Sabine Loitfellner

Morgenstern, Josef

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:41:07 +0000

Morgenstern, Josef

Leonhard Weidinger Wed, 05/05/2021 - 13:47

Josef Morgenstern

6 June 1886 Kis-Szlatina, Hungary – after September 1942 murdered in Auschwitz

Josef Morgenstern worked from the 1920s as a commercial agent and Prokurist (authorized signatory) for banks and the pipe industry in Vienna and Amsterdam. At the same time he studied political science at the University of Vienna, obtaining his doctorate in 1928. He was friends with the art dealer and publisher Otto Nirenstein and joined the Zentralvereinigung der Architekten (Central Association of Architects) as an associate member in 1921. In March 1922 he acquired a property at Apfelgasse 3 in Vienna's 4th district, where he and his wife Alice had apartment 8 furnished by the young architect Otto Bauer. The exclusive modern furniture designed by Bauer was described and pictured in contemporary architecture magazines. An article in Innendekoration in 1924 showed not only the furniture but also various artworks, including the painting Four Trees by Egon Schiele in the music room, which was to be presented in 1928 and 1930 at exhibitions in the Neue Galerie in Vienna and the Kunsthaus in Zurich. Few details are known of the rest of the art collection, but it is thought to have included a work by Paul Gauguin, various watercolours and engravings and a library of five thousand books.

At the time of the annexation in March 1938, Morgenstern was deputy director of the Röhrenkartell-Büro. On account of his Jewish origins he was dismissed in May 1938 by his employer, Kommanditgesellschaft Kontinentale Eisenhandelsgesellschaft Kern & Co, whereupon he and his wife sought to emigrate to North America. They officially left Vienna for Yugoslavia on 13 August 1938, having hitherto been obliged to sell their entire household, including the furniture, Steinway grand piano, sheet music, books and silverware at much less than their actual value because of their dire financial situation. The Morgensterns spent the first months after escaping on the island of Korčula. From there they travelled in December 1938 to Brussels after Josef Morgenstern had obtained a work visa in Zagreb. When German troops invaded Belgium in May 1940, he was arrested, deported to southern France and interned at the camp in Saint Cyprien. After it was closed at the end of 1940, he was transferred to Gurs and then to the Drancy transit camp. On 9 September 1942 he was deported on the thirtieth transport to Auschwitz, where he was murdered on an unknown date. His wife Alice remained in Brussels and managed to survive the war in hiding thanks to her landlady. Josef's only brother and Alice's three sisters were all victims of the Shoah.

Although suspicion arose immediately after the end of the Nazi regime that the Schiele work Four Trees, which was acquired by the Österreichische Galerie in 1943 from Kunsthandlung L. T. Neumann, had been expropriated, the gaps in its provenance have only recently been closed. They prove that Josef and Alice Morgenstern issued power of attorney before their flight in 1938 to their old friend and family lawyer Robert Röhrl (1886–1952) and gave him the painting for safekeeping. The documents also show that Alice Morgenstern did not discover the whereabouts of Four Trees until 1959, when it was shown in two exhibitions by the Österreichische Galerie in Luxembourg and Belgium. In correspondence with the Austrian authorities, she mentioned details of the flight and the loss of possessions, but the fate of the interior furnishings and art collection has still not been established. Alice Morgenstern died on 25 October 1970 in poverty in a Jewish old people's home in Brussels. On the basis of this new information, the Art Restitution Advisory Board recommended in its meeting of 6 March 2020 that the painting Four Trees be restituted to the legal successors of Josef and Alice Morgenstern.

Keywords

Art collector

Nazi persecutee

Sabine Loitfellner

2 June 2020

Publications about the person / institution

Beschluss des Kunstrückgabebeirats, Josef Morgenstern, 6.3.2020, URL: www.provenienzforschung.gv.at/beiratsbeschluesse/Morgenstern_Josef_2020-03-06.pdf (3.12.2020).

Marcel Bervoets-Tragholz, La liste de Saint-Cyprien: l'odyssée de plusieurs milliers de juifs expulsés le 10 mai 1940 par les autorités belges vers les camps d'internement du sud de la France, antichambre des camps d'extermination, Bruxelles 2006.

Kerstin Jesse, Vier Bäume, in: Stella Rollig/Kerstin Jesse (Hg.), Egon Schiele. Wege einer Sammlung, Wien 2018, 198–199.

