Speaker 1: Pushkin for a charming little town. Schleswig in Germany has
Speaker 1: a magnificent old cathedral. Parts of the Cathedral of Saint
Speaker 1: Peter date back nearly nine hundred years, and King Frederick,
Speaker 1: the First of Denmark is buried there. Decade after decade,
Speaker 1: century after century, new parts were added to the building,
Speaker 1: the new artwork. Late in the eighteen hundreds, Schleswig became
Speaker 1: the regional capital and work began on the restoration of
Speaker 1: the cathedral's great Gothic frescoes. These pictures were painted on
Speaker 1: the walls of the cathedral cloisters. They were glorious, but
Speaker 1: they were fading, flaking, being corroded by six centuries of damp,
Speaker 1: and so the cathedral commissioned a painter, August Olbas, to
Speaker 1: restore the great medieval paintings. His work began in eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight, and it was widely admired for its beauty
Speaker 1: and clarity. Five decades passed and tastes changed, as tastes do.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty seven, the church authorities decided that August
Speaker 1: Olbers had done a terrible job. He'd added too much repainting,
Speaker 1: rather than carefully revealing and conserving what was there. The
Speaker 1: new conventional wisdom was that a modern restorer shouldn't add
Speaker 1: anything to the original work, and in particular shouldn't fill
Speaker 1: in the blanks where the original work had disappeared in patches.
Speaker 1: Alba's had done all that, it was agreed that his
Speaker 1: work must be removed, and the original medieval art, even
Speaker 1: if incomplete or damaged, must be revealed. So three men
Speaker 1: began the second attempt at restoration. In charge was Professor
Speaker 1: Ernst Faye, a noted art restorer and a widely admired
Speaker 1: historian of art. Assisting him was Dietrich Faye, his son,
Speaker 1: and at the bottom of the pyramid. Assisting them both
Speaker 1: was a young painter by the name of Lothar Malskat. Faye,
Speaker 1: Faye and Malscat worked diligently for months, protecting the artwork
Speaker 1: with scaffolds and tarpaulin, until finally revealing the restored work
Speaker 1: in all its glory. The critics were astounded and delighted.
Speaker 1: The paintings may have dated all the way back to
Speaker 1: the year thirteen hundred or even earlier. Under the sensitive
Speaker 1: guidance a Professor Faye, they'd been restored so beautifully that
Speaker 1: they might have been painted yesterday. It was a triumph
Speaker 1: something for visitors to the Cathedral of Saint Peter to
Speaker 1: marvel act. Although there was one curious fact about the
Speaker 1: restored frescoes. A local historian was the first to notice it.
Speaker 1: Christopher Columbus had reached the Americas in fourteen ninety two.
Speaker 1: So wasn't it striking that a biblical fresco painted two
Speaker 1: centuries before that voyage depicted eight creatures that were definitely
Speaker 1: unmistakably American. Wild turkis I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening
Speaker 1: to cautionary tales. If Professor Ernst Faye felt awkward about
Speaker 1: the presence of those suspiciously anachronistic turkeys, he didn't show it.
Speaker 1: But then he was a man with powerful friends. Faye
Speaker 1: was undoubtedly an expert in art history, particularly the history
Speaker 1: of church frescoes, and he was a skilled artist too,
Speaker 1: that his most valuable ability was as a networker. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, he flattered his way into the circle
Speaker 1: of Hermann Gering, the most powerful man in Nazi Germany
Speaker 1: other than Adolf Hitler himself. Gerring liked to think of
Speaker 1: himself as a great connoisseur of art and loved having
Speaker 1: men such as Professor Faye to reassure him that he
Speaker 1: was Faye's son. Dietrich learned everything his father had to
Speaker 1: teach him about the history of art and the game
Speaker 1: of securing powerful patrons. Before taking on the restoration of
Speaker 1: Saint Peter's in Schleswig, they had been kept busy with
Speaker 1: a string of prestigious commissions to restore paintings across Germany.
Speaker 1: They could scarcely keep up with the pace of work.
