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Speaker 1: Pushkin. Abraham Bradius was nobody's fool. He was the world's

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Speaker 1: leading scholar of Dutch painters, and particularly of Johannes Vermeer,

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Speaker 1: one of the most admired and most mysterious figures in

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Speaker 1: European art. When Bradius was younger, as an art critic

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Speaker 1: and collector, he had made his name by spotting works

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Speaker 1: wrongly attributed to vermir Now, at the age of eighty two,

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Speaker 1: he was enjoying a retirement swan Song in Monaco. He

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Speaker 1: had just published a highly respected book in which he

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Speaker 1: had identified two hundred fake or misattributed Dutch masters. His

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Speaker 1: opinions were viewed as so authoritative that had been dubbed

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Speaker 1: the Pope. It was at this moment in Bradius's life,

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Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty seven, that Haroard Bone paid a visit

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Speaker 1: to his Monaco villa. Bone was also a pillar of

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Speaker 1: the Dutch establishment, a member of parliament who had spoken

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Speaker 1: out earlier than most against fascism and anti semitism in Europe.

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Speaker 1: Bone had come to Abraham Bradius on a mission of mercy.

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Speaker 1: He told Bradius that a Dutch family of anti fascists

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Speaker 1: were living in Mussolini's Italy, and they needed to raise

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Speaker 1: money to emigrate to the safety of the United States.

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Speaker 1: But they had something to sell that might be of value.

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Speaker 1: Possibly only Bradius had the expertise to judge, and so

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Speaker 1: Bone unpacked the crate he had brought out of Italy.

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Speaker 1: Inside it was a large canvas, still on its ancient

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Speaker 1: wooden stretcher. The picture depicted Christ at a and in

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Speaker 1: the top left hand corner was the magical signature I

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Speaker 1: the mayor Johannes Vermir himself. But Bone was eager to

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Speaker 1: know what did Bradius think he was the expert. The

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Speaker 1: old man was spellbound. He delivered his verdict. Christ at

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Speaker 1: Amaeus was not only a genuine Vermir, it was the

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Speaker 1: Dutch master's finest work. We have here. I am inclined

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Speaker 1: to say the masterpiece of Johannes Vermir of Delft quite

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Speaker 1: a different from all these other paintings, and yet every

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Speaker 1: inch a Vermuir. When this masterpiece was shown to me,

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Speaker 1: I had difficulty controlling my emotion. Appraham Radius used an

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Speaker 1: interesting word to describe his discovery. Almost reverently. He called

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Speaker 1: it the Dutch word to describe something virginly pure, and untouched.

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Speaker 1: It was an ironic choice of words, because EMUs could

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Speaker 1: hardly have been more corrupt. It was a rotten fraud

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Speaker 1: of a painting stiffly applied to an old canvase just

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Speaker 1: a few months before Gradius caught sight of it. I'm

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Speaker 1: Tim Harford, and you're listening to cautionary tales. The trickery

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Speaker 1: may have been crude, but Abraham Gradius wasn't the only

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Speaker 1: one to be fooled. Cererard Bonne had been lied to

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Speaker 1: as well when he visited Bradeus. It was as the

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Speaker 1: unsuspecting accomplice of a master forger, and soon enough the

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Speaker 1: entire Dutch art world was sucked into the Khan christ

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Speaker 1: at Amaeus sold to the Boyman's Museum in Rotterdam, which

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Speaker 1: was desperate to establish itself on the world stage. Bradius

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Speaker 1: urged the museum on and even contributed to help pay

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Speaker 1: for the picture. And there are only forty of ramers,

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Speaker 1: and this is the most important one. And in my judgment,

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Speaker 1: do more's beautiful one. If we wait, we'll lose it.

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Speaker 1: The total cost was five hundred and twenty thousand guilders,

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Speaker 1: compared to the wages of the time that is well

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Speaker 1: over ten million dollars to day. Amaus drew admiring crowds

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Speaker 1: and rave reviews. Several other paintings in a similar style

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Speaker 1: soon emerged in the Netherlands. Once the first forgery had

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Speaker 1: been accepted as a Vermeer, it was easier to pass

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Speaker 1: off these other fakes. They didn't fool everyone, but like

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Speaker 1: a Maus, they fooled the people who mattered. Critics certified

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Speaker 1: the fakes, museums exhibited them, collectors paid vast sums for them,

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Speaker 1: a total of more than one hundred million dollars in

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Speaker 1: today's money in financial terms alone, this was a monumental fraud.

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Speaker 1: It is also a puzzle. The Dutch art world revered.

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Speaker 1: Vermer is one of the greatest painters who ever lived.

