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Walter Westfeld
Walter Westfeld or Westfield (4 March 1889 – c. May 1945) was a German Jewish art collector and art dealer whose collection was plundered by Nazis. Westfield was murdered in the Holocaust.
Walter Westfeld, brother of the painter Max Westfeld, ran a gallery in Wuppertal-Elberfeld at Herzogstrasse 2 from 1920 to May 1936.
When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Walter Westfeld was persecuted and plundered because of his Jewish origins.
After the Reich Chamber of Culture banned outlawed Jewish art dealers, Westfeld was forced to liquidate his gallery. He moved to Düsseldorf at Humboldtstrasse 24.
In August 1937 he was denounced to the Düsseldorf police for violating Nazi anti-semitic race laws by living with a non-Jew Emelie Scheulen (born 6 June 1896 in Düsseldorf). After Kristallnacht in 1938, he and Scheulen and Westfeld prepared to flee to the USA. According to the book Lost Lives, Lost Art: Jewish Collectors, Nazi Art Theft and the Quest for Justice, he "sold a few artworks, smuggled cash to his brother Robert via Amsterdam, and had about 250 of his most precious paintings and sculptures as well as numerous picture frames taken over the border to France with false papers. Assisting him were his servant Werner Abel, Düsseldorf art dealer and freight forwarder Fritz Beyer and August Kleucker." The Nazis, however, had enacted confiscatory taxes, fees and rules to rob fleeing Jews of all their assets, and on 15 November 1938 Westfeld was arrested for violating the Third Reich's foreign exchange regulations.
The artworks still remaining in his collection were confiscated and on 12 and 13 December 1939, auctioned by Lempertz auction house in Cologne under Joseph Hanstein. Westfeld was taken out of detention and forced to work on the catalog of the forced sale. The title of the auction was "Foreclosure ... from non-Aryan property ... on behalf of the Public Prosecutor General Düsseldorf." The forced auction of Westfeld's collection included artworks by Peter Paul Rubens, Egbert van der Poel, Antonio Molinari, Arnold Böcklin, Alselm Feuerbach, Camille Pissarro, Jean-François Millet, Carl Spitzweg, Andreas Achenbach, Franz von Defregger, Franz von Lenbach, Adolf Scheyer and Rombout van Troyen.
The Düsseldorf Regional Court sentenced Westfeld on 2 July 1940, under Director Hans Opderbecke and his assessors, Theodor Hoberg and Theo Groove, to three years and six months in prison and a fine of 300,000 Reichsmarks. Emilie Scheulen was sentenced to six months in prison and a fine of 1,000 Reichsmarks. After serving his sentence, Westfeld was immediately rearrested in 1942 because, as a Jew, he was considered an enemy of the Nazi state.
Westfeld wrote a letter to Scheulen in which he expressed his fear of being deported and concluded with the sentence, "There is not much fiddling about with a Jew." On 15 June 1942, Westfeld was questioned again by the Gestapo in the Düsseldorf police prison which wanted to locate an El Greco in his collection which Hitler wanted to confiscate the picture for his Führermuseum in Linz. On 23 September 1942, Walter Westfeld wrote his will on a small piece of cloth in his cell and appointed Emilie Scheulen as sole heir. He wrote his last words to his partner, whom he called Ihmer: "I know everything will be different after the war. So you, head up! Yet. Yet! I wait for you all over the world. 1000 grape greetings from the paradise of memory."
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Walter Westfeld
Walter Westfeld or Westfield (4 March 1889 – c. May 1945) was a German Jewish art collector and art dealer whose collection was plundered by Nazis. Westfield was murdered in the Holocaust.
Walter Westfeld, brother of the painter Max Westfeld, ran a gallery in Wuppertal-Elberfeld at Herzogstrasse 2 from 1920 to May 1936.
When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Walter Westfeld was persecuted and plundered because of his Jewish origins.
After the Reich Chamber of Culture banned outlawed Jewish art dealers, Westfeld was forced to liquidate his gallery. He moved to Düsseldorf at Humboldtstrasse 24.
In August 1937 he was denounced to the Düsseldorf police for violating Nazi anti-semitic race laws by living with a non-Jew Emelie Scheulen (born 6 June 1896 in Düsseldorf). After Kristallnacht in 1938, he and Scheulen and Westfeld prepared to flee to the USA. According to the book Lost Lives, Lost Art: Jewish Collectors, Nazi Art Theft and the Quest for Justice, he "sold a few artworks, smuggled cash to his brother Robert via Amsterdam, and had about 250 of his most precious paintings and sculptures as well as numerous picture frames taken over the border to France with false papers. Assisting him were his servant Werner Abel, Düsseldorf art dealer and freight forwarder Fritz Beyer and August Kleucker." The Nazis, however, had enacted confiscatory taxes, fees and rules to rob fleeing Jews of all their assets, and on 15 November 1938 Westfeld was arrested for violating the Third Reich's foreign exchange regulations.
The artworks still remaining in his collection were confiscated and on 12 and 13 December 1939, auctioned by Lempertz auction house in Cologne under Joseph Hanstein. Westfeld was taken out of detention and forced to work on the catalog of the forced sale. The title of the auction was "Foreclosure ... from non-Aryan property ... on behalf of the Public Prosecutor General Düsseldorf." The forced auction of Westfeld's collection included artworks by Peter Paul Rubens, Egbert van der Poel, Antonio Molinari, Arnold Böcklin, Alselm Feuerbach, Camille Pissarro, Jean-François Millet, Carl Spitzweg, Andreas Achenbach, Franz von Defregger, Franz von Lenbach, Adolf Scheyer and Rombout van Troyen.
The Düsseldorf Regional Court sentenced Westfeld on 2 July 1940, under Director Hans Opderbecke and his assessors, Theodor Hoberg and Theo Groove, to three years and six months in prison and a fine of 300,000 Reichsmarks. Emilie Scheulen was sentenced to six months in prison and a fine of 1,000 Reichsmarks. After serving his sentence, Westfeld was immediately rearrested in 1942 because, as a Jew, he was considered an enemy of the Nazi state.
Westfeld wrote a letter to Scheulen in which he expressed his fear of being deported and concluded with the sentence, "There is not much fiddling about with a Jew." On 15 June 1942, Westfeld was questioned again by the Gestapo in the Düsseldorf police prison which wanted to locate an El Greco in his collection which Hitler wanted to confiscate the picture for his Führermuseum in Linz. On 23 September 1942, Walter Westfeld wrote his will on a small piece of cloth in his cell and appointed Emilie Scheulen as sole heir. He wrote his last words to his partner, whom he called Ihmer: "I know everything will be different after the war. So you, head up! Yet. Yet! I wait for you all over the world. 1000 grape greetings from the paradise of memory."
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