Speaker 1: It was at this moment, in nineteen thirty six, that
Speaker 1: Lothar Malskat had knocked on the door of Ernst Faye's
Speaker 1: home in Berlin and asked if he was looking for
Speaker 1: an assistant. Malskat was twenty three, talented and desperate. He'd
Speaker 1: studied at the Art Academy of Kernucksburg, and his professors
Speaker 1: had been hugely impressed by the range of styles he
Speaker 1: could execute. One of them called his versatility extraordinary, almost uncanny.
Speaker 1: But when he'd tried to launch his career as an
Speaker 1: artist in nineteen thirties Berlin, he had sunk without trace.
Speaker 1: Professor Ernst Faye looked Malskat up and down, coolly, appraising
Speaker 1: him as he might have appraised a Flemish still life.
Speaker 1: Malskat looked hungry. He'd been sleeping on park benches. Professor
Speaker 1: Faye offered him a job whitewashing his house. It was
Speaker 1: a start. Malskat was a quick learner. Under the tutelage
Speaker 1: of Professor Faye, and with access to Faye's extensive library
Speaker 1: of ecclesiastical art, Malskat learned more than most people will
Speaker 1: ever know about restoring church paintings. The duo of Faye
Speaker 1: and Faye were now a trio, or so it seemed
Speaker 1: to Malskat, But to Ernst and Dietrich Faye, the hungry,
Speaker 1: homeless guy they'd taken pity on. He'd only ever be
Speaker 1: the hired help. A year later, Faye, Faye and Maulscat
Speaker 1: stood in the cloisters of Schleswig Cathedral and contemplated the
Speaker 1: work of August Olba's Alba's Remember had taken moldering work
Speaker 1: from the thirteen hundreds and sumptuously restored it, adding paint
Speaker 1: where the original was thinning and freestyling over the gaps
Speaker 1: where the original had gone. His work had been admired
Speaker 1: of the time, but times had changed. Alba's's renovation had
Speaker 1: to be carefully removed. The medieval work underneath needed to
Speaker 1: be uncovered and displayed, and so the trio began to
Speaker 1: scrape away all traces of Alba's' work, slowly, slowly, slowly.
Speaker 1: But perhaps Alba's had been careless, or perhaps his successes
Speaker 1: had been because when they'd finished, there's nothing left. Professor
Speaker 1: Faye reported, a worried mouse cat nothing well, almost nothing.
Speaker 1: See for yourself. No, no, no, just can't be. The
Speaker 1: paintings were more than six centuries old. They were jewels
Speaker 1: in the crown of German heritage, or at least they
Speaker 1: had been. Now they were a few flakes of paint
Speaker 1: on a moldy old wall, and Professor Ernst Faye was
Speaker 1: in charge of the disaster. Schiser Schis swore Ernst Faye, no, no,
Speaker 1: don't worry, you can fix this. Mouscat fetch them whitewash, whitewash,
Speaker 1: Professor Faye, We're going to start again. Then start again
Speaker 1: they did. Lothar mauscat had started working for Ernst Faye
Speaker 1: by whitewashing his house. Now he was whitewashing the cloisters
Speaker 1: of Schleswig cathedral. He gave himself a completely blank surface
Speaker 1: on which to work, the whitewash slightly tinted to give
Speaker 1: the impression of age, and then he began to paint
Speaker 1: free hand, finally living up to the promise his Kernicksburg
Speaker 1: professors had admired. His uncanny ability to work in any style.
Speaker 1: Was the whole scam Malskat's idea or Dietrich phase, we
Speaker 1: don't know. Jonathan Keats, and artist and art historian, thinks
Speaker 1: that even though Malskat was the one holding the brush,
Speaker 1: the mastermind was the man in charge, Professor Ernst Faye himself.
Speaker 1: Malskat was not painting purely from his imagination. He had
Speaker 1: studied Professor Faye's books, which were filled with medieval art.
Speaker 1: He had, of course observed August Olbers's work up close,
Speaker 1: as he carefully scraped it away and into the mix
Speaker 1: of nineteenth century restoration and medieval work, he stirred other influences.
