Adolphe Schloss
Adolphe Schloss was born in 1842 into a Jewish family in Fürth, Lower Bavaria. In the 1870s, he relocated to Paris, where he married Mathilde Lucie Haas and established the firm “Adolphe Schloss Fils & Cie, Commissionnaires Exportateurs.” He quickly rose to prominence as a broker of goods and commodities for major department stores in France and North America. His success in business earned him recognition as a trusted advisor to the French government on matters of foreign trade.
With the wealth he amassed and in keeping with the tastes of the upper classes of his time, he and his wife began assembling what would become one of the most important private art collections in France. Schloss built strong relationships with a network of prominent European art dealers, including François Kleinberger and Charles Sedelmeyer, who supplied him with high-quality works. Schloss often traded prints, drawings, and paintings in lieu of payment to acquire pieces that better suited his vision. His collection focused primarily on 17th-century Dutch and Flemish painting, enriched by a selection of early Northern European masters, and complemented by a handful of Italian and French works.
The Schloss Collection
All the paintings were prominently displayed throughout the family’s Parisian residence at 38 Avenue Henri-Martin. Covering the walls from floor to ceiling, the artworks were arranged in a dense, mirrored, symmetrical style. They were not grouped by school, but loosely organized by subject and size.
Still lifes featuring fruits and vegetables adorned the dining room. The living room was decorated with works by early Italian and Northern Renaissance painters, while a long gallery showcased the great Flemish and Dutch masters alongside an extensive reference library. Even chairs were placed in the house to allow visitors to sit and contemplate the paintings at leisure.
Schloss’s collection included works by major figures such as Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Gerard Dou, Salomon van Ruysdael, Aelbert Cuyp, and Jan Steen. But also by lesser-known artists who were rarely represented in French collections, such as Pieter van Asch, Joost van Geel, Pieter Gerritsz van Roestraeten, and David Rijckaert III. The great Flemish masters, Rubens, Jacob Jordaens, Adriaen Brouwer, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and David Teniers the Younger, also featured prominently in the gallery. In addition, several important Early Netherlandish painters, often referred to as the “Flemish Primitives,” were part of the collection, notably Petrus Christus.
Inheritance
At the time of Adolphe Schloss’s death in 1910, the collection comprised 333 paintings. It was inherited by his widow, Lucie Schloss, who continued to preserve the collection until her death in 1938. At that point, ownership passed to their four children: Marguerite, Henry, Juliette, and Lucien.
In August 1939, as the threat of German bombardments loomed, the Schloss family discreetly relocated the collection out of Paris. The 333 paintings were carefully packed into crates labeled as the property of Dr. Paul-Émile Weil, Juliette’s husband, in order to hide the identity of the true owners. Among the works were not only paintings from the Schloss collection, but also those belonging to Weil himself. A general moving company transported the crates to the Château de Chambon, a modest castle located in Tulle and owned by the Jordaan Bank of Paris. The family hoped to place the artworks safely out of reach, while they themselves dispersed and sought refuge in the south of France.
A Nazi Obsession
By the time the war began, the Schloss collection was already well known among European art collectors and dealers, and highly coveted by Adolf Hitler himself. The collection was of special interest for his grandiose project of the Führermuseum in Linz.
From an aesthetic perspective, the works aligned perfectly with Nazi ideals of cultural supremacy, showcasing Northern European art as the pinnacle of “Aryan” creativity. But beyond artistic value, the collection had belonged to a Jewish family, making it a prime target for the Nazi campaign of plunder of Jewish cultural heritage.
German occupation authorities, working with French collaborators, acted quickly. On July 24, 1940, just weeks after France’s surrender, they raided the family’s mansion at 38 Avenue Henri-Martin. Yet this early instance of Franco-German cooperation yielded only empty frames. The authorities had no knowledge that the Schloss family had secretly relocated the collection months earlier.
From that moment on, a secret treasure hunt began. German agencies, French police, informants, and art dealers all became involved, driven by the promise of commissions, favors, and prestige for anyone who could locate the missing collection.
Locating the Collection
On the German side, the operation was led by the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce (ERR), under the command of Kurt von Behr. Also involved was Bruno Lohse, a key figure in the Nazi art looting machinery. On the French side, collaboration came from Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, head of the Commissariat-General for Jewish Affairs (CGQJ), the Vichy government agency responsible for the confiscation of Jewish property. Working alongside him was Jean-François Lefranc, an art dealer who had recently been appointed administrator of Jewish collections for the CGQJ. Seeking to outmaneuver the Germans and secure a share of the spoils, they negotiated a favorable agreement for joint action to locate the missing artworks.
Despite this coordinated effort, the Schloss collection remained hidden for several years at the Château de Chambon. It wasn’t until early 1943 that a breakthrough occurred. Jean Liénard, an informant working for de Pellepoix, claimed to know where members of the Schloss family were hiding in the unoccupied zone. On August 7, 1943, Henry Schloss and his wife were apprehended at the Gare des Omnibus in Nice. They were driven to the family’s villa in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, where the house was thoroughly searched for paintings under Lefranc’s supervision, officially acting “on behalf of Pierre Laval”—Vichy’s Prime Minister.
Henry Schloss refused to reveal either the location of the collection or the whereabouts of his brother Lucien. During the raid, a telegram arrived for Henry. Lefranc intercepted it and discovered it had been sent by Lucien, revealing his location. The next day, German officers burst into the Hotel du Commerce in Lamastre, arresting Lucien Schloss. After his arrest, Lucien was taken to Lyon for interrogation, where he managed to escape. However, during the interrogation, the Nazis obtained the most crucial information of all: the location of the Schloss collection.
