Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford - The Wild Turkeys of Schleswig

Episode Date: November 25, 2022

There are eight American turkeys painted on the walls of Schleswig's Cathedral of St Peter - which is odd... since the frescoes were created two centuries before Columbus even crossed the Atlantic.    How did the creatures come to be added to the medieval Biblical scene? Was this proof that the Germans reached the Americas before Columbus? Or do the painted birds tell a different story all together?  For a full list of sources used in this episode visit Tim Harford.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Pushkin For a charming little town, Schleswig in Germany has a magnificent old cathedral. Parts of the Cathedral of St. Peter date back nearly 900 years and King Frederick I of Denmark is buried there. Decade after decade, century after century, new parts were added to the building, the new artwork. Late in the 1800s, Schleswig became the regional capital and work began on the restoration of the Cathedral's great Gothic frescoes. These pictures were painted on the walls of the Cathedral cloisters. They were glorious, but they were fading, flaking, being corroded by six centuries of dam. And so the Cathedral commissioned a painter, Algus Olbers, to restore the great medieval paintings. His work began in 1888 and it was widely admired for its beauty and clarity. Five decades passed and tastes changed, as tastes do. In 1937, the church authorities decided that August Olbers had done a terrible job. He'd added too much. Repainting

rather than carefully revealing and conserving what was there. The new conventional wisdom was that a modern restoreer shouldn't add anything to the original work, and in particular shouldn't fill in the blanks where the original work had disappeared in patches. Olbers had done all that. It was agreed that his work must be removed, and the original, medieval art, even if incomplete or damaged, must be revealed. And so, three men began the second attempt at restoration. In charge, was Professor Ernst Fey, a noted art restorer and a widely admired historian of art.

Assisting him was Dietrich Fey, his son, and at the bottom of the pyramid assisting them both was a young painter by the name of Lothar Malskatt. Fey, Fey and Malskatt worked diligently for months, protecting the artwork with scaffolds and tarpaulin, until finally revealing the restored work in all its glory. The critics were astounded and delighted. The paintings may have dated all the way back to the year 1300 or even earlier, but under the sensitive guidance of Professor Faye, they'd been restored so beautifully that they might have been painted yesterday. It was a triumph, something for visitors to the Cathedral of St. Peter to marvel at. Although, there was one curious fact about the restored frescoes. A local historian was the first to notice it. Christopher Columbus had reached the Americas in 1492, so wasn't it striking that a biblical

fresco painted two centuries before that voyage depicted eight creatures that were definitely unmistakably American wild turkeys. I'm Tim Haferd and you're listening to If Professor Ernst Fey felt awkward about the presence of those suspiciously anachronistic turkeys, he didn't show it. But then he was a man with powerful friends. Faye was undoubtedly an expert in art history, particularly the history of church frescoes, and he was a skilled artist too. But his most valuable ability was as a networker. In the 1930s he flattered his way into the circle of Herman Göring, the

most powerful man in Nazi Germany, other than Adolf Hitler himself. Göring liked to think of himself as a great connoisseur of art, and loved having men such as Professor Fey to reassure him that he was. Fei's son, Dietrich, learned everything his father had to teach him about the history of art, and the game of securing powerful patrons. Before taking on the restoration of St. Peter's in Schleswig, they'd been kept busy with a string of prestigious commissions to restore paintings across Germany. They could scarcely keep up with the pace of work. It was at this moment in 1936 that Lothar Malskatt

had knocked on the door of Ernst-Fey's home in Berlin and asked if he was looking for an assistant. Malskatt was 23, talented and desperate. He'd studied at the Art academy of Kurnik's Burg and his professors had been hugely impressed by the range of styles he could execute. One of them called his versatility extraordinary, almost uncanny. But when he'd tried to launch his career as an artist in 1930s Berlin, hid sunk without trace. Professor Ernst Fey looked Malskatt up and down,

coolly appraising him as he might have appraised a Flemish-dill life. Malskatt looked hungry. He'd been sleeping on parked benches. Professor Fey offered him a job, whitewashing his house. It was a start. Malskatt was a quick learner. Under the tutelage of Professor Fey and with access to Fey's extensive library of ecclesiastical art, Malskatt learned more than most people will ever

