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A Lesser-Known Theft: The History and Modern Restitution Efforts in the Spoliation of Musical Materials
- Monuments Men and Women Fnd
- Jun 2
- 7 min read
In the modern, renewed interest in the study and development of resolutions for issues related to the spoliation and displacement of cultural property during the Nazi era, particular attention has been paid to works of art, resulting in progress in the public's perception and improvement in policy regarding the scrutiny and restitution of such objects. Yet, the Nazis' appropriation of cultural objects extended beyond works of art. The parallels between the treatment of music and art in the Third Reich are striking, but the same attention has not been paid to the fate of missing instruments and musical materials. Organizations such as the association Musique et Spoliations in Paris, France, are working to bring visibility and study to this history and the need for restitution.
Musical Policy and Spoliation within the Third Reich
When Hitler and the Nazi Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or NSDAP) assumed power in January 1933, they initiated sweeping legislation to conform all facets of German culture to their national socialist standards and ideology. Like other art forms, music was to play an integral role in their propaganda machine. Nazi officials not only manipulated the arts but eliminated them as well, especially that which they deemed degenerate. To them, these corrupted artistic expressions must have been a product of inferior "un-German" people who held no place in their new Reich. Several prominent Nazi figures would drive this perverted reform from state offices and NSDAP entities.
In the nazification of Germany's music industry and communities, Joseph Goebbels, the minister of public enlightenment and propaganda, championed the Reich Chamber of Culture (Reichskulturkammer, or RKK) and its subdivisions, including the Reich Chamber of Music (Reichsmusikkammer, or RMK). For music professionals in Germany and its annexed territories, membership in this body was compulsory and being an Aryan a requirement. This state regulation would gradually exclude Jewish musicians, composers, and musicologists, among other professionals, ruining their careers and livelihoods. Gradually, expulsion from participation devolved into confiscations and appropriation when Nazi legislation began targeting Jewish property, notably with several decrees in 1938.
Goebbel's execution NSDAP policy through state functions correlated with Alfred Rosenberg's concurrent implementation of his plans to purify German culture, something he had been doing from within the NSDAP leadership since the late 1920s and would unleash abroad as the war progressed. Rosenberg was the Party's ideologue and Hitler's leading intellectual on the racial purification of German society and culture. He was appointed Plenipotentiary of the Führer for the Supervision of the Entire Intellectual and Ideological Enlightenment of the Nazi Party (the Beauftragte des Führers für die Überwachung der gesamten geistigen und weltanschaulichen Schulung und Erziehung der NSDAP, or DBFU) and assumed control of its functions in January 1934. Its levels of organization covered all forms of arts and humanities, and the administrators of these units were the experts eventually dispatched to oversee Rosenberg's operations in conquered territories.
The Birth of the ERR and the Sonderstab Musik
With the German Wehrmacht launching its Western Campaign in 1940, the now Reich-occupied territories of western Europe provided Rosenberg with a new opportunity to collect Jewish artifacts and archives for his racial studies through state-sanctioned activities. The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) was born from this initiative of the DBFU as a special project under Rosenberg's leadership from within the NSDAP Office of Foreign Affairs (Außenpolitisches Amt der NSDAP, or APA). Its central headquarters were in Berlin and its western operations extended from its western operations extended from its office (Amt. Westen, later Dienstselle Westen) in Paris. Tasked with the collection of the items sought by its namesake, the ERR bureaucratically functioned under the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (Reichsministerium für die besetzen Ostgebiete, or RMfdbO– also administered by Rosenberg– from July 1941 onward, dropping its western-only designation to accommodate the newly opened eastern front. The ERR operations under the Amt Westen were further organized into subdivisions, or Sonderstäbe, whose fields of expertise reflected that of the divisional organization of the DBFU. ERR operations which were originally mandated to collect "research materials" soon transformed into the outright systematic theft of Europe's cultural heritage.
Herbert Gerigk, a German musicologist and outspoken Nazi Party member through his contributions to the publication Die Musik, was a prominent figure in music policy within the NSDAP leadership and Rosenberg's administrator of the central music office in the DBFU, the Hauptstelle Musik. He administered the field operations of the Sonderstab Musik in the western territories from his ERR Amt Musik office in Berlin. Similar to the other Sonderstab operations, this unit would also seize materials and objects and send them to the Reich, where they would be distributed for use by Germans.