Speaker 1: He based the face of Jesus on an old classmate
Speaker 1: from Kernicksburg. He boldly drew a prophet with the features
Speaker 1: of his own father, and the Virgin Mary was inspired
Speaker 1: by the beautiful young actress Hans Knottec a huge star
Speaker 1: in the German movies of the day, After all, reasoned Malskat,
Speaker 1: if you're going to draw the Virgin Mary base her
Speaker 1: on a woman who also inspired devotion a film star,
Speaker 1: it all sounds absurd, and Malskat was certainly improvising more
Speaker 1: than one might expect. But he had a gift and
Speaker 1: expertly inhabited the simple, almost cartoonish style of the fourteenth century.
Speaker 1: The finishing touches came from Professor Faye, who gave the
Speaker 1: brown and orange drawings the patina of the ages by
Speaker 1: gently rubbing them with a brick. The whole thing looked
Speaker 1: rather convincing. Film star or no film star, that said,
Speaker 1: in a biblical image that was supposed to have been
Speaker 1: painted two centuries before Columbus sailed to America, surely including
Speaker 1: eight turkeys, would see the deception immediately unravel, wouldn't it.
Speaker 1: Cautionary tales will return after this message. In Nazi Germany,
Speaker 1: there was really only one possible reaction to the discovery
Speaker 1: of eight turkeys on a supposedly medieval fresco. The murals
Speaker 1: were genuine. It was history that had been faked. The
Speaker 1: idea had already been circulating that a German explorer named
Speaker 1: Diedrich Pinning had reached the Americas in fourteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: nineteen years before Columbus. Although there isn't much evidence that
Speaker 1: this is true, the theory was enthusiastically endorsed by the
Speaker 1: Nazi authorities in the nineteen thirties. Now the Schleswig Turkeys
Speaker 1: showed that Pinning hadn't been the first. Here, at last
Speaker 1: was definitive proof that the Aryan race had not only
Speaker 1: reached the America's centuries earlier than that swore the Mediterranean
Speaker 1: scoundrel Columbus, but they'd returned home with a population of
Speaker 1: wild turkeys. The theory was ludicrous on its face, but
Speaker 1: it was almost universally embraced. The Schleswiger Truthan builder or
Speaker 1: Schlesswig Turkey pictures should have been an embarrassment. Instead, they
Speaker 1: were a cause for national celebration, and perhaps that shouldn't
Speaker 1: be surprising. Germany had become a fascist state, keen to
Speaker 1: amplify any idea that suggested and greatness, no matter how
Speaker 1: absurd that idea might be. There were rewards for complicity,
Speaker 1: and there were punishments for dissent. After all, Professor Faye
Speaker 1: was responsible for the restoration. Professor Faye was friends with
Speaker 1: Herman Gering, and people who upset Herman Gering had a
Speaker 1: tendency to disappear. If you had a problem with the
Speaker 1: Turks of Schleswig, Herman Gering had a problem with you.
Speaker 1: One of the historians who promoted the Turkey sketches as
Speaker 1: vital historical evidence was Professor Alfred Stanger, one of the
Speaker 1: leading ideologus in Nazi Germany. Stanger declared that the restoration
Speaker 1: was as restrained as it was careful, which when you
Speaker 1: think about it, is true, and that the murals were
Speaker 1: the last, deepest final word in German art. Is a
Speaker 1: lie still a lie when everyone in power agrees to
Speaker 1: believe it. Yet there was one notable voice raised to
Speaker 1: expose the lie. The original renovator of the murals, eighty
Speaker 1: year old August Olbers, was still alive and mightily surprised
Speaker 1: to hear so many historians building theories off the back
Speaker 1: of those turkeys. Herr Albas came forward to declare that
Speaker 1: the Turks of Schleswig hadn't been painted in the year
Speaker 1: thirteen hundred. He had painted some himself in eighteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: or so four of them. Anyway, Olbers had been restoring
Speaker 1: a mural depicting King Herod's massacre of the Innocence, and
Speaker 1: there was a blank space underneath it which had wants
Speaker 1: contained medieval work. Olbas decided to add an alternating pattern
Speaker 1: of foxes and turkeys. It was a visual allegory for
Speaker 1: King Herod's combat nation of cunning and greed. But Alba's,
