Christie’s has decided to cancel the auction of the final lots of Austrian billionaire Heidi Horten’s jewelry collection following a controversy surrounding her husband’s ties to Nazi Germany.
In an email sent to AFP on Friday, Christie’s said it had “made the decision not to pursue further real estate sales from the estate of Heidi Horten,” confirming information obtained by The New York Times.
More than 700 jewels are part of the hoarding collection, most of which were sold in May for a total value of $202 million. The last batches should be sold in November.
But, Christie’s explains, “The sale of Heidi Horten’s jewelry collection attracted significant attention and the response to it has deeply touched us and many others, and we will continue to reflect on it.”
Shortly before the sale in May, Christie’s had explained several times why it had decided to agree to distribute this impressive jewelry set.
In response to its critics, the renowned auction house had argued that all proceeds from the sale would be donated to charity.
In addition, Christie’s will make a significant contribution from the sale proceeds to Jewish institutions and Holocaust education, “critically important,” assured Rahul Kadakia, auctioneer and international director of jewelry at the auction house.
But that did not detract from the criticism, including from the American Jewish Committee. The representative council of the Jewish institutions of France (Crif) had classified the sale as indecent.
Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, rejected a donation from the auction house, and other organizations followed suit, according to the New York Times, on the grounds that the husband’s fortune came from Heidi Horten.
He owned one of the largest department store chains in Germany. In 1936, three years after Adolf Hitler came to power, he took over the Alsberg textile company, whose Jewish owners had fled, and subsequently took over several other businesses that had been owned by Jews before the war.
Helmut Horten was later accused of having benefited from the “Aryanization” of Jewish property (expropriation measures to transfer ownership of businesses of Jewish descent).