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Speaker 1: He painted mostly in the sixteen sixties and had been

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Speaker 1: rediscovered only in the late eighteen hundreds. As Bradius said,

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Speaker 1: only forty Vermeer paintings were thought to have survived. So

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Speaker 1: the apparent emergence of half a dozen newly discovered Vermeers

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Speaker 1: in just a few years was a major cultural event,

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Speaker 1: but also an event that should have strained credulity. But

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Speaker 1: it did not. Why don't look to the paintings themselves

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Speaker 1: for an answer. If you compare a genuine Vermeer to

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Speaker 1: the first forgery Emaus, it's hard to understand how anyone

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Speaker 1: was fooled, let alone anyone as discerning as Abraham Bradius

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Speaker 1: Vermier was a true master. His most famous work is

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Speaker 1: Girl with a Pearl Earring, a luminous portrait of a

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Speaker 1: young woman seductive, innocent, adoring, and anxious all at once.

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Speaker 1: In the Milkmaid, a simple scene of domesticity is lifted

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Speaker 1: by details such as the rendering of a copper pot

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Speaker 1: and a display of fresh baked bread that looks good

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Speaker 1: enough to grab out of the painting. Then there's woman

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Speaker 1: reading a letter. She stands in the soft flight of

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Speaker 1: an unseen windows. She perhaps pregnant. We see her in

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Speaker 1: profile as she holds the letter close to her chest,

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Speaker 1: eyes cast down as she reads. There's a dramatic stillness

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Speaker 1: about the image. We feel that she's holding her breath

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Speaker 1: as she scans the letter for news. We hold our

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Speaker 1: breath too. A masterpiece, and christ at Amaus it's a static,

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Speaker 1: awkward image by comparison, rather than seeming to be an

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Speaker 1: inferior imitation of Vermeer. It doesn't look like Vermeer at all.

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Speaker 1: It's not a terrible painting, but it's not a brilliant

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Speaker 1: one either. Set alongside Vermeer's works, it seems dour and clumsy.

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Speaker 1: Yet it fooled the world and might continue to fool

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Speaker 1: the world to this day, had not the Forger been

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Speaker 1: caught out by a combination of recklessness and bad luck.

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Speaker 1: For the Forger, the beginning of the end was a

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Speaker 1: knock on the door. It was just past nine o'clock

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Speaker 1: in the evening on the twenty ninth of May nineteen

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Speaker 1: forty five. The war in Europe was at an end.

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Speaker 1: The aftershocks were not an officer and an armed soldier

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Speaker 1: from the Allied Art Commission were the wands doing the knocking.

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Speaker 1: They were standing at the top of the steps leading

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Speaker 1: to the door of three hundred and twenty one Kaiserskracht,

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Speaker 1: one of Amsterdam's most exclusive addresses. Mister van Megreen, Ah, gentlemen,

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Speaker 1: you have the advantage of me. Lieutenant Joseph Piller of

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Speaker 1: the Provisional Military Government. I see old do come in.

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Speaker 1: The house was lit by kerosene lamps. War ravaged Amsterdam

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Speaker 1: would have no electricity for weeks to come. The Dutch

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Speaker 1: had just endured what they called the hunger winter, with

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Speaker 1: some people reduced to eating gruel made from tulip bulbs

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Speaker 1: to try to stave off starvation. But Lieutenant Pillar could

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Speaker 1: see that at three hundred and twenty one Kaisers Gracked

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Speaker 1: there was plenty of everything. Pillar got to the point

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Speaker 1: a masterpiece by Johannes Vamir the woman taken in adultery

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Speaker 1: had been found in the possession of a German Nazi,

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Speaker 1: and not just any Nazi, but Hitler's right hand man,

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Speaker 1: Hermann Gering. The Germans, being Germans, had kept good records,

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Speaker 1: Pillar followed the money through various middlemen and eventually traced

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Speaker 1: five different Vermeer paintings back to deals with van Megren.

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Speaker 1: At that point the trail went cold. Where he obtained

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Speaker 1: these Dutch treasures? I am not able to help. I

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Speaker 1: know nothing of this, and DI mentioned mister Vennigren. Where

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Speaker 1: did the money come from? It wasn't just a one mansion.

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Speaker 1: Van Megren owned fifty six other properties in Amsterdam alone,

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Speaker 1: commercial properties, private homes, apartment blocks, even a hotel. At

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Speaker 1: number seven hundred and thirty eight, Kaisers gracked a fifteen

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Speaker 1: minutes stroll away. He hosted regular orgies at which sex

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Speaker 1: workers were rewarded for their exhausting efforts by being offered

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Speaker 1: the chance to grab a fistful of jewels in the

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Speaker 1: hallway as they left. Decades before the war, the young

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Speaker 1: van Megren had enjoyed some brief success as an artist

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Speaker 1: in middle age. As his jowls had loosened and his

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Speaker 1: hair had silvered, he had grown rich as an art dealer,

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Speaker 1: very rich. Indeed, Van Megren was arrested and marched at

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Speaker 1: gunpoint across town to prison. He responded with furious denials,

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Speaker 1: trying to bluster his way to freedom, but after a

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Speaker 1: round the clock interrogation, Van Megren cracked. Idiots, if you

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Speaker 1: think I sold a vermir to that fat girring, but

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Speaker 1: it's not a famir. I painted it myself. It's absurd.