Taking Possession of the Collection
On April 10, 1943, the Nazis arrived at the Château de Chambon. Jean-François Lefranc was eager to have the works transferred immediately to Paris. That same night, Louis Darquier de Pellepoix sent a telegram to the civil governor of Tulle, requesting authorization to move the collection to Paris. However, the governor suspected an illegal looting operation and quickly contacted the Vichy Ministry of the Interior. The response was negative. As a result, the governor ordered the local gendarmerie stationed at the Château to prevent the artworks from being removed from the region. The collection, therefore, remained under French jurisdiction.
The Clandestine Seizure
But the Germans were determined. On April 13, the ERR, led by Bruno Lohse and Kurt von Behr, launched a clandestine operation to seize the collection. To avoid attracting attention, they disguised the mission: two trucks arrived at the château carrying French Gestapo auxiliaries dressed as gendarmes, SS officers in plainclothes, and German art historians, all carrying forged French identification. They claimed they were acting on orders from the Vichy government to move the collection to a “safe location.”
The group quickly loaded the paintings onto the trucks, intending to transport them to Paris. However, alerted by the French personnel in Chambon, the prefect of Corrèze intervened, and the convoy was stopped by the French gendarmerie. After a brief confusion, the collection was placed under German military custody, first at a German barracks in Tulle, and later transferred to a military base in Limoges.
The operation caused a stir. Pierre Laval intervened personally, asking the German military commander to return the collection to French control. After several days, the paintings returned to the French and were stored in the vaults of the Bank of France in Limoges.
What followed was a prolonged administrative war between German and French officials. Phone calls continued for months, as both sides jockeyed for control over the prized artworks. The standoff ended on the night of August 9, 1943, when the civil governor of Limoges received a call from Laval’s chief of staff, instructing him to release the paintings for transport to Paris. German pressure had finally prevailed.
Breaking Up the Collection
Once in Paris, the crates were deposited in the vaults of the CGQJ, housed in the former Dreyfus Bank building. The fate of the Schloss collection became the subject of high-level negotiations between top officials of the Vichy regime and the Nazi hierarchy, as well as their intermediaries. The French authorities aimed to integrate part of the collection into the national museum system, a plan that clashed directly with the Germans’ intention to gift the works to Adolf Hitler for his future Führermuseum in Linz.
As recounted by Rose Valland in Le Front de l’Art, according to the law of pre-emption that established the priority of purchase when it came to every sale, French national museums had the right to claim artworks from Jewish collections subject to seizure. In an effort to mitigate complete looting, Jacques Jaujard, director of the French national museums, insisted on the right of first refusal to acquire any paintings deemed part of the country’s national heritage. Exercising this right, the French museums acquired 49 paintings from the Schloss collection.
Once the Louvre had made its selection, the sale of the remaining 284 paintings to the Germans was authorized. With the approval of the Vichy government, 262 paintings were selected and officially purchased for the Führermuseum for a sum of 50 million francs.
Hitler, upon learning that French museums had been allowed to choose first, furiously declared that he had been left with nothing but “beautiful crumbs.” The works were transferred from the CGQJ to the Jeu de Paume in early November 1943, in preparation for their shipment to the Führerbau in Munich later that month.
But what happened to the 22 remaining paintings?
The Missing 22
The 22 paintings, along with several works from Dr. Prosper Émile Weil’s collection rejected by the Nazis for being “degenerate art,” came into the hands of Jean-François Lefranc. Lefranc reportedly sold the paintings to a Dutch art dealer named M. Buittenweg. However, since the true identity of Buittenweg has never been confirmed, several theories have emerged, including the possibility that the buyer was Lefranc himself, operating under a false name.
Let’s see what we know for certain.
On October 22, 1943, Lefranc received a payment of 350,000 francs into his account at the Banque de France, a sum that matched the sale value of the 22 paintings. The origin of the payment remains unclear. During post-war interrogations, Lefranc claimed the amount was related to a sale of a work from the Bonn collection, but he could not recall the buyer’s identity.
Whether Buittenweg ever existed or was a convenient cover, it is certain that Lefranc sold the missing paintings, and their fate remains, to this day, one of the most unresolved and shadowy chapters in the story of the Schloss collection.
Recoveries and Restitutions
With the end of the war, the Schloss family, like many others affected by Nazi looting, began efforts to recover their stolen collection. In the immediate postwar years, the 49 paintings previously acquired by the Louvre were returned to the heirs. As for the works sold by Jean-François Lefranc, five of the 22 paintings were eventually located in Germany, while two more were found in Hitler’s collection in Aussee.
The paintings stored in the Führerbau in Munich were less fortunate: in 1945, during the chaotic days between the collapse of the Third Reich and the arrival of Allied troops, the building was ransacked, and its contents looted. The Schloss artworks stored there disappeared without trace. The remaining paintings were listed in the Directory of Property Looted in France during the War 1939–1945, published in 1947 by the French Office of Restitution.
The Fate of the Schloss Collection
As various works were restituted to the Schloss heirs, many were subsequently sold in the 1950s. Galerie Charpentier held a major auction of 70 restituted works from the collection in May 1949. Two additional sales were held by Charpentier in December 1951 and December 1954, respectively. The most recent chapter in this ongoing story occurred this very year: on June 12, 2025, eight paintings that once belonged to the Schloss collection were offered for sale at Christie’s Paris.
To this day, 166 works remain unrecovered. Some of them have been identified in foreign museums or private collections, and are now the subject of legal claims or diplomatic restitution efforts. What is clear is that the history of the Schloss collection reveals more than just the loss of art. It stands as a compelling case study of the political power struggles and opportunism that shaped the complex dynamics of Franco-German collaboration and rivalry in the acquisition of cultural property during the occupation of France.