Group
ERR
ERR
- Alternative Names
- Einsatzstab Rosenberg; Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg; Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce)
- Type
- Public administration
The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), under the leadership of Alfred Rosenberg, was dedicated from its inception on 17 July 1940 to the expropriation of Jewish-owned cultural property, including archives, books, artworks, Judaica, musical instruments, textiles and any other cultural emanation of Jewish life.
Shortly after the invasion of Western Europe Adolf Hitler authorized looting operations and directed Alfred Rosenberg to secure cultural assets that belonged to Jews, Freemasons, and other “enemies” of the Third Reich. Until early August 1944, the ERR seized hundreds of private Jewish collections in Western Europe. Most of the loot was shipped to ERR-run repositories in Germany and Austria, including Neuschwanstein, Buxheim, Kogl, Seissenneg, Nikolsburg, and starting in 1944, to the salt mines in Altaussee, Austria.
In the Fall of 1940, the ERR designated the Jeu de Paume museum in the Tuileries Gardens as its central collecting point,where looted Jewish cultural assets were stored, processed, catalogued, inventoried, and packed to be shipped to different depots in the Reich up to July 1944.
The ERR’s involvement in the Schloss Collection was limited to the role that Bruno Lohse, deputy director of the ERR in France between 1941 and 1944, played in supporting Lefranc’s bid to locate, seize and disperse the Schloss Collection. Göpel, a leading figure in the Linz Museum project, affirmed Lohse’s involvement in the planning of the seizure of the Schloss Collection in a 26 April 1943 letter to Reichsleiter Martin Bormann.
Sources**:**
Grimsted, Patricia Kennedy_. Reconstructing the Record of Nazi Cultural Plunder:_ _A Guide to the Dispersed Archives of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) and the Postwar Retrieval of ERR Loot. _Published online, 2016/17. https://www.errproject.org/guide/ERR_Guide_Introduction.pdf
Dean, Martin. “Cultural Looting: The Seizure of Archives and Libraries by Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, 1940-1945.” _United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. _https://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-exhibitions/special-focus/offenbach-archival-depot/einsatzstab-reichsleiter-rosenberg-a-policy-of-plunder. Accessed 15 June 2021.
Cultural Plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg: Database of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paume. https://www.errproject.org/jeudepaume/about/err.php. Accessed 15 June 2021.