know about restoring church paintings. The duo of Fay and Fay were now a trio, or so it seemed to Malskatt, but to earn St. Dietrich Fay, the hungry homeless guy they had taken pity on, it only ever be the hired help. A year later, Fay,aye and Malfgatt, stood in the cloisters of Schleswig Cathedral, and contemplated the work of August Albers. Albers remember had taken mouldering work from the 1300s and sumptuously restored it, adding paint where the original was thinning, and freestyling over the gaps where the original had gone. His work had been admired at the time, but times had changed. Olbers' renovation had to be carefully removed.

The medieval work underneath needed to be uncovered and displayed. And so the trio began to scrape away all traces of Olbers' work. Slowly, slowly, slowly. But perhaps Albus had been careless, or perhaps his successors had been, because when they'd finished, there's nothing left, Professor Fey, reported a worried mousecat. Nothing? Well, almost nothing. See for yourself. No, no, no, this can't be! The paintings were more than six centuries old. They were jewels in the crown of German heritage, or at least they had been. Now they were a few flakes of paint on a moldy old wall, and Professor Ernst Fey was in charge of the disaster.

Shyser! Shyser! Swore Ernst Fey. No, no, don't worry. You can fix this mousecat. Fetch some whitewash. Whitewash, Professor Fey? We're going to start again. Then start again they did. Lothar Malzgad had started working for Ernst Faye by whitewashing his house. Now he was whitewashing the cloisters of Schleswig Cathedral. He gave himself a completely blank surface on which to work.

The whitewash slightly timid to give the impression of age. And then he began to paint, freehand. Finally, living up to the promise his Königsberg professors had admired, his uncanny ability to work in any style. Was the whole scam malscats idea? Or detrick phase? We don't know. Jonathan Keats and artist and art historian thinks that even though Malskat was the one holding the brush,

the mastermind was the man in charge, Professor Ernst Faye himself. Malskat was not painting purely from his imagination. He had studied Professor FaZe books, which were filled with medieval art. He had, of course, observed August Olbers' work up close as he carefully scraped it away. And into the mix of 19th century restoration and medieval work, he stirred other influences. He based the face of Jesus on an old classmate from Kernigsburg. He boldly drew a profit with the features of his own father, and the Virgin Mary was inspired by the beautiful young actress Hansi Knotek, a huge star in the German movies of the day. After all, reasoned Malskat, if you're going to draw the Virgin Mary,

based her on a woman who also inspired devotion, a film star. It all sounds absurd, and Malskat was certainly improvising more than one might expect, but he had a gift gift and expertly inhabited the simple almost cartoonish style of the 14th century. The finishing touches came from Professor Fey, who gave the brown and orange drawings the patina of the ages, agently rubbing them with a brick. The whole thing looked rather convincing, film star or no film star. thing looked rather convincing, film star or no film star. That said, in a biblical image that was supposed to have been painted two centuries before Columbus sailed to America, surely including eight turkeys would see the deception immediately unravel. Wouldn't it? Corsion retails will return after this message. Texts and social media messages? Keep your edge with Thrive Small Business Software and never miss a message again. Thrive offers one solution to communicate, market, and run your business.

But simply, small businesses run better on Thrive. Get Command Center for free today at thrive.ca. That's THR-Y-V dot CA. Terms and conditions apply. Free plans have limited functionality. In Nazi Germany, there was really only one possible reaction to the discovery of eight turkeys on a supposedly medieval fresco. The murals were genuine. It was history that had been faked. The idea had already been circulating

that a German explorer named Diedrich Pining had reached the Americas in 1473, 19 years before Columbus. Although there isn't much evidence that this is true, the theory was enthusiastically endorsed by the Nazi authorities in the 1930s. Now, the Schleswig turkeys showed that pinning hadn't been the first. Here at last was definitive proof that the Aryan race had not only reached the Americas centuries earlier than that swore the Mediterranean's scoundrel Columbus, but then returned home with a population of wild turkeys. The theory was ludicrous on its face,

but it was almost universally embraced. The Schleswig-O-Truthan-Builder, or Schleswig-Turkey Pictures, should have been an embarrassment. Instead, they were a cause for national celebration. And perhaps that shouldn't be surprising. Germany had become a fascist state, keen to amplify any idea that suggested German greatness no matter how absurd that idea might be. There were rewards for complicity, and there were punishments for dissent.

