not yet been cataloged in Dresden by the Dresden cataloger Fritz Wiedemann. For the trade in ancient coins in this period, see Emanuele Sbardella in this special issue: “The Annihilation of the German Numismatic Market during the Nazi Era, with Some Observations on the Countermeasures Adopted by Jewish Ancient Coin Dealers”, RIHA Journal 0288, DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/riha.2022.2.92804. See Enderlein, Flacke and Löhr, “Database on the Sonderauftrag Linz”. There are an additional four or five ancient objects in the Wiedemann list of works of art cataloged in Dresden (Archiv der Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Bestand Sonderauftrag Linz, Wiedemann-Liste, Transkription Frau Köhn, 2004): fifth-century BC gold and silver diadems, sold by C. W. Bümming (10); two sculptures, one male and one female, from Hildebrand Gurlitt (25 and also in Linz database); and a bronze statuette, possibly not ancient, from a collection/dealer in Vienna (30).

91 See “Database for the ‘Central Collecting Point Munich’”, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, https://www.dhm.de/datenbank/ccp/dhm_ccp.php?seite=6&fld_1=&fld_3=&fld_4=&fld_5=&fld_6=&fld_6a=Coin&fld_7=&fld_8=&fld_9=&fld_10=&fld_11=&fld_12_a=&fld_12_b=&fld_12a=&fld_13=&suchen=Search (accessed 6 January 2022) (hereafter: CCP Munich Database).

92 For the Linz coin cabinet and weapons collection, see Haase (2002), 77-80; Emanuele Sbardella, “Die dritte Seite der Medaille: Dworschak als Sonderbeauftragter Hitlers für den Aufbau eines Münzkabinetts im sog. Führermuseum” (master thesis, Technische Universität Berlin, 2015): The coin and medal collection of the former monastery of Klosterneuburg near Vienna served as the basis for the Linz coin cabinet, with an emphasis on gold coins and medals, in general, but not ancient Greek and Roman coins in any great numbers (69-70). See also Emanuele Sbardella in this special issue (as n90).

93 Birgit Schwarz (2004), 27, 138, 327-328; these are all in album XX (XX/1-XX/7) and include a mosaic panel depicting the Rape of Europa from ancient Praeneste (see also Daria Brasca in this special issue [as n2]); three marble heads (see the Munich CCP cards in the Deutsches Historisches Museum database, https://www.dhm.de/datenbank/ccp/dhm_ccp.php?lang=en [accessed 9 August 2022] for two Roman male heads [Mü no. 1278/Linz no. 1288; Mü no. 4674]); a terracotta figurine of Tanagra type (now in the Rijksmuseum, Leiden inv. no. I 1953/3.1, https://www.rmo.nl/en/collection/search-collection/collection-piece/?object=I%201953/3.1 [accessed 2 August 2019]); and two bronzes, one of which is the bronze statuette of Luna now in the J. Paul Getty Museum (96.AB.38, http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/29495/unknown-maker-statuette-of-a-draped-female-figure-perhaps-nyx-roman-100-bc-ad-100/; see Claire L. Lyons, “A Goddess of the Night, a Roman Gem, and the Bachstitz Gallery”, RIHA Journal 0294, DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/riha.2022.2.92750).

94 Art Looting Investigation Unit [ALIU], Consolidated Interrogation Report [CIR] No. 1, Activity of the ERR [Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg] in France, 15 August 1945, digitally available in archival data collection https://www.fold3.com/image/231997763 (accessed 5 February 2023); and search of “Cultural Plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg. Database of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paume”, https://www.errproject.org/jeudepaume/ (accessed 2 June 2020).

95 See Brasca, in this special issue (as n2), for details of the locations and export of the Barberini mosaic.

96 CCP Munich Database, Mü no. 13619; Linz no. 1770. In 1949, the Collecting Points were closed and the remaining works of art were handed over, initially to the trusteeship of the Bavarian minister president, then to the Treuhandverwaltung für Kulturgut (Trusteeship for Cultural Property) in Munich, before they passed in 1963 to the hands of the federal finance minister.