Speaker 1: remember had never pretended to be doing anything other than
Speaker 1: filling in the gaps between the original work. It's what
Speaker 1: people had wanted back then. As Lothar Malskat had been
Speaker 1: riffing away, faking medieval frescoes while drawing inspiration from art
Speaker 1: history books, contemporary film stills, and Albas's nineteenth century editions,
Speaker 1: he must have seen those turkeys and liked them, not
Speaker 1: caring or more likely not realizing that they could never
Speaker 1: have been in the underlying medieval work. After all, Malskat
Speaker 1: was an artist, not an ornithologist. Alba's had originally painted
Speaker 1: four turkeys. Malskat's allegedly medieval restoration now contained eight. And
Speaker 1: now there were two awkward facts pointing to the conclusion
Speaker 1: that Faye Faye and Malskat were frauds. First, it was
Speaker 1: perfectly obvious that Aran Vikings had not brought turkeys back
Speaker 1: from the Americus of the twelve hundreds. Second, the man
Speaker 1: who had originally put those turkeys on the walls of
Speaker 1: the cloisters of Schlesvig Cathedral, August Olbers, was telling everyone
Speaker 1: exactly what had happened. Yet given the political context, nobody
Speaker 1: wanted to listen. Experts queued up to explain that old
Speaker 1: hair Olbers was evidently suffering from dementia. The grand lie
Speaker 1: was further cemented in nineteen forty when Heinrich Himmler, head
Speaker 1: of the Nazi SS, ordered that every German school should
Speaker 1: receive a copy of Schleswig Cathedral and its murals. An
Speaker 1: illustrated book by the Nazi art historian Alfred Stanger. It's
Speaker 1: quite a book. Stanger notes that the schleshfig figures resemble
Speaker 1: those from further west and south in Germany. It's proof
Speaker 1: that Germany is one nation. Maltscat had painted them to
Speaker 1: fit Nazi racial stereotypes. I had to paint the apostles
Speaker 1: as long headed Vikings, he said, because one did not
Speaker 1: want Eastern roundheads. Maltscat evidently knew how to please his audience.
Speaker 1: Stanger almost purs with pleasure as he uses the murals
Speaker 1: to draw a link between the German bloodline and the Vikings.
Speaker 1: Stanger explains that the unknown painter, working around twelve eighty,
Speaker 1: displayed astonishing powers of discernment in portraying the turkeys he
Speaker 1: had observed and reproduced the creature's individuality and smallest idiosyncrasies. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll grant this, They definitely looked like turkeys. Stanger added
Speaker 1: that the portrayals are not, as so often borrowed from
Speaker 1: reference books, but based on a high degree of personal observation.
Speaker 1: But good to know, just in case you'd been thinking
Speaker 1: that the Vikings had reached the Americas. That brought back
Speaker 1: nothing but an encyclopedia, and just in case there was
Speaker 1: any doubt about the subtext. A guidebook for tourists visiting
Speaker 1: the cathedral of Saint Peter in Schleswig explained that Aryan
Speaker 1: seafarers went to America long before Columbus did. Incidentally, Columbus
Speaker 1: is the descendant of Spanish Jews from Barcelona. Combine one
Speaker 1: part comical fraud with one part fascist ideology, stirwell, add
Speaker 1: a pinch of intimidation and you have a lie baked
Speaker 1: in so thoroughly that nobody seems to be able to
Speaker 1: even imagine the truth. The only comfort, surely is that
Speaker 1: such a thing could never happen in a democracy. Or
Speaker 1: could it? The answer may be less encouraging than we'd
Speaker 1: like to think. Let me explain. Sunday, March the twenty ninth,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty two Palm Sunday. In fact, Winston Churchill has
Speaker 1: grown tired of trying to bomb small and well defended
Speaker 1: German factories and has decided to fire bomb a civilian
Speaker 1: population instead. The British choose Lubeck, a beautiful medieval port
Speaker 1: less than one hundred miles away from Schleswig. Lubeck is
Speaker 1: a soft target, largely undefended buildings supported by ancient dry
Speaker 1: wooden beams. The darkness of the blacked out city unmistakable
Speaker 1: in contrast with nearby fields dusted with sparkling late spring
Speaker 1: frost and waterways glinting in the light of the full moon.
