Ferdinand Möller

Ferdinand Möller (15 October 1882 - 12 January 1956) was one of Hitler's Nazi art dealers specialized in selling looted "Degenerate art".

A high-profile German art dealer and gallery owner, Möller's career was at its height through the years of the German Republic. After 1933, being neither Jewish nor among those identified by the party as a government opponent, he remained a leading figure in the German arts world, although the nature of the arts business was transformed during the Hitler years: in or soon after 1937 Möller was obliged to end his involvement with organising art exhibitions. He remained active as an art dealer of traditional and modern works throughout his life. In 1938 Möller became one of four leading art dealers mandated to dispose of art works confiscated in the context of the government's campaign against so-called degenerate art. Many sources assert or imply that he found opportunities to interpret his mandate and /or to enrich himself unreasonably while undertaking this work for the government: details remain hard to pin down, however.

Life Provenance and early years Ferdinand Möller was born at Münster, the first-born of his parents' six children. His father, also called Ferdinand Möller, was a master builder and stonemason with his own successful business in the town. It is not known why, as the eldest son, Möller did not simply follow his father into the building trade. Instead, after leaving school in 1897, he embarked at once on a three-year apprenticeship in the books business, starting out on his apprenticeship with a book dealer at Hamm, half an hour to the south of Münster by train. He then worked, between 1900 and 1903, at Limburg an der Lahn, further to the south, employed by the publishing firm of "Heinrich-August-Herz-Verlag". That was followed by three months in Karlsruhe where he worked at the venerable "Braunsche Hofbuchhandlung" (bookshop), before moving further south to the francophone western part of Switzerland. Between October 1904 and February 1906 he was employed at another long-established book shop, the "Librairie Schlesinger" in Vevey, at the eastern end of the lake. It appears that he then moved on the Athens, working from March 1906 at another well-regarded bookshop, the "Librairie Constantin Eleftheroudakis". During or before 1907 he returned to Germany, working in the Bavarian capital till 1910 at the "Ackermann und Schüler" publishing and book trading business. The decision arose, or at least became apparent, after his visit to the 1912 "Sonderbund-Ausstellung" (exhibition), the fourth in a brief series of annual modern art exhibitions - held in 1912 in Cologne - that had a deep impact on many art lovers between 1909 and 1912 (and subsequently). He now moved to Dresden, widely regarded as Germany's arts capital, to take a position at Ludwig Gutbier's "Arnold Gallery" ("Galerie Arnold"). In 1909 Gutbier had opened a new branch of the gallery in Breslau (as Wrocław was known till) 1944/45) and in 1913 Ferdinand Möller transferred to the Silesian capital to take charge at the new "Arnold Gallery" branch there. He remained with the "Arnold Gallery" in Breslau till 1917, which was the year in which he opened his own gallery there. Despite the war, which had been under way since 1914, he was able to stage an opening exhibition of paintings by Lovis Corinth, Anselm Feuerbach, Max Liebermann, Max Slevogt and Wilhelm Trübner: works of sculpture by Alfred Helberger also featured. That same year, also in Berlin, he opened his own "Galerie Ferdinand Möller" at Potsdamer Straße 134c. The address came with its own powerful historical resonances, since the house at Potsdamer Straße 134 had been the home of the much-loved novelist Theodor Fontane till his death in 1898. In October 1919 he added a "Verlag Galerie Ferdinand Möller" (publishing operation) to his flourishing gallery business. His gallery in Breslau, meanwhile, held an exhibition devoted to the works of Karl Hofer in March 1920 and was then closed down.

He teamed up with the collector Wilhelm Valentiner in 1923 to stage an exhibition of German contemporary Art at the American Art Association-Anderson Galleries in New York City. "A Collection of Modern German Art" was the first significant exhibition of German art to be held in New York since the ending of the First World War six years earlier. For Möller the exhibition involved a stay of several months in New York The Gallery Ferdinand Möller relocated in 1932 and again in 1935, but during this period it continued to operate from prestigious premises in the heart of Berlin.

Möller clearly hoped that by combining "classical modernism" with "contemporary art" the exhibition presented by the party's own student members would have a public impact that would effectively trump the rising tide of opposition to "modernism in art" from within the party. In the event the exhibition quickly triggered an intense power struggle between the party's students and the "art-traditionalist racial purists" of Alfred Rosenberg's "Kampfbund für deutsche Kulturwurden".