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Speaker 1: I can't prove it. There's another painting underneath the one,

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Speaker 1: gurring heads I painted right over it. Give me paper

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Speaker 1: and charcoal and I'll sketch the composition for you. X

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Speaker 1: Ray the fake Vermeer and you'll see it's not the

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Speaker 1: only one either. I painted other vamiers and a couple

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Speaker 1: of de Huche and ms Emaus in the Bouments that's

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Speaker 1: mine too. The fraud had unraveled not because anyone spotted

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Speaker 1: these forgeries, but because the forger himself confessed, and why

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Speaker 1: wouldn't he? The alternative was worse. Selling an irreplaceable Vermeer

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Speaker 1: masterpiece to hermann Goering was treason, and treason could carry

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Speaker 1: the death penalty. Better for Van Magren to admit to

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Speaker 1: the less heinous crime of forgery and claim that the

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Speaker 1: Vermeers had never actually existed. All Van Magren had to

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Speaker 1: do was to prove it. When I first heard the

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Speaker 1: story of the fake Vamier, I was charmed by the

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Speaker 1: idea that the despicable Gurring had been duped by a

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Speaker 1: master forger. I loved the irony of the situation Van

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Speaker 1: Magren found himself in. In order to avoid a firing squad,

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Speaker 1: he needed to prove that he had committed a different crime.

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Speaker 1: We'll get back to that. I wanted us to focus

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Speaker 1: first on Abraham Bradius, the art critic who first fell

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Speaker 1: for the fraud. I began my new book, The Data Detective,

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Speaker 1: with the story of this forgery. The Data Detective is

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Speaker 1: a book about how to think clearly about the world,

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Speaker 1: and I wanted to start with Bradius because add a question,

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Speaker 1: how could a man as expert as Abraham Bradius have

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Speaker 1: been fooled by so crass a forgery? The answer is this,

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Speaker 1: when we're trying to interpret the world around us, we

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Speaker 1: need to realize that our expertise can be drowned by

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Speaker 1: our feelings. When Bradius wrote I had difficulty controlling my emotion,

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Speaker 1: he was alas correct. Nobody had more knowledge of Vermeer

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Speaker 1: than Bradius, but Van Maghren understood how to turn Bradius's

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Speaker 1: knowledge into a disadvantage. The story of how Van may

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Speaker 1: and fool Bradius is much more than a footnote in

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Speaker 1: the history of art. It can teach us why we

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Speaker 1: buy things we don't need, fall for the wrong kind

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Speaker 1: of romantic partner, and vote for politicians who betray our trust.

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Speaker 1: It explains why so often we buy into statistical claims

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Speaker 1: that even a moment's thought would tell us can't be true.

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Speaker 1: Van Megren was not a brilliant artist, but he was

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Speaker 1: a brilliant con man. He intuitively understood something about human nature.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes we want to be fooled. In twenty eleven, Guy Mayraz,

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Speaker 1: then a behavioral economist at the University of Oxford, conducted

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Speaker 1: a test of wishful thinking. Mayraz showed his experimental subjects

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Speaker 1: a graph of a price rising and falling over time,

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Speaker 1: and told them that the graphs showed recent fluctuations in

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Speaker 1: the price of wheat. He asked each person to make

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Speaker 1: a forecast of where the price would move next, and

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Speaker 1: offered them a small cash reward if their forecasts came true.

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Speaker 1: But Mayras had also divided his experimental participants into two categories.

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Speaker 1: Half of them were told that they were farmers, who

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Speaker 1: would be paid extra if wheat prices were high. The

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Speaker 1: rest were bakers, who would earn a bonus if wheat

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Speaker 1: was cheap. The subjects could earn two separate payments, then,

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Speaker 1: one for making an accurate forecast, and the second a

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Speaker 1: windfall if the price of wheat happened to move in

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Speaker 1: their direction. Yet may Ras found that the prospect of

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Speaker 1: the windfall influenced the forecast itself. The farmers hoped that

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Speaker 1: the price of wheat would rise, and they also predicted

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Speaker 1: that the price of wheat would rise. The bakers did

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Speaker 1: the opposite. They hoped and predicted that the price of

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Speaker 1: wheat would fall. This is wishful thinking in its purist form,

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Speaker 1: letting our reasoning be swayed by our hopes. It's just

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Speaker 1: one of many studies demonstrating what psychologists call motivated reasoning.

