Christie’s Auction of the Horten Hoard—Tainted by Nazi Expropriation? (Plus: a “Mishneh Torah” Update)

In another case of museums’ declining cash donations because of the money’s problematic source, Christie’s had attempted “to donate a significant portion of its commission” from the sales from Heidi Horton‘s jewelry collection “to organizations that contribute to vitally important Holocaust research and education. It will be up to these organizations, if they so wish, to communicate about these donations [emphasis added].” But when I checked with Christie’s, some two months after the sales, its offer to organizations engaged in Holocaust-related research and education had received no takers.

Christie’s had made no secret of the dicey backstory that backfired: As acknowledged in the auction house’s above-linked online feature about the Horten consignment: “The business practices of Mr. [Helmut] Horten [Heidi’s late first husband and the source of her wealth] during the Nazi era, when he purchased Jewish businesses sold under duress [emphasis added], are well documented.”

That said, the website for the Heidi Horten Collection’s museum in Vienna, which opened to the public in June 2022, whitewashes the disturbing history of the forced sales:

Heidi Goëss-Horten commissioned historian Prof. Dr. Peter Hoeres (University of Würzburg) to write a scientific report on Helmut Horten’s build-up of assets and business in the context of “Aryanization” [aka: the wholesale expropriation of works owned by Jews] during the “Third Reich.” The academic research carried out by Prof. Dr. Hoeres took place based on scientific priorities. The results show a differentiated picture of the businessman Helmut Horten [d. 1987], and correct some rumors.

The expert report was published on the website of the Chair of Modern History at the History Department of the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg and is available here (German Version).

I’ll leave it to you to judge whether the “academic research” in the “expert report,” commissioned by the seller, gives you a “differentiated picture” of Helmut Horten, notwithstanding Christie’s explicit acknowledgement of the “well documented” forced sales.

That said, the commercial hype for the Christie’s auction by the Vienna museum (scroll down to “15. April 2023”) had seemed unseemly:

On April 15 and 16, the Heidi Horten Collection is pleased to present visitors with highlights from Heidi Horten’s extensive world-class jewelry collection. The 37 selected pieces of jewelry are part of the collection to be auctioned at Christie’s in May.

According to Christie’s, the Horten sales “realized a total of US $202 million / CHF 180 million, surpassing the US $162 million / CHF 145 million low estimate for these three auctions. Pursuant to Mrs. Horten’s wishes, all of the Estate’s proceeds will be donated to a foundation that supports philanthropic causes, including medical research, children’s welfare and access to the arts.”

As stated in her profile in Forbes, “Austrian heiress Heidi Horten, who was known for her nearly billion-dollar art collection, died on June 12 [2022].” The eponymous museum opened just days later.

Christie’s pre-auction press release boasted that the collection’s presale estimate of “more than $150 million” made this “the largest and most valuable jewelry collection ever to be offered at auction.”

My somewhat contrarian view about the distribution of the proceeds is this: Worthy nonprofits that are offered some of the possibly ill-gotten gains should probably grab them, without lionizing the source. After all, where would many of New York City’s most venerable cultural institutions be today, had they not been bankrolled by the “Robber Barons” (i.e., John D. Rockfeller, J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie…)?

The source may be tainted. The application of cash towards worthy purposes isn’t. If this is reputation-laundering of a deceased philanthropist, so be it.

And in other Nazi-loot news, here’s what Max Hollein, director of the Metropolitan Museum, stated on May 9 in his Reflections on The Met Collection and Cultural Property:

We have a proud history of restituting works illegally appropriated [emphasis added] from Jewish families during the Nazi era.

Actually, under the laws of the Nazi regime, they were legally appropriated. But they are now properly regarded as unconscionably expropriated from their victimized Jewish owners—an injustice that some museums are still attempting to redress.

As a palate-cleanser, you can savor the Met’s recently opened special installation of a “rare and sumptuous Hebrew manuscript [that] explores the fascinating cross-cultural interaction between those Jewish communities (of northern Italy) and their Christian and humanist surroundings in the fifteenth century”—namely, the “Mishneh Torah” of Maimonides, recently returned to the Met after a five-year stint at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, which had purchased it jointly with the Met in 2013.

As CultureGrrl readers may remember, its joint acquisition by the Met and the Israel Museum some 10 years ago preempted its scheduled auction at Sotheby’s from the collection of Michael and Judy Steinhardt. As I had lamented back then, the Met got to keep it for only three months, after which it was shipped to the Israel Museum, where it has been on long-term loan since 2007 and on view to the public since 2010, after being restored by that museum to exhibition-worthy condition.

Now, at last, it has returned to the Met, where it is currently displayed in conjunction with the Rothschild Mahzor (prayer book), which is on special loan to from the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary:

The pages of the manuscripts are turned by the Met every three months, “to allow visitors to take in their cumulative majesty,” in the high-flown words of the Met’s press release. Another likely consideration is more prosaic—their sensitivity to light.

You can see and hear more about the Mishneh Torah in this CultureGrrl Video (starting at 3:30) from the press preview (which I attended) which touted the subsequently aborted auction of that illuminated manuscript at Sotheby’s:

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