Needs More Turkeys: Lothar Malskat

Don't you hate it when you learn to restore masterworks of art, but then you kind of mess one up, and then you just paint a new one and call it old, but then it's full of anachronisms, and then everyone loves it, but then you don't get any credit for your phony work? Don't you hate that? Lothar Malskat did. He hated it.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio Zaren Elizabeth.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
There. I'm over here, you know, just hanging out doing
my thing, and.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
I I have a question, what is it five times?
It's five?

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Could? Do you know what's ridiculous?

Speaker 3 (00:21):
Yes, dude, Okay, So recently one of my heroes passed away,
Bob Newhart. I thought, no, come on now, Bob Newhart
passed away, right, and I love that guy, and I
learned a fun fact about him, and it's ridiculous. So
his first album was called The Button Down Mind of
Bob Newhart, and I used to listen to his old

(00:42):
comedy albums, right, But what I didn't know was a
few things about this album. Well, for one, he won
the Grammy for Best New Artist as a comedian. I
think it's the only time that's ever happened.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Oh it wasn't, like best New Comedian. Out of all
the recordings, he beat the Curse.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
Yes, he beat like Also he beat Leontine Price and
Miriam mckiba. And he also beat Sinatra for Best Album
of the Year. I mean like it, yes, what, Oh totally,
it's okay, it's nuts like, oh ahead. Then he also
it is the it's the highest selling comedy album of
the twentieth century.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
And then you were listening to it as a kid.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
I was listening to as a kid. So my mother
gave me all of her old Bob Newhart albums, and
I loved him. I memorized him. But the thing that
that's wild to me is so he he does that
recording that album. He recorded it down in Houston. It
was only the second time he'd ever done stand up.
What he never did stand up. And then all of
a sudden, they're like, hey, we want to do a comedy.
We want you to record it, like in like in

(01:41):
a club doing stand ups. Like I don't do that.
They're like, what do you mean. He's like, I just
I make these recordings and I send him in. They
play on the radio station, the DJ plays them. That's
how people know me. They're like, huh, well, can you
do it on a stage? What you do with the
with the fake phone calls and all that, And he's like,
I guess I can try. So he goes down to Houston.
He does one weekend, practices it in front of a crowd,
then next weekend does it live again, records it, and

(02:02):
that's what you hear on the album.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Wow, that's incredible, it's amazing, It's ridiculousiculous.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
And that's the greatest comedy album of the twentieth century.
Highest Sailing gets them all these everybody recognizes it, you know,
both the credits and the fans. Yeah, and I couldn't
believe that.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Wow, that's ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (02:18):
There you go.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Do you want to know what else is ridiculous? Totally
sneaky turkeys and a barefoot married Magdalene Good. This is

(02:48):
a Ridiculous Crime, A podcast about absurd and outrageous cavers
i and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free
and one hundred percent ridiculous. Damn right, here we go.

Speaker 3 (03:02):
It's Ben whiles erin Why Where? Who told you that?

Speaker 2 (03:05):
It's Ben A Whiles Since I told you about a
good art crime?

Speaker 3 (03:08):
Oh yeah, you know I love these. So you finally
got my comments that I put in the comment box.
Oh no crimes again this week? Just yeah?

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Well, you know, I'm not employee of the month every
month like you are. Maybe learned to park, I could
I just can't listen. Yes, I mentioned this guy or
as you would say, Katy.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
And I know Louis Armstrong invented that as slang. That's
why I say it out of honor to Louis Good.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
That's good me out of him. And I talked about
this guy in our listener Mail episode Friend of the Show.
Hondo recommended this guy, and let me say that was
a great recommendation. Yeah. Classic. So the guy's name is
Lothar mallscat. That sounds like when you're mallscat. It sounds
like when you're making up words to make a toddler.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
You know what scat is, right?

Speaker 2 (03:59):
I know what? You know what a mall is a Lothar,
which like, okay, so right there, I'm sold. He's no bumfardo,
but it's good.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
Of the mall people.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
It sounds like the name of a small woodland creature
in like a British nature documentary that lines its den
in candy wrappers and scavenged pubic hair.

