"Sermon on the Mount" by the Flemish baroque painter Frans Francken the Younger.
It is the moment that anyone who has ever watched "Antiques Roadshow," or one of its many imitators around the world, has dreamed of. The moment you present the old painting you found behind some shelves in the garage and you are told by experts it is a long lost cultural treasure, worth hundreds of thousands.
This is exactly what happened recently on German television show "Kunst und Krempel" -- literally "art and junk" -- which estimates the value of antique items found by Germans. Only the news wasn't all positive. After watching the show in November, a viewer from Munich called the local police to tell them that he thought he had seen some stolen art appear on the show.
He had recognized a piece of art, valued at up to €100,000 ($143,000) that had once been stolen by the Nazis. The last known owner was most likely Adolf Hitler himself.
The art in question was a 17th century painting, named "Sermon on the Mount" by the Flemish baroque painter Frans Francken the Younger. And this week, Munich's State Office of Criminal Investigation announced that it was officially looking into the case. It was calling on members of the public who might know how the valuable piece ended up on TV to come forward.
Bayrischer Rundfunk (BR), the state public broadcaster that airs the program -- which can best be described as part treasure hunt, part reality TV, part history lesson -- has refused to give any information about the person who brought the painting to the show. They are claiming a journalist's right to refuse to give evidence in order to protect a source.
What is not being disputed however, is that Francken belonged to one of the most celebrated artist families of the 17th century and that the painting, which is less than a meter long and just 33 centimeters wide, had been missing since Hitler's Munich headquarters, the Führerbau, were plundered in 1945.
Missing Masterpieces
When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they seized millions of pieces of art. Hitler himself was an aspiring artist and intended to build the world's finest art museum in Linz, Austria. He planned to keep the pieces he had obtained safe in storage until after the war.
Tens of thousands of paintings are still thought to be missing today -- despite a 1998 agreement between 44 countries, including Germany, that committed signatories to make efforts to identify and return cultural assets stolen during the Nazi era.
In 2000, Germany also launched an online database listing thousands of works plundered by the Nazis. Investigators now believe that "Sermon on the Mount" was one of the paintings intended for Hitler's planned museum in Linz but that officials had not had time to stow it away before the American troops seized the building in 1945. It had been missing ever since.
This is not the first time that stolen art has shown up on Antiques Roadshow-style series around the world. In 2007, in the US, a painting found in the garbage in New York was identified as a stolen masterpiece by Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo worth $1 million after it featured on the American version of the show. And in the Britain, a Sotheby's auction of a painting, by American artist Winslow Homer, first spotted on "Antique Roadshow" was called off in May this year. This was due to a dispute over whether the artwork, valued at around £100,000 (€114,000), was stolen or not.
cox -- with wires
© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2009
All Rights Reserved
Reproduction only allowed with the permission of SPIEGELnet GmbH