97 See also Brasca, in this special issue (as n2). I am grateful to Marcus Kenzler at the Oldenburg museum for confirming the details of the mosaic’s provenance and for sending me a photo of the mosaic in its 17th-century frame by Giovanni Maria Giorgetti, made for the Barberini family. See also Ludwig Budde, “Die Entführung der Europa. Das Europa-Mosaik Barberini in Oldenburg”, in: Berichte der Oldenburger Museumsgesellschaft 8 (1967–1968), 3-8; Otto Schönberger, “Das Europa-Mosaik Barberini in Oldenburg”, in: Würzburger Jahrbücher für die Altertumswissenschaft, N.F., 4 (1978), 223-229; Odile Wattel de Croizant, “L’emblema de l’Enlèvement d’Europe à Préneste (Barberini-Oldenburg) ou l’histoire d’une mosaïque ‘oubliée’ du temple de la Fortune”, in: Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Antiquité 98 (1986), no. 2, 491-564; Fabio Isman, “Il Ratto di Europa, il mosaico rapito: venduto a Hitler, ora è in Germania”, in: Il Messaggero, 12 December 2012, https://www.ilmessaggero.it/cultura/mostre/ratto_europa_mosaico_rapito_hitler_germania-192645.html (accessed 16 February 2022).

98 Rodolfo Siviero (1984), 20-21, 35-36, 145; Spotts (2003), 210; see also Posse’s report of 23 March 1941 for von Hessen’s assistance with the acquisition of works of art in Italy for the Linz museum, in: Art Looting Investigation Unit [ALIU], Consolidated Interrogation Report [CIR] No. 4, attachment 67: “Linz: Hitler’s Museum and Library”, digitally available in archival data collection Fold3.com, https://www.fold3.com/image/232004283 (accessed 3 February 2023); and Art Looting Investigation Unit [ALIU], “Red Flag List”, compiled 1945–1946, in: NARA, digitally available at https://www.archives.gov/files/research/microfilm/m1782.pdf (accessed 20 March 2022). See also Jonathan Petropoulos, Royals and the Reich: The Princes von Hessen in Nazi Germany, New York 2006, esp. 231-239: Hitler’s art agent in Italy; 149: his collection of Greek sculptures; 233: Philipp von Hessen’s role in the acquisition of the Lancellotti Discobolus.

99 Haase (2000), 92, 253, no. 8.

100 I thank Daria Brasca for calling my attention to a letter of 12 August 1941 from Bottai to Count Ciano and Prince Philipp von Hessen discussing the exportation of works of art from Italy to Germany, including this Palestrina mosaic. See Brasca, in this special issue (as n2). See also Obenaus, in this special issue, for the 1939 law: Maria Obenaus, “Export Regulations and the Role of Ancient Objects in the German List of Nationally Important Artworks”, RIHA Journal 0287, DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/riha.2022.2.92771.

101 Schwarz (2004), 44-45; Birgit Schwarz, “Hans Posse als Hitlers Sonderbeauftragter”, in: Gilbert Lupfer and Thomas Rudert, eds., Kennerschaft zwischen Macht und Moral. Annäherungen an Hans Posse (1879–1942), Cologne 2015, 329-348; Birgit Schwarz, Hitlers Sonderauftrag Ostmark: Kunstraub und Museumspolitik im Nationalsozialismus, Vienna 2018, 204-208.

102 See Iselt (2010) for a biography of Voss. Schwarz (2004), 60-62: Voss’s conceptual plan for the museum did not deviate from that of Posse.

