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National Gallery and Courtauld ‘knew art restorer had links to Nazis’ (English)
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But Professor Kurt Wehlte was no ordinary expert, new research has shown. Just two years before the National Gallery and the Courtauld Institute of Art secured Wehlte’s passage to England, he had been involved with the German SS, and had operated “at the heart of the Nazi cultural and criminal elite”, according to an Oxford University academic.Professor Kurt Wehlte in 1930. The German art restorer had worked with the Ahnenerbe, which operated under the SS.FacebookTwitterPinterestProfessor Kurt Wehlte in 1930. The German art restorer had worked with the Ahnenerbe, which operated under the SS. Photograph: "Familieneigener Besitz"“These two institutions got him over in 1947. They knew that he hadn’t been de-Nazified yet,” said Morwenna Blewett, research fellow at the Ashmolean Museum and Worcester College, University of Oxford. “I discovered that the National Gallery and the Courtauld worked together to use this mechanism to get access to Wehlte because they thought he would be very useful for teaching and also potentially to work at the National Gallery,” she said.Evidence of Wehlte’s work for the Nazis was in American and British judicial hands by 1946, she said. “This should have deterred the British authorities from providing him with money, transport, a forum to teach at the Courtauld, potential for contributing his expertise to the National Gallery, and the possibility of obtaining work in the UK on a permanent basis.” (English)
Dalya Alberge
15 September 2019
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She describes him as “no small fry” within the Third Reich, but an individual “at the heart of the Nazi cultural and criminal elite”, although he was not prosecuted. He was mentioned in the Nuremberg trials through his links to Wolfram Sievers, the most senior figure under Heinrich Himmler. Sievers was prosecuted for his experiments on humans and for facilitating mass murder. Wehlte was also closely connected with other senior Nazis.Blewett discovered that Wehlte – who died in Germany in 1973, aged 75 – had worked with the Ahnenerbe, which operated under the auspices of Himmler’s SS and which was devoted to eugenic doctrines through the arts and conducting “experiments”. It amounted to “medical and anthropologically investigative” torture and murder, she said. (English)
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Shortly after the end of the second world war, two of Britain’s foremost art institutions arranged for a German art restorer to be brought to London so they could draw on his expertise in technical analysis and teaching.But Professor Kurt Wehlte was no ordinary expert, new research has shown. Just two years before the National Gallery and the Courtauld Institute of Art secured Wehlte’s passage to England, he had been involved with the German SS, and had operated “at the heart of the Nazi cultural and criminal elite”, according to an Oxford University academic. (English)