Declassified per Executive Order l2958, Section 3.5
NND Project Number: NND 750168 By: NND Date: ¡975

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LATIN AMERICA

To date little information has been received in regard to the sale
of looted works of art in Latin America.

Single instances of suspieious art deals have been received, but there
is no conclusive evidence of the presence of Nazi-owned looted works
of art on the Latih American market.

One unconfirmed report stated that valuable art loot may have
become the private property of an important industrialist in Latin
America, an individual who lent his name to cover properties which
were transferred to him by high Nazi officials. The reference is
presumably to the notorious Fritz Mandl, Argentine munitions king,
and friend of the Nazis.

A study was also made of intercepts receiVed from the Office of
Censorship over a period of months and dealing with the activities

of the de Koenigsbergs, New York art dealers, and their associates,

to ascertain whether their correspondence revealed illicit art
transactions involving enemy interests. The de Koenigsbergs have
business connections in Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Chile, and Uruguay.
The associates involved were Amadeo Mendaro, Alberto Duhau, Enrique

and Nettie de Paatz, Mrs. Edgardo Nicholson, Miss Isabelle Hill,
Dr. Mario Williams, and Maria Chaliapine.

. The above subjects were said to have been involved in suspicious
transactions of art pieces. Particularly suspect were the de
Koenigsbergs and the Mandaros, who were alleged to have Nazi
sympathies and_connections. This suspicion was partly based on

the fact that their business was conducted on a secret basis, under
cover of personal affairs.

We found no proof that looted art was involved, but a study made

of another art dealer, NiCholas Karger, doing business in Venezuela,
seemed to indicate that the South American art market is being
flooded with pieces of doubtful authenticity, which makes the task
of tracing authentic and valuable looted art objects even harder.

A number of intcrcepts were also reviewed, covering correspondence
between Kurt Stavenhagen, now in Mexico, and other art dealers, in
particular Richard H. Zinser, Forest Hills, Long Island, New York.
For several months they have been discussinr in more or less
guarded terms a presumably valuable painting, which they claim is
Pisanello‘s "Une Princesse d'Este," also described as "The Flower
Girl" and the "Pink Lady." The original painting which was in the
Louvre was estimated at 3250,000. M. Rene Huyghe, Chief Curator
of Paintings at the Louvre Museum, has written that all paintings
placed in repositoriea during the war have been restored to the
museum and that none are missing. Therefore, art experts in this
country believe that the picture held by Zinser must be a good copy
not generally known to dealers.