WEBVTT - The Wild Turkeys of Schleswig 0:00:15.370 --> 0:00:25.410 Pushkin for a charming little town. Schleswig in Germany has 0:00:25.450 --> 0:00:29.210 a magnificent old cathedral. Parts of the Cathedral of Saint 0:00:29.210 --> 0:00:33.250 Peter date back nearly nine hundred years, and King Frederick, 0:00:33.330 --> 0:00:37.290 the First of Denmark is buried there. Decade after decade, 0:00:37.770 --> 0:00:41.570 century after century, new parts were added to the building, 0:00:41.970 --> 0:00:46.930 the new artwork. Late in the eighteen hundreds, Schleswig became 0:00:47.130 --> 0:00:50.930 the regional capital and work began on the restoration of 0:00:50.970 --> 0:00:55.490 the cathedral's great Gothic frescoes. These pictures were painted on 0:00:55.530 --> 0:00:59.890 the walls of the cathedral cloisters. They were glorious, but 0:00:59.970 --> 0:01:05.850 they were fading, flaking, being corroded by six centuries of damp, 0:01:06.930 --> 0:01:11.050 and so the cathedral commissioned a painter, August Olbas, to 0:01:11.130 --> 0:01:15.650 restore the great medieval paintings. His work began in eighteen 0:01:15.730 --> 0:01:19.250 eighty eight, and it was widely admired for its beauty 0:01:19.610 --> 0:01:26.010 and clarity. Five decades passed and tastes changed, as tastes do. 0:01:27.210 --> 0:01:31.810 In nineteen thirty seven, the church authorities decided that August 0:01:31.890 --> 0:01:38.010 Olbers had done a terrible job. He'd added too much repainting, 0:01:38.170 --> 0:01:42.290 rather than carefully revealing and conserving what was there. The 0:01:42.450 --> 0:01:46.770 new conventional wisdom was that a modern restorer shouldn't add 0:01:46.890 --> 0:01:51.130 anything to the original work, and in particular shouldn't fill 0:01:51.170 --> 0:01:54.810 in the blanks where the original work had disappeared in patches. 0:01:55.490 --> 0:01:58.970 Alba's had done all that, it was agreed that his 0:01:59.050 --> 0:02:04.050 work must be removed, and the original medieval art, even 0:02:04.090 --> 0:02:10.490 if incomplete or damaged, must be revealed. So three men 0:02:10.650 --> 0:02:15.290 began the second attempt at restoration. In charge was Professor 0:02:15.530 --> 0:02:20.170 Ernst Faye, a noted art restorer and a widely admired 0:02:20.290 --> 0:02:25.090 historian of art. Assisting him was Dietrich Faye, his son, 0:02:26.010 --> 0:02:28.850 and at the bottom of the pyramid. Assisting them both 0:02:29.290 --> 0:02:34.330 was a young painter by the name of Lothar Malskat. Faye, 0:02:34.850 --> 0:02:40.330 Faye and Malscat worked diligently for months, protecting the artwork 0:02:40.410 --> 0:02:45.490 with scaffolds and tarpaulin, until finally revealing the restored work 0:02:45.810 --> 0:02:51.090 in all its glory. The critics were astounded and delighted. 0:02:51.890 --> 0:02:54.170 The paintings may have dated all the way back to 0:02:54.210 --> 0:02:58.170 the year thirteen hundred or even earlier. Under the sensitive 0:02:58.210 --> 0:03:02.450 guidance a Professor Faye, they'd been restored so beautifully that 0:03:02.530 --> 0:03:07.690 they might have been painted yesterday. It was a triumph 0:03:07.890 --> 0:03:10.650 something for visitors to the Cathedral of Saint Peter to 0:03:10.810 --> 0:03:17.530 marvel act. Although there was one curious fact about the 0:03:17.570 --> 0:03:22.090 restored frescoes. A local historian was the first to notice it. 0:03:23.010 --> 0:03:27.050 Christopher Columbus had reached the Americas in fourteen ninety two. 0:03:27.570 --> 0:03:32.850 So wasn't it striking that a biblical fresco painted two 0:03:33.010 --> 0:03:39.090 centuries before that voyage depicted eight creatures that were definitely 0:03:39.850 --> 0:03:49.090 unmistakably American. Wild turkis I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening 0:03:49.490 --> 0:04:16.090 to cautionary tales. If Professor Ernst Faye felt awkward about 0:04:16.130 --> 0:04:21.130 the presence of those suspiciously anachronistic turkeys, he didn't show it. 0:04:22.010 --> 0:04:26.610 But then he was a man with powerful friends. Faye 0:04:26.810 --> 0:04:31.610 was undoubtedly an expert in art history, particularly the history 0:04:31.650 --> 0:04:35.690 of church frescoes, and he was a skilled artist too, 0:04:36.410 --> 0:04:41.130 that his most valuable ability was as a networker. In 0:04:41.210 --> 0:04:44.690 the nineteen thirties, he