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Speaker 1: Motivated reasoning is thinking through a topic with the aim

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Speaker 1: of reaching a particular conclusion. Sometimes it's a conscious process,

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Speaker 1: as with a lawyer in the courtroom or a candidate

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Speaker 1: in a political debate, but we often don't know we're

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Speaker 1: doing it. It can be something as simple as sports

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Speaker 1: fans convincing themselves that game after game, referee after referee

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Speaker 1: is biased against their team. Wishful thinking isn't the only

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Speaker 1: form of motivated reasoning, but it is a common one.

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Speaker 1: A farmer wants to be accurate in his forecast of

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Speaker 1: wheat prices, but he also wants to make money, so

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Speaker 1: his forecasts are swayed by his avarice. And an art

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Speaker 1: critic who loves Vermeer is motivated to conclude that the

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Speaker 1: painting in front of him is not a forgery but

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Speaker 1: a masterpiece. It was wishful thinking that undid Abraham Bradius.

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Speaker 1: He knew and loved vmir better than anyone alive and

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Speaker 1: was keen to be the man to discover one final

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Speaker 1: work by Vermir. But it was more than that. Bradius

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Speaker 1: had a pet theory about Vermir. He had become fascinated

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Speaker 1: by the gap between Vermeer's early works, which had biblical themes,

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Speaker 1: and his later, more famous portrayals of everyday domestic life.

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Speaker 1: No known paintings existed in that gap. What lurked undiscovered

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Speaker 1: in those apparently fallow years. Wouldn't it be wonderful if

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Speaker 1: another biblical work were found. Bradius also speculated that the

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Speaker 1: Dutch master had, as a young man, traveled to Italy

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Speaker 1: and been inspired by the religious works of the great

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Speaker 1: Italian artist Caravaggio. This was conjecture. Not much was known

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Speaker 1: about Vanmia's life. Nobody knew if he'd ever seen a Caravaggio.

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Speaker 1: Van Maghren was a forger who understood his victim all

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Speaker 1: too well. He created Ameeus to fulfill all Bradius's dreams.

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Speaker 1: It was on a biblical theme, and, just as Bradius

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Speaker 1: had argued, all along was a homage to Caravaggio. When

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Speaker 1: Bradius saw the picture, he had no doubts. Why would

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Speaker 1: he Van Maghren's unwitting stooge, Herold Boone wasn't just showing

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Speaker 1: Bradius a painting bone, was showing him evidence that had

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Speaker 1: been right all along. In the final years of his life,

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Speaker 1: the old man had found the missing link at last.

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Speaker 1: But his wishful thinking really this powerful. Yes, Abraham Bradius

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Speaker 1: was emotionally involved. He loved Vermeer, He was proud of

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Speaker 1: his record as a connoisseur. He was death but not

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Speaker 1: to miss the chance of a major discovery. But shouldn't

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Speaker 1: his expertise have enabled him to spot such a crude khn.

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Speaker 1: The French satirist Moliere once wrote, a learned fool is

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Speaker 1: more fullish than an ignorandue. Perhaps Moliere was right. If

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Speaker 1: people with deeper expertise fall into the trap of wishful thinking,

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Speaker 1: they're able to muster more reasons to believe whatever they

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Speaker 1: really wished to believe. One recent study by Maggie Toplach

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Speaker 1: and other psychologists found that intelligence was no defense against

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Speaker 1: motivated reasoning, and an older study something of a modern classic,

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Speaker 1: also throws light on the question. The political scientists Charles

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Speaker 1: Tabor and Milton Lodge looked at motivated reasoning about two

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Speaker 1: political hot button issues, gun control and affirmative action. They

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Speaker 1: asked people to evaluate various arguments for and against each position,

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Speaker 1: and they found, as he might expect, that politics got

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Speaker 1: in the way of people's ability to dissect the strengths

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Speaker 1: and weaknesses of different points. More surprising, however, was that

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Speaker 1: simply reading the arguments pushed people further towards political extremes.

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Speaker 1: They grabbed onto arguments they liked and quickly dismissed or

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Speaker 1: forgot about counter arguments. Even more striking was that this

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Speaker 1: polarizing effect was stronger for people who already knew a

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Speaker 1: lot about civics and politics. These well informed people were

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Speaker 1: better at cherry picking the information they wanted and dismissing

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Speaker 1: the rest. More information and more expertise produced more strongly

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Speaker 1: motivated reasoning. From his Monaco villa in nineteen thirty seven,

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Speaker 1: Abraham Bradius offers us the perfect warning about the dangerous

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Speaker 1: combination of wishful thinking and deep expertise. Bradius noticed details

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Speaker 1: about the forgery that a less skilled observer would have missed,

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Speaker 1: and those details supported the conclusion he wanted to reach

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Speaker 1: those telltale white dots on the bread For instance, the

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Speaker 1: bright speckles seemed a bit clumsy to the untrained eye,

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Speaker 1: but they reminded Bradius of Vermeer's highlights on that tempting

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Speaker 1: loaf of bread in the milk maid. The composition echoed

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Speaker 1: a tense and understated painting of the Amaus scene by Caravaggio.

