Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio Zaren Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: There. I'm over here, you know, just hanging out doing
Speaker 2: my thing, and.
Speaker 3: I I have a question, what is it five times?
Speaker 3: It's five?
Speaker 2: Could? Do you know what's ridiculous?
Speaker 3: Yes, dude, Okay, So recently one of my heroes passed away,
Speaker 3: Bob Newhart. I thought, no, come on now, Bob Newhart
Speaker 3: passed away, right, and I love that guy, and I
Speaker 3: learned a fun fact about him, and it's ridiculous. So
Speaker 3: his first album was called The Button Down Mind of
Speaker 3: Bob Newhart, and I used to listen to his old
Speaker 3: comedy albums, right, But what I didn't know was a
Speaker 3: few things about this album. Well, for one, he won
Speaker 3: the Grammy for Best New Artist as a comedian. I
Speaker 3: think it's the only time that's ever happened.
Speaker 2: Oh it wasn't, like best New Comedian. Out of all
Speaker 2: the recordings, he beat the Curse.
Speaker 3: Yes, he beat like Also he beat Leontine Price and
Speaker 3: Miriam mckiba. And he also beat Sinatra for Best Album
Speaker 3: of the Year. I mean like it, yes, what, Oh totally,
Speaker 3: it's okay, it's nuts like, oh ahead. Then he also
Speaker 3: it is the it's the highest selling comedy album of
Speaker 3: the twentieth century.
Speaker 2: And then you were listening to it as a kid.
Speaker 3: I was listening to as a kid. So my mother
Speaker 3: gave me all of her old Bob Newhart albums, and
Speaker 3: I loved him. I memorized him. But the thing that
Speaker 3: that's wild to me is so he he does that
Speaker 3: recording that album. He recorded it down in Houston. It
Speaker 3: was only the second time he'd ever done stand up.
Speaker 3: What he never did stand up. And then all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, they're like, hey, we want to do a comedy.
Speaker 3: We want you to record it, like in like in
Speaker 3: a club doing stand ups. Like I don't do that.
Speaker 3: They're like, what do you mean. He's like, I just
Speaker 3: I make these recordings and I send him in. They
Speaker 3: play on the radio station, the DJ plays them. That's
Speaker 3: how people know me. They're like, huh, well, can you
Speaker 3: do it on a stage? What you do with the
Speaker 3: with the fake phone calls and all that, And he's like,
Speaker 3: I guess I can try. So he goes down to Houston.
Speaker 3: He does one weekend, practices it in front of a crowd,
Speaker 3: then next weekend does it live again, records it, and
Speaker 3: that's what you hear on the album.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's incredible, it's amazing, It's ridiculousiculous.
Speaker 3: And that's the greatest comedy album of the twentieth century.
Speaker 3: Highest Sailing gets them all these everybody recognizes it, you know,
Speaker 3: both the credits and the fans. Yeah, and I couldn't
Speaker 3: believe that.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's ridiculous.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 2: Do you want to know what else is ridiculous? Totally
Speaker 2: sneaky turkeys and a barefoot married Magdalene Good. This is
Speaker 2: a Ridiculous Crime, A podcast about absurd and outrageous cavers
Speaker 2: i and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free
Speaker 2: and one hundred percent ridiculous. Damn right, here we go.
Speaker 3: It's Ben whiles erin Why Where? Who told you that?
Speaker 2: It's Ben A Whiles Since I told you about a
Speaker 2: good art crime?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, you know I love these. So you finally
Speaker 3: got my comments that I put in the comment box.
Speaker 3: Oh no crimes again this week? Just yeah?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I'm not employee of the month every
Speaker 2: month like you are. Maybe learned to park, I could
Speaker 2: I just can't listen. Yes, I mentioned this guy or
Speaker 2: as you would say, Katy.
Speaker 3: And I know Louis Armstrong invented that as slang. That's
Speaker 3: why I say it out of honor to Louis Good.
Speaker 2: That's good me out of him. And I talked about
Speaker 2: this guy in our listener Mail episode Friend of the Show.
Speaker 2: Hondo recommended this guy, and let me say that was
Speaker 2: a great recommendation. Yeah. Classic. So the guy's name is
Speaker 2: Lothar mallscat. That sounds like when you're mallscat. It sounds
Speaker 2: like when you're making up words to make a toddler.
Speaker 3: You know what scat is, right?
Speaker 2: I know what? You know what a mall is a Lothar,
Speaker 2: which like, okay, so right there, I'm sold. He's no bumfardo,
Speaker 2: but it's good.
Speaker 3: Of the mall people.
Speaker 2: It sounds like the name of a small woodland creature
Speaker 2: in like a British nature documentary that lines its den
Speaker 2: in candy wrappers and scavenged pubic hair.
Speaker 3: You can see that the wild loth ball scat. He's
Speaker 3: been dwelling here for a bit of.
Speaker 2: Time, behold in the natural habitat. Okay, but I kid
Speaker 2: ha ha. Let's talk about the real Lothar. He was
Speaker 2: born in East Prussia nineteen thirteen. Now it's called where
Speaker 2: he was was Knesberg. Now it's Kaliningrad, Russia, Russia, port
Speaker 2: city on the Baltic. So you've been there, hang out
Speaker 2: there all the time.
Speaker 3: I got a buddy who's still there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got jugged there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's in the black markets. But I can't talk
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 2: He's I need art at this art school, Kundan's Kuhnskatami Conesberg.
Speaker 3: My buddy went so fun to say he's a dance instructor.
Speaker 2: Uh. His professors said that he had quote extraordinary, almost
Speaker 2: uncanny versatility, and he said it like that, and so
Speaker 2: he's got that praise just ringing in his ears. He
Speaker 2: goes to Berlin to make his fortune and his fame,
Speaker 2: but it didn't work out that. Ah. He it's a
Speaker 2: long way to the top if you want a rock
Speaker 2: and roll buddy.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, many steps to get there exactly.
Speaker 2: So he transitioned media. He went from painting on canvas
Speaker 2: to dropping canvas in order to paint walls. The boy
Speaker 2: became a house painter.
Speaker 3: Oh you're trying to say dropping dropping canvas, That sounds
Speaker 3: like house painting. He got that real painting. I was
Speaker 3: just doing some shop talk because look, it's not only beautiful,
Speaker 3: but it's also effective. It seals in the house or
Speaker 3: beautiful the walls, but also it's beautiful. Exactly what do
Speaker 3: you do for a living the beautify the world?
Speaker 2: Exactly be proud. In Berlin, where he was, there's this
Speaker 2: guy named Dietrich Faye, and he was the son of
Speaker 2: Professor Ernst Fay.
Speaker 3: These people, no, okay.
Speaker 2: And Ernst Fay was for those of us who are cultured,
Speaker 2: so you wouldn't know, not me. He was a well
Speaker 2: known art historian and restore and Professor Fay kind of
Speaker 2: hitched his wagonto the Nazis, oh choice, especially the ones
Speaker 2: who thought of themselves as total art connoisseurs.
Speaker 3: Oh art, these.
Speaker 2: Clowns such as Luftwaffe Commander in chief Hermann Goring.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he had a huge stolen collection. Oh yeah, and
Speaker 3: so like the biggest in the world.
Speaker 2: I think Fay just like pals around with him. Fay
Speaker 2: and his son, Dietrich, they went around and they restored
Speaker 2: paintings and churches, and the professor taught his son the
Speaker 2: intricacies of fresco restoration, and Dietrich he was like, really good,
Speaker 2: that's one.
Speaker 3: Of your favorites. Fresco restoration people who messed it up.
Speaker 2: Though totally we're good. Yeah, we'll talk about.
Speaker 3: That, okay.
Speaker 2: So Dietrich, he's like super good at schmoozing clients and
Speaker 2: like greasing government wheels.