Speaker 3 (04:25):
You can see that the wild loth ball scat. He's
been dwelling here for a bit of.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
Time, behold in the natural habitat. Okay, but I kid
ha ha. Let's talk about the real Lothar. He was
born in East Prussia nineteen thirteen. Now it's called where
he was was Knesberg. Now it's Kaliningrad, Russia, Russia, port
city on the Baltic. So you've been there, hang out

(04:52):
there all the time.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
I got a buddy who's still there.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah, you got jugged there.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
Yeah, he's in the black markets. But I can't talk
about it.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
He's I need art at this art school, Kundan's Kuhnskatami Conesberg.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
My buddy went so fun to say he's a dance instructor.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
Uh. His professors said that he had quote extraordinary, almost
uncanny versatility, and he said it like that, and so
he's got that praise just ringing in his ears. He
goes to Berlin to make his fortune and his fame,
but it didn't work out that. Ah. He it's a
long way to the top if you want a rock

(05:32):
and roll buddy.

Speaker 3 (05:33):
Oh yeah, many steps to get there exactly.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
So he transitioned media. He went from painting on canvas
to dropping canvas in order to paint walls. The boy
became a house painter.

Speaker 3 (05:43):
Oh you're trying to say dropping dropping canvas, That sounds
like house painting. He got that real painting. I was
just doing some shop talk because look, it's not only beautiful,
but it's also effective. It seals in the house or
beautiful the walls, but also it's beautiful. Exactly what do
you do for a living the beautify the world?

Speaker 2 (06:04):
Exactly be proud. In Berlin, where he was, there's this
guy named Dietrich Faye, and he was the son of
Professor Ernst Fay.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
These people, no, okay.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
And Ernst Fay was for those of us who are cultured,
so you wouldn't know, not me. He was a well
known art historian and restore and Professor Fay kind of
hitched his wagonto the Nazis, oh choice, especially the ones
who thought of themselves as total art connoisseurs.

Speaker 3 (06:34):
Oh art, these.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
Clowns such as Luftwaffe Commander in chief Hermann Goring.

Speaker 3 (06:39):
Yeah, he had a huge stolen collection. Oh yeah, and
so like the biggest in the world.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
I think Fay just like pals around with him. Fay
and his son, Dietrich, they went around and they restored
paintings and churches, and the professor taught his son the
intricacies of fresco restoration, and Dietrich he was like, really good,
that's one.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
Of your favorites. Fresco restoration people who messed it up.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
Though totally we're good. Yeah, we'll talk about.

Speaker 3 (07:03):
That, okay.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
So Dietrich, he's like super good at schmoozing clients and
like greasing government wheels.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
Oh of course, not an artist.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
He's terrible at the actual restoration.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
Just crap. Meanwhile, Lothar's rollers instead. Yeah, no, it terrible.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
Well, no, he's not the house Lothar, the house painter.
He's twenty four, he's looking for work. So he gets
hired by Professor Fay, not as a restorer, but to
whitewash the family home. So the professor, though it takes
a liking to Lothar, and he loans them all these
books on ecclesiastical art, okay, and it's just like, you

(07:42):
know what, you seem to have your act together more
than my son art. And so over time the Professor
taught Lothart what it was to restore a work, like
the whole craft.

Speaker 3 (07:53):
It's like, would you like to be my surrogate son?
Basically I will teach you the guild training kind of.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
But yeah, So nineteen thirty seven, Germany, the professor and
his son they get this huge contract to restore murals
in the Cathedral of Saint Peter in Schleswig, Schleswig.

Speaker 3 (08:10):
Sure, sure, I believe you.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
It is this huge project. So they needed help, so
they hired Lothar to help them, and they were tasked
with removing some like inauthentic editions that had been added
to the medieval pieces. So in eighteen eighty eight, this guy,
August Albert's he comes in. He's hired to like bring
the old murals back to life. He got a little
too into it, Okay, So the earliest images on the

(08:34):
wall of the cathedral were actually first painted around thirteen hundred, huh,
and over the centuries damp set in, for sure. So
they hired August Olbers in the eighteen eighties to like
go and like, you know.