After all, Professor Fey was responsible for the restoration. Professor Fey was friends with Herman Göring, and people who upset Herman Göring had a tendency to disappear. If you had a problem with the turkeys of Schleswig, Herman Göring had a problem with you. One of the historians who promoted the Turkey sketches as vital historical evidence was Professor Alfred Stanger, one of the leading ideologues in Nazi Germany. Stanger declared that the restoration was as restrained as it was careful, which when you think about it, is true, and that the murals were the last, deepest, final word in German

art. It is a lie, still a lie, when everyone in power agrees to believe it. Yet there was one notable voice raised to expose the lie, the original renovator of the murals. Eight-year-old August Albers was still alive and mightily surprised to hear so many historians building theories off the back of those turkeys. Here, Albers came forward to declare that the turkeys of Schleswig hadn't been painted in the year 1300, he had painted some himself in 1889 or so. Four of them anyway. Albers had been restoring a mural depicting King Herod's massacre of the innocence, and there was a blank space underneath it, which had once contained medieval work.

Olbers decided to add an alternating pattern of foxes and turkeys. It was a visual allegory for King Herod's combination of cunning and greed, but Olbers remember had never pretended to be doing anything other than filling in the gaps between the original work. It's what people had wanted back then. As Lothar Malskatt had been riffing away, faking medieval frescoes while drawing inspiration from art history books, contemporary film stills, and Olbers' 19th Century Editions, he must have seen those turkeys and liked them. Not caring, or more likely not realizing that they could never have been in the underlying

medieval work. After all, Malskatt was an artist, not an ornithologist. Olbers had originally painted four turkeys. Malskats allegedly medieval restoration now contained eight. And now there were two awkward facts pointing to the conclusion that Faye, Faye and Malskat were frauds. First, it was perfectly obvious that Aryan Vikings had not brought turkeys back from

the Americas of the 1200s. Second, the man who'd originally put those turkeys on the walls of the cloisters of Sleshvik Cathedral, August Olbers, was telling everyone exactly what had happened. Yet, given the political context, nobody wanted to listen. Experts queued up to explain that old-hair Olbers was evidently suffering from dementia. The Grand Lai was further cemented in 1940 when Heinrich Himmler, head of the Nazi SS, ordered that every German school should receive a copy of Schleswig Cathedral and its murals, an illustrated book by the Nazi art historian Alfred Stanger.

It's quite a book. Stanger notes that the Schleswig figures resemble those from further west and south in Germany. It's proof that Germany is one nation. Malschapp had painted them to fit Nazi racial stereotypes. I had to paint the apostles as long-headed Vikings, he said, because one did not want eastern round heads. Malzgat evidently knew how to please his audience. Stanga almost purrs with pleasure as he uses the murals to draw a link between the German bloodline and the Vikings. Stanga explains that the unknown painter, working around 1280, displayed astonishing powers of discernment in portraying

the turkeys. He had observed and reproduced the creature's individuality and smallest idiosyncrasies. Well, I'll grant this much. They definitely look like turkeys. much, they definitely look like turkeys. Stanger added that the portrayals are not as so often borrowed from reference books, but are based on a high degree of personal observation. Well, good to know, just in case you'd been thinking that the Vikings had reached the Americas, but brought back nothing but an encyclopedia. And just in case there was any doubt about the subtext, a guidebook for tourists visiting the Cathedral of St Peter in Schleswig

explained that... Arian seafarers went to America long before Columbus did, incidentally Columbus is the descendant of Spanish Jews from Barcelona. Combine one part comical fraud, with one part fascist ideology, stir well, add a pinch of intimidation, and you have a lie baked in so thoroughly that nobody seems to be able to even imagine the truth. The only comfort surely is that such a thing

could never happen in a democracy. Or could it? The answer may be less encouraging than we'd like to think. Let me explain. Sunday, March 29, 1942. Palm Sunday, in fact. Winston Churchill has grown tired of trying to bomb small and well-offended German factories and has decided to fire bomb a civilian population instead.

