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.
Marriage and a change in career Ferdinand Möller married the painter Maria Garny (1886–1971) at Cologne in 1912. The couple's three daughters were born in 1913, 1915 and 1919. 1912 was also the year in which Möller redefined his professional future with a decision to exchange book dealing for dealing. 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.
Berlin In 1918, Möller took over from Erich Schall as "Geschäftsführer" (loosely, "Administrative Director") at the Freie Secession gallery in Berlin. That year he opened his own "Galerie Ferdinand Möller" at Potsdamer Straße 134c, previously the home of novelist Theodor Fontane until his death in 1898. In October 1919 he added a "Verlag Galerie Ferdinand Möller" (publishing operation) to his 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
During 1923/1924 Ferdinand Möller relocated with his family, gallery and publishing operation from central Berlin to Potsdam, a short distance outside the capital. It appears that this move coincided with a decision to devote more time to earlier passions of book collecting, and to publishing books on art, apparently at the expense of art dealing and exhibiting. There are also indications that he had become exhausted by five years of intense activity between 1917 and 1923 and was hoping to lead a quieter life and spend more time with his young family. As far as his public profile at the time was concerned, however, it was as a Berlin art dealer that Möller continued to be known, and there are indications that he continued to work as an art dealer for appropriately discerning and affluent private customers. Meanwhile, he remained exceptionally well-network with the Berlin arts establishment. His daughter would later recall that frequent visitors to the family home included Hans Poelzig, Ernő Kállai, Will Grohmann, Edwin Redslob, Max Kaus, the publisher Eduard Stichnote and the Noldes.
Political shadows In 1927, the Gallery Ferdinand Möller returned to the heart of Berlin, now located at Schöneberger Ufer 38, close to the Potsdamer Bridge. The family continued to live in Potsdam till 1930, however. During the later 1920s, with the return of intensified austerity, political and social tensions were intruding into daily life and spilling onto the city streets with growing frequency. Within and beyond the arts world a polarising rivalry was emerging between "French art" and "German art", encouraged by popularist organisations such as the "Kampfbund für deutsche Kulturwurden" ("Fighting League for German cultural values"). Behind it all stood the National Socialist Party which had been steadily gaining support since 1924, and which in 1930 became the second largest party in parliament. As an art dealer, it might be thought that Ferdinand Möller had no reason to participate in the "French art and German art" debates, and before 1927 he never showed much sign of being interested in politics. In November 1927 he nevertheless published an article under the title "Who is responsible" in the mass-circulation (and by now increasingly shrill) Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (newspaper). It is not known whether he provided the piece at the invitation of the newspaper, or contributed it unsolicited. The "artistic views" shared with readers of the article were uncompromisingly nationalistic, while the syntax employed was heavy with the bombast more familiar to students of the nationalist politics of Europe during the 1930s. The article stands out because neither the tone nor the forthright opinions are representative of Ferdinand Möller's later views, any more than they were adumbrated by his words or actions during his life up till that point. How it found its way into the newspaper remains something of a mystery, but it may very well have provided the writer with some valuable political capital six years later, when the Hitler government took power.
In 1929 there was a particularly important exhibition at the Schöneberger Ufer Gallery Ferdinand Möller, devoted to works by the "Blue four", Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky und Alexej Jawlensky, three of them leading representatives of Bauhaus art and all four of them - despite Möller's nationalistic outpourings in his 1927 Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung article - born outside Germany. Both this exhibition and Möller's 1930 "Vision und Formgesetz" ("Vision and the laws of form") drew great attention a what was widely seen as a high point of German modernist art. Möller himself had become one of the most important art dealers for "1920s German modern" work. 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.
Dicing with Hitler As parliamentary deadlock persisted and political polarisation intensified, in January 1933 the National Socialists took power and in the space of a few months transformed Germany into a one-party dictatorship. Between 4 July and early October 1933, Möller allowed the party Student Union to use his gallery for their exhibition of "30 German artists". The decisive factor in persuading the NS student to work with Möller was Möller's very public support for "German art" in his 1927 Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung article and his resulting reputation as a conservative-nationalist art dealer. Extracts from the article were indeed quoted in (both versions of) the exhibition catalogue. In reality, the organisation of the exhibition seems to have been from the outset a collaboration between Möller and the National Socialist students. Works to be shown came both from young artists and from well-established representatives of German expressionism, but virtually all of the artists represented were still alive.
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". On 4 July 1933, the exhibition's scheduled opening was accompanied by a large rally of supportive National Socialist Students which generated extensive press coverage and public interest. The ministry now intervened to ban the exhibition on the grounds that it included works by Ernst Barlach and Emil Nolde, both well-known opponents of "Nazism". After a frantic exchange of telegrams and other documents the ministry agreed to the conditional opening of the exhibition, which took place, formally, on 22 July 1933. The principal conditions stipulated were the withdrawal of the party Student Union from organising the exhibition and the exclusion of works by Barlach and Nolde. A new version of the exhibition catalogue was quickly produced from which all references to the involvement of the National Socialist Students' Union were expunged, and in which greater emphasis was placed on Möller's 1927 "German Art newspaper paean"; but the works of Barlach and Nolde remained, and in most respects, apart from its deferred opening, the "30 German artists" exhibition went ahead as originally conceived. Indeed, a (briefer) version of the "30 German artists" exhibition became an annual summer fixture at the gallery till 1937.