Hans Schwarte-Hellweg, Blick in die Tenne

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				Price: on request

Description

‘Blick in die Tenne’ (‘View at the Threshing Floor’)
Biography: Hans Schwarte-Hellweg

Signed 1943.
Displayed at the Great German Art Exhibition 1944 room 35.
With original GDK-sticker at the backside.
The painting was confiscated in 1945 by the US Army and stored in de Central Collecting Point of Munich, with the Property Card Number 29313 (also written on the backside).

In total four works by Schwarte-Hellweg were stored in de CCP Munich; one of them was previously stored in the salt mines of Altaussee, the Nazi repository for stolen art and for parts of Hitler’s personal collection contemporary German art (National Archives: Property Card Number 12839 Aussee 7659).

The  threshing floor is often the part of the farm connecting the living quarters of the farm with the place where the grain was threshed in winter. In the Bible, there are dozens of references to the ‘threshing floor’, some literal and some symbolic. Both the Old and New Testaments refer to the threshing floor as a symbol of judgment.

Backside of the painting: the original sticker of the GDK 1944.

Backsie of the painting: the number ‘29313’ under which the painting was registered at the Central Collecting Point in Munich.

Stored in the Central Collecting Point Munich
As a result of war circumstances, the painting assumably remained in the basement of the Haus der Deutschen Kunst after the 1944 exhibition. The GDK-1944 ended in February/ March 1945 and Munich was liberated in April 1945. Somewhat later US Army Captain W. Gilkey moved hundreds of works of art left in the Haus der Deutschen Kunst to the basement of the Führerbau, the ‘Gallery II’ of the Central Collection Point Munich.
According to the National Archives Catalog, ‘Blick in die Tenne’ left in September 1939 the Central Collecting Point in Munich.

25 April 1947. Report of Captain Gordon W. Gilkey
‘The building at the time of my search, contained a few crated pictures in the basement and several large war paintings which had been removed from their canvas stretchers, rolled up, camouflaged, and placed to resemble stage curtains. The 1944 exhibited works and unexhibited entries had been moved from the Haus der Deutschen Kunst to the basement of the Führerbau on Königplatz in Munich, and were in the process of being returned to the artists or owners. I called a temporary halt of this and looked at all the pictures even after assurances from German personnel in the building that it contained no war art. My search disclosed that about one out of every five proved to be a war picture. They had been hidden behind huge framed nudes and pastoral landscapes….’  (Report of Captain Gordon W. Gilkey, d.d. 25 April 1947, published in the book ‘The German War Artists’ by Paul Weber, 1979).

‘Blick in die Tenne’ by Schwarte-Hellweg, stored after WWII in the Central Collecting Point in Munich. Registered in the files of the National Archive Catalog (Property Card Number 29313/H.d. Kunst 973).

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