London’s Imperial War Museum owns a highly sensitive painting: one of the most important official portraits of Adolf Hitler, a work by the Nazi artist Heinrich Knirr. Last month The Art Newspaper viewed the work, which is currently off view and held on a rack in the museum’s art storeroom.
In 1937 the Nazis entitled the portrait Adolf Hitler, Creator of the Third Reich and Renewer of German Art. Today, the museum now simply calls it Der Führer (The Leader).
To view Der Führer in the store is a unnerving experience. The painting is imposing, at nearly one metre high. What leaps out is Hitler’s prominent swastika-emblazoned armband and the steely determination in his eyes. Behind him lies a rocky landscape, set beneath an ominously stormy sky. Painted two years before the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, it depicts a leader who would eventually oversee the extermination of many millions of people.
It is disturbing to think that the portrait once hung in the waiting room of the German embassy in London, in an impressive building leased from the Crown Estate at 7-9 Carlton House Terrace, overlooking The Mall and close to Buckingham Palace.
Knirr, the portrait’s artist, is now best known as the teacher of the 18-year-old Paul Klee in 1898. But by the 1930s Knirr had become a committed Nazi and Hitler’s “court artist”. He was once photographed in intimate conversation with Hitler in the Führer’s Alpine redoubt in Berchtesgaden.
Knirr painted two versions of the Hitler portrait, one of which was displayed in July 1937 in the first Grosse Deutsche Kunstausstellungen (Great German Art Exhibition) in Munich. This show had been established by Hitler to present officially approved work. The other version of the portrait was destined for London.
Sent to London in 1937
Der Führer was brought to London by Joachim von Ribbentrop, who had been appointed ambassador by Hitler in late 1936. One of his first decisions was to embark on a fundamental refurbishment of the embassy building, which was undertaken by 200 German workmen. The project was overseen by Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect, with the furniture designed by Paul Troost. Work was speeded up so it could be completed by May 1937 to provide a grandiose setting for celebrations to mark King George VI’s coronation.
Knirr’s portrait was probably brought over for the reopening of the embassy, to be placed over the fireplace in the ambassador’s spacious waiting room. If so, this suggests that Knirr may have finished the London version first (by May) and the Great German Art Exhibition version shortly afterwards (by July).
Ribbentrop reopened the embassy in style, with a 1,400-guest party. Among the attendees was the king’s brother Prince George, and later that week the ambassador had the prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, and his successor, Neville Chamberlain (who took over later in May), for lunch. Chamberlain has gone down in history for his role in appeasing Hitler.
When war broke out in September 1939 the German embassy was placed under the care of the neutral Swiss authorities. The war in Europe eventually ended on 8 May 1945 and on 31 July the embassy and its contents were handed over to the UK’s Ministry of Works.
At the ministry’s request, the National Gallery’s director Kenneth Clark and the curator Neil MacLaren were asked to inspect the embassy’s paintings. These included the portrait of Hitler, but the artist’s signature in German Gothic script is difficult to read and they completely misread the name as “Glanz?”, adding a question mark. They valued it at £20.
In August the ministry offered three items to the Imperial War Museum: the Knirr portrait, a bust of Hitler and a portrait of the Nazi deputy leader Hermann Göring. When the museum’s trustees met on 3 September they decided that “they did not wish to acquire busts or portraits of Hitler and other Nazi leaders from the German embassy”. This was in part out of concern that the government would expect payment.
In the immediate aftermath of the war it would be difficult for a UK museum to justify expenditure on portraits glorifying the leaders of their defeated enemy. What went on behind the scenes is confused, since on 4 September (the day after the trustees’ meeting) a ministry official recorded that the museum “would like to take over the portraits of Hitler and Göring, also a stone bust of Hitler”.
The sculpture ended up being auctioned, along with the bulk of the embassy’s furnishings. On 27 November 1945, the “granite bust of Hitler on marble plinth” was sold by Knight, Frank & Rutley as lot 597, going for £500. When the buyer was identified, it was revealed to be Robert Gordon-Canning, a notorious British fascist.
The ministry informed the office of the prime minister, Clement Attlee, on 5 December 1945: “The bust of Hitler was actually offered to the Imperial War Museum, but although the museum would have liked to acquire it they did not feel able to use part of their very limited funds for this purpose.”
The fear of a fascist buyer
Attlee’s government then realised that they could hardly allow the Knirr portrait to be bought by a British Nazi supporter, hence the decision to donate it to the Imperial War Museum. The portrait appears to have been formally accessioned by the museum on 12 June 1946, but it was obviously a highly sensitive object. It does not seem to have been exhibited until the 1980s.
In the 1990s the Knirr portrait was apparently taken down, but subsequently lent to two outside exhibitions at London’s Hayward Gallery (1995) and Berlin’s Deutsches Historisches Museum (2006). On both these occasions it was shown in a historical context as an example of propaganda.
And what happened to the German figures involved in the embassy refurbishment? Ribbentrop was appointed Hitler’s foreign minister in 1938 and served until the end of the war. He was found guilty of war crimes at the Nuremberg trials and hanged. Speer gave up architecture and became Hitler’s minister of armaments and war production. He was later sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment.
Knirr died in 1944 of natural causes, aged 81. His portrait of Hitler is for the moment held in the Imperial War Museum’s storeroom, now in a simpler frame than the ornate one it had in the embassy’s waiting room.
There is no trace of the other version that had been displayed at the 1937 Great German Art Exhibition. It was presumably wrecked by bombs, looted or destroyed by victorious Allied troops. As for the former German embassy, it remained empty after the war. In 1967 the building was taken over by the Royal Society, an institution set up in 1660 to promote science and its benefits.
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