The British choose Lubek, a beautiful medieval port, less than 100 miles away from Schleswig. Lubek is a soft target, largely undefended, building supported by ancient dry wooden beams. The darkness of the black-tout city unmistakable in contrast with nearby fields dusted with sparkling late spring frost, and waterways glinting in the light of the full moon. The Royal Air Force come in low. They drop 400 tons of bombs, most of them in senderies and the center of Lubek burns. Right in the middle of it all is Lubek's great medieval church, the Marien Kiesher. The firestorm is so hot that the church bells melt.

And yet, after the embers had cooled, came the miracle of Marien Kiesher. On the walls of the church, huge gothic frescoes had been exposed. They had been concealed under centuries of whitewash, but the whitewash had been peeled away in the heat. It was the most astonishing, inspiring discovery. Of course, those frescoes now needed to be preserved by the best experts in Germany. But there was a war on, so Ubex authorities put up some temporary roofing and awaited

the day that the war ended. That day didn't come for another three years. Lothar Malskatt had been jobless and penniless at the end of the war, trying to make a living by painting erotic pictures. If the German economy hadn't been wrecked, many young German men killed in the war, and if he hadn't been selling them on the streets, he might have scraped together a living, but he didn't. So just as it had done back in the 1930s, he'd gone to the phase house in desperation

and asked for work. Old Professor Faye had died, but his son, Dietrich, was the same as ever. The art historian Jonathan Keats says that Dietrich Faye seemed to be the only man in Germany unaffected by the war. He was still wearing expensive suits and still smoking expensive cigarettes.

And just as Dietrich's father had done, Faye Jr. treated Malskatt as a servant. He set him to work forging paintings by the yard. Shagal, Dega, Gogam, Matisse, Picasso, Rembrandt, Renoir, Van Gogh. Even working at speed, Malskatt could do them all, not always well, but well enough. And Faye had the connections to convince people to buy. Not that buyers needed much convincing, they were afraid of hyperinflation, which had struck Germany after the previous war, and so they were desperate to find assets that might keep their value.

And after so many Jewish connoisseurs had fled Germany, or been sent to their deaths in extermination camps, and their art collections had been stolen, it didn't seem strange to find all these paintings floating around. And nobody wanted to ask questions about where they'd come from. Then, in 1948, with post-war Germany finally in a position to contemplate medieval restoration work, the authorities in Lübeck sought out out Dietrich Fey, the acclaimed Restorer of St. Peter's Cathedral in Schleswig, and asked him to conserve the Marian Kierschemurals that had been revealed during the fire bombing of Lubek. Dietrich was given 88,000 marks

to fund the work. It was a substantial sum, relative to the wages of the day, something like $200,000 in today's money. Both Harmalskatt was still working for Faye on a wage of three marks, about $7 per hour. He duly climbed the scaffolding to take a look at the enormous murals. holding to take a look at the enormous murals. When he returned, he shook his head. There's nothing there, just dust, a shadow of the original. All I have to do is blow on it, and the shadow disappears. Faye and Malskatt could see that it would take more than one miracle to restore the frescoes of Marion Kiercher.

Still, they were nothing if not miracle workers, right? And so, Lothar Malzkat got to work again. And as always, Malzkat worked fast. There was a deadline, the 700th anniversary celebrations of the church were approaching, but so quickly did Malskat restore or rather reimagine the 14th century frescoes that face suggested they keep working. The pair put up some scaffolding in a different part of the church and him discovered another wall full of 14th century paintings. Not everyone was happy with what was going on behind that scaffolding.

The state curator of art wrote a confidential report suggesting that detrick Faye had probably overpainted previous restorations. And a young researcher named Johanna Colber managed to examine the work at close range and submit her concerns to the city authorities. I regret to report that the over-painting is much too thick. There are also some strange discrepancies, for example. Photographs of the Fire-damaged Church in 1942 show that Mary Magdalene has sandals. In the restored frescoes, she has bare feet.

