February 2, 2001
CONTENTS:
- Christies art experts miss possible Holocaust loot
- Treasure seekers at both ends of a tunnel hunt the fabled Amber Room
- Online Auctions Top Internet Fraud List
Christies art experts miss possible Holocaust loot
By Joan Gralla
NEW YORK, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Art experts at auction powerhouse Christies failed to spot two warning signs that a 15th century painting might have been stolen from a famous Dutch art dealer by Nazi air minister Herman Goering, according to the Art Loss Register. Sarah Jackson, the Register's historic claims director in London, told Reuters on Thursday she made the discovery after looking at the sales catalog the auction house sent the group ahead of a sale set for Jan. 26. A Christies spokeswoman said the auction house withdrew the painting, called "The Temptation of Saint Anthony," shortly after the Register told it of its concerns. The Register was set up in 1990 by insurers and the art trade to collect information on stolen art. Christies regularly sends the Register its catalogs to double- check the ownership of art works. The Christies spokeswoman said the incident showed the system worked. Paul Marchese, the New York lawyer who represents the estate of Hertha Katz which has the painting by Jan Wellens de Cock said: "If it (a claim) proves to be legitimate, we'll make it right." Katz's husband, a Jewish doctor, fled Germany in the 1930s, he added. The Register's expert was surprised at how easy it was to spot the possible problem. In its catalog, Christies said the work in 1927 was with Goudstikker in Amsterdam, and with Walter Andreas Hofer in Munich in 1957. How Hofer acquired the work is not known. But a post-war declassified report by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services said Hofer was Goering's most important art buyer. The OSS was the agency that preceded the CIA. Jacques Goudstikker was a top Dutch art dealer. A Jew, he sought refuge in England, but died en route in 1940. "Certainly, Hofer was the name that jumped out at me, as well as Goudstikker," Jackson said. Christine Koenigs of Amsterdam attended the Jan. 26 auction at Christies in New York. "One (dealer) just pointed at the provenance of the painting (and said) how ridiculous it was to have the painting in the sale when that was in the provenance," she said, describing the dealer's reaction to seeing the names Goudstikker and Hofer listed as previous owners. Koenigs went to the Christies auction because her grandfather's art collection fell into Nazi hands after the Christian banker died in May 1941 in Cologne. Koenigs told her friend, Marei von Saher of Connecticut, about her discovery. Von Saher is Goudstikker's daughter-in-law. "All these things you can look up on the Internet," von Saher said. "If Christine Koenigs had not e- mailed me I would have been totally oblivious to this."
http://money.iwon.com/
Treasure seekers at both ends of a tunnel hunt the fabled Amber Room
By PETER FINN, Washington Post
DEUTSCHNEUDORF, Germany -- One of the most enduring but futile postwar treasure hunts -- the search for the so-called Amber Room, looted by the Nazis from a Russian palace in 1941 -- has wound its way to this remote frontier village, where a subterranean race has begun between rival German and Czech teams. The competing Raiders of the Lost Amber are equally certain that this fabled piece of plunder lies hidden in a large and long- abandoned silver mine that runs beneath the border. The dig is on, but the question is: Which side of the border has the lode? "It's not over there," said Helmut Gaensel, 66, the Czech team leader, as he stood in the Czech village of Hora Sviate Katerini and looked with near pity at Germany, 50 yards away. "I'm pretty sure that this year people will see the Amber Room. It's in the Czech Republic. I'm convinced of that." Hold on, Helmut. "It's back here somewhere," said Heinz- Peter Haustein, mayor of Deutschneudorf, as he swigged, fittingly, on an amber beer and examined a map of the German side of the mine. "They can't find it over there because it isn't there. It's here." Some scholars of Nazi pillage, however, believe the baroque masterpiece isn't anywhere because it's been destroyed. Made by German master craftsmen, the jewel- encrusted amber paneling was given to Peter the Great by Prussia's King Frederick William I in 1716. Later, during the reign of Catherine the Great, the panels -- an estimated six tons of Baltic amber -- were installed to cover the walls of a large room in her palace in Tsarskoye Selo, near St. Petersburg. There the room became one of Russia's national treasures. "When the work was finished, in 1770, the room was dazzling," wrote art historians Konstantin Akinsha and Grigorii Kozlov in their work "Beautiful Loot." "It was illuminated by 565 candles whose light was reflected in the warm gold surface of the amber and sparkled in the mirrors, gilt and mosaics." In 1941, after overrunning Tsarskoye Selo in their war against the Soviet Union, Nazi troops disassembled the room and took it to Koenigsberg in Germany (now Kaliningrad in Russia) and stored it in the city's castle. But by January 1945, with the city under heavy Allied bombing, the room was being packed up again, apparently to be moved to Saxony, according to Nazi documents. Hence clue No. 1: Deutschneudorf is in Saxony. According to Akinsha and Kozlov, however, there is "abundant evidence" that the panels were destroyed in a fire at the Koenigsberg castle -- a theory that was at first accepted by the Russians when they took control of the city in 1945. But the next year a Russian museum curator, after visiting Kaliningrad, raised the possibility that the amber panels survived and only the other elements in the room -- wood and mosaic -- went up in smoke. The hunt was on and it has lasted 55 years. Theories about the Amber Room's location run from "the Russians actually have it and aren't saying" to "the Americans have it and aren't saying." In between, to no avail, hole after hole has been dug across Europe by treasure