While writing his thesis on the music of the French composer Darius Milhaud (1892-1974) in 1991, the Dutch musicologist Willem de Vries learned from Milhauds widow Madeleine Milhaud that during World War II their appartment in Paris was completely emptied by the Germans. Their possessions, including manuscripts of Milhauds compositions, correspondence and grammophone records, were never returned. Having undertaken some initial research in French archives, Willem de Vries was able to locate in Nuremberg in 1992 a number of the missing Milhaud manuscripts which were consequently handed over to Madeleine Milhaud 50 years after their disappearance. In the following years, intensive research led to the discovery of a sophisticated organization: the "Sonderstab Musik", a command force of Alfred Rosenberg's "Einsatzstab", and responsible for the systematic confiscation of music (compositions, manuscripts, instruments, libraries, records, etc.) from Jewish musicians and composers, followed in 1942 by the robbery of all music paraphernalia from the households of deported Jews.

"The confiscation of music by the Sonderstab Musik of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) in the occupied countries of Western Europe during Wold War II" will be published early in 1996 by the Amsterdam University Press. Below, the author gives a short overview of the two main topics of his book: the overall organization of the ERR, responsible for the unlimited and systematic theft of art and culture in Europe, and the activities of the Sonderstab Musik in France, Belgium and Holland.

In January 1934, Hitler ordered Alfred Rosenberg to direct the Plenipotentiary of the Führer for the Supervision of the Entire Intellectual and Ideological Enlightenment of the Nazi Party ("Dienststelle des Beauftragten des Führers für die Überwachung der gesamten geistigen und weltanschaulichen Schulung und Erziehung der NSDAP", DBFU).

After 1934, Rosenberg carried out this mission by establishing an extensive and sophisticated political organization that covered all fields of art, culture, and science. In 1939, this apparatus consisted of the following offices:
"Amt Lehrplanung" (Educational Planning)
"Amt Weltanschauliche Information" (Ideological Information)
"Amt Schrifttumpflege" (Literary Endeavours)
"Amt Wissenschaft" (Science)
"Amt Vorgeschichte" (Prehistory)
"Amt Kunstpflege" (Artistic Endeavours)

Each Amt was subdivided into one or more main branches ("Hauptstellen"). In the "Amt Kunstpflege", for example, the Main Branch for Visual Art was directed by Robert Scholtz, while Dr. Herbert Gerigk managed the Main Branch for Music. Both Scholtz and Gerigk were to play an important role in the art robbery in the occupied countries of Western Europe during WW II. In 1939, the managerial staff of the DBFU numbered about one hundred.

After completing the "Westfeldzug" (the invasion of the Netherlands, Belgium and France) of May and June 1940, Alfred Rosenberg founded the "Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg" (ERR) on July 17, 1940. The ERR was an operational unit that emerged from the DBFU during the war and which consisted of several individual command forces called "Sonderstäbe", each with a specific field of expertise. Gradually, each main branch of the DBFU described above was assigned a corresponding "Sonderstab", which followed the German occupation forces as the 'entourage' of the "Wehrmacht". During the war, "Sonderstäbe" were established for visual arts, music, theatre, folklore, prehistory, churches, archives, science, genealogy, etc. In the course of the war, the activities of the ERR would reach "... von Dänemark über die Niederlande, Frankreich, Italien und Südosteuropa bis Griechenland und vom Kaukasus bis Reval ..." (Findbuch NS 30, Federal Archive Koblenz, page IV).

In the occupied territories, the ERR rapidly organized the greatest systematic theft of art and culture in history. The operation received support from several decrees by the Führer and physical assistance from the "Militärverwaltung" (military authority), the "Sicherheitspolizei" (Security Police, SiPo), the "Sicherheitsdienst" (Security Service, SD), and the "Geheime Feldpolizei" (Secret Field Police, GFP). There is no doubt that the sophistication of the DBFU organization gave Rosenberg an important advantage over other interested parties. The specialists who were sent out from Berlin knew what to look for and where. By 1943, the ERR employed some 350 people.

The specialist for music matters in Rosenberg's Einsatzstab was Dr. Herbert Gerigk, a musicologist, who joined the "Reichsüberwachungsamt" (Reich Supervisory Office) at Rosenberg DBFU in January 1935 where he became "Reichshauptstellenleiter" for music in the "Amt Kunstpflege". Gerigk was editor of the monthly periodicals "Die Musik" and "Musik im Kriege" (music in war) and published in 1940 the notorious "Lexikon der Juden in der Musik" (encyclopedia of jews in music). At the outbreak of WW II, Gerigk's organization consisted of internal and external specialists in all fields of music, including musicologists of high reputation such as Dr. Wolfgang Boetticher and Professor Gustav Fellerer. After WW II, their careers were not hampered by their active participation in confiscating musicalia from Jewish owners during the war.