Speaker 3: Oh of course, not an artist.
Speaker 2: He's terrible at the actual restoration.
Speaker 3: Just crap. Meanwhile, Lothar's rollers instead. Yeah, no, it terrible.
Speaker 2: Well, no, he's not the house Lothar, the house painter.
Speaker 2: He's twenty four, he's looking for work. So he gets
Speaker 2: hired by Professor Fay, not as a restorer, but to
Speaker 2: whitewash the family home. So the professor, though it takes
Speaker 2: a liking to Lothar, and he loans them all these
Speaker 2: books on ecclesiastical art, okay, and it's just like, you
Speaker 2: know what, you seem to have your act together more
Speaker 2: than my son art. And so over time the Professor
Speaker 2: taught Lothart what it was to restore a work, like
Speaker 2: the whole craft.
Speaker 3: It's like, would you like to be my surrogate son?
Speaker 3: Basically I will teach you the guild training kind of.
Speaker 2: But yeah, So nineteen thirty seven, Germany, the professor and
Speaker 2: his son they get this huge contract to restore murals
Speaker 2: in the Cathedral of Saint Peter in Schleswig, Schleswig.
Speaker 3: Sure, sure, I believe you.
Speaker 2: It is this huge project. So they needed help, so
Speaker 2: they hired Lothar to help them, and they were tasked
Speaker 2: with removing some like inauthentic editions that had been added
Speaker 2: to the medieval pieces. So in eighteen eighty eight, this guy,
Speaker 2: August Albert's he comes in. He's hired to like bring
Speaker 2: the old murals back to life. He got a little
Speaker 2: too into it, Okay, So the earliest images on the
Speaker 2: wall of the cathedral were actually first painted around thirteen hundred, huh,
Speaker 2: and over the centuries damp set in, for sure. So
Speaker 2: they hired August Olbers in the eighteen eighties to like
Speaker 2: go and like, you know.
Speaker 3: Freshen it up.
Speaker 2: He took some liberties and at the time everyone thought
Speaker 2: it was fantastic. Like, so he took a bad blurry
Speaker 2: image and he would paint over it to look like
Speaker 2: he figured the original artist intended.
Speaker 3: Oh and there's no living memory of the actual painting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And anything that he couldn't make out he made up.
Speaker 3: Yes, everybody had just been living with the hazy Yeah,
Speaker 3: and that's.
Speaker 2: How restoration was done then too, So by the time
Speaker 2: loath are so, yeah, that looks right, and so loath
Speaker 2: art comes on the scene and that's just not true anymore.
Speaker 2: So by the thirties, people realize you can't trample on
Speaker 2: the original work. You have to just like Learnt crud Off, Yeah,
Speaker 2: to let the paint sing through. And so this is
Speaker 2: totally calling to mind as you referenced one of my
Speaker 2: favorite works of art, the fresco of Jesus in the
Speaker 2: Spanish church that the lady painted over to quote fix
Speaker 2: it made horrible. Yeah, I had a T shirt with it.
Speaker 2: Happened to that shirt. It was horrible and awesome.
Speaker 3: I bet an intern ticket. It's so awesome. Probably one
Speaker 3: of the one of the hairy ones, the dogs.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go looking through their closets. So Olbers,
Speaker 2: he didn't deface the walls like that. He just broke
Speaker 2: the new orthodoxy established by Cologne art historian Auto H.
Speaker 2: Forster quote there must be no l of addition, completion,
Speaker 2: or other conjectured reconstruction of any supposed original state. So
Speaker 2: Olbers is like check, check, and check. Oh, I'm not
Speaker 2: supposed to do those things. So now, Professor Fay and
Speaker 2: his company. They've come in. They have to restore that
Speaker 2: Undo Ober, Yeah, Undo Olbers. And when they started the project,
Speaker 2: it pretty much scraped away all of the paint laid
Speaker 2: down by Olbers.
Speaker 3: I can tell you, I just has a house painter.
Speaker 3: Unpainting is your least favorite thing to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And so they're trying to take Olbers off,
Speaker 2: but they're taking even more stuff.
Speaker 3: It's very difficult, it's really and they have.
Speaker 2: To work with what they have, the notes from the
Speaker 2: eighteen eighties. So he has to restore a blank wall now.
Speaker 2: And so the phase decided they were going to have
Speaker 2: Lothar repaint the murals from scratch and pretend they were restorations.
Speaker 2: So Lothar whitewashed the brick and then he like discolored
Speaker 2: the line that he used with pigment to get it
Speaker 2: that like lived in ancient Terror. Then he freehanded his
Speaker 2: own version of the murals based on Olber's restorations, and
Speaker 2: he looked at medieval examples to try and fill in
Speaker 2: any blanks, and he drew the figures in earth tones
Speaker 2: and like went all in on the medieval style. But
Speaker 2: he also made a bunch of anachronistic errors on purpose.
Speaker 2: Oh really yeah, Like the big one is that he
Speaker 2: included turkeys in one of the corn tomatoes, and like
Speaker 2: turkeys weren't known of in fourteenth century years.
Speaker 3: None of those potatoes they world.
Speaker 2: He also modeled the virtue Mary's face after Hanseik, Austrian
Speaker 2: movie star, and he painted his father as a prophet.
Speaker 2: And he used an old classmate as the inspiration for
Speaker 2: the face of Christ. That's an honor. And when he
Speaker 2: was done, the professor swooped in Fay and he just
Speaker 2: rubbed a brick over the entire thing to give it
Speaker 2: like wear and tear patina.
Speaker 3: Did he have like a fishmonger? Who was the face
Speaker 3: of Mary? I mean, like how deep did it go?
Speaker 2: It goes deep? And people loved it. They're like, this
Speaker 2: is gorgeous. An art historian at the University of bond
Speaker 2: Fell by the name of Alfred Staunch, he just gushed
Speaker 2: about Professor Fay and the restoration work said it was
Speaker 2: quote as restrained as it was careful, and he said
Speaker 2: it was the quote last deepest final word in German art.
Speaker 2: Like this guy got sensual with it, s all about it.
Speaker 2: But he also.
Speaker 3: Didn't realize he was putting all of his name on
Speaker 3: this too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well he had. He thought that the art had
Speaker 2: another use. He wanted the government to use the murals
Speaker 2: to promote Third Reich nationalism.
Speaker 3: Oh that's right, German art the last word.
Speaker 2: He thought the murals would be right up their alley
Speaker 2: because first of all, the figures conformed to their stereotypes,
Speaker 2: the blond and like the purity of the German. Yeah. Sure,
Speaker 2: Lothar said in an interview later quote, I had to
Speaker 2: paint the apostles as longheaded vikings because one did not
Speaker 2: want Eastern roundheads. Okay, right, wow, But then there's the turkeys.
Speaker 3: So do the Nazis really know that they're talking about
Speaker 3: a Jewish guy in like the like not the Nazi
Speaker 3: pass Like? Are they just skipping past that? Are they
Speaker 3: trying to pretend like the Jesus, the Jesus is not Jewish,
Speaker 3: the Disciples are not Jewish fishermen.
Speaker 2: I can't explain the disconnects.
Speaker 3: Okay, I was just wondering if they were, Like, Also,
Speaker 3: by the way, can we make everyone blonde in the picture?
Speaker 2: Everyone comes from here?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 2: So okay, so then we got the turkeys, sure, and
Speaker 2: there are eight turkeys in the Mural.
Speaker 3: And twelve disciples.
Speaker 2: Independent historian named Freer Kai. Sherman Hompkins I know, pointed
Speaker 2: out that the turkeys were introduced to Europe by the
Speaker 2: Spaniards in the fifteen fifties, so like, how are they
Speaker 2: in this painting? The paintings had been given the okay
Speaker 2: by the Nazis. Himmler himself had attested to their value.
