El Greco - Portrait of a Gentleman, Julius Priester

Julius Priester (born 4 September 1870 in Wolschy,

Bohemia Bohemia ( ; cs, Čechy ; ; hsb, Čěska; szl, Czechy) is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. Bohemia can also refer to a wider area consisting of the historical Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by the Bohem ...

; died 6 February 1955 in Acapulco de Juárez, Guerrero, México) was a wealthy Jewish industrialist and art collector in Vienna whose properties and art collection were looted by the

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

Early life

Julius Priester, born on 4 September 1870 in Wolschy, Bohemia, was an art collector, a banker, an industrialist and President of the Petroleumgesellschaft Galizin GmbH, also known as the Anglo-Galician Company. A collector of Old Master paintings, he displayed them in his office and in his home in Vienna in the 1920s.

Art collection

Priester's art collection included El Greco, Cranach, Rubens, Van Dyke and many other important artists.

Nazi persecution

Austria joined Nazi Germany in the

Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germany ...

of 1938. Persecution of Jews began immediately. Priester fled to Mexico Camilla Priester (née Robicek). Everything in his apartment was packed up and stored with Speditionsfirma Max Föhr.

On 11 May 1939 the contents of the apartment were valued and inventoried under the supervision of the Gestapo and the Customs Investigation Office, in the presence of civil servants of the Zentralstelle für Denkmalschutz (Austrian Heritage Office) and three appraisers from Vienna's Dorotheum auction house, one of them named Bernhard Wittke who was also an SS officer and agent of the Gestapo.... On 11 February 1944 the Priester collection was forcibly removed in six trucks by the Gestapo

In February 1944, Mr. Priester's possessions including paintings were seized by the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...

from Max Föhr's depot in Vienna.The Austrian Nazi looting organization, the

VUGESTA The Vugesta (also VUGESTAP) for “''Vermögens-Umzugsgut von der Gestapo''" ("Property Removed by the Gestapo") was a Nazi looting organization in Vienna that from 1940 to 1945 seized the possessions of 5,000-6,000 Viennese Jews. It was a key pl ...

, the "Verwertungsstelle für jüdisches Umzugsgut der Gestapo", is thought to have been involved in the seizure of Priester's collection.

Lawsuits and restitutions

As soon as World War II ended, in 1945, Priester started trying to recover his stolen art collection. The process was exceedingly slow and difficult. On 20 May 1947 Max Föhr, through Mr. Priester's solicitor Dr. Erich Goglia, filed a report with the Austrian authorities which included a list of 51 paintings still in Priester's possession as of 4 May 1937. Mr. Priester had sent photographs of his paintings to his secretary Mrs. Geiringer and his solicitor Mr. Hunna after the war. Together with the photographs, Mr. Priester also sent them a list of his paintings. They brought this matter to the attention of the police in Vienna, who as a result published pictures in a police circular dated 21 May 1954. In 1953 the Rubens painting, Man with a fur coat, was found by the Vienna police in the ownership of Julius Strecker, a former appraiser for the Gestapo, who had bought it from Vienna art dealer Josef Hofmann-Altenheim in the summer of 1951. Swiss customs seized it from the shipping company Weltifurrer in Zurich. Other paintings from Priester's collection that were located in the 1950s include the Cranach Madonna with veil and child, among others.

In 2005 the Brouwer was discovered for sale at Hampel auction house in Munich, and in 2006 'Portrait of a man' by the Master of Frankfurt was identified for sale at Christie's London. In 2013 the Van Orley was located for sale at Christie's New York attributed to Sittow

In 2004, the

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, or VMFA, is an art museum in Richmond, Virginia, United States, which opened in 1936. The museum is owned and operated by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Private donations, endowments, and funds are used for the su ...

in Richmond restituted Corneille de Lyon's ''Portrait of Jean d'Albon'' (1539) to Priester's heirs. In 2015

El Greco Domḗnikos Theotokópoulos ( el, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος ; 1 October 1541 7 April 1614), most widely known as El Greco ("The Greek"), was a Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El G ...

's ''Portrait of a Gentleman'' was restituted, after its false provenance was discovered to conceal the Nazi looting of Priester. Priester's name had been omitted and the name of a collector who never owned the painting, Ritter von Schoeller, had been inserted in the owership history of the painting, which had, in reality, transited via the Gestapo appraiser Bernhard Wittke to Sanct Lucas gallery, owned by art dealer Frederick Mont, Rudolf Heinemann's Pinakos Gallery, the Knoedler Galleries and a Swiss Trust company before reaching a dealer in New York. Many artworks from the collection have not been located, including those by

Rubens Sir Peter Paul Rubens (; ; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640) was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque traditio ...

and Van Dyck.

Philanthropy

According to ANA GARDUÑO, Julius Priester donated several paintings to the Museo Nacional de San Carlos.

References

External links

Report of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies 2014–2015
{{DEFAULTSORT:Priester, Julius Austrian art collectors Patrons of the arts Jewish art collectors 1870 births 1954 deaths