In August 1940, Gerigk opened the Paris office of the Sonderstab Musik on Boulevard Haussmann, the ERR-headquarters. Although he claimed that his main objective was "Sicherstellung deutscher Musikhandschriften in Frankreich" (repossessing German music manuscripts in France) from the early Middle Ages until the present day, which had made their way into French libraries and private collections, Gerigk soon gave directives to confiscate material of the political adversaries of the Reich. Record companies were inspected, their stock of Jewish music (composed or performed by Jews) confiscated. Residences of German and German-Jewish emigrants were searched for music libraries or other music paraphernalia that they had taken with them. Jewish music publishers also merited inspection.

In September 1940, the first of a series of important individual confiscations of the possessions of Jewish musicians and composers took place: the valuable collection of historic music instruments of the famous harpsichord player Wanda Landowska was packed in crates and transported to Berlin, together with her library of some 10.000 music books. Among others, the appartments of Gregor Piatigorsky, Darius Milhaud and Arthur Rubinstein were completely emptied. The next step was to visit the major music libraries, such as the music departments of the Bibliothèque du Conservatoire. Obviously, the searches targeted important manuscripts of German origin.

In September 1940, ERR offices were opened in Brussels and Amsterdam. Subsequently, the "Sonderstab Musik" also became active in Belgium and Holland.

Even before the deportation started in June 1942, Alfred Rosenberg had requested and received permission from Hitler to confiscate all personal possessions of Jews for transfer to the occupied territories of the East or to be given in compensation to German citizens who were bombed by the Allies. Between May 1942 and August 1944, enormous quantities of music instruments, literature, partitions and sheet music, grammophone records and players were transported by Gerigk's "Sonderstab Musik" to the Reich. In June 1942, Gerigk mentioned in a note that some 200 piano's would become available every week in France alone, necessitating two transports per week. In April 1943, for instance, some 1,006 piano's and grand-piano's were stored in Paris ready for transport. In total, some 68,000 complete Jewish households from France and Belgium were brought over to Germany during the war.

All these music paraphernalia had various destinations. Valuable (historic) instruments, manuscripts and music libraries were to be reserved for 'study' at the "Hohe Schule", a prestigious project of study centers in all fields of culture and science to be realized after the war. The German troops all over Europe needed instruments and music in their "Soldatenheime" (soldiers homes), while the home market in Germany received instruments in compensation.

Under the influence of the increasing Allied bombings of 1943, the enormous quantities of confiscated goods (including Gerigk's loot) in the Berlin warehouses of the ERR were transfered to other parts of the Reich, mainly to Upper Silesia (nom. Poland), where they were stored in depots, castles, churches, cellars, and the like. The Russian offensive early in 1945, however, forced the ERR staff to transfer much valuable material to e.g. Bavaria. The transport of the hundreds of thousands of books, such as the famous "Ostbücherei", became more and more difficult:

"Upon the Russian invasion of Ratibor, ... several million volumes remained, including some on various Oder barges that had yet to be unloaded" (testimony of a former ERR agent).

Postscript:
The ERR files ("Rosenberg files") in Western Europe are far from complete:
"Der Existenz und Wirksamkeit der Sonderstäbe nachzugehen ist besonders mühselig" (Foreword Findbuch NS 30 in the "Koblenz Bundesarchiv")
Now that Eastern European archives are opening their files to researchers, the size of the confiscation of art and culture by the ERR in e.g. Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, Estland and Latvia may come to light. By July 1943, the following "Außenstellen" (foreign branches) of the ERR in the East were operational: Belgrade, Riga, Dorpat, Reval, Vilna, Minsk, Gorki, Smolensk, Kiev, Charkov, Dnjepropetrovsk and Simferopol.

Dr. Herbert Gerigk and his "Sonderstab Musik" collaborators were also active in most of the above "Außenstellen", following the German "Ostfeldzug" of 1941. There are also reports of Gerigks visits to the music libraries of Poland in the fall of 1939. The activities of the "Sonderstab Musik" in Eastern Europe and the size of the confiscations, however, have yet to be investigated.

Willem de Vries, Musicologist,
Independent researcher and music critic, Amsterdam