Speaker 3 (08:46):
Freshen it up.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
He took some liberties and at the time everyone thought
it was fantastic. Like, so he took a bad blurry
image and he would paint over it to look like
he figured the original artist intended.

Speaker 3 (08:58):
Oh and there's no living memory of the actual painting.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yeah, And anything that he couldn't make out he made up.

Speaker 3 (09:03):
Yes, everybody had just been living with the hazy Yeah,
and that's.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
How restoration was done then too, So by the time
loath are so, yeah, that looks right, and so loath
art comes on the scene and that's just not true anymore.
So by the thirties, people realize you can't trample on
the original work. You have to just like Learnt crud Off, Yeah,
to let the paint sing through. And so this is
totally calling to mind as you referenced one of my

(09:28):
favorite works of art, the fresco of Jesus in the
Spanish church that the lady painted over to quote fix
it made horrible. Yeah, I had a T shirt with it.
Happened to that shirt. It was horrible and awesome.

Speaker 3 (09:40):
I bet an intern ticket. It's so awesome. Probably one
of the one of the hairy ones, the dogs.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
I'm going to go looking through their closets. So Olbers,
he didn't deface the walls like that. He just broke
the new orthodoxy established by Cologne art historian Auto H.
Forster quote there must be no l of addition, completion,
or other conjectured reconstruction of any supposed original state. So

(10:07):
Olbers is like check, check, and check. Oh, I'm not
supposed to do those things. So now, Professor Fay and
his company. They've come in. They have to restore that
Undo Ober, Yeah, Undo Olbers. And when they started the project,
it pretty much scraped away all of the paint laid
down by Olbers.

Speaker 3 (10:26):
I can tell you, I just has a house painter.
Unpainting is your least favorite thing to do.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah, yeah, And so they're trying to take Olbers off,
but they're taking even more stuff.

Speaker 3 (10:35):
It's very difficult, it's really and they have.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
To work with what they have, the notes from the
eighteen eighties. So he has to restore a blank wall now.
And so the phase decided they were going to have
Lothar repaint the murals from scratch and pretend they were restorations.
So Lothar whitewashed the brick and then he like discolored

(10:58):
the line that he used with pigment to get it
that like lived in ancient Terror. Then he freehanded his
own version of the murals based on Olber's restorations, and
he looked at medieval examples to try and fill in
any blanks, and he drew the figures in earth tones
and like went all in on the medieval style. But

(11:18):
he also made a bunch of anachronistic errors on purpose.
Oh really yeah, Like the big one is that he
included turkeys in one of the corn tomatoes, and like
turkeys weren't known of in fourteenth century years.

Speaker 3 (11:33):
None of those potatoes they world.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
He also modeled the virtue Mary's face after Hanseik, Austrian
movie star, and he painted his father as a prophet.
And he used an old classmate as the inspiration for
the face of Christ. That's an honor. And when he
was done, the professor swooped in Fay and he just
rubbed a brick over the entire thing to give it

(11:58):
like wear and tear patina.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
Did he have like a fishmonger? Who was the face
of Mary? I mean, like how deep did it go?

Speaker 2 (12:04):
It goes deep? And people loved it. They're like, this
is gorgeous. An art historian at the University of bond
Fell by the name of Alfred Staunch, he just gushed
about Professor Fay and the restoration work said it was
quote as restrained as it was careful, and he said

(12:24):
it was the quote last deepest final word in German art.
Like this guy got sensual with it, s all about it.
But he also.

Speaker 3 (12:34):
Didn't realize he was putting all of his name on
this too.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yeah, well he had. He thought that the art had
another use. He wanted the government to use the murals
to promote Third Reich nationalism.