hunters including the KGB and the Stasi, the defunct East German secret police. But Mayor Haustein is a confident man. Clue No. 2: A Nazi honcho from Koenigsberg visited Deutschneudorf in 1944. Moreover, the mayor has sources, unidentified sources, SS sources, including "Martin J.," a former SS man allegedly attached to a special unit controlled by art thief and leading Nazi Hermann Goering. Clue No. 3: Before his recent death, Martin J. told Haustein the loot was dumped in Deutschneudorf. And Clue No. 4: Elderly villagers remember trucks arriving in the dead of night in April 1945 carrying flat boxes. Four clues may add up to hundreds of millions of dollars, what the room would be worth in today's art market, according to some estimates. There would be a good chunk of money in the bank for the treasure hunters, because both German and Czech law allow for a 10 percent finder's fee for anyone who recovers World War II loot. Haustein may not be entirely deluded. The tantalizing discovery of two items from the Amber Room -- a Florentine mosaic and an 18th- century bureau -- in the German city of Bremen in the mid- '90s rekindled hopes that the room itself may have survived. The items were returned to Russia. Haustein notes, with a characteristic nod and a wink, that he got money from the German government to build a "visitor center" at the mine and thus his project has official, if unspoken, support. Like Gaensel, he is also backed by private sponsors and each side is spending tens of thousands of dollars on the dueling quests. Working with mining experts and historians, Haustein's team is stabilizing the warren of tunnels that run beneath the village -- he is allowed to search only the German side of the mine. Sections of the tunnels have collapsed -- or, as the mayor prefers to say, were blown up in 1945 -- and it may take months before the Germans get to the hidden recesses of the mine where they believe the treasure lies. Both sides said the treasure will, invariably, be returned to Russia if it is found. "We're not in this for the money," Haustein said. "This is for the village and Germany and the world." Across the border on Czech soil, Gaensel has sources, too -- unidentified sources, SS sources, including the man who met him in a Frankfurt, Germany, hotel and described the mine in Hora Sviate Katerini to "100 percent accuracy." Following a two-year legal battle with the village over rights to proceed, Gaensel began his dig Thursday by cutting through the collapsed mouth of the tunnel on the Czech side. Gaensel says he expects to know within six weeks if his tunnels contain the Amber Room, other treasure or nothing at all. His rivals suggest that all he'll find are the bones of the men who transported the loot to the German side of the mine and were then executed by the SS to ensu r e no one would reveal its location. (They know this from their sources.) But Gaensel has a fallback position. "If it's not here," he says, "there are two other places in the Czech Republic where it could be." Where are they? Don't ask.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/
Online Auctions Top Internet Fraud List
Buyers reported late delivery of goods, damaged items, and merchandise that never arrived.
By Poornima Gupta, Reuters
Online auctions made up 78 percent of Internet fraud complaints received by the National Consumers League in 2000, with an average loss of $326 per victim, the group said on Wednesday. The nonprofit consumer organization also released a report showing 41 percent of online auction buyers surveyed reported problems including late delivery of goods, damaged items, and merchandise that never arrived.
Internet auction fraud is also on the US Federal Trade Commission's top 10 online scams list and makes up 42 percent of all Internet-related complaints filed with the FTC.
"An overwhelming majority of the complaints is failure to deliver the goods after the buyer has sent the payment," said Dolores Gardner, an attorney with the FTC specializing in Internet auction fraud.
National Consumer League spokeswoman Holly Anderson said most of the complaints it received involved auctions made on popular auction sites such as eBay and Yahoo!
eBay said on Wednesday that fraud was decreasing as a percentage of overall activity on its site.
"Only one in 40,000 transactions result in a confirmed case of fraud," said Kevin Pursglove, spokesman for eBay. As a reference check, eBay now requires a seller to file their credit card number with the company, he said.
Most people who buy items at online auctions send payment in form of a check or money order, according to the survey. By the time the buyer discovers that there is a problem with the transaction, the check has already been cashed, the National Consumer League said.
Looking for bargains
But online auctions remain extremely popular among Internet users, with 31 percent of online Americans, or approximately 35 million people, participating in them, the group said. eBay alone had 22.4 million registered users in 2000, a 12.4 million increase from 10 million users in 1999.
Most of the online buyers are collectors, and the auctions bring things to the computer that they never dreamed of ever acquiring, Anderson said. "The victims that I have talked to feel some connection with other collectors. They trust them."
Anderson added that most of these people don't apply the consumer lessons they learned in the real world in the virtual world. The FTC said a significant number of online auction frauds deal with computers and computer accessories, which typically cost more than the rest of the goods on sale, she said.
Four FTC cases recently filed in US District Court charged defendants with advertising computer software and electronic goods at various auction sites, taking cashier's checks or money orders in payment, but never delivering the goods.
Recently, federal authorities arrested a man in California for using an eBay site for a fraud scheme in which people sent payment for computers, camera equipment, and other goods that were never delivered.
http://www.techtv.com/