flattered his way into the circle 0:04:44.730 --> 0:04:48.930 of Hermann Gering, the most powerful man in Nazi Germany 0:04:49.050 --> 0:04:53.010 other than Adolf Hitler himself. Gerring liked to think of 0:04:53.090 --> 0:04:56.970 himself as a great connoisseur of art and loved having 0:04:57.010 --> 0:05:00.370 men such as Professor Faye to reassure him that he 0:05:00.530 --> 0:05:06.330 was Faye's son. Dietrich learned everything his father had to 0:05:06.370 --> 0:05:09.530 teach him about the history of art and the game 0:05:09.610 --> 0:05:14.250 of securing powerful patrons. Before taking on the restoration of 0:05:14.290 --> 0:05:17.250 Saint Peter's in Schleswig, they had been kept busy with 0:05:17.290 --> 0:05:21.730 a string of prestigious commissions to restore paintings across Germany. 0:05:22.170 --> 0:05:24.610 They could scarcely keep up with the pace of work. 0:05:25.570 --> 0:05:28.690 It was at this moment, in nineteen thirty six, that 0:05:28.930 --> 0:05:32.930 Lothar Malskat had knocked on the door of Ernst Faye's 0:05:33.010 --> 0:05:35.650 home in Berlin and asked if he was looking for 0:05:35.690 --> 0:05:42.770 an assistant. Malskat was twenty three, talented and desperate. He'd 0:05:42.810 --> 0:05:46.610 studied at the Art Academy of Kernucksburg, and his professors 0:05:46.610 --> 0:05:49.730 had been hugely impressed by the range of styles he 0:05:49.730 --> 0:05:56.730 could execute. One of them called his versatility extraordinary, almost uncanny. 0:05:57.850 --> 0:06:00.410 But when he'd tried to launch his career as an 0:06:00.490 --> 0:06:04.610 artist in nineteen thirties Berlin, he had sunk without trace. 0:06:06.250 --> 0:06:11.610 Professor Ernst Faye looked Malskat up and down, coolly, appraising 0:06:11.690 --> 0:06:14.810 him as he might have appraised a Flemish still life. 0:06:15.490 --> 0:06:21.290 Malskat looked hungry. He'd been sleeping on park benches. Professor 0:06:21.330 --> 0:06:25.970 Faye offered him a job whitewashing his house. It was 0:06:26.010 --> 0:06:32.130 a start. Malskat was a quick learner. Under the tutelage 0:06:32.170 --> 0:06:36.210 of Professor Faye, and with access to Faye's extensive library 0:06:36.250 --> 0:06:40.810 of ecclesiastical art, Malskat learned more than most people will 0:06:40.850 --> 0:06:47.090 ever know about restoring church paintings. The duo of Faye 0:06:47.090 --> 0:06:50.770 and Faye were now a trio, or so it seemed 0:06:50.770 --> 0:06:55.170 to Malskat, But to Ernst and Dietrich Faye, the hungry, 0:06:55.210 --> 0:06:58.410 homeless guy they'd taken pity on. He'd only ever be 0:06:58.450 --> 0:07:04.210 the hired help. A year later, Faye, Faye and Maulscat 0:07:04.650 --> 0:07:08.650 stood in the cloisters of Schleswig Cathedral and contemplated the 0:07:08.650 --> 0:07:14.010 work of August Olba's Alba's Remember had taken moldering work 0:07:14.130 --> 0:07:18.810 from the thirteen hundreds and sumptuously restored it, adding paint 0:07:18.970 --> 0:07:22.370 where the original was thinning and freestyling over the gaps 0:07:22.410 --> 0:07:25.890 where the original had gone. His work had been admired 0:07:25.890 --> 0:07:31.010 of the time, but times had changed. Alba's's renovation had 0:07:31.050 --> 0:07:34.890 to be carefully removed. The medieval work underneath needed to 0:07:34.930 --> 0:07:39.650 be uncovered and displayed, and so the trio began to 0:07:39.690 --> 0:07:46.690 scrape away all traces of Alba's' work, slowly, slowly, slowly. 0:07:47.930 --> 0:07:52.850 But perhaps Alba's had been careless, or perhaps his successes 0:07:52.850 --> 0:07:58.090 had been because when they'd finished, there's nothing left. Professor 0:07:58.130 --> 0:08:04.810 Faye reported, a worried mouse cat nothing well, almost nothing. 