Nazi-Looted Peschel Painting Traced to Hitler's Berlin Home

Carl Gottlieb Peschel's Joseph Sold by His Brothers (1831), once owned by Dutch Jewish collector Bob Nijkerk, hung in Adolf Hitler's Berlin home during the Nazi era, according to new research reported by the Dutch newspaper Het Parool.

The painting shows the biblical scene of Joseph being sold into slavery in Egypt. Diederik Oostdijk, a professor of English and American literature at Amsterdam's Vrije Universiteit, traced its wartime path in his new book Overlevingskunst (The Art of Survival), which follows "three Jewish families [who] miraculously escaped the Holocaust thanks to their art collections."

After leaving Hitler's Berlin residence, the Peschel was moved to the Führer's storage facility in Munich, where the regime held prized works for a planned Führermuseum — the art museum Hitler intended to build in Linz, Austria.

Who was Bob Nijkerk?

Nijkerk's family made its fortune in iron and scrap metal in the 19th century. He used that wealth to collect bibliophile editions, modern Dutch typography and paintings, and received the Peschel as a gift from his brother-in-law in 1941. When the Nazis occupied Amsterdam in 1940, Nijkerk was managing director of the family company; the Nazis seized it in 1941.

From 1942, the Nazis deported more than 100,000 Dutch Jews to killing centers. Nijkerk, his wife and their three children were spared at first. Willem Sandberg, a curator at Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum — where Nijkerk had loaned and donated artworks — intervened and got the family onto an exception list of roughly 700 Jews. In 1940, the two men had visited the museum's art bunker together, and the collector likely stored important works there.

The family was first taken to De Schaffelaar Castle, about 45 minutes outside Amsterdam, then deported to the Westerbork camp in the Netherlands and on to Theresienstadt, in what is now the Czech Republic. "Ultimately, all five survived the war because they were brought to Switzerland by train in 1945 along with a select group of camp prisoners from Theresienstadt," Het Parool reports.

What does the research change for the family?

Nijkerk's grandson Willem Nijkerk knew the family included bibliophiles but not how large his grandfather's collection was. "I mainly knew about the period during and after the war. Through Oostdijk's research, I was given a glimpse into their prewar life. They lived in relatively grand luxury," Willem told Het Parool.

It remains unclear whether Nijkerk sold the painting in late 1941 or early 1942, or whether German forces or Dutch collaborators confiscated it during raids on Jewish homes. After the war, Nijkerk recovered many of his books but "never uttered a word about Peschel's painting," Willem said.

The seven descendants have filed no formal restitution claim for the Peschel, now held at the Martin von Wagner Museum in Würzburg, Germany. Nor have they claimed three other paintings Oostdijk linked to the collection — two 1633 portraits by Caspar Netscher and a 1673 work by Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, all at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Willem said the family would likely sell the works if they are ever restituted.

"It is a bizarre thought that a painting belonging to my grandparents was in Hitler's residence, one of the most horrific human beings who ever lived, and to think that he found this work so beautiful," Willem told Het Parool. "I don't necessarily want Peschel's painting on my wall at home. I also find it an unpleasant thought that it lay in Hitler's home."

With Oostdijk's book now documenting the provenance, the German and Dutch museums hold works whose histories are on the record — whether claims follow is now a family decision.