Hedwig Lafrenz Hagenbucher, Die Frau und der Schreibtisch. Vom guten und vom schlechten Schreibtisch, in: Innendekoration. Die gesamte Wohnungskunst in Wort und Bild, hg. von Alexander Koch, 35 (1924) 11, 344–351.

E. J. Margold, Zweck und Form, in: Österreichs Bau- und Werkkunst, Hg. von der Zentralvereinigung der Architekten 2 (April 1926), 225–229, URL: anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno-plus?aid=buw&datum=1925&page=243 (3.12.2020).

Monika Mayer, Egon Schiele und das Belvedere. Versuch einer Sammlungs- und Rezeptionsgeschichte 1912–2003, in: Eva Blimlinger/Heinz Schödl (Hg.), Die Praxis des Sammelns. Personen und Institutionen im Fokus der Provenienzforschung (= Schriftenreihe der Kommission für Provenienzforschung 5), Wien-Köln-Weimar 2014, 299–318, URL: doi.org/10.7767/boehlau.9783205793564.299.

Iris Meder, Fragmente zu Leben und Werk des Architekten Otto Bauer: "Ihr Platz ist in der Welt", in: David. Jüdische Kulturzeitschrift 76 (April 2008), URL: david.juden.at/2008/76/15_meder.htm (3.12.2020).

Otto Nirenstein, Egon Schiele. Persönlichkeit und Werk, Wien 1930.

Vugesta

acolono — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:40:29 +0000

Vugesta Susanne Hehenberger Wed, 11/18/2020 - 16:10

Vugesta – Verwaltungsstelle für jüdisches Umzugsgut der Gestapo

Gestapo Office for the Disposal of the Property of Jewish Emigrants

other names: VJU, Vugestap

superior authority: Vienna Gestapo

On 1 August 1940, the Reich Ministry of the Interior issued a decree ordering the Vienna Gestapo to expropriate the assets and property stored with transport companies or in public warehouses of emigrated Jews who came under the provisions regarding the annulment of German citizenship and the forfeiture of their assets. Families fleeing from Nazi persecution had stored their removal goods – from household items to linen and valuable furnishings – with transport companies for packing and shipment. With the beginning of the Second World War, goods could no longer be shipped from Vienna, and containers that had already been transported to ports remained there. With this decree, the Vienna Gestapo was interested in creating an organization to dispose of these removal goods. In addition, the NSDAP wanted to bring these goods, which were in short supply, back onto the market for controlled consumption. Karl Ebner, deputy head of the Vienna Gestapo, contacted Karl Herber, director and Vienna agent of the Reichsverkehrsgruppe Spedition und Lagerei, who stated his willingness to cooperate and to set up an accounting office by arrangement with representatives of the transport companies. It was called the Gestapo Office for the Disposal of the Property of Jewish Emigrants, or Vugesta for short (working title: VJU, initially also Vugestap), headed by Herber. It had a staff of around twenty, including several assessors such as Bernhard Witke, Leopold Berka, Julius Fargel, Anton Grimm and Adolf Wawra and was also able to employ Jewish forced labourers. Its headquarters were in Herber's office at Bauernmarkt 24 in Vienna's 1st district. By agreement with the Reich Security Main Office and Moabit West tax office, Vugesta started operation on 7 September 1940. It functioned thereafter as an extension of the Vienna Gestapo, although representing the interests of transport companies and operating within the private economy. In return for its work, it was paid 2 per cent, later 3 per cent, of the proceeds. In addition, the overheads and storage costs until the goods were disposed of were also to be refunded. In the following years, Vugesta staff disposed of the removal goods of around 5,000 families for the benefit of the Reich treasury. The transport companies storing the removal goods had first to report to Vugesta, which checked the data and obtained information with the aid of political dockets issued by the Gestapo from various institutions such as the central registration office, housing department and tax office to determine whether the removal goods were subject to seizure. The files were then presented to the Gestapo. Once the goods had been declared seized, Vugesta could dispose of them. Seized goods were sold initially at auctions organized by the Dorotheum. As it could not handle the huge amounts of household goods and to make these goods accessible at a reasonable price to others, from early 1941 Vugesta organized private sales in the Rotunde in the Vienna Prater, and then in the Vienna exhibition centre and Sophiensäle. Goods with an estimated value of over 1,000 Reichsmarks were passed on to the Dorotheum. The group allowed to participate in the private sales was limited, with socially deprived and large families being given priority – as an example of the Nazi welfare policy. But members of the transport companies, Gestapo, Vugesta and NSDAP also benefited from the massive redistribution of household items. In this way, art and cultural objects that had already been released for export once again came under the control of the Nazi regime. The sales were subject to the "Führervorbehalt" ("Führer reserve"). If this was not applied, others had their turn. Cronyism flourished: high-up Nazis and their favourites and those connected with Vugesta and the Gestapo acquired furniture, antiques and works of art very cheaply. Assessors such as Bernhard Witke, Anton Grimm and Leopold Berka, who had their own antiques businesses alongside their work for Vugesta, filled their depots with seized removal goods. Pictures were sold by Vugesta in the premises of the former Hagenbund in Zedlitzgasse and in those of the Reichsstatthalterei at Herrengasse 13 in the 1st district. When the systematic deportation of Viennese Jews started later, the possessions they left behind in the Sammelwohnungen (collective apartments) they had been herded into were sold if not directly by Vugesta then by an affiliated organization, Möbelverwertungsstelle Krummbaumgasse, headed by the two assessors Bernhard Witke and Anton Grimm. Some business ran through Vugesta, such as the payment of workers and secretaries at Möbelverwertungsstelle Krummbaumgasse. Herber had apparently refused to take responsibility for the sale and processing of the deportees' possessions, and Karl Ebner therefore assigned this task directly to Bernhard Witke. In the case of the collection belonging to Gisela and Ernst Pollack – who were Herber's neighbours – Herber showed fewer scruples. He took responsibility for clearing their valuable interior furnishings after their deportation in June 1942 and acquired numerous works of art for himself in this way.