Speaker 2: So Sherman Hompkins, he couldn't question the authenticity without questioning
Speaker 2: the Nazis. So he did like a good fascist, and
Speaker 2: he questioned history itself. He decided that the paintings were
Speaker 2: proof that the Vikings had discovered America.
Speaker 3: I knew.
Speaker 2: And then they brought the turkeys back with of course,
Speaker 2: and people bought into this, so of course.
Speaker 3: That makes the most sense.
Speaker 2: And it was already like a big Nazi talking point
Speaker 2: that supposedly the German explorer Diedrich Pining had reached America
Speaker 2: in fourteen seventy three.
Speaker 3: They're not even going with like Leif Ericksson in history, well.
Speaker 2: No, because then they're like, oh wait a second, this
Speaker 2: just proves the Vikings had actually been there earlier, because
Speaker 2: this is from the thirteen hundreds, and they brought not
Speaker 2: fourteen seventy three, they brought the turkeys to Germany so
Speaker 2: a dude could paint them on the walls of a
Speaker 2: church and that was just fantastic, and that meant that
Speaker 2: the Germans could then further cement their Viking pedigree.
Speaker 3: Of course, really just drive home.
Speaker 2: That Teutonics premisy. So the turkeys existing in early medieval
Speaker 2: Germany became a part of Nazi cannon. What yeah, and
Speaker 2: it got integrated into their propaganda. So a guidebook for
Speaker 2: the church said, quote Arian seafarers went to America long
Speaker 2: before Columbus did. Incidentally, Columbus is the descendant of Spanish
Speaker 2: Jews from Barcelona. Like wow, people are disgusting, so gross. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so about Columbus, right, I mean you got I can
Speaker 2: say a lot about Columbus, but like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, irrelevant. I find small mind and is funny sometimes,
Speaker 3: so I can laugh at a lot of things.
Speaker 2: The turkeys. The turkeys were painted in the eighteen eighties
Speaker 2: by August Olbers, because that's when he was like, I
Speaker 2: don't know what.
Speaker 3: Goes in there to paint feet, And then after the.
Speaker 2: Mural was unveiled in the nineteen thirties, eighty year old
Speaker 2: Olbers comes forward and it's like, the mural is not
Speaker 2: proof that the Vikings discovered America because I painted those
Speaker 2: jive turkeys in the eighteen eighties, like he confesses. And
Speaker 2: he's like, I wasn't trying to pull a fast one.
Speaker 2: I just couldn't figure there was a big empty spot.
Speaker 2: I didn't know what to put in there.
Speaker 3: Is doing this publicly to the authorities.
Speaker 2: Publicly, oh wow, and to the like everybody. And he's like,
Speaker 2: I didn't want to leave a bear spot. I paint turkeys.
Speaker 2: I'm really good at painting turkeys.
Speaker 3: I love the gobblers.
Speaker 2: He put a bunch of foxes, and he put four turkeys,
Speaker 2: and they were supposed to symbolize the guile and gluttony
Speaker 2: of King Herod.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, okay.
Speaker 2: So then Lothar he sees the turkeys, he's like, oh,
Speaker 2: these are original. I guess what does he know from turkeys?
Speaker 2: You know, who knows where they came from? They're just
Speaker 2: delicious whatever. But remember I said there were eight in
Speaker 2: the mural. Let's got Olbers only painted four of them.
Speaker 2: Lothar liked how they looked, and he really liked painting turkeys.
Speaker 2: This is good at it, so he doubled up.
Speaker 3: On it and they're so fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, nobody, thank you.
Speaker 3: I did you know? You did celebrity pressions and animals?
Speaker 2: Everybody it's me But okay, nobody listened to Olbers. Right,
Speaker 2: So the old guy, they're like, you're senile, you don't
Speaker 2: remember anything you see sad go away.
Speaker 3: He's like, I did it. They're like no, yeah.
Speaker 2: No, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: The Vikings sit down, grandpa, we have to talk about.
Speaker 2: It was too important to the third Yeah, this is
Speaker 2: the Viking legend and the Turkeys live on.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the war, there was a war.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you heard about it.
Speaker 3: Oh right, right right.
Speaker 2: Loth Ars survived the war, but he couldn't get a job.
Speaker 2: He had no money.
Speaker 3: Was in the war.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know. He tried to make it as an artist,
Speaker 2: and that by that I mean he painted erotic pinups
Speaker 2: that he sold on the streets of Hamburg.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so by the summer of forty five erotic pinups. Yeah,
Speaker 2: summer forty five, totally broke, totally starving. He goes to
Speaker 2: the phase to ask for.
Speaker 3: What, how terrible is it that there you are? And
Speaker 3: this specifically as a straight man who's broke, penniless hoping
Speaker 3: to like get something, and they have to just stare
Speaker 3: at like a beautiful woman who's half naked all day
Speaker 3: while you're trying to paint this thing. It's like for
Speaker 3: that guy, I mean, what a temptation of like, I'm
Speaker 3: never doing anything like this. Oh god, terrible.
Speaker 2: Anyway, I don't feel bad for him anyway. So he
Speaker 2: goes to the phase looking for work. Professor Ernst died
Speaker 2: in the war and so, and there weren't like a
Speaker 2: whole lot of paying restoration projects going on. But Dietrich
Speaker 2: the sun live and large.
Speaker 3: So that wasn't big on the Marshall plan.
Speaker 2: Huh well, I mean that didn't. That was you look
Speaker 2: at like a few years later and you'll see shows that. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: so Dietrich he's like wearing these like beautiful suits and
Speaker 2: smoking expensive cigarettes just like he had before, and he's like,
Speaker 2: Lothar aw high are you? And you can even move
Speaker 2: into my servants quarters, thank you? But this is there's
Speaker 2: no restoration work there. What's the there's work, there's art forgeries. Ah,
Speaker 2: so the economy is in the toilet, but there's still
Speaker 2: plenty of buyers, you know, on this black market.
Speaker 3: And all this art that's been liberated.
Speaker 2: Cash means nothing. People are trading in cigarettes. And they
Speaker 2: also they protect their savings by buying things with lasting
Speaker 2: value like art.
Speaker 3: It's like the loose diamonds events.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so most of the new collectors are inexperienced with it.
Speaker 2: They just want to lock their money into a solid
Speaker 2: piece of art. Most of the high value paintings had
Speaker 2: been looted from foreign museums or seized from Jewish collectors
Speaker 2: and families, which meant that like no one was asking
Speaker 2: any questions about provenans lips zipped. So the collectors, they
Speaker 2: figured someone else's bad luck, as they're a good fortune.
Speaker 2: They're just lovely people. Collectors. They figured the art had
Speaker 2: to be real with all the hush hush and all.
Speaker 3: That's the thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the ones who had their doubts about the
Speaker 2: authenticity just kind of like push it out of their minds.
Speaker 2: They're just trying to survive. So Fee gave Loathar some canvasses,
Speaker 2: some paints, and then a list of names Rembrandt, Shegal, Picasso. Orders.
Speaker 2: They're coming in fast and furious from Munich, Frankfurt and
Speaker 2: Lothar really had to like bust Rump to keep up.
Speaker 2: He said, quote, sometimes I copied an old painting in
Speaker 2: a day. It took me an hour to do a Picasso.
Speaker 2: But what I like best was to do new paintings
Speaker 2: in the style of the French Impressionists. He had a
Speaker 2: catalog of more than seventy artists whose work and or
Speaker 2: style he copied.
Speaker 3: There's the catalog for black market buyers to then sell
Speaker 3: to annoying people.
Speaker 2: Yea. And then he turned out in this time, he
Speaker 2: turned out six hundred oils and watercolors, and he was
Speaker 2: making Dietrich Fay a lot of money. But he was
Speaker 2: so let's hang that on the wall. Okay, when we
Speaker 2: come back, we're going to talk more art fraud.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Elizabeth Saren, Okay, I want to hear more story.