Speaker 1: The Royal Air Force come in low. They dropped four
Speaker 1: hundred tons of bombs, most of them in centuries, and
Speaker 1: the center of the Lubeck burns right in the middle
Speaker 1: of it. All is Lubec's great medieval church, the Marian Kiyoshi.
Speaker 1: The firestorm is so hot that the church bells melt,
Speaker 1: And yet after the embers had cooled, came the miracle
Speaker 1: of Marion Kiyoshi. On the walls of the church, huge
Speaker 1: Gothic frescoes had been exposed. They'd been concealed under centuries
Speaker 1: of whitewash, but the whitewash had been peeled away in
Speaker 1: the heat. It was the most astonishing inspiring discovery. Of course,
Speaker 1: those frescoes now needed to be preserved by the best
Speaker 1: experts in Germany. But there was a war on, so
Speaker 1: Ubec's authorities put up some temporary roofing and awaited the
Speaker 1: day that the war ended. That day didn't come for
Speaker 1: another three years. Lothar Malscat had been jobless and penniless
Speaker 1: at the end of the war, trying to make a
Speaker 1: living by painting erotic pictures. If the German economy hadn't
Speaker 1: been wrecked many young German men killed in the war,
Speaker 1: and if he hadn't been selling them on the streets,
Speaker 1: he might have scraped together a living. But he didn't, so,
Speaker 1: just as he had done back in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: he had gone to the Phay's house in desperation and
Speaker 1: asked for work. Old Professor Faye had died, but his son,
Speaker 1: Dietrich was the same as ever. The art historian Jonathan
Speaker 1: Keats says that Dietrich Faye seemed to be the only
Speaker 1: man in Germany unaffected by the war. He was still
Speaker 1: wearing expensive suits and still smoking expensive cigarettes. And just
Speaker 1: as Dietrich's father had done, Faye Junior treated Mauscat as
Speaker 1: a servant. He set him to work forging paintings by
Speaker 1: the yard chagal Deaga, Gogan, Matisse, Picasso, Rembrandt, Renoir, van Gogh.
Speaker 1: Even working at speed, Malskat could do them all, not
Speaker 1: always well, but well enough, and Faye had the connections
Speaker 1: to convince people to buy. Not that buyers needed much convincing.
Speaker 1: They were afraid of hyperinflation, which had struck Germany after
Speaker 1: the previous war, and so they were desperate to find
Speaker 1: assets that might keep their value. And after so many
Speaker 1: Jewish connoisseurs had fled Germany or been sent to their
Speaker 1: deaths in extermination camps and their art collection had been stolen,
Speaker 1: it didn't seem strange to find all these paintings floating around,
Speaker 1: and nobody wanted to ask questions about where they'd come from. Then,
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty eight, with post war Germany finally in
Speaker 1: a position to contemplate medieval restoration work, the authorities in
Speaker 1: Lubeck sought out Dietrich Faye, the acclaimed restorer of Saint
Speaker 1: Peter's Cathedral in Schleswig, and asked him to conserve the
Speaker 1: Marion Kirsha murals that had been revealed during the fire
Speaker 1: bombing of Lubeck. Dietrich was given eighty eight thousand marks
Speaker 1: to fund the work. It was a substantial sum relative
Speaker 1: to the wages of the day, something like two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in today's money. Lothar Malskat was still working
Speaker 1: for Faye on a wage of three marks about seven
Speaker 1: dollars per hour. He duly climbed the scaffold to take
Speaker 1: a look at the enormous murals. When he returned, he
Speaker 1: shook his head. There's nothing there, just dust, a shadow
Speaker 1: of the original. All I have to do is blow
Speaker 1: on it and the shadow disappears. Faye and Malscat could
Speaker 1: see that it would take more than one miracle to
