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