Auction house Christie’s has canceled the second part of a controversial auction of jewelry by Austrian billionaire Heidi Horten. The public’s reaction to the first part of the auction left the auction house “struck,” Christie’s said today. Therefore, the auction will not continue in November as previously planned.
The shadow of German businessman Helmut Horten’s Nazi past hung over the auction. According to a historian’s report published in January 2022, Helmut Horten was a long-time member of the NSDAP. In 1936, three years after the Nazis seized power, he took control of the Alsberg textile department store in Duisburg at the age of 27 after its Jewish owners fled.
He later took over other companies that were previously owned by Jewish owners. He was therefore accused of having benefited from the “Aryanization” of Jewish businesses during the Nazi era. Numerous Jewish organizations therefore called for the jewelry auction to be stopped in order to clarify the extent to which Horten’s wealth belonged to the persecuted Jews and their descendants.
According to Forbes, Heidi Horten, who died last year at the age of 81, left a fortune equivalent to around 2.6 billion euros. Her jewelry collection included around 700 pieces. The first part of the jewelry auction, held in May, generated around 141 million euros, with only around a hundred pieces of jewelry being auctioned.