Speaker 1: restore the frescoes of Marion Kirsha. Still they were nothing
Speaker 1: if not miracle workers, right, and so Lothar Malscat got
Speaker 1: to work again, and as always Malscat worked fast. There
Speaker 1: was a deadline. The seven hundredth anniversary celebrations of the
Speaker 1: church were approaching. But so quickly did Malscat restore, or
Speaker 1: rather reimagine, the fourteenth century frescoes that Faye suggested they
Speaker 1: keep working. The pair put up some scaffolding in a
Speaker 1: different part of the church and discovered another wall full
Speaker 1: of fourteenth century paintings. Not everyone was happy with what
Speaker 1: was going on behind that scaffolding. The State Curator of
Speaker 1: Art wrote a confidential report suggesting that Dietrich Faye had
Speaker 1: probably overpainted previous restorations, and a young researcher named Johannah
Speaker 1: Colba managed to examine the work at close range and
Speaker 1: submit her concerns to the city authorities. I regret to
Speaker 1: report that the overpainting is much too thick. There are
Speaker 1: also some strange discrepancies. For example, photographs of the fire
Speaker 1: damaged church in nineteen forty two show that Mary Magdalene
Speaker 1: has sandals in the restored frescoes. She has bare feet,
Speaker 1: some of the saints appeared to have moved. Dietrich Faye
Speaker 1: threatened to sue Johannah Colber. He was a rich and
Speaker 1: powerful man. She was just a doctoral student. She recanted,
Speaker 1: saying that she must have misremembered. But more than a
Speaker 1: faulty memory was required. Anyone examining those wartime photographs of
Speaker 1: the original frescoes revealed after the fire could see clearly
Speaker 1: how much Mouscat had simply invented. Yet, just as in
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, such doubts were waved away when the
Speaker 1: restored paintings were revealed. The response was ecstatic. Images of
Speaker 1: the murals were put on millions of postage stamps. Tourists
Speaker 1: flocked to Lubeck to visit the church. Journalists wrote about
Speaker 1: the striking discovery, while academics breathlessly explained that it would
Speaker 1: rewrite the history of ecclesiastical art. Dietrich Fay was given
Speaker 1: another one hundred and fifty thousand marks and nominated for
Speaker 1: a professorship. In nineteen fifty one, the leader of West
Speaker 1: Germany's fledgling democracy, Conrad Adenau, visited the church to celebrate
Speaker 1: its septuous centenary and stood in the nave, examining the work.
Speaker 1: This is uplifting, gentleman. He gestured up at the rows
Speaker 1: of saints seventy feet above them, ten feet tall, green
Speaker 1: red and earthy brown, revealed by the wartime inferno, and
Speaker 1: restored to their original glory by Dietrich Faye and his assistant.
Speaker 1: What was the fellow's name? Again, nobody knew the name
Speaker 1: of Lothar Malscat, but soon that name would be on
Speaker 1: the lips of everyone in Germany. Cautionary tales will return
Speaker 1: in a moment. Lothar Malskat was fuming. It wasn't the money,
Speaker 1: although heaven knows Dietrich Faye paid him little enough. It
Speaker 1: was the credit. Malskat had created all this art, the
Speaker 1: images that were being reprinted on stamps, and which were
Speaker 1: yet again rewriting the textbooks, and yet nobody even knew
Speaker 1: his name. Faye was publicly honored by Conrad Adnauer, the
Speaker 1: leader of post war West Germany, and Malskat. Malskat was
Speaker 1: hanging out with the other craftsman. He was a nobody.
Speaker 1: Phaye's plan required Malskat's anonymity. The whole point was to
Speaker 1: claim that the work was done by an anonymous artist
Speaker 1: in the fourteenth century. But Malskat wasn't interested in anonymity anymore.