Some of the saints appear to have moved. Dietrich Fey threatened to sue Johanna Colba. He was a rich and powerful man. She was just a doctoral student. She recanted, saying that she must have misremembered. But more than a faulty memory was required, anyone examining those wartime photographs of the original frescoes revealed after the fire could see clearly how much Malskatt had simply invented.

Yet, just as in the 1930s, such doubts were waived away. When the restored paintings were revealed, the response was ecstatic. Images of the murals were put on millions of postage stamps. Tourists flocked to Lubek to visit the church. Journalists wrote about the striking discovery, while academics breathlessly explained that it would rewrite the history of ecclesiastical art, Dietrich Fey was given another 150,000 marks and nominated for a professorship. In 1951, the leader of West Germany's fledgling democracy, Conrad Adnauer visited the church to celebrate its set to a centenary and stood in the nave examining the work.

This is uplifting gentlemen. He gestured up at the rows of saints 70 feet above the 10 feet tall, green, red and earthy brown, revealed by the wartime inferno and restored to their original glory by deetric fate and his assistant. What was the fellow's name again? Nobody knew the name of Lothar Malskatt, but soon that name would be on the lips of everyone in Germany. Corsion retails will return in a moment. Business notifications getting out of hand, buried under an avalanche of customer emails, texts, and social media messages?

Keep your edge with Thrive Small Business Software and never miss a message again. Thrive offers one solution to communicate, market, and run your business. But simply, small businesses run better on Thrive. Get Command Center for free today at thrive.ca. That's THR-Y-V dot CA. Terms and conditions apply. Free plans have limited functionality. Lothar Malskat was fuming. It wasn't the money, although hevon knows Dietrich Feh paid him little enough.

It was the credit. Malskat had created all this art, the images that were being reprinted on stamps, and which were yet again rewriting the textbooks. And yet nobody even knew his name. Faye was publicly honored by Conrad Adnauer, the leader of post-war West Germany. And Malzkad? Malzkad was hanging out with the other craftsman. He was a nobody. Phase plan required Malskatt's anonymity. A whole point was to claim that the work was done by an

anonymous artist in the 14th century. But Malskatt wasn't interested in anonymity anymore. He didn't want fade to take the credit, he didn't want a 14th century painter to take the credit, and so he wrote on the wall of the Marianne Kiesher. All paintings in this church are by Lothar Malskatt. They, of course, painted over that inconvenient declaration immediately, and so Malskath took an even more extraordinary step. He went to the local police station and made a full confession he had faked the Marion Keishan murals. The police laughed him out of town. Much like August Olbers, the elderly restorer who'd first put turkeys on the walls of Schleswig Cathedral in the late 1800s, Lothar Malskatt was explaining to the world exactly

what he'd done, and he was being sneered at, demeaned, and disbelieved. The local newspaper pittingly described it as, the lamentable case of a painter gone crazy. But unlike August Olbers, Malzkat had a secret weapon. A like a camera. He documented every step in the process from obliterating the fragile murals with a steel brush where necessary, to slapping on fresh whitewash, to exuberantly painting on the blank walls. And while the local authorities had no interest in even looking at these photographs, the national media found Mel's cat story and his photographs, rather more intriguing.

For a few months, there was a stalemate. The wider world believed Malskatt, but the great and the good of Lubek were outraged at the perceived slander, and back their man, the renowned art expert, Dr. Fey. When Lothar Malskatt confessed to also forging the turkeys of St. Peter's Church at Sleswig, they regarded this as further proof that he was deranged and with delusions of grandeur too. And so Malskatt took the fight to a surreal, new level. He sued himself for forgery. Under German law, this forced the police to take action.