Speaker 3: Come on back up.
Speaker 2: I'm ready. When I left off Lowthar Malscott, he's making.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I'm trying to be professional. Go on.
Speaker 2: He was making fakean famous works of art for Dietrich Fay,
Speaker 2: the son of his former boss. And he's painting. He's
Speaker 2: at a breakneck speech day, sometimes multiple and he was
Speaker 2: painting so many so quickly that a lot of times
Speaker 2: the quality left a lot to be desired.
Speaker 3: I had to wonder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was this dealer in Frankfurt who showed one
Speaker 2: of the chagalls to Chagall himself. Now, like Mark, Chagall
Speaker 2: was notoriously bad at detecting his his on counter. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so this time though, he takes one look at
Speaker 2: it and just rips it up with his bare hands.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 2: He's like, oh, well, it doesn't matter. The dealer is like,
Speaker 2: I can get another one, super easy, and he makes
Speaker 2: a mental note not to show show Chagall the paintings
Speaker 2: that again. Yeah, so the art forgery business is going well.
Speaker 3: But then Dietrich I like that the art road has
Speaker 3: always been the same.
Speaker 2: Always, always. Dietrich, though, he comes to Lothar with a
Speaker 2: new gig. So back on March twenty ninth, nineteen forty two,
Speaker 2: so we're going back in time, back in the war. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was Palm in time is Palm Sunday. The Allied
Speaker 2: forces used almost two hundred and thirty four planes and
Speaker 2: three hundred tons of bombs to pretty much level the
Speaker 2: German city of Lubek Gonzers. Everything burned, including Saint Mary's Church,
Speaker 2: which was also you know known to them as Marion Kerch.
Speaker 2: So the Churchill he was like directing the bombers to
Speaker 2: just wreck shop on the towns in Germany and break
Speaker 2: everyone's will.
Speaker 3: And you see it with like Dresden, the producer Di
Speaker 3: and I were watching Masters of Air. We're into this,
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: I figured you'd like that. So thelwa they retaliated what
Speaker 2: was with what was called the bey Decker Blitz, and
Speaker 2: they said they would lay waste to every town that
Speaker 2: had a three star rating in bay Decker's Guide to
Speaker 2: Great Britain.
Speaker 3: Are you kidding No?
Speaker 2: Are you kidding you?
Speaker 3: That's serious.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So they basically used like the Michelin star.
Speaker 2: All your cool stuff. Howd that work out?
Speaker 3: How about that?
Speaker 2: So anyway, Lubeck, the heat from the fires your bombing campaign.
Speaker 2: It was pretty smart.
Speaker 3: It's funny and.
Speaker 2: It's funny, but it's also the heat from the fires
Speaker 2: from the bombing. Yeah, they made the plaster peel off
Speaker 2: the church walls. The plaster, the plaster and then these
Speaker 2: Gothic frescoes that were previously hidden since the church's construction
Speaker 2: were revealed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they just basically bubbled up the plaster.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the paint peels away, plaster peels away, and underneath
Speaker 2: is another layer with these beautiful but weathered frescoes. And
Speaker 2: so this this is this like sign of hope, and
Speaker 2: people are calling it a miracle of Marion Cash. Church
Speaker 2: officials they put makeshift roofs over the frescoes to protect
Speaker 2: them from the.
Speaker 3: Elements restoration work.
Speaker 2: But they're like, we can't do it right now because
Speaker 2: we're in the middle some So then so now we're
Speaker 2: going to jump forward. We're going to jump forward to
Speaker 2: nineteen forty K. So the government and church authorities they
Speaker 2: approached Dietrich and they say, we're going to pay you
Speaker 2: eighty eight thousand German marks to fix the frescoes, and
Speaker 2: like this wasn't a one hundred percent popular decision. In
Speaker 2: this sealed report filed with the provincial Culture Ministry, the
Speaker 2: Schleswig Holstein state curator Peter Hirschfeld, yeah totally sure, wrote
Speaker 2: quote the restoration of defective medieval mural paintings is, in
Speaker 2: the last analysis, a question of trust. Dietrich Fay will
Speaker 2: not guarantee that he has never done any overpainting in
Speaker 2: an unguarded moment, I therefore declare that I disassociate myself
Speaker 2: from the working methods of the restore Dietrich Fay, I
Speaker 2: decline all further RESI reponsibility. Yeah, whatever. The church is like,
Speaker 2: we want, Fay. They wanted the attention that those turkeys
Speaker 2: got so lubak. Bishop Johannes Poka told them, quote, paint
Speaker 2: out the church beautifully.
Speaker 4: I just like, go for it.
Speaker 3: Did people ever sort out the whole like Vikings didn't
Speaker 3: really get to do. Are they still going with that?
Speaker 2: At this point? They're like that that's what happened. These
Speaker 2: are Viking turkeys, and they're bold, strong, big busted Viking turkeys.
Speaker 3: They're so brave.
Speaker 2: The chief architects at the church, doctor Bruno friedric I, can't.
Speaker 2: He told Dietrich and lowth Art to quote preserve the
Speaker 2: religious impression, and he reminded them that we don't want
Speaker 2: a museum. So with the contract in place, it's time
Speaker 2: to get to work. Maybe this would be a legit job,
Speaker 2: like a chance to really use the skills that Professor
Speaker 2: Fay had taught him about restoration and preserv he learned
Speaker 2: from the master Zarin closure eyes. Yes, I want you
Speaker 2: to picture it. You are a stonemason hired to rebuild
Speaker 2: and repair Marian Kirch to its former glory. Instead of
Speaker 2: asking you where you were in the war, I'm just
Speaker 2: going to say that you are eighteen years old and
Speaker 2: have just moved to Germany for whatever reason, just six
Speaker 2: months ago. Basically, you've never been a member of the
Speaker 2: Nazi Party or aligned with them in any way. You're wolcome.
Speaker 2: So there you are sitting on some scaffolding, assessing the
Speaker 2: state of some joining in the nave. A painter, some
Speaker 2: guy assisting the fancy dude who got the restoration contract
Speaker 2: climbs the seventy foot scaffolding next two years, the one
Speaker 2: that reaches all the way to the ceiling. There's not
Speaker 2: much light in here, so you can't see too well
Speaker 2: what he's about to go. Check out the frescoes, the miracles.
Speaker 2: You've heard about them, and you realize that when the
Speaker 2: guy shines his lantern up there, you'll finally be able
Speaker 2: to see them. Scaffolding creaks is the man Lothar malscat
Speaker 2: raises his lantern to the frescoes. Someone hammers in the distance,
Speaker 2: some engineers chat far below you. Above you, though the
Speaker 2: ceiling is now illuminated with soft light, revealing nothing really,
Speaker 2: just the faintest of outlines. Loathar blows on the surface,
Speaker 2: hoping to move some dust and reveal a masterpiece. Instead,
Speaker 2: what paint that is there sweeps off the ceiling and
Speaker 2: reins down onto you on your perch. You cough and
Speaker 2: wave the dust away with your hand. Lothar looks down
Speaker 2: at you, crestfallen, you lock eyes. He places his index
Speaker 2: finger to his lips. Sh you get it, this didn't happen.
Speaker 2: There's no miracle. You realize, well, it's a miracle. You
Speaker 2: have a job, So you're just gonna keep your mouth
Speaker 2: shut and get on with your work. Been there s
Speaker 2: so Dietrich and Lothar they put up barriers to keep
Speaker 2: people out of the nave, and they hung all these
Speaker 2: warning signs of like danger overhead. Basically stay out and
Speaker 2: don't look up, because you know, it's like they you
Speaker 2: couldn't really protect what had been revealed from the elements
Speaker 2: in those three years or whatever. So then loth Aar,
Speaker 2: he's got this assistant, Theo, and Lothar and Theo they
Speaker 2: hang huge wooden panels to conceal their work.
