Bruno Lohse Bruno Lohse ( 17 September 1911 – 19 March 2007 ) was a German art dealer who , during World War II , became the chief art looter in Paris for Hermann Göring , helping the Nazi leader amass a vast collection of plundered artworks . During the war , Göring boasted that he owned the largest private art collection in Europe . World War II . Lohse , who published a scholarly thesis on painter Jacob Philipp Hackert in 1936 , worked as an art dealer in Berlin from 1936 to 1939 , selling paintings out of his father ' s home . Having joined the SS in 1933 , Lohse became a member of the Nazi Party in 1937 . He would eventually be drafted into Göring ' s Luftwaffe , then appointed by Göring to the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg ( ERR ) , Hitler ' s special art looting unit . Lohse arrived in Paris by November 1940 to help catalog the celebrated and eclectic collection of Alphonse Kann , which numbered 1 , 202 items . Though Lohse reported to Paris ERR chief Kurt von Behr ( 1890 - 1945 ) , he enjoyed " special agent " status conferred on him by Göring . Among other privileges , Lohse was not required to wear a uniform for the nearly four years he lived in occupied Paris . As the ERR ' s Deputy Director in Paris from 1942 to 1944 , Lohse helped supervise the systematic theft of at least 22 , 000 paintings and art objects in France , most of which were taken from Jewish families . Although Lohse set aside the most highly prized Old Master s for Hitler ' s Führer Museum ( planned in Linz ) , he helped Göring develop his own enormous private art collection , which accumulated during the war at Göring ' s vast German estate , Carinhall . Between November 1940 and November 1942 , Lohse staged 20 exhibitions of looted art for Hitler ' s second - in - command in the Jeu de Paume , from which Göring selected at least 594 pieces for his own collection . Interrogation and imprisonment . Lohse fled Paris in August 1944 , and briefly served in one of Göring ' s safe Berlin regiments before travelling to Neuschwanstein Castle in February 1945 , where a major cache of art looted in France ( as well as the Rothschild family jewels ) had been safely stored . Lohse was ordered by Robert Scholz to protect Nazi art holdings and records from destruction , and to " turn them over to the American authorities at such time as Füssen [ a nearby town ] might be occupied . " Facing a possible death sentence for crimes witnessed in Paris by Rose Valland ( and others ) , Lohse underwent a two - month interrogation , during which he shared a cell with two other notorious Nazi art looters , Karl Haberstock and Walter Hofer . The suicide of Baron Kurt von Behr proved to be a godsend to Lohse , permitting him to blame the systematic confiscation of French art collections on his former ERR chief in Paris . Lohse cooperated with American occupiers and repeatedly traded his encyclopedic knowledge of the Nazi art trade for further leniency — he testified , for example , in the Nuremberg trials in November 1945 , providing evidence against his superiors and professing a personal distaste for activities of the ERR . After being transferred from American to French custody in 1948 , Lohse was acquitted in a 1950 military tribunal in Paris against some officials of the Einsatzstab Reichleiter Rosenberg . Lohse never conceded responsibility for art looting , admitting only to possessing furniture stolen from deported Jewish families which Lohse had abandoned in his Paris apartment . Later years . Although the conditions of Lohse ' s release forbade him ever to work again as an art dealer , German officials quietly allowed Lohse to resume his profession in Bavaria ( Munich ) in the early 1950s . An unrepentant Nazi , Lohse was among several former Nazi art dealers who , after the war , pressed their own restitution claims for work they claimed to have lost during the years of conflict . Lohse ' s legitimately acquired collection of Dutch old masters and Expressionist paintings was said to be valued in the " millions . " Lohse ' s death in March 2007 was little - noticed , apparently because few realized one of the Third Reich ' s most notorious art looters was still alive . Secret vault . In May 2007 , the seizure of a secret Zurich bank vault ( under Lohse ' s control since 1978 ) turned up a valuable Camille Pissarro painting stolen by the Gestapo from a prominent Jewish publisher in Vienna in 1938 , as well as paintings of uncertain provenance by Monet and Renoir . According to U . S . historian and looted art expert Jonathan Petropoulos , who " got to know [ Lohse ] well " in the last decade of his life , the existence of the vault makes it " not only possible , but likely " that Lohse had sold looted artworks in recent decades . Painted in 1903 and the first in Pissarro ' s last series of Paris city views , " Le Quai Malaquais , Printemps " was restituted later in 2007 by a Liechtenstein court to an heir of Gottfried Bermann Fischer , and ultimately auctioned in November 2009 for $ 1 , 850 , 000 ( $ 2 , 154 , 000 with Christie ' s premium ) under its new title , " Le Quai Malaquais et l ' Institut " . European prosecutors seized documents confirming that at least 14 paintings left Lohse ' s safe since 1983 , including paintings by Corot and Sisley as well as - yet - unnamed works by Dürer and Kokoschka , among others . An international investigation of Lohse ' s activities ( as well as possible collusion with galleries and auction houses ) was opened as of 2006 and currently involves three European countries : Germany , Switzerland , and Liechtenstein . According to widely accepted estimates , of the 600 , 000 artworks looted by the Nazis in World War II , up to 100 , 000 were destroyed or are still missing .