The $400,000,000 Lawsuit

In 1935, Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, a prominent Jewish banker, died in Berlin. He was also an art collector, and his art wandered off in unclear ways after his death. In Fall 2008, I got a call from the lead attorney for a group of his descendants who were claiming ownership of two of the Picassos, which are now in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. They asked for either $400,000,000 or custody of the paintings.

The case was interesting. Case law is clear in cases where Jewish art was seized by the Nazis. In this instance, however, Mendelsson-Bartholdy had turned the art over to a somewhat suspect art dealer before his death, after which the pieces migrated to Switzerland, and eventually to the United States. The museums contended either that he had given the artwork to his wife as a wedding present before 1933, or that he had been under no untoward pressure to sell, and that therefore the heirs had no claim.

The lead attorney discovered several items relating to the family on the GPA, and asked if I could provide copies of them, and perhaps others as well. That turned out to provide several interesting months of research at my end as I provided dozens of relevant items.

I was scheduled to testify at the trial before a federal court in New York early in February, but as often happens, the case settled on the day the trial was to begin. The details of the agreement are sealed, though one can reasonably assume that if one asks for $400,000,000, one does not settle for $500,000.

The settlement got considerable publicity. A later NYT article reported that the judge was unhappy with the secrecy of the settlement, noting that the issue was of larger public interest.

A 1954 East German Propaganda Flyer

The actual peace treating ending World War II was not signed until after the collapse of the GDR. That provided all sorts of occasions for East-West friction during the Cold War. I've added a translation of an 8-page pamphlet from 1954 in which the GDR argues that unlike the Treaties of Bonn and Paris that further integrated West Germany into the Western alliance, a Soviet proposal for a peace treaty would benefit all Germans. It provides a good summary of the GDR's arguments at this point in the Cold War.

Bring Down the System! (1932)

Lately I've been looking for pre-1933 Nazi propaganda material. Today, I'm adding a pamphlet prepared for the July 1932 Reichstag election titled Bring Down the System! It is an illustrated summary of the Nazi arguments against the Weimar government.

New Hitler Youth Training Material

I've added two particularly striking covers of Hitler Youth training material. One is from, I think, 1934, and has a quotation from E. M. Arndt: "To be a people is the religion of our age." The other is from 1939, after the annexation of Austria. The title is: "80 million Germans live on 580,000 square kilometers." The point is that Germany is overcrowded, and needs more territory.

Why Hindenburg? (1932)

Today I've added a 1932 pamphlet titled Why Hindenburg? Hitler was challenging Hindenburg for the office of Reich President. This is one of a series of appeals from the period targeted at particular audiences. The pamphlet had a delicate task. The Nazis respected Hindenburg, as did most of the German public, so it was impossible to attack him directly. Instead, this pamphlet argued that those supporting Hindenburg from the Social Democratic, Center, and Democratic Parties were hypocrites, since they had vehemently opposed him in the previous election, held in 1925. Hindenburg, it argues, is a noble old man being exploited by those who will do anything to stop the Nazis.

Another Fake Nazi Quotation

I've added another falsified quotation by Adolf Hitler to the False Nazi Quotations page. This one runs: "Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death." It's cited on more than 12,000 Internet pages at the moment -- but not once in a book, and none of the pages that cites it gives a source. It seems mostly to be used by conspiracy theorists, and provides a good example of their gullibility. They tend to believe anything that supports their point of view, frequently not troubling to check the reliability of the information.

Wall Newspaper Posters from 1941 and 1942

The Parole der Woche was a weekly current events poster issued by the Nazi Party between 1936 and 1943, when it was discontinued due to paper shortages caused by the war. It was a commentary on current events, and reflected the central propaganda message of the week. They were accompanied by a playing card sized condensed version that was often pasted to the backs of official correspondence.

I have added two of them from my collection. The first, from fall 1941, boasts of German submarine successes. The second was issued in spring of 1942, and accuses England of being a Soviet puppet.