Speaker 3: And they had they had to work, and Theo has
Speaker 3: a brother named Vincent.
Speaker 2: They couldn't walk away from this contract, you know, because
Speaker 2: it's like everyone's trying just to make ends meet, and
Speaker 2: he got a giganic contract. So Theo and Lothar they
Speaker 2: scrubbed the walls and they primed the bare brick, and
Speaker 2: then Lothar got to work creating the apostles and the
Speaker 2: saints that he could like barely make out before the
Speaker 2: dusty paint had blown away, and he used really bold
Speaker 2: lines and bright colors. He's like, this is a miracle,
Speaker 2: and he hauled tail like he did with his face.
Speaker 2: So he worked quickly a little too quickly, and what
Speaker 2: would take a real restore months took him just days.
Speaker 2: And tearing through things two years later.
Speaker 3: But what chemicals you use that work two years later?
Speaker 2: He's done. The whole thing is nineteen fifty, way ahead
Speaker 2: of schedule. He had finished all the murals in the nave,
Speaker 2: and the completion was timed like to coincide with the
Speaker 2: seven hundredth anniversary of the church the next year, so
Speaker 2: they had to stall. So Dietrich put up scaffolding in
Speaker 2: the choir and told Lothar to go discover some more murals.
Speaker 2: There are no murals in there at all. There never
Speaker 2: were like nothing even slightly to work with. So loth
Speaker 2: Are he's just like hitting the books, cramming. He's reading
Speaker 2: about art from the Middle Ages, and like once again
Speaker 2: he uses his own models, like his dad shows up
Speaker 2: in there. That Hansey the actress, she's up in there,
Speaker 2: he throws res buttan In is like a bearded king.
Speaker 2: Why not, to quote Jonathan Keats writing for Forbes, quote
Speaker 2: he painted in local laborers as monks, trade himself as
Speaker 2: a patriarch. Within months, the walls of the choir were
Speaker 2: resplendent with art. Twenty one Gothic figures stood ten feet
Speaker 2: in height, embellished with friezes of animals and flowers. The
Speaker 2: Marian Kirsch Miracle had a surprise post war sequel.
Speaker 3: The Terracotta Warriors, that all had individual like soldiers they
Speaker 3: were based on He's just looking around.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, you're you there, the mason you showed up.
Speaker 3: You happened to look like one of the shepherds.
Speaker 2: So like Lothar and Dietrich, they fought all the time. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and Dietrich. Dietrich was only paying Lothart one hundred and
Speaker 2: ten marks a week out of that eighty eight thousands the.
Speaker 3: Cash.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so Dietrich would remind Lothar all the time, look,
Speaker 2: you're just an assistant. You're nobody special here. You hold
Speaker 2: a bas get up there and pay your mural.
Speaker 3: I got a monkey, and he was like.
Speaker 2: You know something, uh, Lothar, the city of Lubec hired me,
Speaker 2: Dietrich Fay to bring this church back to its glory.
Speaker 2: They didn't hire you.
Speaker 3: You know who discovers the work around here.
Speaker 2: So the low pay hurt, but it was the disrespect
Speaker 2: and the lack of acknowledgment that hurt more for Lothar,
Speaker 2: Like he loved these paintings. They're his, like literally he
Speaker 2: even started marking some of the figures with his initials,
Speaker 2: like those days are mind and he wrote at one
Speaker 2: point he wrote on the wall, all paintings in this
Speaker 2: church are by Lothar Maltska. And like Dietrich sees it
Speaker 2: freaks out like goes and paints over it, just scrupture.
Speaker 3: It doesn't even do it like in like weird laugh,
Speaker 3: like he's just literally.
Speaker 2: Lobarto German font totally in the old German script. So
Speaker 2: one day this doctoral student shows up Johanna Kolbe. She
Speaker 2: scales the scaffolding like no one was really going up there,
Speaker 2: and what she saw was shocking, like super thick paint,
Speaker 2: and Mary Magdalene was running around barefoot. So she goes
Speaker 2: to the local town government to complain and blow the
Speaker 2: whistle boo. Dietrich was like, you know what, she's a liar.
Speaker 2: You can't look at her. She looks like a liar,
Speaker 2: and the officials are like, you know what, You're totally right, Teatrick.
Speaker 2: She's probably just confused. So they ignored her. Really, they
Speaker 2: dismissed her. And the experts they're elated with this, like
Speaker 2: supposedly these newly discovered.
Speaker 3: Murals more German history.
Speaker 2: On the walls, the Lubek Museum director Hans Arnold Grobkok wrote, quote,
Speaker 2: ideas hitherto current as to the original aspect of Gothic
Speaker 2: brick interiors will have to be revised in light of
Speaker 2: the merits of the works here recovered.
Speaker 3: History been written.
Speaker 2: Uh huh Art historian Hans Jurgen Hansen he wrote, quote,
Speaker 2: they exhibit a severe style, Byzantine influenced and still almost Romanesque,
Speaker 2: and then he contrasted them with the ones in the nave,
Speaker 2: which he found quote more animated, softer, entirely Gothic. So
Speaker 2: he's like, they're amazing, They're totally different. I can't believe
Speaker 2: in the arientime, Like wow, that Peter Hirschfeld wanted nothing
Speaker 2: to do with it. All of a sudden, he calls
Speaker 2: the murals quote the most important and extensive ever disclosed
Speaker 2: in Germany. In fact, one of the finest intact frescoes
Speaker 2: of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, extant through Western Europe.
Speaker 3: So he just wanted to get on like the art
Speaker 3: shows and talk about it. He's like, let me talk
Speaker 3: on the show. So, guys, there were photos.
Speaker 2: From nineteen forty two when the outer paint first peeled
Speaker 2: away and the paintings were revealed, And if anyone had
Speaker 2: cared to look at those photos, anyone other than that
Speaker 2: grad student, they would have seen that some of the
Speaker 2: saints had moved and that Mary Magdalene had indeed lost
Speaker 2: her shoes. She had no sandals on where she had
Speaker 2: sandals on before.
Speaker 3: Okay, whatever, they're like, is that major ly significant?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean what happened, Like did they get blown
Speaker 2: off in the war? Where did her shoes go, well, you.
Speaker 3: Know after the war they wanted a lot more barefoot home,
Speaker 3: like you know, taking care of the kids.
Speaker 2: He just like loathers like I'm not really good at
Speaker 2: painting sandals.
Speaker 3: Yea. So Mary Magdalene was she like a big figure,
Speaker 3: like I mean like figure well making. The French they
Speaker 3: love Mary Magdalene? So is she also big?
Speaker 2: She's ever seen their painting like you know, this crowd
Speaker 2: hanging out, she'd normally be their usual suspect.
Speaker 4: On So.
Speaker 2: Nineteen fifty one, the restored Church, they have the big
Speaker 2: seven hundredth anniversary. The everyone's like yeah, high five and
Speaker 2: skipping around. West German Chancellor Conrad Adenauer said, that's East
Speaker 2: Erbund mine headn. I don't know whatever. It's uplifting, gentlemen.
Speaker 2: I didn't say it right, but that's.
Speaker 3: East I think taking us up, gentlemen.
Speaker 2: So he said the murals were quote a valuable treasure
Speaker 2: and a fabulous discovery of lost masterpieces.
Speaker 3: Dude, what better way to celebrate your what Septis centennial.
Speaker 2: Than with some art that's a farefoot Mary and so
Speaker 2: the government they printed two million postage stands.
Speaker 3: Does Peter have an afro in this?