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Speaker 1: That resonance would have been lost on a casual viewer,

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Speaker 1: but it was not lost on Bradius. He would have

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00:21:44,970 --> 00:21:48,170
Speaker 1: picked up other clues designed to show Amaus was the

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Speaker 1: real thing. There's a jug in the painting, just a

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Speaker 1: jug to most observers. That Bradius would have noted that

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00:21:54,770 --> 00:21:58,090
Speaker 1: it was in a seventeenth century style, not the sort

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Speaker 1: of vessel available in biblical times. That is just the

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00:22:01,770 --> 00:22:06,170
Speaker 1: sort of anachronism that indicates an authentic work. But van

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00:22:06,250 --> 00:22:10,450
Speaker 1: Megren was a step ahead here, aimed a seventeenth century

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Speaker 1: antique and used it as a prop There were seventeenth

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00:22:14,170 --> 00:22:18,970
Speaker 1: century pigments too. Van Magren had duplicated Vanmeer's color palette

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Speaker 1: and his materials. It bought year's worth of rare lapis

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00:22:23,530 --> 00:22:26,930
Speaker 1: lazually paint from a London supplier in order to produce

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00:22:26,970 --> 00:22:31,970
Speaker 1: an authentic Vermeer blue. An expert such as Bradius could

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Speaker 1: spot at nineteenth or twentieth century forgery simply by looking

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Speaker 1: at the back of the painting and noting that the

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00:22:37,810 --> 00:22:42,010
Speaker 1: canvas was too new. Van Magren knew this. He had

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Speaker 1: painted his work on a seventeenth century canvas, carefully scrubbed

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00:22:46,570 --> 00:22:50,010
Speaker 1: of its surface pigments, but retaining the undercoat and its

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00:22:50,090 --> 00:22:53,930
Speaker 1: distinctive pattern of cracking. And then there was the simplest

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00:22:53,970 --> 00:22:58,050
Speaker 1: test of all, was the paint soft The challenge for

298
00:22:58,090 --> 00:23:00,610
Speaker 1: anyone who wants to forge an old master is that

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00:23:00,810 --> 00:23:04,490
Speaker 1: oil paints take half a century to dry completely. If

300
00:23:04,490 --> 00:23:07,170
Speaker 1: you dip a cotton swab into some pure alcohol and

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00:23:07,610 --> 00:23:10,570
Speaker 1: gently robbed the surface of an oil painting, and the

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00:23:10,610 --> 00:23:14,370
Speaker 1: cotton may come away stained with pigments. If it does,

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00:23:14,970 --> 00:23:19,050
Speaker 1: the painting is a modern fake. Only after several decades

304
00:23:19,290 --> 00:23:24,050
Speaker 1: will the paint hardened enough to pass this test. Bradius

305
00:23:24,050 --> 00:23:28,130
Speaker 1: had identified fakes using this method before, but the paint

306
00:23:28,250 --> 00:23:33,770
Speaker 1: on Emmaus stubbornly refused to yield its pigment. This gave

307
00:23:33,810 --> 00:23:37,250
Speaker 1: Bradius an excellent reason to believe that Emaus was old

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Speaker 1: and therefore genuine, and Magren had fooled him with a

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00:23:42,330 --> 00:23:46,730
Speaker 1: brilliant piece of amateur chemistry. The forger had figured out

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Speaker 1: a way to mix seventeenth century oil paints with a

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00:23:50,330 --> 00:23:55,930
Speaker 1: very twentieth century material, phenol formaldehyde, a resin that, when

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00:23:56,010 --> 00:24:00,050
Speaker 1: gently cooked for two hours, turned into the robust new

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00:24:00,090 --> 00:24:04,370
Speaker 1: material known as baker light. No wonder, the paint was

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00:24:04,450 --> 00:24:11,290
Speaker 1: hard and unyielding. It was infused with industrial plastic. Bradius

315
00:24:11,370 --> 00:24:14,770
Speaker 1: had half a dozen subtle reasons to believe that Amaeus

316
00:24:15,170 --> 00:24:19,250
Speaker 1: was of Ameer. They were enough to dismiss one glaring

317
00:24:19,330 --> 00:24:23,410
Speaker 1: reason to believe otherwise that the picture doesn't look like

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Speaker 1: anything else Vanmeir ever painted. I'm no art critic, but

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00:24:28,450 --> 00:24:32,010
Speaker 1: to my eyes the painting is drab. The eyelids in

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00:24:32,050 --> 00:24:36,650
Speaker 1: particular catch my attention. They're droopy and strange and very

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00:24:36,690 --> 00:24:41,370
Speaker 1: distinctive of Van Magren's other work. But then I'm looking

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Speaker 1: for a van Magren. Gradius was looking for a Vermeer.