The "30 German artists" exhibition of 1933 can be seen as a battle won on behalf of contemporary art, but over the course of the twelve Hitler years it is hard to discern any equivalent public victory in the longer term. In 1937 Ferdinand Möller's involvement in art exhibitions came to an end: his continuing activity as an art dealer between 1937 and 1945 took place, even more than before, "under the radar", at least in terms of accessible surviving sources. Because of his social position and his good contacts inside the Propaganda Ministry and his quiet but extensive networking of many years with other party insiders, it seems reasonable to infer that Möller never felt the need to fear "personal sanctions" by government authorities. Certainly he never felt the need to abandon his personal commitment to German expressionist art.

Degenerate art and the war years Government leaders became increasingly preoccupied during the middle 1930s with what they characterised as the problem of "degenerate art". German modernist art - much of it the work of well-known and internationally admired artists - was removed from state-owned museums and other public buildings on the grounds that it was an "insult to German feeling" because un-German, Jewish, and/or "communist". Although the resulting campaign lasted for at least five years, most of the major art works affected had been identified and removed by the end of 1938. That left the government with thousands of artworks to dispose of: some of it might turn out to be valuable on the international art markets irrespective of its perceived degeneracy in the eyes of the government. Four leading art dealers expert in the field were selected to deal with the problem. Ferdinand Möller was one of the four. The other three were Karl Buchholz, Hildebrand Gurlitt and Bernhard Böhmer. The men were instructed to sell the art works on the international market, obtaining the best prices they could, and accounting to the government for the resulting foreign currency receipts. It is not clear what instructions, if any, they received concerning the disposal of works for which no international buyers could be found. Although they were naturally entitled to charge a commission for their trouble, troubling rumours surfaced that not all the commissions earned were being properly recorded and accounted for. There were, in addition, accusations that Möller had failed to ensure that all the "degenerate art works" were removed from Germany, but had instead sold a significant number to collectors resident in Germany or, in some cases, acquired them for himself. Equivalent accusations and assumptions quickly also surfaced and have persisted in respect of the other three eminent art dealers involved: all four would no doubt have insisted that preserving important art works was far more important than following the letter of the deluded instructions from the government.

By around 1942 Ferdinand Möller seems to have drawn back from the art market, unlike Gurlitt and Böhmer who seem to have been dealing more actively than ever. However, very little of Möller's correspondence from the period 1942 till 1944 has been accessed by scholars, giving rise to suspicions in some quarters that the available records may still not be complete in respect of his business activities during the period. Earlier that same year, as the American bombing of Berlin increased, Möller moved out of the city to the summer bungalow-villa at Zermützel, accompanied by his wife and daughter Susanne along Susanne's her two children. The youngest daughter, Angelika, stayed on in Berlin, living at what remained of the gallery in Kluckstraße, to which Möller had relocated the focus of his business activities back in 1939. The middle daughter, Rosemarie, remained with her family far to the west, in the Black Forest region, where she had lived since her marriage in 1938. In 1943 the house at Zermützel was extended on one side in order to accommodate Susanne and the children. Möller had also taken to Zermützel as many as possible of the surviving art works that remained in his care at the time. As for most German families during the closing months of the war, the priority was on finding enough food and heating fuel to keep the family alive. Whatever Möller's preoccupations during this period, they may not have included much that concerned art dealing.

Ferdinand Möller foundation During the decade following reunification, starting in 1994, four paintings that he been on display at the Moritzburg gallery in Halle, having been confiscated from Möller in the late 1940s were returned to his youngest daughter, Angelika Fessler-Möller (1919–2002). She reacted by teaming up, in 1995, with the art dealer Wolfgang Wittrock to create the Berlin-based Ferdinand Möller foundation. The foundation is funded, in part, from the restoration and sale of certain paintings formerly owned by the art dealer Ferdinand Möller. It applies the capital gains generated through the increase in the value of its paintings to promoting research in the fields of German expressionist art as well as on National Socialist strategy for culture and the arts. It also supports the documentation of art works identified as "degenerate" and removed from German public collections in and directly after 1937.