Speaker 2: That would not be allow. So the two million postage
Speaker 2: stamps are printed with reproductions of the murals on them.
Speaker 2: And this is like rebuilt Germany. This is Phoenix from
Speaker 2: the ashes the thunder, so wonder okay. Time magazine said
Speaker 2: the paintings were quote a major artistic fine and told
Speaker 2: readers that quote the interior of the Marian Kirch looks
Speaker 2: more as its original decorators intended than it has for
Speaker 2: five hundred years. So in the months following this grand reopening,
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand people came through to take a peep.
Speaker 2: The town loved the attention, but they really really loved
Speaker 2: the tourist money coming in. Everyone partied and celebrated the murals.
Speaker 2: Dietrich like soaked up the adoration that the chancellor gave
Speaker 2: him an extra one hundred and fifty thousand marks for
Speaker 2: a job well done. Yeah, almost twice what the contract was.
Speaker 3: And the townsound a lot of pretzels and beers, so
Speaker 3: they're all still happy with it.
Speaker 2: Then they also Dietrich gets a job. He's offered a
Speaker 2: job as a university professor in Bond And then you
Speaker 2: got Lothar forgot the parties, always getting the short end
Speaker 2: of the still kind of broke. So he kept working
Speaker 2: for Dietrich, but like he's getting more and more bitter.
Speaker 2: I imagine, Yeah, he'd like stew over it. And they
Speaker 2: work on you know, he and THEO, they're working on
Speaker 2: these small projects for Dietrich. He just is chewing Theo's
Speaker 2: ear off, nagging about it.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like he's like THEO, I gotta get even,
Speaker 2: I want revenge, Like I'm the real talent here.
Speaker 3: Joe Pesci and Casino.
Speaker 2: Completely anyway, So they sit there like Lothar is complaining,
Speaker 2: but like they just keep working for him, and the
Speaker 2: work they're doing is lining Dietrich's pockets. Let's go to commercial.
Speaker 2: I'm about to hit you with some ads when we
Speaker 2: come back. More moping Lothar.
Speaker 4: Hey we are back, look at us.
Speaker 2: Hey, how you doing this?
Speaker 4: Guy?
Speaker 2: Loth Ar mallscut.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to like it, you know, I love him,
Speaker 3: Maybe I feel bad for him. Him and THEO down
Speaker 3: there grouse and making the fakes.
Speaker 2: Faking it until he's making it. He's not making it,
Speaker 2: creating lost masterpieces.
Speaker 3: He's rallying the people. Yeah, he's doing that. He's raising
Speaker 3: some bacon only.
Speaker 2: No one knows about all the stuff that he's doing.
Speaker 2: But that's about to change.
Speaker 3: Trying, it's about to change.
Speaker 2: May ninth, nineteen fifty two. Great May Lothar just gathers
Speaker 2: up his courage strolls into the police station. He tells
Speaker 2: them the Marian Kirch murals are fakes. I'm here to
Speaker 2: tell you.
Speaker 3: Is he sober?
Speaker 2: He's totally sober. Dietrich Fay made him paint them. He's
Speaker 2: like this, he made me do it. The whole thing's
Speaker 2: a con. You all have been swindled by by Faye,
Speaker 2: by Dietrick Faye and me, and we've all been cheated.
Speaker 2: Everyone's shocked. They immediately put out a warrant for Dietrich's arrest,
Speaker 2: and then they cut Lowthar a check for five hundred
Speaker 2: thousand marks. Are you kidding, I'm totally kidding you.
Speaker 3: That is not what happened. Okay, No, nobody believed him,
Speaker 3: say this does not follow. He gets arrested right, tossed.
Speaker 2: Him out, and they told a local newspaper that quote,
Speaker 2: this is the lamentable case of a painter gone crazy.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, they're like, he's huff there's an expression. My friends,
Speaker 3: Derek His German mother used to always say, it's about
Speaker 3: the turpentine to mock and it makes a turpentine makes
Speaker 3: a painter crazy.
Speaker 2: Oh really German expression, That's probably what people used all
Speaker 2: the time. That's probably what they said.
Speaker 3: Like their version is mad as a hatter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so that's what they said. They've been he's
Speaker 2: been huffing. So people, they wanted him tossed into an
Speaker 2: insane asylum for even suggesting such a thing. Not not
Speaker 2: the soul asylum, like a runaway trains are an insane assylum.
Speaker 2: I prefer the first, the oversized sweater and the white
Speaker 2: dreads and the piercing Come on, Sarah, So did they
Speaker 2: at least go look at the murals? Did they know
Speaker 2: it's too high up? Man? Did they look at the
Speaker 2: actual pictures that are yeah? How about no? No, no,
Speaker 2: But the pictures that loath Are took with him to
Speaker 2: the police station, that he himself took with his own camera,
Speaker 2: that detailed the entire process from oh crap, the original
Speaker 2: paint isn't even there to uh, let's just do a
Speaker 2: clean slate to toda.
Speaker 3: So they just were willfully ignored. They're like, do not
Speaker 3: mess up our backs please, we have finally secured the
Speaker 3: bag for the town.
Speaker 2: Put those photos away. I'm not looking. They're turning their heads,
Speaker 2: like put them away. Put them away?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 2: So loath are big. He went to the national media.
Speaker 2: Oh and he made the rounds. He did interviews, He
Speaker 2: pointed out all his like inside jokes and the differences
Speaker 2: from the original.
Speaker 3: To Spiegel around where's Spiegel around here?
Speaker 2: And then the city of Lubec issued an official statement quote,
Speaker 2: rumors and accusations against the renowned art expert doctor Fay
Speaker 2: are of no consequence and purely malicious gossip.
Speaker 3: This is so unexpectedly un German, right, the whole not
Speaker 3: caring about the precision and the truth of Like this
Speaker 3: is actually the thing. I mean, like, I know what.
Speaker 3: They're humans too. I'm not trying to get on a
Speaker 3: high horse about Germans, but as a culture, they tend
Speaker 3: to really like things to be a little bit more.
Speaker 3: Buy the book exactly.
Speaker 2: So okay, thought Lothar, think, think, Lothar think, come on,
Speaker 2: there's got to be something I can get to trick on. Yes,
Speaker 2: the first church. Oh right, So it goes back to
Speaker 2: the police station and he confessed to that pre war
Speaker 2: phony Turkey restoration and that was the one that they
Speaker 2: used to get all the future restoration contract starting. This
Speaker 2: did not help. So now they're like, you know what,
Speaker 2: you are a serious nutcase. You are super cuckoo. So
Speaker 2: is there anything else that you're responsible for painting?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 2: Are you a Viking?
Speaker 3: Was?
Speaker 2: Did you paint Assistine Chapel?
Speaker 4: Do tell?
Speaker 2: Like they're just brushing them off. Church officials issued a
Speaker 2: statement quote, any charges at present being leveled at the
Speaker 2: Restore Dietrich Fay are as yet insufficient to rouse our misgivings.
Speaker 2: The work of preservation will therefore continue under the Restore
Speaker 2: Dietrich Fay. Like they're like totally back in their boy
Speaker 2: and I don't know why they talk like that.
Speaker 3: This seems very un German too. This is another on German.
Speaker 2: Nothing's adding up.
Speaker 3: But only going makes sense is they want to keep
Speaker 3: that tourist dollar rolling in.
Speaker 2: That's the only thing. So loth are lawyered up good Man. Yeah.