Speaker 1: He didn't want Faye to take the credit. He didn't
Speaker 1: want a fourteenth century painter to take the credit, and
Speaker 1: so he wrote on the wall of the Marion koshare
Speaker 1: all paintings in this church are by Lothar Malskat. They
Speaker 1: of course painted over that inconvenient declaration immediately, and so
Speaker 1: Malskat took an even more extraordinary step. He went to
Speaker 1: the local police station and made a full confession he
Speaker 1: had faked the Marion Kyoshia murals. The police laughed him
Speaker 1: out of town. Much like August Olbas, the elderly restorer
Speaker 1: who had first put turkeys on the walls of Schleshviig
Speaker 1: Cathedral in the late eighteen hundreds, Lothar Malskat was explaining
Speaker 1: to the world exactly what he had done, and he
Speaker 1: was being sneered at, demeaned, and disbelieved. The local newspaper
Speaker 1: pityingly described it as the lamentable case of a painter
Speaker 1: gone crazy. But unlike August Olbers, Malskat had a secret
Speaker 1: weapon are like a camera. He documented every step in
Speaker 1: the process from obliterating the fragile murals with a steel
Speaker 1: brush where necessary, to slapping on fresh whitewash, to exuberantly
Speaker 1: painting on the blank walls. And while the local authorities
Speaker 1: had no interest in even looking at these photographs, the
Speaker 1: national media found Malskat's story and his photographs rather more intriguing.
Speaker 1: For a few months there was a stalemate. The wider
Speaker 1: world believed Malskat, but the great and the good of
Speaker 1: Lubeck were outraged that perceived slander and backed their man,
Speaker 1: the renowned art expert doctor Fay. When Lothar Malskat confessed
Speaker 1: to also forging the turkeys of Saint Peter's Church at Schleswig,
Speaker 1: they regarded this as further proof that he was deranged
Speaker 1: and with delusions of grandeur too, and so Malskat took
Speaker 1: the fight to a surreal new level. He sued himself
Speaker 1: for forgery under German law. This forced the police to
Speaker 1: take action. Malskat's attorney handed over a dossier full of evidence,
Speaker 1: including accounts of those forged Van Goghs and Rembrandts. When
Speaker 1: the police searched Dietrich Faye's house, they found several more forgeries.
Speaker 1: Dietrich Faye was arrested and taken into custody. Within days,
Speaker 1: an expert commission had been assembled, inspected the Marion Kirsha
Speaker 1: and published a report which agreed with Malskat. None of
Speaker 1: the medieval remains were visible at all. The modern pictures
Speaker 1: followed completely new outlines. The twenty one figures in the
Speaker 1: choir are not Gothic, but painted freehand by Mouscat. The
Speaker 1: painting described as old by the restorer Faye, does not
Speaker 1: lie on the medieval layer, but on a post medieval layer,
Speaker 1: and cannot, if for this reason alone, be considered original. Finally,
Speaker 1: the reckoning was coming. Lubeck was about to hold the
Speaker 1: most sensational trial in the city's history. This isn't really
Speaker 1: a cautionary tale about a forgery. It's a cautionary tale
Speaker 1: about complicity, about who amplifies a lie, who tries to
Speaker 1: silence the truth tellers, and who looks the other way.
Speaker 1: I think we can all understand why, in nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: six nobody really wanted to tell the truth about the
Speaker 1: Turkey pictures of Schleswig. In a fascist state where every
Speaker 1: day political dissidents disappeared into the concentration camps, were beaten
Speaker 1: up or murdered. Who really would put their neck on
Speaker 1: the chopping block for the sake of some anachronistic birds.
Speaker 1: But after the war you might have hoped things would
Speaker 1: go differently. Himmler and Gering were both dead by suicide.
Speaker 1: That ridiculous racist book which claimed that the Schleswig murals
Speaker 1: demonstrated the national unity of Germany had been written by
Speaker 1: Alfred Stanger. He had lost his job as a professor,
Speaker 1: the Nazis had lost, so there was nothing standing in
Speaker 1: the way of recognizing the self evident truth that the
Speaker 1: Schleswig murals were modern, except that Germans had already lost
Speaker 1: so much in the disastrous evils of the Third Reich
Speaker 1: and the war, they didn't really fancy facing up to
Speaker 1: any more losses, such as acknowledging that the schless Big
Speaker 1: murals must be fake. And so, even though the state
Speaker 1: curator had recorded his doubts about Dietrich Faye, Faye was
Speaker 1: put in charge of the fragile miracle of the Marion Kirsha.
