Between art protection and art theft: The Trier art historian and Nazi official Hermann Bunjes (1911–1945) on trial

[Translate to Englisch:] Hermann Bunjes

 

In the context of Nazi art looting and Allied restitution policies after 1945, art historians sought to establish themselves as key players at the intersection of scholarship, administration, and politics. One of them was the art historian and Nazi official Hermann Bunjes (1911–1945). Bunjes, who was initially active in the Trier region, became deeply involved in the systematic cataloguing, relocation, and appropriation of European cultural assets during the German occupation of France. His activities exemplify the ambivalence of occupation policy, which, under the guise of state-organized “art protection” and a demonstrative adherence to scholarly standards, in fact carried out systematic expropriation and organized art theft. At the same token, the case of Hermann Bunjes sheds light on the profound legal and administrative upheavals of the immediate post-war period, during which issues of guilt, responsibility and restitution were re-examined under the auspices of changing regimes.

 

Hermann Bunjes (1911–1945) was born on September 11, 1911, in Bramsche, in what is now Lower Saxony. After extensive studies in art history, history, and archaeology in Germany and France, he received his doctorate in Marburg in 1935 and completed his habilitation at the University of Bonn in 1939. He thus belongs to the generation of German art historians whose academic socialisation and professional development took place almost entirely during the Nazi era. In the late 1930s, Bunjes played a key role in the inventorying of monuments in the Rhine Province. His work in Trier, together with numerous publications on Roman and medieval architectural and artistic monuments, established his scholarly reputation and strong regional connections. These were further strengthened through his marriage to Sofia Sauerwein from Trier. As a result, the rural village of Fell, near Trier, became a central biographical location in the final months of the war.

From 1940 onward, Bunjes worked in occupied Paris, initially in the so-called art protection sector and, from 1942, as head of the art-historical research centre there. In this position, he navigated difficult terrain between the ideals of preserving historical monuments and political exploitation. On the one hand, he was deeply embedded in the structures of Nazi art looting, working closely with the “Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg” (ERR) and serving as an adviser to Hermann Göring. On the other hand, he demonstrably participated in measures to protect individual works of art, such as organising the secure relocation of the Bayeux Tapestry.
In the final stages of the war, opportunism led him to cooperate with representatives of the “Monuments Men” who arrived in the region to recover potentially hidden Nazi-looted artworks. It was to them that Bunjes provided highly significant information and documents. However, after fleeing Paris, Bunjes settled with his family in Fell in the summer of 1944. He was ultimately arrested in 1945 and died by suicide while in French custody in a Trier prison on July 25, 1945.

This research project is the first to examine in a systematic and comprehensive manner the hitherto largely neglected administrative and judicial proceedings brought against Bunjes following his arrest in 1945 in Trier under American and subsequently French occupation. At its core lies the analysis of surviving trial records, interrogation transcripts, and accompanying administrative documentation, as well as their contextualisation within Allied practices of justice, occupation governance, and restitution. This legal-historical perspective, however, does not constitute the endpoint of the investigation but rather its point of departure. In order to do justice to a thematically embedded biography, it is necessary to undertake the systematic evaluation of additional point-based and serial sources that extend beyond the narrow framework of the proceedings themselves. The object of study is therefore not primarily the individual legal case, but Hermann Bunjes as a historical actor, whose actions, institutional embeddedness, and modes of self-positioning can only be reconstructed through the interplay of administrative, legal, and personal sources. Accordingly, sources of different types are brought together—ranging from official files, correspondence, and administrative records to contemporary reports, witness statements, and personal documents—focusing primarily on the period from approximately 1936 to 1945. The analysis of archival holdings from German, French, and U.S. archives necessitates an and collaborative approach that systematically integrates historical and legal-historical perspectives with biographical inquiry.

The aim of this project is to gain new insights into, first, the functioning of Nazi art looting; second, the specific mechanisms involved in the restitution of looted artworks — for example, in the context of the “Monuments Men”; and third, the early French occupation justice system in what is now Rhineland-Palatinate. The study thus contributes to historical provenance research as well as to the legal and administrative history of the postwar period, while simultaneously anchoring these questions in a clearly defined local and regional context between Trier, Paris, and the Allied power centres.

A doctoral dissertation on this topic is planned. Project preparation is funded by the Research Fund of the University of Trier (funding period: 2026). 

Project leaders: Prof. Dr. Stephan Laux (Chair of Regional History) and Prof. Dr. Carsten Fischer (Chair of Private Law, German and European Legal History)