Josef "Sepp" Angerer (1899–1961) was a rug merchant and

art dealer An art dealer is a person or company that buys and sells works of art, or acts as the intermediary between the buyers and sellers of art. An art dealer in contemporary art typically seeks out various artists to represent, and builds relationsh ...

who acted as an agent for

Hermann Göring Hermann Wilhelm Göring (or Goering; ; 12 January 1893 – 15 October 1946) was a German politician, military leader and convicted war criminal. He was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, which ruled Germany from 1933 to 1 ...

's private art collection, immediately before and during the Second World War. Art that Angerer dealt with for Göring came from a variety of sources:

looted Looting is the act of stealing, or the taking of goods by force, typically in the midst of a military, political, or other social crisis, such as war, natural disasters (where law and civil enforcement are temporarily ineffective), or rioting. ...

, acquired using threats, bought on the open market, and appropriated from museums.

Background

Angerer was director of Quantmeyer & Eicke, of Kronenstrasse 61, Berlin, importers of rugs, furniture and works of art. In art matters he was second only to Walter Hofer in importance to Göring. Angerer used his international contacts to find art for the Göring collection and arranged the sale of the modern works that Göring did not want, thus raising funds to buy the tapestries and old master works that Göring preferred. Although he had strong Nazi connections, Angerer held no official position within the Nazi state.

"Degenerate art"

The Nazis regarded any art that did not fit with their ideas of what art should be as

Degenerate art Degenerate art (german: Entartete Kunst was a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party in Germany to describe modern art. During the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, German modernist art, including many works of internationally renowned artists, ...

. Almost all modern art was regarded as "degenerate". It was banned under the regime, seized and placed in special storehouses, and the artists who produced it were subject to sanctions. In 1938, Göring removed 13 paintings from the store of seized "degenerate art" at Kopenickerstrasse. Among others, works of

Paul Cézanne Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically d ...

and Vincent van Gogh that he sold through Angerer. German-born Dutch national Franz Koenig bought Van Gogh's ''

Portrait of Dr. Gachet ''Portrait of Dr. Gachet'' is one of the most revered paintings by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. It depicts Dr. Paul Gachet, a homeopathy, homeopathic doctor and artist with whom van Gogh resided following a spell in Monastery of Saint-Paul ...

'' (first version, 1890) and ''

Daubigny's Garden ''Daubigny's Garden'', painted three times by Vincent van Gogh, depicts the enclosed garden of Charles-François Daubigny, a painter whom Van Gogh admired throughout his life. Van Gogh started with a small study of a section of the garden. Then ...

'' (1890), and Cézanne's ''The Quarry'' (c. 1900). Koenig died in 1941 when he fell under a train at Cologne station. According to Ivan Lindsay, Koenig was killed by the Nazis, so his collection of

old master In art history, "Old Master" (or "old master")Old Masters De ...

drawings could be taken from him. Of the remaining paintings, one by

Edvard Munch Edvard Munch ( , ; 12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian painter. His best known work, '' The Scream'' (1893), has become one of Western art's most iconic images. His childhood was overshadowed by illness, bereavement and the d ...

and one by

Paul Signac Paul Victor Jules Signac ( , ; 11 November 1863 – 15 August 1935) was a French Neo-Impressionist painter who, working with Georges Seurat, helped develop the Pointillist style. Biography Paul Signac was born in Paris on 11 November 1863. ...

were sold by Angerer in Sweden and two further Munchs in London. Göring paid compensation to the

Städel Museum The Städel, officially the ''Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie'', is an art museum in Frankfurt, with one of the most important collections in Germany. The Städel Museum owns 3,100 paintings, 660 sculptures, more than 4,600 ...

for the Van Gogh and the

Folkwang Museum Museum Folkwang is a major collection of 19th- and 20th-century art in Essen, Germany. The museum was established in 1922 by merging the Essener Kunstmuseum, which was founded in 1906, and the private Folkwang Museum of the collector and patr ...

for the Cézanne but at a fraction of the paintings true worth.

