English source-aligned edition
Robert Scholz
Robert Scholz served as head of the Fine Arts Special Staff in the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg and organiser of the selection and exchange of looted artworks. The profile reconstructs the person’s function in France, Belgium and Germany through documented office, decisions, supervision or operational conduct. It does not assign every crime committed by an institution or region to one individual.
Confirmed findings
- From 1941 he headed the Fine Arts Special Staff within the ERR, and from spring 1942 he exercised scholarly direction over the Louvre Working Group.
- He helped develop methods for confiscating, cataloguing and distributing artworks in Western Europe and ordered lists to be prepared of objects intended for exchange.
- After Kurt von Behr was removed, Scholz personally controlled the exchange agreements; at least 93 paintings looted from Jewish owners were used in 28 exchanges conducted between 1941 and 1943.
- A French military tribunal sentenced him in absentia in 1950 to ten years' imprisonment and a residence ban, but he never served the sentence.
Place in the chain of responsibility
Scholz explains the middle link in the looting chain: expert selection, cataloguing, the decision on an object's destination and exchange on the art market. The profile attributes documented decisions and supervision to him, not the entire record of the ERR.
Key events and mechanisms
- taking charge of the Fine Arts Special Staff in 1941
- assuming scholarly direction of the Louvre Working Group in spring 1942
- controlling exchange agreements after Kurt von Behr's removal
- the trial in absentia in Paris on 1–3 August 1950
The circle records authority, function and agency. Several profiles may describe different parts of the same persecution chain, so profile-level totals must not be added together.
Postwar accountability
He was investigated by the American Art Looting Investigation Unit. In August 1950 a French military tribunal sentenced him in absentia to ten years' imprisonment and a residence ban; the judgment was not enforced. He died in 1981.
Limits of the evidence
The INHA database contains a discrepancy in his birth date: its narrative and the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek give 1902, while one INHA metadata field gives 1909. There is insufficient evidence to attribute to Scholz the burning of some objects in July 1943; the source itself presents this only as a supposition.
Sources
The source set combines institutional, archival, trial or scholarly material from at least two independent publishers.