103 Löhr (2005), 192; Schwarz (2009), 248 regarding the notes Posse took after his conversation about the museum with Hitler in 1938. In a memo of 1 August 1940, Martin Bormann relays the information that if the Linz gallery ends up being too small for the paintings, Hitler would build a second building for sculpture. He instructed Posse to keep an eye out for “antike” sculpture in Holland and Belgium (Art Looting Investigation Unit [ALIU], Consolidated Interrogation Report [CIR] No. 4, attachment 2, in archival data collection Fold3.com, https://www.fold3.com/image/232003028 [accessed 3 February 2023]). It is not clear, however, whether by “antike” he meant ancient or premodern.

104 Schwarz (2004), 44-46: Posse speaks of seven rooms devoted to Gothic, Renaissance, southern German Baroque, Netherlandish, Italian painting of 16th–18th centuries, French of 17th and 18th centuries, and German of 18th century; Schwarz (2009), 248; Schwarz (2018), 204-208.

105 Ingo Sarlay, Hitlers Linz: Die Stadtplanung von Linz an der Donau 1938–1945, Ph.D. diss., Technische Universität Graz, 1985, 136-138; Ingo Sarlay, Baukunst im Dritten Reich: Hitlers Linz, Habilitationsschrift, Technische Universität Graz, 1987, fig. 100a. See also Hitler’s sketches, fig. 100b, ca. 1938, with rooms numbered but with no key, 100d, 100e. A detailed interior plan of the Linz museum by Albert Speer, the architect in charge of the museum project, has not been found (see Schwarz [2004], 46). For Hermann Giesler’s role in the Linz project, see Michael Früchtel, Der Architekt Hermann Giesler: Leben und Werk (1898–1987), Tübingen 2008, 284-327, 318 for the “Führer Galerie“, figs. 330-331 for undated sketches by Hitler of the museum.

106 Art Looting Investigation Unit [ALIU], Detailed Interrogation Report [DIR] No. 12, in: Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Otto Wittmann Papers, 910130, box 3, folder 11, attachment 2.

107 Jerzy Miziolek, “The Lanckoronski Collection in Poland”, in: Antichità viva 34 (1995), no. 3, 27-49, https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/artdok/1476/1/Miziolek_The_Lanckoronski_collection_in_Poland_1995.pdf (accessed 18 October 2019); Joanna Winiewicz-Wolska, Karol Lanckoroński and His Viennese Collection, vol. 1, Cracow 2014.

108 Winiewicz-Wolska (2014), appendix 6, 476-477 (sarcophagus is no. 17; Reichsliste Nr. 1) and appendix 9, 480-498 for the antiquities from the 1942 inventory; Schwarz (2018), 167-170.

109 For the ancient collection, in general, see Winiewicz-Wolska (2014), 165-173; list in appendix 9, 480-498, from 1942 inventory.

110 Winiewicz-Wolska (2014), 308-312, figs. 119-123.

111 Winiewicz-Wolska (2014), 166-167, no. 59; Schwarz (2018), 167-171, 169, fig. 54, now in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA, acc. 60, “Asiatic Sarcophagus”, https://www.vmfa.museum/piction/6027262-11346327/ (accessed 18 October 2019). See also Victoria Reed’s article in this special issue, “A Case Study in Plunder and Restitution”, RIHA Journal 0293, DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/riha.2022.2.92737.

112 Schwarz (2004), 43-47; Birgit Schwarz, Auf Befehl des Führers. Hitler und der NS-Kunstraub, Darmstadt 2014, 85-88; Birgit Schwarz, “Hildebrand Gurlitt and the ‘Special Commission Linz’”, in: Andrea Baresel-Brand, Meike Hopp and Agnieszka Lulinska, eds., Gurlitt Status Report: "Degenerate Art" Confiscated and Sold. Nazi Theft and Its Consequences,Munich 2017, 48-49.

113 See Brasca, in this special issue (as n2), and Bald Romano, introduction to this special issue (as n11), for various cases.

114 ALIU, CIR No. 2, box 1, folder 5, esp. 29-31, “The Loot from Monte Cassino”, in: NARA, digitally available at https://www.fold3.com/image/231999292. Regarding the accuracy of Hofer’s testimony, see Yeide (2009), 16.