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Speaker 1: Listen again to that extraordinary rave review from Abraham Gradius.

324
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Speaker 1: We have here. I am inclined to say the masterpiece

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00:24:58,210 --> 00:25:03,570
Speaker 1: of Johannes Veramir of Delft quite a different from all

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Speaker 1: his odor paintings. And yet every inch of quite different

327
00:25:11,730 --> 00:25:15,130
Speaker 1: from all his other paintings. Shouldn't that be a warning?

328
00:25:16,170 --> 00:25:18,930
Speaker 1: But the old man desperately wanted to believe that this

329
00:25:19,050 --> 00:25:22,370
Speaker 1: painting was the Vermeer he'd been looking for all his life,

330
00:25:22,730 --> 00:25:26,130
Speaker 1: the one that would provide the link back to Caravaggio himself.

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00:25:27,130 --> 00:25:30,770
Speaker 1: Van Meghren set a trap into which only a true

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00:25:30,850 --> 00:25:44,290
Speaker 1: expert could stumble. Wishful thinking did the rest. It's hard

333
00:25:44,450 --> 00:25:47,410
Speaker 1: not to love the story of the clever forger who

334
00:25:47,450 --> 00:25:51,410
Speaker 1: fooled the experts and scanned the Nazis hand. Van Meghren

335
00:25:51,490 --> 00:25:54,730
Speaker 1: seemed to be David Versus Goliath, Robin Hood and the

336
00:25:54,770 --> 00:25:59,410
Speaker 1: Scarlet Pimpernel all rolled into one. Many biographies have been

337
00:25:59,450 --> 00:26:04,250
Speaker 1: written about him, including two authoritative books by Edward Dolnick

338
00:26:04,570 --> 00:26:07,970
Speaker 1: and by Jonathan Lopez. Several movies have been made too,

339
00:26:09,090 --> 00:26:14,010
Speaker 1: doing the recent The Last Vermeer. Van Maghren his Box Office.

340
00:26:15,090 --> 00:26:18,690
Speaker 1: His early biographers made him out to be a misunderstood trickster,

341
00:26:19,050 --> 00:26:22,290
Speaker 1: hurt by the unjust rejections of his own art, but

342
00:26:22,450 --> 00:26:27,570
Speaker 1: happy to outsmart his country's occupiers. One oft reported story

343
00:26:27,730 --> 00:26:32,410
Speaker 1: is that Gering, awaiting trial in Nuremberg, when told he

344
00:26:32,450 --> 00:26:36,170
Speaker 1: had been duped by Van Magren looked as if for

345
00:26:36,210 --> 00:26:39,770
Speaker 1: the first time he had discovered there was evil in

346
00:26:39,850 --> 00:26:44,410
Speaker 1: the world, and the authorities responsible for bringing Van Magren

347
00:26:44,450 --> 00:26:50,530
Speaker 1: to justice unwittingly helped make his story world famous. Forensic

348
00:26:50,610 --> 00:26:55,130
Speaker 1: chemists quickly verified that, as Van Megren claimed, the paintings

349
00:26:55,130 --> 00:26:59,130
Speaker 1: were hardened with bakolite and aged with India ink. But

350
00:26:59,530 --> 00:27:04,050
Speaker 1: in an absurd stunt, prosecutors challenged Van Magren to prove

351
00:27:04,170 --> 00:27:07,370
Speaker 1: that he was the forger by painting a picture in

352
00:27:07,410 --> 00:27:10,730
Speaker 1: the style of a maus, and of course he did.

353
00:27:11,690 --> 00:27:19,410
Speaker 1: One breathless headline reported he paints for his life. Newspapers

354
00:27:19,410 --> 00:27:22,730
Speaker 1: in the Netherlands and around the world couldn't tear their

355
00:27:22,770 --> 00:27:26,130
Speaker 1: gaze away from the great showman. By the time the

356
00:27:26,170 --> 00:27:30,170
Speaker 1: trial came in nineteen forty seven, the charge was forgery,

357
00:27:30,570 --> 00:27:35,170
Speaker 1: not treason or collaboration. Everything was set for a media

358
00:27:35,290 --> 00:27:39,290
Speaker 1: circus in which the charismatic Van Magren was the ringmaster.

359
00:27:40,610 --> 00:27:46,770
Speaker 1: Called the next witness, mister Renz stribes your honor, I'm

360
00:27:46,810 --> 00:27:50,730
Speaker 1: a little nervous. I don't know anything ab old art.

361
00:27:51,410 --> 00:27:59,730
Speaker 1: Don't worry. These lawyers don't know anything either. Spoiled smister

362
00:27:59,930 --> 00:28:04,690
Speaker 1: van Negren. Please, when van Megren himself took the stand.

