How an 18th-century portrait stolen by the Nazis was recovered 80 years later in Argentina | Argentina

TThere was nothing remarkable in Calle Padre Cardiel, a quiet settlement street in the leafy Parque Luro region of Mar del Plata, Argentina’s most well -known coastal town, and there was nothing remarkable about the middle -aged couple living in the stone -covered villa.

58 -year -old Patricia Kadgien was born in Buenos Aires, five hours north. His social media described him as a yoga teacher and a bio -coding practitioner, an uncertain alternative therapy claiming to treat the disease by solving past traumas.

His 61-year-old husband, Juan Carlos Cortegoso, built and competed. Like many people in this neighborhood, double -closed and discreet. “Patri was a perfect person,” a neighbor said a neighbor. “Beautiful, well educated,” the other said.

Then, they put their homes for sale last month. Robles Casas Y Campos, a photographer with a local real estate agent, came to attract the interiors that were laid in a wide, elegant way. The pictures rose. And their silent assets collapsed.

The fifth photo on the agency’s list showed a general view of Villa’s living room. A woman had an extremely different oil plate on a buttoned sofa, next to a buttoned sofa, next to an antique combination hanging on the wall, hanging on the wall.

More than 11,000 km away, the Dutch News Outlet ad for a few years, quietly investigating the fate of the old master paintings looted by the Nazis. It is listed by the Dutch Ministry of Culture as “unnecessary unnecessary .. After World War II.

Journalists, Patricia Kadgien, the owner of the property and a high -ranking Nazi official, a high -ranking Nazi official, who was known to have settled in Argentina after the war, made several attempts to talk to Alicia.

His calls and messages were constantly unanswered or rejected. But then a Dutch correspondent in Buenos Aires, Peter Schouten, began to knock on the door of the villa – and saw “for sale”.

After clicking on the link of the property and recognizing the study instantly, his colleagues in Schouteten and Amsterdam followed the headlines all over the world because the 18th century portrait, which was missing for 80 years, was caused by unexpected healing.

“This is a very surreal-a little absurd, Sch Schouten said, after a packed court hearing, accused of a heavy confidentiality for allegedly concealing a lady’s portrait of a lady.

Federal prosecutor Carlos Martínez said that the accusation of concealment to the court should be understood in connection with the genocide crime… This is theft in the context of genocide. It is linked to the most serious crimes known by humanity. ”

A judge imposed a 180 -day travel ban for the couple and prevented Martínez’s plundering of cultural assets as part of a systematic plan to enrich the Nazi regime and its members ”.

After the reports of the possible position of the study and before a police call, the couple tried to block the investigation, the prosecutor defended the online property list and took the sales sign and replaced the portrait with a goblen.

Although they knew that they were under the investigation, the defendants also tried a civilian case claiming that the picture was rightly came to them, but it was allegedly handing over after the house was imprisoned and more police raids.

Thanks to their lawyers, Kadgien and Cortegoso refused to hide by arguing that they are always willing to deliver the picture and prevent the prevention, not to hide the work of art, not to hide the work of art.

This week, during a series of raids on the property owned by the Kadgien family members, police engravings, pressures, drawings and two paintings from the 19th century seized, and the authorities said with more accusations if it proved that these works were looted.

The portrait of a female belonged to Jacques Goudstikker, a Jewish-Holland art dealer fleeing from Amsterdam in the mid-May 1940 to escape the Nazis, but the ship carrying it to England died after the SS Bodegraven’s grip.

Goudstikker carried a notebook that details more than 1,100 artwork collections, including parts of Rubens, Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt and Van Gogh.

Some were later rescued and exhibited as part of the Netherlands National Collection in Rijkmuseum, 202, in 2006, his father -in -law Marei von saher, before returning to the dealer’s only heir. The portrait of a lady was not among them.

Among the buyers in the forced sale of the Second World War art theft, Reicsmarschall Hermann Göring, a 33 -year -old official named Friedrich Gustav Kadgien in the early years of the war.

Born in 1907, Kadgien joined the Nazi party in 1932 and SS in 1935. By 1938, Adolf was a special representative for the four -year economic plan to reorganize Germany by Hitler and prepare for self -sufficiency until 1940.

According to the 1996 Swiss report, Kadgien, a key player in the third Reich’s foreign exchange relations, said, “Cash stolen from Jewish victims has been intensively joined by criminal methods for acquiring cash, securities and diamonds”.

Kadgien said, “He confiscated a large amount of property from Jewish traders, including jewels and diamonds in Amsterdam, and supervised the sale of expropriated shares and securities through banks and front companies in Switzerland, Kad said.

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Thousands of Nazis fled to the continent after the war and settled in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Paraguay. Apart from a few important high -profile exceptions, most of them lived without disturbing their lives, sometimes without changing names.

In 1951, Kadgien reappeared in Rio de Janeiro, settled in the Santa Teresa region, and founded a former colleague from the four -year plan, Ludwig Haupt, and Switzerland Associate’s wife Anna Imfeld and Imhauka’s Brazilian branch.

Regardless of the purchase, his wealth was enough to invest in a farm of 20,000 cattle and 85,000 hectares. In 1951, Imhauk’s Buenos Aires branch followed and now Federico Gustavo – Kadgien won Argentine citizenship soon.

While Imhauka acted as an intermediary for large German engineering companies such as Juan Perón government, such as Siemens, a second company released in 1973 made valuable contracts specialized in food and drugs.

He married Hildegard Strauss, where Kadgien, Patricia and Alicia were in the Argentine capital. In 1978 or 1979, he died of war and subsequent actions and was buried in the German cemetery.

Unlike Patricia, whose unwanted fame is a model, it is well known locally. “If you didn’t tell me I would never know,” a neighbor said. Another said that he was “responsible for his father’s mistakes.”

But even those who sympathize with him admits that it is strange that he did not deliver the picture immediately.

The fate of the portrait of a female portrait to be registered to the Argentine Supreme Court is now uncertain.

The prosecutors demanded that they be held at the Holocaust Museum in Buenos Aires, but demanded that they exhibit. This week, Goudstikker’s heir Von Sahar made a legal claim to the work done with the FBI in New York.