Person

Hoffmann, Heinrich, 1885-1957

1885-1957

Heinrich Hoffmann, Sr. (1885-1957) was a noted German photographer and proprietor of a photographic agency, and a rare “close” friend and confidant of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. Hitler made Hoffmann his exclusive photographer, which over the course of the 1930s and 1940s allowed Hoffmann to create a massive and unequaled photographic archive of Hitler and other Nazi leaders. In addition to the millions of images in Hoffmann’s collection, he also owned several watercolors that had been painted by Hitler as a young man. Hoffmann and his wife Therese Baumann had two children: Henriette (1913-1992), who married Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach in 1932; and Heinrich, Jr. (1916-1988).

In 1937, Hoffmann, Sr. gifted the family’s photo archive proprietorship to his son Heinrich, Jr. The archive at that time consisted of 2.5 million photographs and 350,000 glass plate negatives. Hoffmann, Jr. operated the Hoffmann Presse until 1945. As the Allied armies began closing in on Germany in that year, Hoffmann, Jr. stored most of the photographic archive at a castle in Winhoring, in eastern Bavaria. Meanwhile, Hoffmann, Sr. hid the Hitler watercolors and the rest of his own art collection at a second eastern Bavarian castle, in Dietramszell. Both father and son were arrested by the United States Army in May 1945. Hoffmann, Sr. was tried as a war profiteer (he had grown rich off royalties for the use of his photographs) and jailed until mid-1950. His son was held by the Army until May 1949.

The Three Hoffmann Property Groups

1. The Photographic Archive (Main)
   In May 1945 both castles were requisitioned by the U.S Army for use as officers’ billets, and the Hoffmann photos and art were discovered. The photographic archive was seized by the Army. A large portion of the archives was sent to Nuremberg for use by the War Crimes Commission from 1945-1949 and was subsequently transferred to the Army’s Historical Division in Frankfurt in April 1949. The entire archive was shipped to the United States in October 1949, to the Army’s German Military Documents Section in Alexandria, VA. On May 31, 1951, the U.S. government’s Office of Alien Property vested ownership of the Hoffmann archive in the Attorney General under the authority of the Trading with the Enemy Act. The photographs themselves have been held by the National Archives and Records Administration since 1962.

The Hoffmanns had been aware that the photographs were in the Army’s possession – both father and son were summoned to Nuremberg to help catalog the archive there and identify images for use in the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. Hoffmann, Jr. claimed that he had been told the images would be returned to his family once the Army was finished with them. Between 1949 and 1951 he wrote numerous letters to the Army protesting the removal of what he believed to be his family’s property to the United States.  He even made a visit to the United States in 1971 to view the collection at the National Archives. In 1982, Hoffmann, Jr and his sister Henriette Hoffmann Von Schirach contracted with Texas businessman Hitler art expert Billy F. Price, wherein the Hoffmann heirs agreed to convey ownership of the photographs (which they believed they still legally possessed) to Price in exchange for Price’s aid in removing the materials from U.S. government possession.

2. &The “Time-Life” Photographic Archive*
   The Hoffmann photo archive in the holdings of the National Archives was not, however, the entirety of the original collection. In May 1945, a portion of the archive was stolen from Hoffmann’s Berlin photo studio by two photographers for Life _Magazine_and held in the Time-Life archives until 1981, at which time Time-Life, Inc. offered and transferred the images to the U.S. Army’s Carlisle Barracks at Carlisle, PA.

3. The Hitler Watercolors
   In May 1945, the U.S. Army discovered at Dietramszell both Hoffmann, Sr.’s four watercolors that had been painted by Hitler as well as the rest of his extensive art collection. The paintings were all sent to a central collecting point in Munich and in1949 to another at Wiesbaden. In 1951 the four Hitler watercolors were transferred to the Army Historical Division (now the Center for Military History) in Alexandria, VA, where they remain.

In 1982 Billy F. Price, founder and president of Price Compressor Company in Houston, was doing research for his book Adolph Hitler: The Unknown Artist. The book was a de facto catalogue raisonne of Hitler’s artistic work, a product of Price’s fervent interest in Hitler-as-artist and his belief that something of Hitler’s psychology might be understood through his art. In the course of researching the book, Price came across evidence of the four Hoffmann-owned watercolors in the Army’s possession. He contacted Henriette von Schirach, at which point she and her brother conveyed ownership of the watercolors (and the aforementioned photographs) to Price, and Price agreed to press the Army and the government for the return of the Hoffmann materials and/or compensation for damages.

4. The Case
   In 1982-1983 Price, through his lawyer, Robert I. White, filed multiple administrative claims against the U.S. Army for the return of the photographs and the watercolors. After the Army refused, in August 1983 Price and the Hoffmann heirs filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas under the Foreign Torts Claims Act for the return of the items.

This filing marked the start of two decades of different cases and subsequent appeals filed in assorted federal district and circuit courts, either by Price, et.al., or by the U.S. Government. The White Papers are structured into series based on the individual cases in the prolonged suit. (See Scope and Content Note)

In the end, the case ended unsuccessfully for Price and his fellow litigants. In 2002 the United States Supreme Court refused to hear their appeal (designated as Case #01-1111) from a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (designated as Case #00-1131), that found for the Government. A few remaining issues requiring resolution in lower courts were dealt with additional filings in federal court. The entire case was brought to its ultimate conclusion by a final denial by the Supreme Court for the Hoffmann heirs’ petition for a writ of certiorari in 2004.

The final decision was, as in many such cases, determined by a number of technical, obscure-to-the-layman legal points. However, in summary, the Government successfully made the case that both the photographs and the Hitler watercolors legitimately belonged to the United States as confiscated spoils of war, under the terms of numerous interagency and international agreements, including the 1945 Potsdam Agreement, the 1951 Vesting Order issued by the U.S. Army and the 1954 settlement treaty between the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany. The materials all remain to this day the property of the United States and are held by the U.S. Army and the National Archives and Records Administration.