Speaker 3 (12:45):
Oh that's right, German art the last word.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
He thought the murals would be right up their alley
because first of all, the figures conformed to their stereotypes,
the blond and like the purity of the German. Yeah. Sure,
Lothar said in an interview later quote, I had to
paint the apostles as longheaded vikings because one did not
want Eastern roundheads. Okay, right, wow, But then there's the turkeys.

Speaker 3 (13:15):
So do the Nazis really know that they're talking about
a Jewish guy in like the like not the Nazi
pass Like? Are they just skipping past that? Are they
trying to pretend like the Jesus, the Jesus is not Jewish,
the Disciples are not Jewish fishermen.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
I can't explain the disconnects.

Speaker 3 (13:30):
Okay, I was just wondering if they were, Like, Also,
by the way, can we make everyone blonde in the picture?

Speaker 2 (13:34):
Everyone comes from here?

Speaker 4 (13:35):
Well?

Speaker 2 (13:35):
So okay, so then we got the turkeys, sure, and
there are eight turkeys in the Mural.

Speaker 3 (13:40):
And twelve disciples.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
Independent historian named Freer Kai. Sherman Hompkins I know, pointed
out that the turkeys were introduced to Europe by the
Spaniards in the fifteen fifties, so like, how are they
in this painting? The paintings had been given the okay
by the Nazis. Himmler himself had attested to their value.
So Sherman Hompkins, he couldn't question the authenticity without questioning

(14:06):
the Nazis. So he did like a good fascist, and
he questioned history itself. He decided that the paintings were
proof that the Vikings had discovered America.

Speaker 3 (14:18):
I knew.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
And then they brought the turkeys back with of course,
and people bought into this, so of course.

Speaker 3 (14:24):
That makes the most sense.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
And it was already like a big Nazi talking point
that supposedly the German explorer Diedrich Pining had reached America
in fourteen seventy three.

Speaker 3 (14:34):
They're not even going with like Leif Ericksson in history, well.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
No, because then they're like, oh wait a second, this
just proves the Vikings had actually been there earlier, because
this is from the thirteen hundreds, and they brought not
fourteen seventy three, they brought the turkeys to Germany so
a dude could paint them on the walls of a
church and that was just fantastic, and that meant that
the Germans could then further cement their Viking pedigree.

Speaker 3 (14:57):
Of course, really just drive home.

Speaker 2 (14:59):
That Teutonics premisy. So the turkeys existing in early medieval
Germany became a part of Nazi cannon. What yeah, and
it got integrated into their propaganda. So a guidebook for
the church said, quote Arian seafarers went to America long
before Columbus did. Incidentally, Columbus is the descendant of Spanish

(15:20):
Jews from Barcelona. Like wow, people are disgusting, so gross. Yeah,
so about Columbus, right, I mean you got I can
say a lot about Columbus, but like.

Speaker 3 (15:33):
Yeah, irrelevant. I find small mind and is funny sometimes,
so I can laugh at a lot of things.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
The turkeys. The turkeys were painted in the eighteen eighties
by August Olbers, because that's when he was like, I
don't know what.

Speaker 3 (15:44):
Goes in there to paint feet, And then after the.

Speaker 2 (15:48):
Mural was unveiled in the nineteen thirties, eighty year old
Olbers comes forward and it's like, the mural is not
proof that the Vikings discovered America because I painted those
jive turkeys in the eighteen eighties, like he confesses. And
he's like, I wasn't trying to pull a fast one.
I just couldn't figure there was a big empty spot.

(16:09):
I didn't know what to put in there.

Speaker 3 (16:11):
Is doing this publicly to the authorities.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
Publicly, oh wow, and to the like everybody. And he's like,
I didn't want to leave a bear spot. I paint turkeys.
I'm really good at painting turkeys.

Speaker 3 (16:21):
I love the gobblers.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
He put a bunch of foxes, and he put four turkeys,
and they were supposed to symbolize the guile and gluttony
of King Herod.