115 CCP Munich Database, Mü no. 2408; Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, 5630. Eugene J. Dwyer, Pompeiian Domestic Sculpture, Rome 1982, 79-80; Carol C. Mattusch, “When a Statue Is Not a Statue”, in: Jens M. Daehner, Kenneth Lapatin and Ambra Spinelli, eds., Artistry in Bronze: The Greeks and Their Legacy. XIX International Congress on Ancient Bronzes [2015], Los Angeles 2017, 69-76: 71-72, http://www.getty.edu/publications/artistryinbronze/large-scale-bronzes/8-mattusch/ (accessed 3 August 2019); Lauterbach (2015), 113, fig. 111 for a photo of the statue taken by Herbert List at CCP Munich in March 1946; Lauterbach (2018), 154, fig. 159.

116 CCP Munich Database, Mü no. 2448; Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, 5625; Carol C. Mattusch, The Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum: Life and Afterlife of a Sculpture Collection, Los Angeles 2005, 216-222; Lauterbach (2015), 111, fig. 109; Lauterbach (2018), 155, fig. 162.

117 CCP Munich Database, Mü nos. 2398 and 2432; Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, 4886 and 4888; Mattusch (2005), 326-331; Lauterbach (2015),146-147, fig. 146 (photo by Inge Loeffler taken in 1946 in CCP Munich of NM 4886, with its legs and ears broken, in photo archives of the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich); Lauterbach (2018), 155, fig. 161. See the discussion above regarding reproductions of the bronze deer at Carinhall, fig. 7 and nn70-72.

118 CCP Munich Database, Mü no. 2455; Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, 5619: woman fastening her peplos; Mattusch (2005), 200-202. Unlikely to be dancers, these are possibly to be identified with the Appiades of Stephanos, the mythical nymphs of the Aqua Appia; see Lapatin (2019), 172-175, nos. 20-21, with bibliography.

119 CCP Munich Database, Mü nos. 2307, 2318, 2381/2, 2391/7, 2454; listed also in ALIU, CIR No. 2, attachment 8: “Art Objects from Monte Cassino”, in: NARA, digitally available at https://www.fold3.com/image/232001271.

120 CCP Munich Database, Mü no. 2394 includes many groups of jewelry from Naples taken by the “Göring” division; Rodolfo Siviero, Gli ori e le ambre del Museo Nazionale di Napoli. Le opere d’arte recuperate, vol. 2, Firenze 1954, 5 for the brief history.

121 Rodolfo Siviero, “Esodo e ritorno delle opere d’arte italiane asportate durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale”, in: Paolozzi Strozzi and Scalia (1984), 15-26, esp. 24.

122 ALIU, CIR No. 2, esp. 29-31, “The Loot from Monte Cassino”, in: NARA, digitally available at https://www.fold3.com/image/231999292. In addition, there is a very full account of the Montecassino incident, especially regarding the condition of the ancient objects after their recovery in Altaussee and the move to CCP Munich, in a letter dated 20 October 1945 from Ernest T. DeWald (1891–1969), an American MFAA officer in Italy and later in Austria who was responsible for the return of the Naples collection, to John B. Ward Perkins (1912–1981), a noted archaeologist and MFAA officer in Italy. In the letter, DeWald noted that the Naples works of art had reached Carinhall and were displayed there before being moved south for safekeeping; see British School at Rome, Archive, Ward-Perkins War Damage Documents, box B. On DeWald and Ward Perkins see also Monuments Men and Women Foundation, https://www.monumentsmenfoundation.org/dewald-lt-col-ernest-t and https://www.monumentsmenfoundation.org/ward-perkins-lt-col-john-bryan [accessed 12 April 2021].

