Alois Miedl

Alois Miedl (3 March 1903 – 11 June 1970) was a naturalized Dutch art dealer, originally a German Nazi banker, born in Munich, who had moved to and was mainly active in the Netherlands, involved with the sales of properties stolen from Jews who had fled or had been deported.

Early life Alois Miedl was born in 1903 in Munich as son to Alois Miedl and Maria Streicher. His father owned a dairy farm. Alois Miedl married Theodore "Dorie" Fleischer, a Jewish girl with whom he had two children, Ruth Marie (born 1925) and Hanns Alois (born 1933). From 1920 to 1924, Alois worked at the bank of Heinrich and Hugo Marx in Munich, and from 1924 to 1929 at the bank Witzig & Co., also in Munich. In 1930 he became a director of the Berlin Schantung-Handelaktiengeselschaft, and in 1932 he moved to the Netherlands as director of Veland, a subsidiary of the Berlin company. At the same time, he was director of a number of companies in Germany and elsewhere. He was an avid mountaineer. He moved to the Netherlands in 1932, because of his new function there, but probably also because he feared for the security of his Jewish wife in Germany.

Nazi connections Before the war, the Miedls frequented the richest Jewish families in Amsterdam, where they had moved to from Munich in 1932. At the same time, he was a friend of many prominent Nazi leaders, including Hermann Göring and Ferdinand aus der Fünten, the head of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Amsterdam. He even stayed several times at Hitler's residence Berghof in Berchtesgaden.

Second World War Right from the start of the war, Miedl tried to acquire art works from Jewish owners, threatening them that they had the choice between selling to him at severely reduced prices, or being looted by the Gestapo. Many Jews, not seeing any way out, agreed to the blackmail.

Miedl also dealt with non-Jewish collectors. He bought a collection of 19 old master paintings from German banker Franz Koenigs in 1941: 9 Rubens paintings from it were sold by Miedl to Göring. from the Belgian art collector Émile Renders, he bought 12 old Flemish works, including works attributed to Hans Memling and to Rogier van der Weyden. 6 Works were sold to Göring, the other half was kept by Miedl.

In 1942, Miedl bought Christ with the Adulteress, a painting supposedly by Johannes Vermeer but actually a forgery by Han van Meegeren, for 1.65 million Dutch guilders. He then sold it to Hermann Göring in exchange for an undisclosed sum of money and 150 other looted paintings, 54 of them originally from the Goudstikker collection, totalling about 2 million guilders worth. to have a constant supply of wood for Germany, or alternatively as a foothold to spy on Canada or the United States. It failed when Canada disallowed the sale for fear of espionage. He also was said to have attempted to buy a gold mine in the Dutch East Indies,

In July 1944, Miedl remained in Spain and negotiated a deal with the Dutch authorities, who confiscated valuables worth about 1.8 million guilders, and some 150 pictures left by Miedl in the Netherlands when he fled. Other paintings acquired by Miedl were kept in banks in Berlin, and in Switzerland. The works in Switzerland, which included 4 paintings by Paul Cézanne and Van Gogh's Self portrait with bandaged ear, all previously owned by French art dealer and Jew Paul Rosenberg, were confiscated in 1945. The works in Germany were also recovered and claimed by the Dutch government. He died in Munich on June 11, 1970.