363
00:28:05,130 --> 00:28:08,650
Speaker 1: He spun his story that he'd only forged the art

364
00:28:08,770 --> 00:28:11,930
Speaker 1: to prove his worth as an artist and to unmask

365
00:28:12,050 --> 00:28:15,490
Speaker 1: the art experts as fools. But mister van Megren, you'll

366
00:28:15,610 --> 00:28:19,530
Speaker 1: sold these figs for high prices, your honor. Had they

367
00:28:19,570 --> 00:28:23,050
Speaker 1: sold them for low prices, it would have been obvious

368
00:28:23,210 --> 00:28:26,770
Speaker 1: that they were favor and Magren had them all spelled

369
00:28:26,890 --> 00:28:32,850
Speaker 1: under order in the court. In his closing statement to

370
00:28:32,930 --> 00:28:35,450
Speaker 1: the court, he claimed again that he hadn't done it

371
00:28:35,490 --> 00:28:38,690
Speaker 1: for the money, which had brought him nothing but trouble.

372
00:28:39,450 --> 00:28:43,570
Speaker 1: The newspapers and the public lapped up his story. Van

373
00:28:43,650 --> 00:28:48,050
Speaker 1: Maghren was found guilty of forgery, but was cheered as

374
00:28:48,050 --> 00:28:51,450
Speaker 1: he left the court room. A Dutch opinion poll found that,

375
00:28:51,650 --> 00:28:55,290
Speaker 1: apart from the Prime Minister, Han Van Meghren was the

376
00:28:55,330 --> 00:28:59,610
Speaker 1: most popular man in the country, and that was his

377
00:28:59,690 --> 00:29:04,050
Speaker 1: final bow. A few days after being sentenced, Van Magren

378
00:29:04,130 --> 00:29:07,610
Speaker 1: was admitted to hospital with heart trouble. A few weeks later,

379
00:29:08,170 --> 00:29:12,890
Speaker 1: he died a hero, without ever serving a day of

380
00:29:12,970 --> 00:29:16,730
Speaker 1: his prison term. For a while, there was even talk

381
00:29:16,770 --> 00:29:20,970
Speaker 1: of putting up a statue of the man who fooled Girring.

382
00:29:22,250 --> 00:29:26,130
Speaker 1: There's just one problem with this picture of Hand van

383
00:29:26,210 --> 00:29:30,890
Speaker 1: Magren as a lovable rogue. He was, in fact an

384
00:29:31,050 --> 00:29:37,930
Speaker 1: enthusiastic Nazi taking England. One is a book illustrated and

385
00:29:38,010 --> 00:29:42,690
Speaker 1: published by Hand van Magren. It's so sinister looking that

386
00:29:42,890 --> 00:29:47,650
Speaker 1: Jonathan Lopez, Van Magren's biographer has hidden his copy away

387
00:29:47,890 --> 00:29:51,530
Speaker 1: so that visitors don't see it. It's an evil book

388
00:29:52,330 --> 00:29:57,930
Speaker 1: full of grotesque, antisemitic poetry and illustrations using Nazi iconography

389
00:29:57,970 --> 00:30:02,210
Speaker 1: and colors. It's lavish, with no expense spared in the

390
00:30:02,250 --> 00:30:06,610
Speaker 1: printing of the book, no wonder given whom Van Magren

391
00:30:06,690 --> 00:30:11,850
Speaker 1: hoped might read it. The was hand delivered to Adolf

392
00:30:11,930 --> 00:30:16,890
Speaker 1: Hitler with a handwritten declaration in artist's charcoal to all

393
00:30:17,010 --> 00:30:26,050
Speaker 1: my beloved fur in grateful tribute und von Mager. Remember

394
00:30:26,090 --> 00:30:30,210
Speaker 1: where we began our cautionary tale. Harard Bone came to

395
00:30:30,290 --> 00:30:33,690
Speaker 1: Abraham Bradius with a maus at, a story about an

396
00:30:33,730 --> 00:30:37,650
Speaker 1: anti fascist family with an old canvas in a back room,

397
00:30:37,730 --> 00:30:41,210
Speaker 1: desperate to escape from Muslin's Italy and hoping that the

398
00:30:41,290 --> 00:30:44,650
Speaker 1: work might be worth something. They were a figment of

399
00:30:44,770 --> 00:30:49,210
Speaker 1: Van Megren's imagination. Bone was just another victim of the

400
00:30:49,250 --> 00:30:53,690
Speaker 1: forger's cynical gift for pushing all the right emotional buttons.