Speaker 1: You have to suspect that Lubec's authorities had a sense
Speaker 1: that Faye and his assistant would do more than merely
Speaker 1: conserving the old murals. We want no museum. The architect
Speaker 1: of the restoration project had said, lay on more paint.
Speaker 1: Paint out the church beautifully, agreed the Bishop of Lubeck,
Speaker 1: only later to declare that he had been betrayed by
Speaker 1: an extremely cunning deception. Jonathan Keats, the author of Forged,
Speaker 1: Why Fakes of the Great Art of our Age, says
Speaker 1: the trial in nineteen fifty four of Malskat and Faye
Speaker 1: actually became a trial of all the powerful institutions which
Speaker 1: had supported, protected, and perhaps quietly encouraged them. The local
Speaker 1: newspapers agreed. The real defendants are not the forgers, but
Speaker 1: the experts and officials who failed to exercise proper care
Speaker 1: read the newspaper, they didn't mind being deceived. Had Mouscat
Speaker 1: not photographed the empty church walls before he started painting
Speaker 1: his murals, the evidence would have been suppressed by the
Speaker 1: very people who employed him. They are as much to
Speaker 1: blame as the fortres themselves. Indeed, we all want to
Speaker 1: believe in miracles, and when someone punctures our little bubble
Speaker 1: of wishful thinking, we're less likely to thank them than
Speaker 1: to resent them. The Turkeys of Schleswig showed us that
Speaker 1: in a fascist state people will queue up to endorse
Speaker 1: an obvious lie. But the miracle of Marion Kirsha showed
Speaker 1: us that even a democracy isn't invulnerable to grand self deceptions.
Speaker 1: As Lothar Malskat explained at the trial, people liked to
Speaker 1: be fooled. Today we just gave them what they wanted.
Speaker 1: In the end, Lothar Malskat got what he wanted to.
Speaker 1: He was finally acknowledged as the artist who painted the
Speaker 1: interior of the Marion Kyosha. He also got something he
Speaker 1: didn't want. Eighteen months in prison. Dietrich Faye got twenty
Speaker 1: and the Marion Kosher. The melted church bells still lie
Speaker 1: where they fell to the floor of the church, a
Speaker 1: solemn memorial to the horror of war. But not everything
Speaker 1: has been so carefully remembered. Many of Malskat's paintings stayed up.
Speaker 1: He would have liked that, but he would not have
Speaker 1: liked what the guide books now say about the church.
Speaker 1: Gothic crescoes of Christ and Saints add color to otherwise
Speaker 1: plain walls. The pastel images only resurfaced when a fire
Speaker 1: caused by the nineteen forty two air raid licked away
Speaker 1: the coat of whitewash. What an injustice. Surely the guidebook
Speaker 1: should add all paintings in this church are by loth
Speaker 1: arm Mouscat, but it does not. Apparently you can't keep
Speaker 1: a good miracle down. The definitive account of loth arm
Speaker 1: Mouscat's forgery is in Jonathan Keats's book Forged, Why Fakes
Speaker 1: Are the Great Art of our Age. For a full
Speaker 1: list of our sources, please see the show notes at
Speaker 1: Tim Parford dot com. Cautionary Tales is written by me
Speaker 1: Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced by Ryan Dilley
Speaker 1: with support from Courtney Guarino and Emily Vaughan. A sound
Speaker 1: design and original music is the work of Pascal Wise.
Speaker 1: It features the voice talents of Ben Crow, Melanie Gutridge,
Speaker 1: Stella Harford, and Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been possible without the work of Mia LaBelle, Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: Heather Fane, John Schnas, Julia Barton, Kylie mcgliori, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 1: Royston Basserve, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano, Danielle Lakhan, and Maya Kanig.
Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you
Speaker 1: like the show, please remember to share, rate and review,
Speaker 1: Tell a friend, tell two friends, and if you want
Speaker 1: to hear the show, adds free and listen to four
Speaker 1: exclusive Cautionary Tales shorts. Then sign up for Pushkin Plus
Speaker 1: on the show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin
Speaker 1: dot fm slash plus