Gifts for Hitler

Top Nazis liked to give each other gifts of art. When Göring desired to give

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

a gift, he asked Angerer to buy eight Flemish

tapestries Tapestry is a form of textile art, traditionally woven by hand on a loom. Tapestry is weft-faced weaving, in which all the warp threads are hidden in the completed work, unlike most woven textiles, where both the warp and the weft threads may ...

from Albert Auwercx's series of ''"Gothic Myths"'', as the Nazis called these allegorical subjects. Göring's own deals could be mixed into such transactions in order to disguise them.Petropoulos, 1996, pp. 79-80.
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Activities in Italy

Angerer was asked by Göring to buy six

in Italy for 400,000 Lire. He took a dozen to Göring in Berlin in August 1941 of which Göring bought six. On a trip to Florence, around 1942, Angerer and the local German consul

Gerhard Wolf Gerhard Wolf (12 August 1896 – 23 March 1971) was a German diplomat who served as consul in Florence during World War II. Wolf was born in Dresden, the seventh and youngest child of an attorney of family law. After serving in the military, he st ...

went on a tour of Count Bonacossi's collection. Angerer supposedly told the count, "What a pity you're not a Jew!" and drawing a finger across his throat continued "If you were a Jew, we could do just that! And all the paintings would be ours!" Forewarned of a German art raid, local collections had already removed their best items and hidden them elsewhere behind false walls. Records had been falsified and the remaining works spaced out to disguise the absences. Enquirers after the Jewish art historian

Bernard Berenson Bernard Berenson (June 26, 1865 – October 6, 1959) was an American art historian specializing in the Renaissance. His book ''The Drawings of the Florentine Painters'' was an international success. His wife Mary is thought to have had a larg ...

's collection were told that he had fled to Portugal with the help of the Vatican and that nothing of importance remained in Florence. In fact, he was still in Italy, awaiting the Allied liberation.

Post war

Angerer was interrogated by the Allies in the autumn of 1945. He was placed under arrest and his home at

Berchtesgaden Berchtesgaden () is a municipality in the district Berchtesgadener Land, Bavaria, in southeastern Germany, near the border with Austria, south of Salzburg and southeast of Munich. It lies in the Berchtesgaden Alps, south of Berchtesgaden; th ...

, which he had shared with

Fritz Görnnert Ing Friedrich (Fritz) Görnnert (18 March 1907 – 1 May 1984) was Ministerial Counsellor (personal assistant) to Hermann Göring from January 1937 until the capture of Göring in 1945. He had previously been assistant to Professor Töpfer, who he ...

(Göring's personal assistant), was searched. Thomas Carr Howe Jr., one of the U.S. "monuments men" charged with recovering looted art, described what he found there: "The house was an unpretentious villa hidden among pine trees high up in the hills above the town. The place was under guard. On the ground floor we examined the contents of a small storeroom. There were several cases bearing Angerer's name and three or four large crates containing Italian furniture. A similar storeroom on the second floor contained a dozen tapestries, a pile of Oriental rugs, a large collection of church vestments and nearly a hundred rare textiles mounted on cardboard. … Concealed beneath the tapestries were ten cases, each one about two feet square and a foot high... On each one was stenciled in Gothic letters: "Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring." They contained a magnificent collection of Oriental weapons."Howe Jr, Thomas Carr. (1946
Salt Mines and Castles: The Discovery and Restitution of Looted European Art.
Indianapolis:

Bobbs-Merrill Company The Bobbs-Merrill Company was a book publisher located in Indianapolis, Indiana. Company history The company began in 1850 October 3 when Samuel Merrill bought an Indianapolis bookstore and entered the publishing business. After his death in ...

, pp. 219-220. In 1946, Angerer was placed on the American

Office of Strategic Services The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the intelligence agency of the United States during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all bran ...

special counterintelligence Art Looting Investigation Unit's "red flag" list of people and organisations that were involved in the art trade under the

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hit ...

.Post-War Reports: Art Looting Intelligence Unit (ALIU) Reports 1945–1946 and ALIU Red Flag Names List and Index.
lootedart.com Retrieved 27 November 2014. His life after that is unclear.

Notes and references

External links

*http://www.fold3.com/image/270079957/ {{DEFAULTSORT:Angerer, Sepp 1899 births 1961 deaths German art dealers People from Nazi Germany Looting Hermann Göring