Speaker 3 (16:29):
Oh okay, okay.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
So then Lothar he sees the turkeys, he's like, oh,
these are original. I guess what does he know from turkeys?
You know, who knows where they came from? They're just
delicious whatever. But remember I said there were eight in
the mural. Let's got Olbers only painted four of them.
Lothar liked how they looked, and he really liked painting turkeys.
This is good at it, so he doubled up.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
On it and they're so fun.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
Yeah, exactly, nobody, thank you.

Speaker 3 (16:57):
I did you know? You did celebrity pressions and animals?

Speaker 2 (17:00):
Everybody it's me But okay, nobody listened to Olbers. Right,
So the old guy, they're like, you're senile, you don't
remember anything you see sad go away.

Speaker 3 (17:09):
He's like, I did it. They're like no, yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:11):
No, I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (17:12):
The Vikings sit down, grandpa, we have to talk about.

Speaker 2 (17:15):
It was too important to the third Yeah, this is
the Viking legend and the Turkeys live on.

Speaker 3 (17:21):
Yeah. So the war, there was a war.

Speaker 2 (17:23):
I don't know if you heard about it.

Speaker 3 (17:24):
Oh right, right right.

Speaker 2 (17:26):
Loth Ars survived the war, but he couldn't get a job.
He had no money.

Speaker 3 (17:30):
Was in the war.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
Yeah, I know. He tried to make it as an artist,
and that by that I mean he painted erotic pinups
that he sold on the streets of Hamburg.

Speaker 3 (17:40):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
Yeah, so by the summer of forty five erotic pinups. Yeah,
summer forty five, totally broke, totally starving. He goes to
the phase to ask for.

Speaker 3 (17:50):
What, how terrible is it that there you are? And
this specifically as a straight man who's broke, penniless hoping
to like get something, and they have to just stare
at like a beautiful woman who's half naked all day
while you're trying to paint this thing. It's like for
that guy, I mean, what a temptation of like, I'm
never doing anything like this. Oh god, terrible.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
Anyway, I don't feel bad for him anyway. So he
goes to the phase looking for work. Professor Ernst died
in the war and so, and there weren't like a
whole lot of paying restoration projects going on. But Dietrich
the sun live and large.

Speaker 3 (18:24):
So that wasn't big on the Marshall plan.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
Huh well, I mean that didn't. That was you look
at like a few years later and you'll see shows that. Okay, yeah,
so Dietrich he's like wearing these like beautiful suits and
smoking expensive cigarettes just like he had before, and he's like,
Lothar aw high are you? And you can even move
into my servants quarters, thank you? But this is there's
no restoration work there. What's the there's work, there's art forgeries. Ah,

(18:48):
so the economy is in the toilet, but there's still
plenty of buyers, you know, on this black market.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
And all this art that's been liberated.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
Cash means nothing. People are trading in cigarettes. And they
also they protect their savings by buying things with lasting
value like art.

Speaker 3 (19:04):
It's like the loose diamonds events.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yeah, so most of the new collectors are inexperienced with it.
They just want to lock their money into a solid
piece of art. Most of the high value paintings had
been looted from foreign museums or seized from Jewish collectors
and families, which meant that like no one was asking
any questions about provenans lips zipped. So the collectors, they
figured someone else's bad luck, as they're a good fortune.

(19:26):
They're just lovely people. Collectors. They figured the art had
to be real with all the hush hush and all.

Speaker 3 (19:32):
That's the thing.

Speaker 2 (19:33):
Yeah, and the ones who had their doubts about the
authenticity just kind of like push it out of their minds.
They're just trying to survive. So Fee gave Loathar some canvasses,
some paints, and then a list of names Rembrandt, Shegal, Picasso. Orders.
They're coming in fast and furious from Munich, Frankfurt and
Lothar really had to like bust Rump to keep up.

(19:54):
He said, quote, sometimes I copied an old painting in
a day. It took me an hour to do a Picasso.
But what I like best was to do new paintings
in the style of the French Impressionists. He had a
catalog of more than seventy artists whose work and or
style he copied.