0:08:05.410 --> 0:08:11.330 See for yourself. No, no, no, just can't be. The 0:08:11.450 --> 0:08:16.170 paintings were more than six centuries old. They were jewels 0:08:16.170 --> 0:08:19.850 in the crown of German heritage, or at least they 0:08:19.890 --> 0:08:23.930 had been. Now they were a few flakes of paint 0:08:24.130 --> 0:08:28.690 on a moldy old wall, and Professor Ernst Faye was 0:08:28.730 --> 0:08:35.850 in charge of the disaster. Schiser Schis swore Ernst Faye, no, no, 0:08:35.930 --> 0:08:40.810 don't worry, you can fix this. Mouscat fetch them whitewash, whitewash, 0:08:40.890 --> 0:08:45.730 Professor Faye, We're going to start again. Then start again 0:08:45.810 --> 0:08:50.730 they did. Lothar mauscat had started working for Ernst Faye 0:08:50.730 --> 0:08:55.650 by whitewashing his house. Now he was whitewashing the cloisters 0:08:55.690 --> 0:09:00.690 of Schleswig cathedral. He gave himself a completely blank surface 0:09:00.770 --> 0:09:04.890 on which to work, the whitewash slightly tinted to give 0:09:04.930 --> 0:09:08.810 the impression of age, and then he began to paint 0:09:09.450 --> 0:09:13.250 free hand, finally living up to the promise his Kernicksburg 0:09:13.370 --> 0:09:18.610 professors had admired. His uncanny ability to work in any style. 0:09:19.850 --> 0:09:24.250 Was the whole scam Malskat's idea or Dietrich phase, we 0:09:24.370 --> 0:09:29.290 don't know. Jonathan Keats, and artist and art historian, thinks 0:09:29.330 --> 0:09:32.730 that even though Malskat was the one holding the brush, 0:09:32.850 --> 0:09:37.970 the mastermind was the man in charge, Professor Ernst Faye himself. 0:09:39.610 --> 0:09:43.530 Malskat was not painting purely from his imagination. He had 0:09:43.570 --> 0:09:47.210 studied Professor Faye's books, which were filled with medieval art. 0:09:47.730 --> 0:09:51.570 He had, of course observed August Olbers's work up close, 0:09:51.610 --> 0:09:55.410 as he carefully scraped it away and into the mix 0:09:55.450 --> 0:10:00.930 of nineteenth century restoration and medieval work, he stirred other influences. 0:10:01.890 --> 0:10:05.330 He based the face of Jesus on an old classmate 0:10:05.450 --> 0:10:09.850 from Kernicksburg. He boldly drew a prophet with the features 0:10:09.890 --> 0:10:14.050 of his own father, and the Virgin Mary was inspired 0:10:14.130 --> 0:10:18.290 by the beautiful young actress Hans Knottec a huge star 0:10:18.410 --> 0:10:22.730 in the German movies of the day, After all, reasoned Malskat, 0:10:23.290 --> 0:10:26.170 if you're going to draw the Virgin Mary base her 0:10:26.250 --> 0:10:30.690 on a woman who also inspired devotion a film star, 0:10:31.810 --> 0:10:36.570 it all sounds absurd, and Malskat was certainly improvising more 0:10:36.610 --> 0:10:40.610 than one might expect. But he had a gift and 0:10:41.170 --> 0:10:46.730 expertly inhabited the simple, almost cartoonish style of the fourteenth century. 0:10:48.010 --> 0:10:51.730 The finishing touches came from Professor Faye, who gave the 0:10:51.810 --> 0:10:55.810 brown and orange drawings the patina of the ages by 0:10:55.850 --> 0:10:59.610 gently rubbing them with a brick. The whole thing looked 0:10:59.690 --> 0:11:04.690 rather convincing. Film star or no film star, that said, 0:11:05.490 --> 0:11:08.490 in a biblical image that was supposed to have been 0:11:08.570 --> 0:11:14.250 painted two centuries before Columbus sailed to America, surely including 0:11:14.410 --> 0:11:20.530 eight turkeys, would see the deception immediately unravel, wouldn't it. 0:11:21.770 --> 0:11:39.290 Cautionary tales will return after this message. In Nazi Germany, 0:11:39.650 --> 0:11:43.170 there was really only one possible reaction to the discovery 0:11:43.210 --> 0:11:49.170 of eight turkeys on a supposedly medieval fresco. The murals 0:11:49.610 --> 0:11:55.090 were genuine. It was history that had been faked. The 0:11:55.170 --> 0:11:59.130 idea had already been circulating that a German explorer named 0:11:59.210 --> 0:12:03.650 Diedrich Pinning had reached the Americas in fourteen seventy three, 0:12:04.210 --> 0:12:08.770 nineteen years before Columbus. Although there isn't much evidence that 0:12:08.810 --> 0:12:13.130 this is true, the theory was enthusiastically endorsed by the 0:12:13.210 --> 0:12:18.730 Nazi authorities in the nineteen thirties. Now the Schleswig Turkeys 0:12:19.010 --> 0:12:23.130 showed that Pinning hadn't been the first. Here, at last 0:12:23.370 --> 0:12:27.690 was definitive proof that the Aryan race had not only 0:12:27.730 --> 0:12:32.490 reached the America's centuries earlier than that swore the Mediterranean 0:12:32.610 --> 0:12:38.250 scoundrel Columbus, but they'd returned home with a population of 0:12:38.370 --> 0:12:44.530 wild turkeys. The theory was ludicrous on its face, but 0:12:44.570 --> 0:12:49.890 it was almost universally embraced. The Schleswiger Truthan builder or 0:12:50.010 --> 0:12:55.650 Schlesswig Turkey pictures should have been an embarrassment. Instead, they 0:12:55.650 --> 0:13:01.410 