401
00:30:55,050 --> 00:30:58,890
Speaker 1: Bone had spoken out against fascism and anti Semitism, and

402
00:30:59,090 --> 00:31:04,130
Speaker 1: Van Megren the secret fascist Cruelly spannam a yarn about

403
00:31:04,250 --> 00:31:07,570
Speaker 1: heroic dissidents as a ruse to get the painting into

404
00:31:07,610 --> 00:31:11,850
Speaker 1: the hands of Abraham Brady. Of course, Bone fell in

405
00:31:11,890 --> 00:31:17,370
Speaker 1: love with the idea. After the war, the Dutch didn't

406
00:31:17,370 --> 00:31:21,050
Speaker 1: have much time for collaborators. There were too many of them,

407
00:31:21,090 --> 00:31:24,530
Speaker 1: and some of their crimes, such as colluding in transportation

408
00:31:24,570 --> 00:31:28,370
Speaker 1: of Jews to death camps, were too awful to ignore.

409
00:31:29,250 --> 00:31:33,410
Speaker 1: There was little sense of reconciliation or forgiveness. The traitors

410
00:31:33,410 --> 00:31:38,170
Speaker 1: were shamed in the streets or worse so, what would

411
00:31:38,210 --> 00:31:42,890
Speaker 1: have happened if Hitler's personally inscribed copy of Taken England

412
00:31:42,890 --> 00:31:47,930
Speaker 1: One had been discovered before Van Magren's trial. The discomforting

413
00:31:48,010 --> 00:31:53,370
Speaker 1: truth is that it was discovered. A Dutch resistance newspaper

414
00:31:53,450 --> 00:31:57,610
Speaker 1: had published the news that Van Magren's personally dedicated book

415
00:31:57,890 --> 00:32:03,410
Speaker 1: had been found in Adolf Hitler's library. Van Magren waved

416
00:32:03,450 --> 00:32:06,530
Speaker 1: it away, claiming that it signed hundreds of copies of

417
00:32:06,570 --> 00:32:09,050
Speaker 1: the book and the dedication must have been added by

418
00:32:09,250 --> 00:32:14,530
Speaker 1: someone else. It's a ludicrous excuse, but people believed it.

419
00:32:15,570 --> 00:32:21,530
Speaker 1: That seems incredible. Handvan Megren had prospered mightily under Nazi occupation,

420
00:32:22,330 --> 00:32:26,010
Speaker 1: buying up a portfolio of expensive properties and holding those

421
00:32:26,050 --> 00:32:29,690
Speaker 1: decadent parties. You don't get to act like that in

422
00:32:29,810 --> 00:32:33,850
Speaker 1: German occupied territory unless you've made friends with a few Nazis.

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Speaker 1: But handvan Megren sensed that the Dutch people needed a

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Speaker 1: new story, something upbeat, a lighthearted tale of boldness and

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Speaker 1: trickery in which a Dutchman had struck back against the Nazis,

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Speaker 1: and he gave it to them. A man who should

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Speaker 1: have been viewed as a traitor reshaped his reputation into

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Speaker 1: that of a patriot, even a hero. He manipulated the

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Speaker 1: emotions of the Dutch people as he had manipulated the

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Speaker 1: emotions of Abraham Radius before the war. Abraham Radius desperately

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Speaker 1: want of a mere The Dutch public desperately wanted symbols

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Speaker 1: of resistance to the Nazis. Wishful thinking is a powerful thing.

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Speaker 1: Hand van Maigren knew how to give people exactly what

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Speaker 1: they wanted. If you'd like to hear another cautionary tale

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Speaker 1: about a trickster who Captivated a Nation. One of my

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Speaker 1: favorite episodes is Cautionary Tales Season one, episode two, The

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Speaker 1: Rogue Dressed as a Captain enjoy Key. Sources for this

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Speaker 1: episode include The Man Who Made Vermeers by Jonathan Lopez,

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Speaker 1: The Forger's Spell by Edward Donnick, and my own book

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Speaker 1: The Data Detective Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics.

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Speaker 1: For a full list of references, see Tim Harford dot com.

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Speaker 1: Cautionary Tale as is written by me Tim Harford with

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Speaker 1: Andrew Wright. It's produced by Ryan Dilley and Marilyn Rust.

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Speaker 1: The sound design and original music is the work of

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Speaker 1: Pascal Wise. Julia Barton edited the scripts. Starring in this

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Speaker 1: series of Cautionary Tales Helena Bonham, Carter and Jeffrey Wright,

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Speaker 1: alongside Nazzar Elderazzi, Ed Gohen, Melanie Guttridge, Rachel Hanshaw, copnaholbrook Smith,

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00:34:36,650 --> 00:34:42,090
Speaker 1: Greg Lockett, Messiah Munroe and Ruthless Wright. This show wouldn't

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Speaker 1: have been possible without the work of Neil LaBelle, Jacob Weisberg,

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Speaker 1: Heather Fane, John Schnarz, Karlie mcgliory, Eric Sandler, Emily Roster,

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Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor Ann, Yellow Lakhan, and Maya Kanig. Cautionary Tales

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Speaker 1: is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show,

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Speaker 1: please remember to rate, share, and review by