Speaker 3 (20:10):
There's the catalog for black market buyers to then sell
to annoying people.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
Yea. And then he turned out in this time, he
turned out six hundred oils and watercolors, and he was
making Dietrich Fay a lot of money. But he was
so let's hang that on the wall. Okay, when we
come back, we're going to talk more art fraud.

Speaker 3 (20:27):
Yeah, Elizabeth Saren, Okay, I want to hear more story.

(20:50):
Come on back up.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
I'm ready. When I left off Lowthar Malscott, he's making.

Speaker 3 (20:57):
I'm sorry, I'm trying to be professional. Go on.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
He was making fakean famous works of art for Dietrich Fay,
the son of his former boss. And he's painting. He's
at a breakneck speech day, sometimes multiple and he was
painting so many so quickly that a lot of times
the quality left a lot to be desired.

Speaker 3 (21:15):
I had to wonder.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
Yeah, there was this dealer in Frankfurt who showed one
of the chagalls to Chagall himself. Now, like Mark, Chagall
was notoriously bad at detecting his his on counter. Yeah,
and so this time though, he takes one look at
it and just rips it up with his bare hands.

Speaker 3 (21:35):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (21:35):
He's like, oh, well, it doesn't matter. The dealer is like,
I can get another one, super easy, and he makes
a mental note not to show show Chagall the paintings
that again. Yeah, so the art forgery business is going well.

Speaker 3 (21:50):
But then Dietrich I like that the art road has
always been the same.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
Always, always. Dietrich, though, he comes to Lothar with a
new gig. So back on March twenty ninth, nineteen forty two,
so we're going back in time, back in the war. Yeah,
it was Palm in time is Palm Sunday. The Allied
forces used almost two hundred and thirty four planes and
three hundred tons of bombs to pretty much level the

(22:15):
German city of Lubek Gonzers. Everything burned, including Saint Mary's Church,
which was also you know known to them as Marion Kerch.
So the Churchill he was like directing the bombers to
just wreck shop on the towns in Germany and break
everyone's will.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
And you see it with like Dresden, the producer Di
and I were watching Masters of Air. We're into this,
I know.

Speaker 2 (22:39):
I figured you'd like that. So thelwa they retaliated what
was with what was called the bey Decker Blitz, and
they said they would lay waste to every town that
had a three star rating in bay Decker's Guide to
Great Britain.

Speaker 3 (22:53):
Are you kidding No?

Speaker 2 (22:54):
Are you kidding you?

Speaker 3 (22:55):
That's serious.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:56):
So they basically used like the Michelin star.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
All your cool stuff. Howd that work out?

Speaker 3 (23:04):
How about that?

Speaker 2 (23:04):
So anyway, Lubeck, the heat from the fires your bombing campaign.
It was pretty smart.

Speaker 3 (23:12):
It's funny and.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
It's funny, but it's also the heat from the fires
from the bombing. Yeah, they made the plaster peel off
the church walls. The plaster, the plaster and then these
Gothic frescoes that were previously hidden since the church's construction
were revealed.

Speaker 3 (23:34):
Yeah, so they just basically bubbled up the plaster.

Speaker 2 (23:36):
Yeah, the paint peels away, plaster peels away, and underneath
is another layer with these beautiful but weathered frescoes. And
so this this is this like sign of hope, and
people are calling it a miracle of Marion Cash. Church
officials they put makeshift roofs over the frescoes to protect
them from the.

Speaker 3 (23:56):
Elements restoration work.

Speaker 2 (24:00):
But they're like, we can't do it right now because
we're in the middle some So then so now we're
going to jump forward. We're going to jump forward to
nineteen forty K. So the government and church authorities they
approached Dietrich and they say, we're going to pay you
eighty eight thousand German marks to fix the frescoes, and

(24:22):
like this wasn't a one hundred percent popular decision. In
this sealed report filed with the provincial Culture Ministry, the
Schleswig Holstein state curator Peter Hirschfeld, yeah totally sure, wrote
quote the restoration of defective medieval mural paintings is, in
the last analysis, a question of trust. Dietrich Fay will

(24:45):
not guarantee that he has never done any overpainting in
an unguarded moment, I therefore declare that I disassociate myself
from the working methods of the restore Dietrich Fay, I
decline all further RESI reponsibility. Yeah, whatever. The church is like,
we want, Fay. They wanted the attention that those turkeys

(25:07):
got so lubak. Bishop Johannes Poka told them, quote, paint
out the church beautifully.