were a cause for national celebration, and perhaps that shouldn't 0:13:01.450 --> 0:13:06.370 be surprising. Germany had become a fascist state, keen to 0:13:06.410 --> 0:13:11.210 amplify any idea that suggested and greatness, no matter how 0:13:11.290 --> 0:13:16.250 absurd that idea might be. There were rewards for complicity, 0:13:17.090 --> 0:13:22.410 and there were punishments for dissent. After all, Professor Faye 0:13:22.690 --> 0:13:27.130 was responsible for the restoration. Professor Faye was friends with 0:13:27.170 --> 0:13:31.770 Herman Gering, and people who upset Herman Gering had a 0:13:31.770 --> 0:13:35.170 tendency to disappear. If you had a problem with the 0:13:35.210 --> 0:13:39.010 Turks of Schleswig, Herman Gering had a problem with you. 0:13:42.730 --> 0:13:46.170 One of the historians who promoted the Turkey sketches as 0:13:46.330 --> 0:13:50.970 vital historical evidence was Professor Alfred Stanger, one of the 0:13:51.090 --> 0:13:56.290 leading ideologus in Nazi Germany. Stanger declared that the restoration 0:13:56.570 --> 0:14:01.050 was as restrained as it was careful, which when you 0:14:01.090 --> 0:14:05.530 think about it, is true, and that the murals were 0:14:05.570 --> 0:14:12.090 the last, deepest final word in German art. Is a 0:14:12.130 --> 0:14:16.130 lie still a lie when everyone in power agrees to 0:14:16.130 --> 0:14:21.610 believe it. Yet there was one notable voice raised to 0:14:21.650 --> 0:14:26.930 expose the lie. The original renovator of the murals, eighty 0:14:27.010 --> 0:14:31.890 year old August Olbers, was still alive and mightily surprised 0:14:31.890 --> 0:14:35.410 to hear so many historians building theories off the back 0:14:35.450 --> 0:14:39.850 of those turkeys. Herr Albas came forward to declare that 0:14:39.890 --> 0:14:42.930 the Turks of Schleswig hadn't been painted in the year 0:14:43.090 --> 0:14:47.450 thirteen hundred. He had painted some himself in eighteen eighty nine, 0:14:47.530 --> 0:14:51.370 or so four of them. Anyway, Olbers had been restoring 0:14:51.410 --> 0:14:55.290 a mural depicting King Herod's massacre of the Innocence, and 0:14:55.570 --> 0:14:58.570 there was a blank space underneath it which had wants 0:14:58.690 --> 0:15:03.810 contained medieval work. Olbas decided to add an alternating pattern 0:15:03.970 --> 0:15:07.890 of foxes and turkeys. It was a visual allegory for 0:15:08.050 --> 0:15:12.650 King Herod's combat nation of cunning and greed. But Alba's, 0:15:12.730 --> 0:15:16.130 remember had never pretended to be doing anything other than 0:15:16.210 --> 0:15:19.650 filling in the gaps between the original work. It's what 0:15:19.730 --> 0:15:24.050 people had wanted back then. As Lothar Malskat had been 0:15:24.170 --> 0:15:29.330 riffing away, faking medieval frescoes while drawing inspiration from art 0:15:29.450 --> 0:15:35.570 history books, contemporary film stills, and Albas's nineteenth century editions, 0:15:35.570 --> 0:15:39.210 he must have seen those turkeys and liked them, not 0:15:39.410 --> 0:15:43.690 caring or more likely not realizing that they could never 0:15:43.770 --> 0:15:48.570 have been in the underlying medieval work. After all, Malskat 0:15:48.970 --> 0:15:57.450 was an artist, not an ornithologist. Alba's had originally painted 0:15:57.650 --> 0:16:05.010 four turkeys. Malskat's allegedly medieval restoration now contained eight. And 0:16:05.130 --> 0:16:08.770 now there were two awkward facts pointing to the conclusion 0:16:08.850 --> 0:16:15.090 that Faye Faye and Malskat were frauds. First, it was 0:16:15.410 --> 0:16:20.090 perfectly obvious that Aran Vikings had not brought turkeys back 0:16:20.130 --> 0:16:24.610 from the Americus of the twelve hundreds. Second, the man 0:16:24.690 --> 0:16:27.330 who had originally put those turkeys on the walls of 0:16:27.370 --> 0:16:32.050 the cloisters of Schlesvig Cathedral, August Olbers, was telling everyone 0:16:32.330 --> 0:16:38.450 exactly what had happened. Yet given the political context, nobody 0:16:38.490 --> 0:16:42.850 wanted to listen. Experts queued up to explain that old 0:16:42.890 --> 0:16:49.370 hair Olbers was evidently suffering from dementia. The grand lie 0:16:49.570 --> 0:16:54.050 was further cemented in nineteen forty when Heinrich Himmler, head 0:16:54.090 --> 0:16:58.890 of the Nazi SS, ordered that every German school should 0:16:58.890 --> 0:17:03.450 