Christie’s launches from this Wednesday the online auction of hundreds of jewels that belonged to the Austrian billionaire Heidi Horten, whose husband, a German businessman, made his fortune under the Nazis.
More than 700 jewels that were in the possession of this Austrian patron (1941-2022) are part of this collection estimated at more than 150 million dollars. 400 lots will be distributed in Geneva cinemas on May 10 and 12, the rest will go online from May 3 to 15 and then in November.
future record
The sale could eclipse previous records set by Christie’s for sales of properties belonging to actress Elizabeth Taylor in 2011 and the “Maharajas and Mughal Magnificence” collection in 2019, which exceeded $100 million.
Among the lots are rare 20th-century pieces by Cartier, Harry Winston, Boivin and Van Cleef & Arpels, as well as an important selection of pearls, jade pieces and Bulgari creations from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
The Austrian billionaire died in June 2022 just days after opening a private art museum in Vienna featuring her art collection. According to the Forbes ranking, her fortune amounted to 2.9 billion dollars.
Born in the Austrian capital, this daughter of an engraver worked in a law firm after finishing hospitality school. According to Christie’s, she met her future husband, more than thirty years her senior, while on vacation with her parents in an Austrian town, before marrying him in 1966. Owner of one of the largest department store chains in Germany , Mr. Horten died in 1987 in Croglio, in the Swiss canton of Ticino, where the foundation that bears his name is located.
The foundation describes him as an “entrepreneur with a strong sense of social responsibility” who launched “the first German supermarket based on American consumer habits” in the late 1950s. The canton of Ticino emphasizes on its online site that “he built his empire beginning in the 1930s, during which he acquired much property.”
In 1936, three years after Adolf Hitler became German chancellor, he took over the Duisburg-based textile company Alsberg after its Jewish owners fled, before taking over several other Jewish-owned shops before war. He was later accused by some of profiting from the “Aryanization” of Jewish property (plundering measures aimed at transferring ownership of businesses owned by people of Jewish descent).
According to a report published in January 2022 by historians commissioned by the Horten Foundation, including Professor Peter Hoeres, he was indeed a member of the Nazi party, before being expelled from it, and subsequently exonerated by the denazification committee.
But the origin of his fortune, which his wife inherited, casts doubt on the auction, which some historians have criticized in the media. On its site, Christie’s notes that “Mr. Horten’s business practices during the Nazi era, during which he bought Jewish businesses sold under duress, are well documented.”
The auction house also indicates that the proceeds of the sale will go to the Heidi Horten Foundation, created in 2021 to support the eponymous collection, as well as medical research, child protection and other philanthropic activities that the wealthy heiress has supported for many years. years. decades.
Christie’s will donate “a significant contribution” of sales-related commissions to “an organization that promotes Holocaust research and education.”
Source: BFM TV