France Becomes the Main Victim of the ERR's Operations
Several Nazi looting agencies followed on the heels of the Wehrmacht into western occupied territories. The Paris office of the Sonderstab Musik opened in August 1940, with subsequent, smaller operations in the Netherlands and Belgium. Gerigk and his experts descended on the French capital, searching for the abandoned musical property of Jews, known as herrenlos, and scouring the French state collections in search for cultural objects of German origin that Hitler insisted be returned to the Reich. The height of the musical looting was during the M-Action (Möbel-Aktion, or furniture operation), which was initiated by Rosenberg in December 1941 and implemented early the following year. An offshoot of the ERR operations, the M-Action eventually functioned under the Dienststelle Westen. Its mandate was to strip all furnishings and contents from the abandoned residences of Jews who had fled or been deported for transport to Germany, where they would furnish bombed-out homes in the west and offices on the eastern front. Some 38,000 Parisian Jewish residences were methodically searched and stripped of their belongings. Some 8,000 pianos were confiscated.
Gerigk coveted a clearing house in Paris like the Sonderstab Bildende Kunst in the Jeu de Paume, yet the haul from the Sonderstab Musik in France was not as impressive as that of its looting counterpart in the fine arts, although still notable. Musical historian Willem de Vries noted in his groundbreaking research of the 1990s that, in the four years that the Sonderstab Musik operated, it transferred hundreds of thousands of music books, tens of thousands of musical instruments, manuscripts, music scores, sheet music, and other music paraphernalia to Germany. Most of that spoliated material had been shipped to the Amt Musik's operations in Berlin for sorting, cataloging, and further transportation arrangements to final destinations and storage.
Gerigk's operations from within the Reich were constantly plagued with shortcomings. In 1943, Rosenberg's central ERR offices in Berlin were evacuated to Silesia–the Amt Musik sheltered in the castle of Langenau (today, Czernica, Poland). It was the beginning of the end for the ERR as the Allies closed in from the east and west. The last shipment of musical instruments left Paris in July 1944. Many crates were left behind when all ERR operations abandoned their western offices days prior to the liberation of Paris by the French 2nd Armored Division and the US 4th Infantry Division that August.
Modern Efforts in Research and Restitution
Although cultural objects of the visual and performing arts were subjected to the Nazis' vast theft operations, the treatment of their recovery and eventual restitution began to diverge beginning in the immediate postwar era through to modern efforts. Several factors contribute to this: the very nature of the objects being restituted, the absence of records and resources due to historical events and lack of efforts to discover such information, and, lastly, the practices of the instrument market. Pascale Bernheim, co-founder of the nonprofit association Musique et Spoliations, is determined to change that, particularly with those objects and materials plundered from France.
Bernheim established the associated Musique Spoliations in 2017 after realizing that the research and restitution of musical materials lagged behind the visual arts.
My interest in the looting of artworks had been stimulated by Le Musée disparu, a book by Hector Feliciano, but I was far from thinking that musicians had been plundered too. This was in 2016. I scoured the literature. Plenty of people had written about music under the Nazis, but there was nothing specifically about the looting of instruments and musical scores. No one seemed interested. Instruments for one, have been scrutinized very differently than works of art, say paintings for instance. Not to mention they are also more difficult to recover.
Unlike many works of art, it is difficult to trace the provenance of instruments. Setting aside the deficiency of research into discovering records, the Nazi-era documentation that is available for instruments and musical materials is partial and scarce. Take, for instance, the Sonderstab Musik. Unlike the other Sonderstab operations, the known records of this unit are more summation reports on operations, not the detailed information conducive to restitution. Additionally, many ERR records were destroyed during the war either deliberately by staff to cover their crimes, or accidentally in combat operations. Those captured by the Soviets in Silesia when ERR operations evacuated east from Berlin were most likely taken back to Russia. Without the means to establish the facts of the spoliation, an accurate provenance is difficult and so is therefore any potential restitution.
In postwar Europe, Allied restitution operations were mostly focused on works of art. "Looted instruments were soon forgotten. They weren't worth as much as a painting. They were harder to trace and to identify," says Bernheim. French officials in the late 1940s drew up a catalog of property removed from France. It noted 567 pianos and 728 instruments reported as missing by their owners, a significantly less number given that an estimated 8,000 pianos were confiscated during the M-Action. The Musique et Spoliations hopes to correct this lag "piece as much of that puzzle together as possible in due course" by "establishing and cross-reference such indices and such data bases as exist; to dig into archives and to raise awareness in scientific and musical circles; to support publication; and where relevant to help new restitution and provenance procedures." Furthermore, more must be done in the instrument market, which was experienced much less scrutiny and regulation than those dealing in the fine arts and continues to operate as part of the ongoing problem.
It is the hope of the Musique et Spoliations and other advocates for the research and recovery of the musical heritage of Europe displaced during the Nazi era, that it will be restored or at the very lease recognized on equal footing as the fine arts, in a step towards righting this outstanding injustice.
The Foundation wishes to extend its gratitude to Pascale Bernheim for her contributions to this piece. For more information on the association Musique et Spoliations, please visit their website.
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