Malzgat's attorney handed over a dossier full of evidence, including accounts of those forged van Goghs and Rembrandt's. When the police searched Dietrich Faye's house, they found several more forgeries. Dietrich Faye was arrested and taken into custody. Within days, an expert commission had been assembled, inspected the Marion Kiercher, and published a report which agreed with Malskatt. None of the medieval remains were visible at all. The modern pictures followed completely new outlines. The 21 figures in the choir are not gothic,

but painted freehand by Malskatt. The painting described as old by the Restora Fe, does not lie on the medieval layer, but on a post-medieval layer, and cannot, if for this reason alone, be considered original. Finally, the reckoning was coming. Yubek was about to hold the most sensational trial in the city's history.

This isn't really a cautionary tale about a forgery. It's a cautionary tale about complicity, about who amplifies a lie, who tries to silence the truth-tellers, and who looks the other way. I think we can all understand why in 1936, nobody really wanted to tell the truth about the turkey pictures of Schleswig, in a fascist state, where everyday political dissidents disappeared into the concentration camps, were beaten up or murdered, who really would put their neck on the chopping block, for the sake of some anachronistic birds. But after the war, you might have hoped things would go differently. Himmler and Güring were both dead by suicide.

That ridiculous racist book which claimed that the Schleswig-Mührerls demonstrated the national unity of Germany had been written by Alfred Stanger. He had lost his job as a professor. The Nazis had lost. So there was nothing standing in the way of recognizing the self-evident truth that the Schleswig-Murals were modern. Except that Germans had already lost so much in the disastrous evils of the Third Reich and the war.

They didn't really fancy facing up to any more losses, such as acknowledging that the Schleswig-Murals must be fake. And so, even though the state curator had recorded his doubts about Dietrich Fei, Fei was put in charge of the fragile miracle of the Marion Kiercher. was put in charge of the fragile miracle of the Marion Kiercher. You have to suspect that Lubek's authorities had a sense that Faye and his assistant would do more than merely conserving the old murals.

We want no museum, the architect of the Restoration Project had said, lay on more paint. Paint out the church beautifully, agreed the bishop of Lubeck, only later to declare that he'd been betrayed by an extremely cunning deception. Jonathan Keats, the author of Forged, Why Fakes at the Great Art of Our Age, says the trial in 1954 of Malskat and Fay actually became a trial of all the powerful institutions which had supported, protected, and perhaps quietly encouraged them. The local newspapers agreed.

The real defendants are not the forges, but the experts and officials who failed to exercise proper care, read the newspaper. They didn't mind being deceived. Had Malskat 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 forges themselves.

Indeed, we all want to believe in miracles. And when someone punctures our little bubble of wishful thinking, we're less likely to thank them than to resent them. The turkeys of Schleswig showed us that in a fascist state, people will queue up to endorse an obvious lie. But the miracle of Marian Kiercher showed us that even a democracy isn't invulnerable to grand self-deceptions. As Lothar Malskatt explained at the trial, people liked to be fooled today, we just gave them what they wanted.

In the end, Lothar Malskatt got what he wanted to. He was finally acknowledged as the artist who painted the interior of the Marian Kiesher. He also got something he didn't want. 18 months in prison, Dietrich Fey got 20. And the Marian Kiesher? The melted church bells still lie where they fell to the floor of the church, a solemn memorial to the horror of war. But not everything has been so carefully remembered. Many of Malzkatz paintings stayed up. He would have liked that.

But he would not have liked what the guidebooks now say about the Church. Gothic frescoes of Christ and saints add colour to otherwise plain walls. The pastel images only resurfaced when a fire caused by the 1942 air raid licked away the coat of whitewash. What an injustice! Surely the guidebook should add, all paintings in this church are by The definitive account of Lothar Malskats' forgery is in Jonathan Keats' book, Forged, why fakes are the great art of our age. For a full list of our sources, please see the show notes at timhalford.com.

Corsinary Tales is written by me, Tim Halford, with Andrew Wright. It's produced by Ryan Dilly with support from Courtney Garino and Emily Vaughn. A sound design and original music is the work of Pascal Wise. It features the voice talents of Ben Crow, Melanie Gutridge, Stella Haafard and Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Mia LeBel. Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fane, John Schnarrs, Julia Barton, Carly McGleory, Eric Sandler, Royston Besserv, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Marano, Daniel LaCarn, and Maya Canig. Corsairry Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries.

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