receive a copy of Schleswig Cathedral and its murals. An 0:17:03.450 --> 0:17:08.530 illustrated book by the Nazi art historian Alfred Stanger. It's 0:17:08.690 --> 0:17:13.530 quite a book. Stanger notes that the schleshfig figures resemble 0:17:13.650 --> 0:17:17.770 those from further west and south in Germany. It's proof 0:17:18.050 --> 0:17:23.010 that Germany is one nation. Maltscat had painted them to 0:17:23.090 --> 0:17:27.730 fit Nazi racial stereotypes. I had to paint the apostles 0:17:27.730 --> 0:17:31.410 as long headed Vikings, he said, because one did not 0:17:31.490 --> 0:17:37.690 want Eastern roundheads. Maltscat evidently knew how to please his audience. 0:17:38.330 --> 0:17:42.650 Stanger almost purs with pleasure as he uses the murals 0:17:42.690 --> 0:17:46.450 to draw a link between the German bloodline and the Vikings. 0:17:47.530 --> 0:17:52.570 Stanger explains that the unknown painter, working around twelve eighty, 0:17:53.130 --> 0:17:59.850 displayed astonishing powers of discernment in portraying the turkeys he 0:17:59.890 --> 0:18:07.970 had observed and reproduced the creature's individuality and smallest idiosyncrasies. Well, 0:18:08.290 --> 0:18:15.210 I'll grant this, They definitely looked like turkeys. Stanger added 0:18:15.250 --> 0:18:19.370 that the portrayals are not, as so often borrowed from 0:18:19.410 --> 0:18:24.250 reference books, but based on a high degree of personal observation. 0:18:25.090 --> 0:18:27.530 But good to know, just in case you'd been thinking 0:18:27.530 --> 0:18:30.890 that the Vikings had reached the Americas. That brought back 0:18:30.970 --> 0:18:34.770 nothing but an encyclopedia, and just in case there was 0:18:34.970 --> 0:18:39.130 any doubt about the subtext. A guidebook for tourists visiting 0:18:39.130 --> 0:18:43.650 the cathedral of Saint Peter in Schleswig explained that Aryan 0:18:43.810 --> 0:18:48.370 seafarers went to America long before Columbus did. Incidentally, Columbus 0:18:48.450 --> 0:18:53.130 is the descendant of Spanish Jews from Barcelona. Combine one 0:18:53.330 --> 0:18:59.610 part comical fraud with one part fascist ideology, stirwell, add 0:18:59.610 --> 0:19:03.250 a pinch of intimidation and you have a lie baked 0:19:03.330 --> 0:19:07.010 in so thoroughly that nobody seems to be able to 0:19:07.050 --> 0:19:12.530 even imagine the truth. The only comfort, surely is that 0:19:12.570 --> 0:19:16.970 such a thing could never happen in a democracy. Or 0:19:17.330 --> 0:19:21.490 could it? The answer may be less encouraging than we'd 0:19:21.490 --> 0:19:28.330 like to think. Let me explain. Sunday, March the twenty ninth, 0:19:28.930 --> 0:19:34.610 nineteen forty two Palm Sunday. In fact, Winston Churchill has 0:19:34.650 --> 0:19:38.370 grown tired of trying to bomb small and well defended 0:19:38.410 --> 0:19:42.370 German factories and has decided to fire bomb a civilian 0:19:42.410 --> 0:19:48.530 population instead. The British choose Lubeck, a beautiful medieval port 0:19:49.210 --> 0:19:53.970 less than one hundred miles away from Schleswig. Lubeck is 0:19:54.010 --> 0:20:00.530 a soft target, largely undefended buildings supported by ancient dry 0:20:00.570 --> 0:20:05.570 wooden beams. The darkness of the blacked out city unmistakable 0:20:05.730 --> 0:20:10.290 in contrast with nearby fields dusted with sparkling late spring 0:20:10.370 --> 0:20:14.730 frost and waterways glinting in the light of the full moon. 0:20:15.890 --> 0:20:20.490 The Royal Air Force come in low. They dropped four 0:20:20.850 --> 0:20:25.290 hundred tons of bombs, most of them in centuries, and 0:20:25.450 --> 0:20:30.090 the center of the Lubeck burns right in the middle 0:20:30.130 --> 0:20:34.530 of it. All is Lubec's great medieval church, the Marian Kiyoshi. 