Speaker 2: He hires an attorney named Willie flot Wrongly Willy, I
Speaker 2: don't know Willy flot wrong it was to say so
Speaker 2: he's fills the beans to flat wrong about all the
Speaker 2: fake restorations and the art forgeries that he did, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: the Picassos, the renwas he had evidence there too. So
Speaker 2: looking over all of the materials, the lawyer is like
Speaker 2: thinking about it, and then Lothar's like, I got an idea,
Speaker 2: why don't you file charges against Dietrich and me you
Speaker 2: be the one to file him. Oh yeah, So then
Speaker 2: the cops have to do something, and they did so
Speaker 2: Flatrong goes to the police. Dietrich gets arrested and they
Speaker 2: search his house and the cops find seven paintings and
Speaker 2: twenty one drawings, all forgeries matist de go Chagall Beckmann.
Speaker 3: And in various states of preparation.
Speaker 2: I think they're all just completed.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, like his little you know, gallery, his.
Speaker 2: Own home stable. And so here's this like famous lauded
Speaker 2: preservationist with a house full of fakes. The town and
Speaker 2: the church. They got a group of experts together to
Speaker 2: go and inspect the murals, like for realness. Time, climb
Speaker 2: on up there, Hansil, like.
Speaker 3: Business is real, bring your big ladder.
Speaker 2: Yes. So in their October twentieth, nineteen fifty two report,
Speaker 2: they said, quote, the twenty one figures in the choir
Speaker 2: are not Gothic, but painted freehand by Malscat. The painting
Speaker 2: described as old by the restoer Fay does not lie
Speaker 2: on the medieval layer of mortar, but on a post
Speaker 2: medieval layer. It cannot, for this reason alone, be considered original.
Speaker 2: So finally, finally.
Speaker 3: Like someone's like actually looking at the building.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the same goes for the ones in the
Speaker 2: nave repainted. The bishops are like, sure you should sure
Speaker 2: the murals are fake and that if quote if the
Speaker 2: restorer Dietrich Fay, has fraudulently succeeded in getting his work
Speaker 2: recognized as faithful restoration. This was possible only because of
Speaker 2: an extremely cunning deception which misled not only the church
Speaker 2: administration as proprietor, but also curators and art experts.
Speaker 3: The bishops are like, you know, God works in a
Speaker 3: mist serious ways. I don't know what So.
Speaker 2: Good you guys, we had no idea. The devil was
Speaker 2: at work, boys.
Speaker 3: One of them. I'm telling you this is supernatural.
Speaker 2: For nearly a year, the prosecutor just conducts scores of
Speaker 2: interviews just gathering this information. The questions brought the heat
Speaker 2: so much so that the church superintendent requested earlier retirement,
Speaker 2: and then another church official just up and moved to
Speaker 2: East Germany. Yikes, he's like going the wrong way.
Speaker 3: Over the wall. What are you doing here?
Speaker 2: It is bad for me back, trust me on this.
Speaker 3: You are the first person to this.
Speaker 2: Okay, well here have like a gray up.
Speaker 3: I don't know, you know, you know you can't kill
Speaker 3: still be a priest here, right, He's like, I don't care.
Speaker 2: Uh so that chief architect Bruno Fendrick, he was named
Speaker 2: co defendant in the indictment and the phony restores are
Speaker 2: on trial. But also like all the people that you
Speaker 2: know threw the money at him. A local paper wrote, quote,
Speaker 2: the real defendants are not the forgers, but the experts
Speaker 2: and officials who failed to exercise proper care. They didn't
Speaker 2: mind being deceived. Had Molscat not photographed the empty church
Speaker 2: walls before he started painting his murals, the evidence would
Speaker 2: have been suppressed by the very people who employed him.
Speaker 2: They are as much to blame as the forgers themselves,
Speaker 2: so at least they're kind of on that. And like
Speaker 2: in case you couldn't guess, this trial was huge, huge,
Speaker 2: hottest ticket in town. They moved it from the courthouse
Speaker 2: to a dance hall where they do like swing dance
Speaker 2: and like hey, daddi.
Speaker 3: Oh, they got a band for the courtroom.
Speaker 2: They had to accommodate all the people that wanted to
Speaker 2: sit in the gallery. There still wasn't enough room even
Speaker 2: with an occupancy number of four hundred, so they set
Speaker 2: up chairs outside in the garden and they broadcasted the
Speaker 2: trial on a loud speaker.
Speaker 3: They go, like, schnitzel vendors walking through the nitzle was thick.
Speaker 2: It was the oil in the air, and like pres oh,
Speaker 2: my god, so much like large nugget salt on the pretzels.
Speaker 3: Boy.
Speaker 2: So August tenth, nineteen fifty four, the trial starts. Okay,
Speaker 2: looth Are said that he confessed because quote, everybody raved
Speaker 2: about my beautiful murals, yet Fay got all the credit.
Speaker 2: Nobody even knew my name. So he's like, you, guys,
Speaker 2: I'm an artist. I'm a genius. And then he said,
Speaker 2: quote I love to do thirteenth century painting. Nothing to it.
Speaker 3: So often when you have these art foragers, it comes
Speaker 3: down to like, what about me, guys. I'm not supposed
Speaker 3: to make all the money. I just want you guys
Speaker 3: to say that I'm the prettiest painter.
Speaker 2: There is so good at this, you guys, which it
Speaker 2: always bums me out because they're great artists and he
Speaker 2: has multiple skills. They can't do it on their own.
Speaker 3: They had nothing to say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is exactly so. Even as he's like praising himself,
Speaker 2: he starts ragging on the experts who got full quote.
Speaker 3: It couldn't help himsel he is what he says.
Speaker 2: One art critic raved about the prophet with the magic eyes.
Speaker 3: It was modeled on my father.
Speaker 2: Another gushed about the spiritual beauty of the splendid figure
Speaker 2: of Mary, so far removed from our present day image
Speaker 2: of womanhood. For that painting, I used a photograph of Hansey.
Speaker 3: No tech, not Hansey, one of my favorite models. To you, so, the.
Speaker 2: Prosecutor asked, at a time when X ray apparatus, court slamps,
Speaker 2: and the most modern technical equipment seemed to exclude the
Speaker 2: possibility of large scale art forgeries, how could a second
Speaker 2: rate painter have fooled the nation's leading experts? And there's
Speaker 2: like that stings, But then he tells them, He tells
Speaker 2: them quote, people like to be fooled today. We just
Speaker 2: gave them what they wanted.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly so.
Speaker 2: January twenty sixth, nineteen fifty five a verdict. The judge said, quote,
Speaker 2: although the ascertainable material damage done may not have been excessive,
Speaker 2: it seriously endangered the restoration of Mary and Kersh as
Speaker 2: a whole. The dishonest behavior of those engaged upon it
Speaker 2: undermined confidence in the proper execution of all the reinstatement work. Then,
Speaker 2: as Jonathan Keith wrote and Forbes quote, in other words,
Speaker 2: the offense was not fundamentally a crime of property damage,
Speaker 2: but rather the infringement was psychological robbery of faith, theft
Speaker 2: of a miracle.
Speaker 3: Totally, yeah, violation.
Speaker 2: It's so beautifully put.
Speaker 3: So the architects, thank you, ohamn, oh okay whatever.
Speaker 2: Your assessment of a violation of faith was so writing this, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think crying this isn't sweat because so hot stone
Speaker 2: write this in Can I paint it on a fresco?
Speaker 2: So the architects and then THEO they got slap THEO
Speaker 2: they like they were like, you get out of here, YouTube,
Speaker 2: just don't do this again. They're like, bye, guys. Dietrich
Speaker 2: got twenty months in.
Speaker 3: Prison, okay, almost two.
Speaker 2: Years, and then Loath are eighteen months okay, yeah whatever.
Speaker 2: After sentencing Lothar skipped out and went to Sweden. Never
Speaker 2: catch me. He didn't Layloh there. So he goes and
Speaker 2: he tries to make money by being infamous and like
Speaker 2: he sold paintings. He did the interior of Stockholm's trick
Speaker 2: Kroner restaurant in the fourteenth century Gothic style.
