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Kurt Walter Bachstitz
Kurt Walter Bachstitz was an internationally renowned German-Austrian art dealer. He was born in Breslau (then Germany), or in Raipoltenbach (Austria), on the 4th October, 1882 and died in The Hague in 1949. Bachstitz was of Jewish origin and held Austrian nationality. He lived in Vienna and in Berlin and he created an internationally known company with art galleries in The Hague, New York City and Berlin. The Dutch company, known as “Kunsthandel K.W. Bachstitz (Bachstitz Gallery) N.V.” was established in The Hague in 1920. He married Elfriede Pesé with whom he had two children – a son Walter Werner Michael  who died in Switzerland in the 1940s  and a daughter, Margit Martha  who died in South Africa in 1982. His marriage to Elfriede was unsuccessful and in 1918 Bachstitz married his second wife, Elisa (“Lilly”) Emma Hofer. With the onset of war, he decided to leave Berlin and in 1938 Bachstitz moved to The Hague with his wife. Lilly was a German and was not Jewish. She was the sister of art dealer Walter Andreas Hofer who managed the Gallery in The Hague for a while and subsequently became an art buyer for Herman Göring.

National Socialism
After the surrender of the Netherlands the persecution of the Jews, including Bachstitz, increased. In 1941 Bachstitz officially resigned as supervisory director of the Bachstitz Gallery and his non-Jewish wife became the Managing Director. Together with his wife, he continued to provide a clandestine management role. In this way, they avoided having the Gallery placed under the administration of a “Verwalter” for the duration of the war. Furthermore, the couple had their marriage dissolved in September 1943 to prevent the confiscation of the gallery by the occupying authority. After the war, the couple was again registered as officially married. In 1942 Bachstitz was summoned by the occupation  authority (the “Wirtschaftsamt”) as he had failed to register the gallery as “non-Aryan property”. Proceedings were commenced against him and he was arrested by the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) in July 1943 and imprisoned in the Scheveningen prison in The Hague. Fortunately, due to his marriage to Hofer’s sister and as Hofer had influence as an art supplier to the German art market, Bachstitz was released a week later. He was also exempted from wearing the Star of David on account of his importance as art dealer for Hitler’s “Fuerermuseum” notwithstanding the secret support that he and his wife were providing for Jews trying to escape the authorities, (according to the documents in the file concerning his successful application to become a Dutchman after the war (ministerie van justitie (1915-1955) inv. No. 13533 1646)). In 1944, with the help of his brother-in-law, Andreas Hofer, Bachstitz managed to obtain permission to leave the Netherlands and he immigrated to Switzerland. Hofer was, by that time, curator of the art collections of Hermann Göring and wielded sufficient influence to convince Göring that he should authorise Bachstitz’s immigration to Switzerland. In return Bachstitz had to hand over a number of works of art to Hermann Göring, among them the painting “Samson and Delilah” by Jan Steen (US-NARA, RG 260, M1946. Roll 127. Restitution Research Records. Göring, Hermann: Notes on Purchases. Page 65).

Restitution
After the war The Netherlands restituted the painting by Jan Steen (NL-HaNA, Stichting Nederlands Kunstbezit (SNK), 2.08.42). In 2009 the painting “Roman Capriccio” by Pietro Capelli was restored to Kurt Walter Bachstitz’ grandchildren. In July 2013 the “Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz” restituted a Tyrolean gothic wall-mounted writing slate (ca. 1500) and a large 16th century Italian bronze mortar. Kurt Walter Bachstitz’ grandchildren are still searching for many works of art that were lost due to persecution.