Droog Magazine. Investigations

droog magazine

HOME

April 13, 2021 - Droog Magazine periodical for investigative journalism

to Hitler Forgery Industry index | 2021 | to Droog Magazine

Part 1 (Fegelein)| court case | press |

Part 2 (WHI-press release and comments)

Part 3 (Goering) |

Part 1

In Belgium a storm has broken out over the purchase policy of the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History (RMAFMH) in Brussels. The museum appears to have spent in recent years a considerable amount of money on material that is in all probability either counterfeit or already in the museum's collection.

Hermann Fegelein's jacket

For example, a uniform jacket attributed to Eva Braun's brother-in-law Hermann Fegelein was purchased for 32,000 euros. This happened in the run-up to the exhibition “War, occupation, liberation”, “the largest national retrospective exhibition on the Second World War” ever held in Belgium, which was compiled by curators Wannes Devos and Kevin Gony in 2019.

It is unclear though how this jacket fits in: there is no demonstrable link between Fegelein and Belgium (despite reports on Wikipedia).

According to a retired officer who recently blew the whistle about this purchase, the two curators apparently wanted to create a “sexy”exhibition. They might have been turned on by on Fegelein's jacket, because this Nazi appeared in the famous film Der Untergang (Downfall), about Hitler's last days. The garment would therefore be a crowd-puller.

However, nothing was known about the origins of the jacket. The only “proof” that the jacket would have been Fegelein's consists of a sewn-in label from the Munich clothing company Petersen & Co, dated June 1944, on which is written in ink the name “Hermann Fegelein”, with the number 9885.

In addition, it was offered by the Munich auction house Hermann Historica. An auction house that is notorious as a major supplier of forged Nazi goods, including fake Hitler watercolors.

It is therefore not surprising that even before the jacket was auctioned on May 3, 2012, collectors of Nazimilitaria expressed serious doubts about the authenticity of the alleged Fegelein jacket. They did so at the Wehrmacht Awards Forum, an international discussion forum for collectors of Nazi militaria.

The then acting uniforms depot manager of the Museum tells the curators about the concerns and warns them that the garment is “kaka” (not good). Nevertheless, the museum participates in the bidding. For 24,000 euros (or actually 32,000 euros, the auction house charges all kinds of additional costs) they acquire the jacket for the RMAFMH. Without knowing anything about the origin of the thing.

When the jacket arrives in Brussels, there are more concerns. Several employees question the authenticity of the garment. Even Hermann Historica seems to be in doubt: the auction house reportedly offers to take back the jacket and return the money.

Apparently nothing is done with the criticism and the offer.

Petersen & Co.

Then, on August 30, 2013, a descendant of the Petersen family reports at the Wehrmacht Awards Forum. He says that the old account books with information about the customers have been preserved. He shows a photo of the relevant book, from which it appears that the number 9885 was not written out until December 9, 1945 and belonged to a civilian customer, a former Wehrmacht officer. Certainly this was somebody else than Fegelein, who was shot on the orders of Hitler on April 28, 1945, shortly before Hitler married Eva Braun.

Click to enlarge.

This Petersen family member explains too that in the 1960s leftover batches of blank Petersen labels ended up on flea markets.

Employees of the Museum read the remarks of the Petersen family member. They inform curators Devos and Gony and as well the acting museum director Dominique Hanson (fired in 2014). These turn out to be blind and deaf to the facts presented and decide to exhibit the jacket as “authentic”. Their main argument being the fallacy that because the seller had said that the jacket was authentic, it must be authentic.

Omerta

The former depot manager: "Those who doubted the authenticity were not allowed to comment or criticize the RMAFMH, either internally or externally."

The fact that this all remained unknown to the public until now, is due to this duty of confidentiality: earlier this year both the whistleblowing officer and the depot manager have left the Museum and are therefore no longer bound by this omerta.

The retired officer: "The purchase of the Fegelein forgery is not the disease, but a symptom of the condition that has plagued the War Heritage Instute, the national military heritage institution of which the RMAFMH is a subdivision, in recent years. MRA- Musée royal de l'Armée, as it is known in French - can also represent a number of aspects for Museé royal de l'Amateurisme.”

This disease has caused, among other things, that tens of thousands of euros of the Belgian taxpayer has been used to finance and inspire, the Nazi counterfeit industry and that many museum visitors have been fooled.

Court case

The retired officer has filed a complaint against the War Heritage Institute and director Michel Jaupart at one of the Brussels courts (de Nederlandstalige rechtbank van eerste aanleg Brussel). He is indicting them for, among other things, forgery, use of false documents, defrauding the buyer (of entrance tickets to the museum), misleading business practices and misleading advertising.

Wannes Devos, Kevin Gony and Michel Jaupart were given the opportunity to react to this article before to publication. They did not respond. We did receive the following response from Franky Bostyn, deputy director general a.i of the War Heritage Institute:

The Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History (RMAFMH), a subdivisione of the War Heritage Institute (WHI) since 2017, has heard in the press that a complaint has been filed in relation to a uniform on display at RMAFMH.

It concerns a uniform attributed to SS General Hermann Fegelein, brother-in-law of Adolf Hitler, who was executed in 1945. This was purchased in good faith in May 2012 from the Hermann Historica auction house in Munich. According to the then current procedures, this was done with the agreement of the head of collections (now deceased) and of the director-general (now retired). € 24,000 was paid for this piece, excluding costs.

The WHI does not wait for the judicial investigation and has already ordered an investigation into the authenticity of the document, for which several international experts are being contacted. After all, the WHI is aware that pieces from this period are more and more the subject of forgeries and / or deliberately misallocations to historical figures. The results of this research will be published. In the event of forgery and / or incorrect allocation, the auction house will of course also be held responsible for this.

The museum also wishes to emphasize the difference between the content of the exhibition on which the piece is displayed, which was supervised by a scientific committee and which has also been very well received internationally, and the discussion around the piece itself, which has been under the collection management since 2012 of the institution. At the exhibition itself, the purchased pieces also represent less than 2% of the exhibited, the other pieces were acquired by the museum shortly after the Second World War.

The WHI would like to thank anyone who might have information about the history of this piece for submitting it to the institution.

Comment by Droog Magazine on the reaction of Mr. Bostyn

The late Hermann Fegelein has never been a brother-in-law of the even so late Adolf Hitler. Hitler had Fegelein killed on April 28, 1945, shortly before he married Eva Braun, who was a sister-in-of-law of Fegelein.

Sources:

Anton Joachimsthaler. Hitlers Ende. Legenden und Dokumente. Mit 138 Abbildungen und Dokumenten. Herbig, [München], 2. überarbeitete Auflage 2004, page 465.
Volker Ullrich. Adolf Hitler. Biographie. Die Jahre des Untergangs 1939-1945. Band 2. S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, 2018. Pages 649-650.

To top of page.