MA-AEGY 1, front

MA-AEGY 1

This Torso is one of the more stunning Egyptian antiquities looted by the Nazis and their French collaborators from Jewish collectors living in Paris.

Described by the Nazis as “A torso of a man (Männlicher Torso)”, it was inventoried at the Jeu de Paume museum in central Paris on 1 October 1943 as one of many objects confiscated from Jewish owners under the aegis of Möbel-Aktion. The person responsible for the description of this torso was Ernst Adalbert Voretzsch, a German archaeologist and specialist with the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) in Paris. He actually oversaw the description of all ancient Egyptian antiquities rounded up during M-Aktion in the Paris region in 1943. 

The ERR, when it inventoried the Torso as MA-AEGY 1, had originally mis-identified it as dating from the 13th dynasty in an earlier inventory dated 16 September 1943. Indications on the inventory show that the item had also been miscast as an “Asian” object. Lots of confusion at the Jeu de Paume. Apparently, there were no Egyptologists on hand, although Paris had its fair share of experts still on duty during the German occupation period. The Torso was ultimately dated to the 26th dynasty. 

Back of ERR card

ERR inventory page for MA-AEGY 1

mention of torso in Bernheim-Jeune restitution file

Shortly therafter, the ERR packed up the torso and sent it to one of its depots in Seisenegg, near Amstetten (Austria) on 18 November 1943. The looted objects stored at Seisenegg were eventually repatriated to France. As a M-Aktion piece, it was not obvious to identify the rightful owner. But eventually, the torso was restituted on 14 June 1950 to Jean Bernheim-Jeune, the heir of the Bernheim-Jeune gallery and inventory.

Fast forward 60 years…

On 5 June 2013, the Torso came up for sale in a Paris auction house, Boisgirard-Antonini, as a 30th dynasty piece, thus contradicting earlier appraisals of the object performed by French and German specialists. It allegedly broke a record. The Torso was then shown at TEFAF-Maastricht Art Fair in March 2014. Throughout this period, questions about the status of the object came up. Although the Paris auction house was aware that the object had been looted during WWII, those showing the piece at TEFAF wanted to be certain about its entire history.

The Paris-based Bernheim-Jeune family of art dealers and collectors had owned the Torso in the early part of the 20thcentury. The question then became: did they own the piece at the time of its confiscation by Möbel-Aktion agents?

Further research was necessary to ascertain that, in fact, the victim was Bernheim-Jeune. The family’s own restitution claim and recovery documents confirmed their ownership of the piece. The Torso had been on view atop a fireplace mantle at the Bernheim-Jeune residence in Paris up to the time of its seizure. The complication resided in the fact that those responsible for the seizure were French Fascists who had taken over the Bernheim-Jeune residence. The Torso was transferred at some point to the Nazi authorities in Paris and catalogued as a Möbel-Aktion piece. All of this makes little sense but the events speak for themselves.

This story of a restituted object being sold on the art market decades after its confiscation and restitution attests to the diligence exercised by those who handled the Torso in 2013 and 2014 in ascertaining the proper facts surrounding the object’s history prior to selling it.

Sources:

Bundesarchiv B323 series, Koblenz

Publications where the Torso appeared:

L’Art moderne et quelques aspects de l’art d’autrefois: cent-soixante-treize
planches d’après la collection privée de MM. J. & G. Bernheim-Jeune: poèmes de
Henri de Régnier, I-II, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, 1919, p. 5 (vol. I),
pl. 173 (vol II).

J. J. Clère, `Autobiographie d’un général, gouverneur de la Haute Égypte à
l’époque saïte’, Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 83,
1983, pp. 85-100, pls IX-XII.

H. de Meulenaere, `Un général du Delta, gouverneur de la Haute Égypte’,
Chronique d’Égypte: Bulletin périodique de la Fondation Égyptologique Reine
Élisabeth, 61, 1986, p. 203-210.

Shorter, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 11, 1925, pp. 78-79.
H. Kees,`Der angebliche Titel “Vorsteher der südlichen Türöffnung (von
Elephantine)”‘, Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde, 70,
1934, p. 86, n. 5.

E. Otto, Die biographischen Inschriften der ägyptischen Spätzeit, Leiden,
1954, p. 92 and p. 128.

Wörterbuch Die Belegstellen, II-V, 1937-1953 where the inscription is cited
several times; for the references, see Clère op. cit., p. 86.