123 ALIU, CIR No. 2, 29-31, “The Loot from Monte Cassino”, in: NARA, digitally available at https://www.fold3.com/image/231999292; Ilaria D. Brey, The Venus Fixers. The Remarkable Story of the Allied Soldiers Who Saved Italy’s Art during World War II, New York 2009, 28-29, 260. See also Federica M. Rovati, “Italia 1945. Il recupero delle opere d’arte trafugate dai tedeschi”, in: Annuali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Università degli Studi di Milano 58 (2005), no. 3, 265-292; Benedetta Gentile and Francesco Bianchini, I misteri dell’abbazia: La verità sul tesoro di Montecassino, Florence 2014, 83-88.

124 Göring had several Roman imperial portraits in his collection, including of Vibia Matidia (?) (Puritani [2017], B.2, 135-136), Hadrian (A.7, 28-29), and Lucius Verus (?) (A.10, 31-32), but there was no real coherence in their selection.

125 Alexander Demandt, “Klassik als Klischee: Hitler und die Antike”, in: Historische Zeitschrift 274 (2002), no. 1, 281-314.

126 See n50 above.

127 Made by the silverware factory Bruckmann in Heilbronn; for images of the cutlery, see https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-dorset-44574109 (accessed 9 August 2022); Scobie (1990), 15; Despina Stratigakos, Hitler at Home, New Haven, CT 2015, 190-192 for Hitler’s table service.

128 Vogue, August 1936; New York Times Magazine, 30 May 1937; Stratigakos (2015).

129 Stratigakos (2015), 80, fig. 25, 144.

130 Stratigakos (2015), 38, 41, fig. 11.

131 Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, lot 3940, no. 46 (LC-USZ62-135831): On the second shelf from the top on the left side is a bronze figurine of Aphrodite with her right hand raised toward her head and leaning on a column to her left, a variant of the Aphrodite Anadyomene (hair-binding) type, of probable Hellenistic or Roman date; on the third shelf from the top on the right side is an Attic red-figured kylix with an undecipherable scene, but with repaired breaks visible.

132 It is not clear whether this is ancient, a copy, or a neoclassical creation. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, lot 3940, nos. 4a and 8 (LC-USZ62-135912; LC-USZ62-135901).

133 This is the consensus of his contemporaries (e.g., Walter Andreas Hofer, his art adviser and agent, who was himself not a trained art historian: ALIU, DIR No. 9, 15 September 1945 [Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Otto Wittmann Papers, 910130, box 3, folder 8]), his American interrogators in 1945 (ALIU, CIR No. 2, esp. 3-4, in: NARA, digitally available at https://www.fold3.com/image/231999045), and more recent scholars who have examined his collection (Yeide [2009], 18). See Brasca, in this special issue (as n2), for quotations regarding Göring’s childlike delight in a dealer’s shop in Florence.

134 A black-and-white Roman or Roman-style mosaic of a wild boar hunt (Meleager on horseback?) is shown on the floor in an entrance hall at Carinhall in an undated photo (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, lot 3810, box 1, no. 24).

135 A Geometric period Greek pyxis with three horses on the lid and a swastika design around the body appears on a table in the long hall at Carinhall (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, lot 3810, box 1, no. 8). In the background is a bronze statuette of a youth that is labeled on the back of the photographic mount: “Röm. Kopie (?)”. The date of this photo is not known, though it may have been taken before the 1938 renovation and expansion of Carinhall, for the pyxis is also shown in a photo taken by “Robert” ca. 1940 on top of one of the lion sarcophagi in the long hallway, along with a Greek lekythos and a black-glazed bowl (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, lot 3810, box 1, no. 7). It is not clear whether the pyxis is ancient or a copy.

136 See Puritani, in this special issue (as n2).

137 See Petropoulos (1996), 179-240, for summaries of the art collections of other Nazi leaders. Though Heinrich Himmler’s tastes leaned largely toward German and Dutch art, his large art collection also included an Etruscan bronze helmet, as well as some prehistoric artifacts (e.g., Germanic weaponry, metal belt buckles).