0:20:35.690 --> 0:20:39.450 The firestorm is so hot that the church bells melt, 0:20:42.090 --> 0:20:46.650 And yet after the embers had cooled, came the miracle 0:20:46.930 --> 0:20:52.010 of Marion Kiyoshi. On the walls of the church, huge 0:20:52.090 --> 0:20:57.010 Gothic frescoes had been exposed. They'd been concealed under centuries 0:20:57.050 --> 0:21:00.650 of whitewash, but the whitewash had been peeled away in 0:21:00.690 --> 0:21:06.410 the heat. It was the most astonishing inspiring discovery. Of course, 0:21:06.690 --> 0:21:10.330 those frescoes now needed to be preserved by the best 0:21:10.490 --> 0:21:14.610 experts in Germany. But there was a war on, so 0:21:14.930 --> 0:21:19.010 Ubec's authorities put up some temporary roofing and awaited the 0:21:19.090 --> 0:21:23.370 day that the war ended. That day didn't come for 0:21:23.490 --> 0:21:31.330 another three years. Lothar Malscat had been jobless and penniless 0:21:31.410 --> 0:21:33.730 at the end of the war, trying to make a 0:21:33.770 --> 0:21:38.330 living by painting erotic pictures. If the German economy hadn't 0:21:38.330 --> 0:21:41.610 been wrecked many young German men killed in the war, 0:21:41.850 --> 0:21:44.090 and if he hadn't been selling them on the streets, 0:21:44.570 --> 0:21:49.090 he might have scraped together a living. But he didn't, so, 0:21:49.330 --> 0:21:51.610 just as he had done back in the nineteen thirties, 0:21:51.770 --> 0:21:54.570 he had gone to the Phay's house in desperation and 0:21:54.730 --> 0:21:59.930 asked for work. Old Professor Faye had died, but his son, 0:22:00.010 --> 0:22:04.130 Dietrich was the same as ever. The art historian Jonathan 0:22:04.250 --> 0:22:07.570 Keats says that Dietrich Faye seemed to be the only 0:22:07.650 --> 0:22:11.690 man in Germany unaffected by the war. He was still 0:22:11.770 --> 0:22:17.850 wearing expensive suits and still smoking expensive cigarettes. And just 0:22:18.010 --> 0:22:22.450 as Dietrich's father had done, Faye Junior treated Mauscat as 0:22:22.450 --> 0:22:26.810 a servant. He set him to work forging paintings by 0:22:26.810 --> 0:22:34.690 the yard chagal Deaga, Gogan, Matisse, Picasso, Rembrandt, Renoir, van Gogh. 0:22:35.450 --> 0:22:39.410 Even working at speed, Malskat could do them all, not 0:22:39.610 --> 0:22:44.810 always well, but well enough, and Faye had the connections 0:22:44.850 --> 0:22:49.730 to convince people to buy. Not that buyers needed much convincing. 0:22:50.290 --> 0:22:53.930 They were afraid of hyperinflation, which had struck Germany after 0:22:53.930 --> 0:22:57.130 the previous war, and so they were desperate to find 0:22:57.210 --> 0:23:01.290 assets that might keep their value. And after so many 0:23:01.410 --> 0:23:05.450 Jewish connoisseurs had fled Germany or been sent to their 0:23:05.490 --> 0:23:09.970 deaths in extermination camps and their art collection had been stolen, 0:23:10.690 --> 0:23:14.370 it didn't seem strange to find all these paintings floating around, 0:23:15.210 --> 0:23:21.490 and nobody wanted to ask questions about where they'd come from. Then, 0:23:21.890 --> 0:23:25.970 in nineteen forty eight, with post war Germany finally in 0:23:25.970 --> 0:23:30.450 a position to contemplate medieval restoration work, the authorities in 0:23:30.530 --> 0:23:35.690 Lubeck sought out Dietrich Faye, the acclaimed restorer of Saint 0:23:35.730 --> 0:23:39.530 Peter's Cathedral in Schleswig, and asked him to conserve the 0:23:39.650 --> 0:23:43.250 Marion Kirsha murals that had been revealed during the fire 0:23:43.250 --> 0:23:48.370 bombing of Lubeck. Dietrich was given eighty eight thousand marks 0:23:48.410 --> 0:23:52.850 to fund the work. It was a substantial sum relative 0:23:52.890 --> 0:23:55.810 to the wages of the day, something like two hundred 0:23:55.810 --> 0:24:01.250 thousand dollars in today's money. Lothar Malskat was still working 0:24:01.250 --> 0:24:05.610 for Faye on a wage of three marks about seven 0:24:05.650 --> 0:24:10.050 dollars per hour. He duly climbed the scaffold to take 0:24:10.090 --> 0:24:14.730 a look at the enormous murals. When he returned, he 0:24:14.810 --> 0:24:19.730 shook his head. There's nothing there, just dust, a shadow 0:24:19.730 --> 0:24:22.290 of the original. All I have to do is blow 0:24:22.330 --> 0:24:27.730 on it and the shadow disappears. Faye and Malscat could 0:24:27.730 --> 0:24:30.290 see that it would take more than one miracle to 0:24:30.370 --> 0:24:35.410 restore the frescoes of Marion Kirsha. Still they were nothing 0:24:35.490 --> 0:24:40.890 if not miracle workers, right, and so Lothar Malscat got 0:24:40.890 --> 0:24:46.610 to work again, and as always Malscat worked fast. There 0:24:46.650 --> 0:24:50.490 was a deadline. The seven hundredth anniversary celebrations of the 0:24:50.610 --> 0:24:55.450 church were approaching. But so quickly did Malscat restore, or 0:24:55.850 --> 0:25:01.050 rather reimagine, the fourteenth century frescoes that Faye suggested they 0:25:01.130 --> 0:25:05.090 keep working. The