Speaker 3: Painted he's now known for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he busted out some turkey murals at the Royal
Speaker 2: tennis courts. Let me give you a turkey, But that
Speaker 2: didn't last long. He gets extradited back to Germany in
Speaker 2: late nineteen fifty six, served his time, and then he
Speaker 2: just for the next thirty two years until the end
Speaker 2: of his life, just lived a quiet life, painted, did
Speaker 2: his own little paintings.
Speaker 3: Did he get to a place where he actually was
Speaker 3: able to generate art?
Speaker 2: Probably? I mean he was generating his own art.
Speaker 3: Sure, But but did anybody enjoy it?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: So he wasn't doing showings later on.
Speaker 2: I think he just kind of faded out. What about
Speaker 2: the murals though?
Speaker 3: Erin Elizabeth the murals?
Speaker 2: Do you remember Peter Hirschfeld?
Speaker 3: Do I?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Forget?
Speaker 2: At first he's like no, girl, and then he's like
Speaker 2: yes girl.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now he's mad girl, so he's like super livid.
Speaker 2: Has a plan, he said. Quote. The forgeries should first
Speaker 2: be plastered over so as to obtain a clear surface
Speaker 2: free from all theoretical preconception, and thus enable careful plans
Speaker 2: to be laid for an ideal solution of the problem
Speaker 2: by substituting true works of art for forgery, honesty for insincerity,
Speaker 2: for consequent obliteration of the stain upon morality. It should
Speaker 2: be considered the duty of any truly Christian community to
Speaker 2: carry out this task. He makes it into a holy war.
Speaker 3: He does.
Speaker 2: And that's exactly what happened to the choir murals Like
Speaker 2: the frum scratch scratch workers covered it up. No one's
Speaker 2: the wiser gone. But then the Nave art restorer Sep
Speaker 2: Schuer explained quote the Nave forgeries were deliberately left as
Speaker 2: they were. They constituted a sort of warning to all
Speaker 2: concerned with art, either as amateurs or professionals. Detail there
Speaker 2: so I'll leave you with this gem to ponder from
Speaker 2: Jonathan Keats okay quote, the contradictory responses reflect our emotional
Speaker 2: ambivalence toward a betrayal of trust, whether to obliterate or
Speaker 2: to commemorate the offense. Yet whichever decision is made, the
Speaker 2: sting of injury will pass and people will recover their belief.
Speaker 2: According to the Lubeck entry in Rough Guided Germany, a
Speaker 2: bay decker for the twenty first century, Gothic frescoes of
Speaker 2: Christ and Saints add color to otherwise plain walls of
Speaker 2: Marian Kirsch. The pastel images only resurfaced when a fire
Speaker 2: caused by the nineteen forty two air raid licked away
Speaker 2: the coat of whitewash. Malscat is not mentioned, nor is
Speaker 2: his moral staying apparent in the church. For a new
Speaker 2: generation of tourists, the murals are again miraculous, are they are? They?
Speaker 2: Says Aaron. What's your ridiculous takeaway? Thanks for asking?
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, Malscat my man. Yeah, that lothar of
Speaker 3: them all people he deserves. I think like they should
Speaker 3: make him another church, right, Like that's like all anachronistic,
Speaker 3: Like the church is wrong, like part of it's Baroque,
Speaker 3: part of it's like Byzantine. Then he gets to go
Speaker 3: in there and paint it into something, just like lean
Speaker 3: into it. And you know how many people would go
Speaker 3: to see that freaky church? Yeah, see some things like
Speaker 3: just that way, he'd have something to say to be
Speaker 3: a whole joke. But the point being is, like it's
Speaker 3: my takeaway, if you will, ridiculous as it is, is
Speaker 3: he could actually do a bit on himself and have
Speaker 3: people want to come out and see it and still
Speaker 3: be referencing his whole like, hey, look when I got
Speaker 3: over on these people. Yeah, well you know, I guess
Speaker 3: he got happy just going and living quietly. Sure, Elizabeth
Speaker 3: does mine? I do? I do? I do.
Speaker 2: I think it's interesting that they felt the need to
Speaker 2: maintain this history right then, you know, even even if
Speaker 2: in the face of the fact that there's nothing to
Speaker 2: work with, instead of saying, well, let's recreate, let's do
Speaker 2: a new one in the style of today, or borrowing
Speaker 2: from their styles, because the whole point is to celebrate,
Speaker 2: you know, the story of Christ right in this church.
Speaker 2: But really, the whole point of these elaborate things within
Speaker 2: churches is to celebrate the achievement of man on earth
Speaker 2: in the name of God.
Speaker 3: Yeah, good point.
Speaker 2: So it's like, why wouldn't you say, here, here, we
Speaker 2: can have this achievement of what we can do now,
Speaker 2: this fascination with the past I mean I understand wanting
Speaker 2: to preserve, you know, something that's beautiful and enduring, but
Speaker 2: this wasn't enduring. And so it's either like try and
Speaker 2: totally fully reproduce it with an acknowledgment that it's a
Speaker 2: modern reproduction, or just do it anew But it doesn't
Speaker 2: make it any less of a miracle, you know what
Speaker 2: I'm saying, Like for something to stand and to persevere
Speaker 2: and blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: Not in special but thirteen hundred yeah, no, I mean honestly,
Speaker 3: like they painted something, everyone's like, oh, this is the original. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we could no offense, do a nice painting here, and
Speaker 3: then one hundred years from now people be like this
Speaker 3: is I'm twenty or whatever.
Speaker 2: Like Lofar who's really talented and he can do these things,
Speaker 2: and people look at it and they're moved. They have
Speaker 2: that emotional response, which is the point of the art
Speaker 2: to begin with. Like it's not to have a certain
Speaker 2: name on it or certain date, it's what what is
Speaker 2: the response to the art? How do you close that
Speaker 2: circle of communication.
Speaker 3: And humble yourself in time? Yes, like we could be
Speaker 3: meaningful to people one hundreds years from no, exactly, So
Speaker 3: I just be on that rone.
Speaker 2: So I say, let him go nuts in there.
Speaker 3: I love that. I love when you say let him
Speaker 3: go nuts.
Speaker 2: I want everyone to go nuts the summer of dark, Elizabeth,
Speaker 2: I'm telling you how to keep it nuts. Dave. You
Speaker 2: know what I need after all that, I need to
Speaker 2: talk back.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I let you.
Speaker 5: Hey, it's destrude and I just want to say, I
Speaker 5: listen to your Sophie Smith episode many times and I
Speaker 5: can't expect why, but it just tickles my brain cells.
Speaker 5: So thanks for everything.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad that your brain cells are tickled. That's
Speaker 2: my goal.
Speaker 3: What's Elizabeth like? I'm like, well, what you likes to
Speaker 3: tickle brain cells?
Speaker 2: Astra? I am so pleased that you like Soapye, I
Speaker 2: love Sophie Smith. Wow, ma'am uh. That's it for today.
Speaker 2: You can find us online at ridiculous crime dot com.
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Speaker 2: is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and
Speaker 2: edited by Saxon Turkey Farmer Dave Kusten, starring Annalise Rutger
Speaker 2: as Judith. Research is by Mary Magdalen's Shoe Plug, Marissa
Speaker 2: Brown and Andrea Song Sharp and Tear aka third Angel
Speaker 2: from the Left on the wall of the nave. The
Speaker 2: theme song is by unemployed Rick Rubber, Thomas Lee and
Speaker 2: Travis Dutton Muralist to the Stars. Host wardrobe is provided
Speaker 2: by Botany five hundred. Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot
Speaker 2: and Mister Andre. Executive producers are Ben But what if
Speaker 2: the turkeys were native to Europe Bowlin and Noel, and
Speaker 2: then the Vikings took them to North America, Brown dus
Speaker 2: Quime Say It one More Times.
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