It is not clear when Vugesta closed down. The private sales probably ended in late 1943/early 1944 and the activity of Vugesta as a whole at the end of 1944. It is estimated that goods worth 10 million Reichsmarks were sold through the Dorotheum and 5 million Reichsmarks in private sales. Only one file and the associated ledgers have remained as historical source material. They contain the names and addresses of the former owners and a summary list of the proceeds of auctions in the Dorotheum and private sales; only in rare instances are the buyers or the precise date of the sale mentioned. Even today not all of the accounts, figures and payment codes have been deciphered. Because of the paucity of original sources, other source material needs to be consulted to investigate Vugesta, in particular the files of the Volksgericht trials after 1945 of members of Vugesta and the Gestapo.

Provenance research today is hampered by the absence of source documents and the massive redistribution by Vugesta, which was involved in the "disposal" of countless Viennese art collections, including those of Bernhard Altmann, Richard Beer-Hofmann, Hugo Blitz, Oscar Bondy, Caroline Czeczowiczka, Hans Engel, Ernst Egger, Josef Freund, Elsa Gall, Robert Gerngross, Daisy Hellmann, Bruno Jellinek, Siegfried Kantor, Gottlieb Kraus, Klara Mertens, Moriz und Stefan Kuffner, Stefan Mautner, Oskar Reichel, Louise Simon and Siegfried Trebitsch. Practically all Austrian state and provincial museums and collections obtained artworks from Vugesta during the Nazi era, and even today items appear on the art market that belonged to the removal goods of emigrated Jews.

Keywords

"Führer reserve"

Auctioning

Nazi asset expropriation

Sabine Loitfellner

29 May 2019

Publications about the person / institution

Gabriele Anderl/Edith Blaschitz/Sabine Loitfellner/Mirjam Triendl/Niko Wahl, "Arisierung" von Mobilien (= Veröffentlichungen der Österreichischen Historikerkommission. Vermögensentzug während der NS-Zeit sowie Rückstellungen und Entschädigungen seit 1945 in Österreich 15), Wien-München 2004, URL: hiko.univie.ac.at/PDF/15.pdf (3.12.2020).

Sabine Loitfellner, Arisierungen während der NS-Zeit und ihre justizielle Ahndung vor dem Volksgericht Wien 1945–1955. Voraussetzungen – Analyse – Auswirkungen, Diplomarbeit Universität Wien 2000.

Sabine Loitfellner, Die Rolle der Verwaltungsstelle für jüdisches Umzugsgut der Gestapo (Vugesta) im NS-Kunstraub, in: Gabriele Anderl/Alexandra Caruso (Hg.), NS-Kunstraub in Österreich und die Folgen, Innsbruck-Wien-Bozen 2005, 110–120.

Sabine Loitfellner/Monika Wulz, Dorotheum und Vugesta als Institutionen der NS-Kunstenteignung, in: Ingrid Bauer/Helga Embacher (Hg.), Sechster Österreichischer Zeitgeschichtetag 2003, Innsbruck 2004, 209–213.