pair put up some scaffolding in a 0:25:05.090 --> 0:25:11.170 different part of the church and discovered another wall full 0:25:11.210 --> 0:25:16.330 of fourteenth century paintings. Not everyone was happy with what 0:25:16.490 --> 0:25:20.330 was going on behind that scaffolding. The State Curator of 0:25:20.450 --> 0:25:24.450 Art wrote a confidential report suggesting that Dietrich Faye had 0:25:24.490 --> 0:25:30.170 probably overpainted previous restorations, and a young researcher named Johannah 0:25:30.210 --> 0:25:34.010 Colba managed to examine the work at close range and 0:25:34.130 --> 0:25:38.330 submit her concerns to the city authorities. I regret to 0:25:38.370 --> 0:25:41.890 report that the overpainting is much too thick. There are 0:25:41.930 --> 0:25:46.450 also some strange discrepancies. For example, photographs of the fire 0:25:46.570 --> 0:25:50.610 damaged church in nineteen forty two show that Mary Magdalene 0:25:50.810 --> 0:25:54.930 has sandals in the restored frescoes. She has bare feet, 0:25:55.890 --> 0:26:00.690 some of the saints appeared to have moved. Dietrich Faye 0:26:00.690 --> 0:26:03.690 threatened to sue Johannah Colber. He was a rich and 0:26:03.810 --> 0:26:08.450 powerful man. She was just a doctoral student. She recanted, 0:26:09.170 --> 0:26:14.290 saying that she must have misremembered. But more than a 0:26:14.410 --> 0:26:19.890 faulty memory was required. Anyone examining those wartime photographs of 0:26:19.890 --> 0:26:23.730 the original frescoes revealed after the fire could see clearly 0:26:23.850 --> 0:26:28.850 how much Mouscat had simply invented. Yet, just as in 0:26:28.890 --> 0:26:33.250 the nineteen thirties, such doubts were waved away when the 0:26:33.330 --> 0:26:38.890 restored paintings were revealed. The response was ecstatic. Images of 0:26:38.890 --> 0:26:43.130 the murals were put on millions of postage stamps. Tourists 0:26:43.210 --> 0:26:47.170 flocked to Lubeck to visit the church. Journalists wrote about 0:26:47.210 --> 0:26:51.650 the striking discovery, while academics breathlessly explained that it would 0:26:51.690 --> 0:26:57.410 rewrite the history of ecclesiastical art. Dietrich Fay was given 0:26:57.450 --> 0:27:01.770 another one hundred and fifty thousand marks and nominated for 0:27:01.810 --> 0:27:06.610 a professorship. In nineteen fifty one, the leader of West 0:27:06.730 --> 0:27:12.250 Germany's fledgling democracy, Conrad Adenau, visited the church to celebrate 0:27:12.290 --> 0:27:17.530 its septuous centenary and stood in the nave, examining the work. 0:27:18.930 --> 0:27:24.850 This is uplifting, gentleman. He gestured up at the rows 0:27:24.890 --> 0:27:28.850 of saints seventy feet above them, ten feet tall, green 0:27:29.210 --> 0:27:33.850 red and earthy brown, revealed by the wartime inferno, and 0:27:34.010 --> 0:27:39.570 restored to their original glory by Dietrich Faye and his assistant. 0:27:40.930 --> 0:27:45.330 What was the fellow's name? Again, nobody knew the name 0:27:45.370 --> 0:27:49.090 of Lothar Malscat, but soon that name would be on 0:27:49.130 --> 0:27:59.530 the lips of everyone in Germany. Cautionary tales will return 0:27:59.610 --> 0:28:15.330 in a moment. Lothar Malskat was fuming. It wasn't the money, 0:28:15.490 --> 0:28:19.570 although heaven knows Dietrich Faye paid him little enough. It 0:28:19.610 --> 0:28:24.490 was the credit. Malskat had created all this art, the 0:28:24.570 --> 0:28:28.050 images that were being reprinted on stamps, and which were 0:28:28.170 --> 0:28:32.210 yet again rewriting the textbooks, and yet nobody even knew 0:28:32.210 --> 0:28:36.930 his name. Faye was publicly honored by Conrad Adnauer, the 0:28:37.050 --> 0:28:42.210 leader of post war West Germany, and Malskat. Malskat was 0:28:42.330 --> 0:28:46.250 hanging out with the other craftsman. He was a nobody. 0:28:49.210 --> 0:28:54.530 Phaye's plan required Malskat's anonymity. The whole point was to 0:28:54.570 --> 0:28:57.650 claim that the work was done by an anonymous artist 0:28:57.730 --> 0:29:04.210 in the fourteenth century. But Malskat wasn't interested in anonymity anymore. 