Karl Buchholz (born 26 August 1901 in Göttingen; died 6 January 1992 in Bogotá) was one of Hitler's Nazi art dealers specialized in selling looted "Degenerate Art".
Buchholz took his first job in Berlin, where he started his own bookstore on Taubenstrasse in 1925. In 1926 he expanded his business on Mauerstrasse and two branches were soon added in Berlin. In 1934, the international bookstore on Leipziger Strasse included a gallery of contemporary art on the floor above the shop, where Curt Valentin worked until he emigrated in 1937 and founded the Buchholz Gallery on 46th Street in New York.
Karl Buchholz dealt in art looted by the Nazis, both from museums and from Jewish collectors. When the Nazis attacked modern art as âÂÂDegenerate ArtâÂÂ, Karl Buchholz was commissioned from 1938 together with Ferdinand Möller, Hildebrand Gurlitt and Bernhard A. Böhmer by Goebbels's Reich Ministry of People's Enlightenment and Propaganda to sell the confiscated works of art to raise cash for the Third Reich. The discovery of the Gurlitt stash in 2012/2013 suggests that some of the art was kept for personal profit as well.
Buchholz sold art in Norway, Switzerland and the United States and supplied east coast museums through his New York gallery. Buchholz in Germany worked with Valentin in New York. Valentin, a Jew, received special permission from the Nazis to sell art in New York. Buchholz' daughter Godula described the unusual circumstances of Valentin's emigration to the United States. As part of their program of robbing Jews, the Nazis usually prevented fleeing Jews from taking assets with them. But, according to Godula Buchholz, Valentin carried âÂÂbaggage containing sculptures, [p]aintings, and drawings from the Galerie Buchholz in BerlinâÂÂ
In 1942 Buchholz was expelled from the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts. When the United States entered World War II, communications with Valentin were said to be broken off before resuming postwar. In 1943 he founded a branch in Lisbon. On 29 May 1944, citing the Trading with the Enemy Act, the U.S. government seized 401 artworks that Buchholz had shipped to Valentin.
After the war, Buchholz was investigated by the OSS Art Looting Intelligence Unit because of his trafficking in confiscated and looted art. According to the OSS, the spy Wilhelm Gessmann (alias Alexander, Joan Charles; Alendorf, Wilhelm) worked as a representative of the Buchholz art and bookselling establishments in Berlin and Lisbon. and Enrique Lehrfeld was Buchholz' partner in the New German Bookshop in Lisbon, 50 avda da Liberdade.
After the end of the war, Buchholz emigrated with his family to Colombia and from 1951 ran a bookstore and gallery in Bogotá, the LibrerÃÂa Buchholz, which his daughter Godula Buchholz, born in 1935, later took over. Buchholz became the publisher of the literary magazine Eco, founded in 1960. ', which lasted until 1984.
The Buchholz-Valentin partnership has emerged in several restitution claims concerning art looted from private Jewish art collectors and dealers. Claims filed in U.S. courts concern art allegedly stolen from Georg Grosz and from Alfred Flechtheim which transited through Buchholz' partner Curt Valentin as well as from Alphonse Kann and others. Claims that have gone before German commissions include artworks that belonged to Clara Levy, a textile manufacturer who was persecuted by the Nazis.
Karl Buchholz played a key role in laundering Nazi-looted art and is the subject of ongoing studies and his name appears in numerous claims for restitution.