Walter Hofer

Walter Andreas Hofer (1893 – c. 1971) was a German art dealer who was Hermann Göring's principal art agent and director of the Göring Collection during the Second World War. Hofer was not a member of the Nazi party. After the war he continued to work as an art dealer in Munich.

Hofer was born in Berlin in 1893. He began his career at the gallery of his brother-in-law Kurt Walter Bachstitz in The Hague. In 1928, Hofer went to Berlin to study art where he met the Lausanne art collector Gottlieb Reber. Between 1930 and 1934, Hofer worked for Reber in Switzerland. From 1934 Hofer was an independent dealer working in Berlin near the Kurfürstendamm.

In 1937, Hofer married the art restorer Berta Fritsch who later became the official picture restorer for the Göring Collection. Fritsch was the sister of Gottlieb Reber's secretary.

In 1942, Hofer helped his brother-in-law Kurt Bachstitz, who was Jewish, obtain a visa so that he could flee the Netherlands to Switzerland. He also arranged a divorce for Bachstitz so that his art dealing firm became fully Aryan, thus avoiding confiscation. Hofer's sister took over the running of the firm.

Hofer began to work for Hermann Göring in 1937 and became Göring's principal art agent and later director of the Göring Collection. Hofer was not a member of the Nazi party. Hofer worked for Göring on a freelance basis, always maintaining his personal art dealing business and it was agreed between them that Hofer could keep any works he found for Göring that Göring refused. With Göring's money and backing, Hofer could access collections anywhere in Germany. He travelled on Göring's special art trains and could access essential foreign currency (Devisen) for his purchases which was in short supply for ordinary Germans. Where he didn't need foreign currency, as in the Netherlands where the German and Dutch currencies became directly convertible in April 1941, he was even more active in his acquisitions, sometimes competing with agents from other parts of the German government. Göring said that the price of a work of art was never a problem and he often paid above market price (where he did not confiscate items outright) though he was often slow to pay the bill. Hofer claimed that on one occasion in Paris, he beat an agent acting for Adolf Hitler to a Rembrandt by one day. (This is no longer available through Google News- March 2017).

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