0:29:04.890 --> 0:29:07.450 He didn't want Faye to take the credit. He didn't 0:29:07.450 --> 0:29:10.530 want a fourteenth century painter to take the credit, and 0:29:10.610 --> 0:29:13.690 so he wrote on the wall of the Marion koshare 0:29:14.410 --> 0:29:20.770 all paintings in this church are by Lothar Malskat. They 0:29:20.890 --> 0:29:26.130 of course painted over that inconvenient declaration immediately, and so 0:29:26.370 --> 0:29:31.290 Malskat took an even more extraordinary step. He went to 0:29:31.330 --> 0:29:35.170 the local police station and made a full confession he 0:29:35.770 --> 0:29:41.410 had faked the Marion Kyoshia murals. The police laughed him 0:29:41.410 --> 0:29:46.970 out of town. Much like August Olbas, the elderly restorer 0:29:46.970 --> 0:29:49.930 who had first put turkeys on the walls of Schleshviig 0:29:50.010 --> 0:29:54.850 Cathedral in the late eighteen hundreds, Lothar Malskat was explaining 0:29:54.890 --> 0:29:57.850 to the world exactly what he had done, and he 0:29:57.930 --> 0:30:03.530 was being sneered at, demeaned, and disbelieved. The local newspaper 0:30:03.610 --> 0:30:07.890 pityingly described it as the lamentable case of a painter 0:30:08.050 --> 0:30:14.730 gone crazy. But unlike August Olbers, Malskat had a secret 0:30:14.770 --> 0:30:21.250 weapon are like a camera. He documented every step in 0:30:21.250 --> 0:30:25.970 the process from obliterating the fragile murals with a steel 0:30:26.010 --> 0:30:31.250 brush where necessary, to slapping on fresh whitewash, to exuberantly 0:30:31.370 --> 0:30:35.370 painting on the blank walls. And while the local authorities 0:30:35.410 --> 0:30:38.690 had no interest in even looking at these photographs, the 0:30:38.890 --> 0:30:44.850 national media found Malskat's story and his photographs rather more intriguing. 0:30:46.130 --> 0:30:49.770 For a few months there was a stalemate. The wider 0:30:49.810 --> 0:30:53.490 world believed Malskat, but the great and the good of 0:30:53.570 --> 0:30:58.130 Lubeck were outraged that perceived slander and backed their man, 0:30:58.450 --> 0:31:03.810 the renowned art expert doctor Fay. When Lothar Malskat confessed 0:31:03.850 --> 0:31:07.970 to also forging the turkeys of Saint Peter's Church at Schleswig, 0:31:08.250 --> 0:31:11.690 they regarded this as further proof that he was deranged 0:31:11.890 --> 0:31:18.530 and with delusions of grandeur too, and so Malskat took 0:31:18.530 --> 0:31:24.330 the fight to a surreal new level. He sued himself 0:31:24.810 --> 0:31:29.690 for forgery under German law. This forced the police to 0:31:29.730 --> 0:31:35.290 take action. Malskat's attorney handed over a dossier full of evidence, 0:31:35.770 --> 0:31:39.810 including accounts of those forged Van Goghs and Rembrandts. When 0:31:39.850 --> 0:31:44.770 the police searched Dietrich Faye's house, they found several more forgeries. 0:31:45.610 --> 0:31:49.690 Dietrich Faye was arrested and taken into custody. Within days, 0:31:50.010 --> 0:31:54.370 an expert commission had been assembled, inspected the Marion Kirsha 0:31:54.970 --> 0:31:59.770 and published a report which agreed with Malskat. None of 0:31:59.810 --> 0:32:04.370 the medieval remains were visible at all. The modern pictures 0:32:04.410 --> 0:32:09.530 followed completely new outlines. The twenty one figures in the 0:32:09.610 --> 0:32:14.330 choir are not Gothic, but painted freehand by Mouscat. The 0:32:14.450 --> 0:32:18.290 painting described as old by the restorer Faye, does not 0:32:18.730 --> 0:32:22.650 lie on the medieval layer, but on a post medieval layer, 0:32:22.970 --> 0:32:29.210 and cannot, if for this reason alone, be considered original. Finally, 0:32:29.730 --> 0:32:34.250 the reckoning was coming. Lubeck was about to hold the 0:32:34.250 --> 0:32:43.450 most sensational trial in the city's history. This isn't really 0:32:43.490 --> 0:32:47.810 a cautionary tale about a forgery. It's a cautionary tale 0:32:48.050 --> 0:32:53.930 about complicity, about who amplifies a lie, who tries to 0:32:54.010 --> 0:32:57.410 silence the truth tellers, and who looks the other way. 0:32:58.930 --> 0:33:01.850 I think we can all understand why, in nineteen thirty 0:33:01.890 --> 0:33:05.290 six nobody really wanted to tell the truth about the 0:33:05.330 --> 0:33:10.090 Turkey pictures of Schleswig. In a fascist state where every 0:33:10.170 --> 0:33:14.290 day political dissidents disappeared into the concentration camps, were beaten 0:33:14.410 --> 0:33:17.810 up or murdered. Who really would put their neck on 0:33:17.850 --> 0:33:21.410 the chopping block for the sake of some anachronistic birds. 0:33:23.250 --> 0:33:26.610