Speaker 4 (25:14):
I just like, go for it.

Speaker 3 (25:15):
Did people ever sort out the whole like Vikings didn't
really get to do. Are they still going with that?

Speaker 2 (25:20):
At this point? They're like that that's what happened. These
are Viking turkeys, and they're bold, strong, big busted Viking turkeys.

Speaker 3 (25:29):
They're so brave.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
The chief architects at the church, doctor Bruno friedric I, can't.
He told Dietrich and lowth Art to quote preserve the
religious impression, and he reminded them that we don't want
a museum. So with the contract in place, it's time
to get to work. Maybe this would be a legit job,

(25:54):
like a chance to really use the skills that Professor
Fay had taught him about restoration and preserv he learned
from the master Zarin closure eyes. Yes, I want you
to picture it. You are a stonemason hired to rebuild
and repair Marian Kirch to its former glory. Instead of

(26:16):
asking you where you were in the war, I'm just
going to say that you are eighteen years old and
have just moved to Germany for whatever reason, just six
months ago. Basically, you've never been a member of the
Nazi Party or aligned with them in any way. You're wolcome.
So there you are sitting on some scaffolding, assessing the
state of some joining in the nave. A painter, some

(26:37):
guy assisting the fancy dude who got the restoration contract
climbs the seventy foot scaffolding next two years, the one
that reaches all the way to the ceiling. There's not
much light in here, so you can't see too well
what he's about to go. Check out the frescoes, the miracles.
You've heard about them, and you realize that when the
guy shines his lantern up there, you'll finally be able

(26:58):
to see them. Scaffolding creaks is the man Lothar malscat
raises his lantern to the frescoes. Someone hammers in the distance,
some engineers chat far below you. Above you, though the
ceiling is now illuminated with soft light, revealing nothing really,
just the faintest of outlines. Loathar blows on the surface,

(27:20):
hoping to move some dust and reveal a masterpiece. Instead,
what paint that is there sweeps off the ceiling and
reins down onto you on your perch. You cough and
wave the dust away with your hand. Lothar looks down
at you, crestfallen, you lock eyes. He places his index
finger to his lips. Sh you get it, this didn't happen.

(27:40):
There's no miracle. You realize, well, it's a miracle. You
have a job, So you're just gonna keep your mouth
shut and get on with your work. Been there s
so Dietrich and Lothar they put up barriers to keep
people out of the nave, and they hung all these
warning signs of like danger overhead. Basically stay out and
don't look up, because you know, it's like they you

(28:01):
couldn't really protect what had been revealed from the elements
in those three years or whatever. So then loth Aar,
he's got this assistant, Theo, and Lothar and Theo they
hang huge wooden panels to conceal their work.

Speaker 3 (28:15):
And they had they had to work, and Theo has
a brother named Vincent.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
They couldn't walk away from this contract, you know, because
it's like everyone's trying just to make ends meet, and
he got a giganic contract. So Theo and Lothar they
scrubbed the walls and they primed the bare brick, and
then Lothar got to work creating the apostles and the
saints that he could like barely make out before the
dusty paint had blown away, and he used really bold

(28:43):
lines and bright colors. He's like, this is a miracle,
and he hauled tail like he did with his face.
So he worked quickly a little too quickly, and what
would take a real restore months took him just days.
And tearing through things two years later.

Speaker 3 (29:01):
But what chemicals you use that work two years later?

Speaker 2 (29:05):
He's done. The whole thing is nineteen fifty, way ahead
of schedule. He had finished all the murals in the nave,
and the completion was timed like to coincide with the
seven hundredth anniversary of the church the next year, so
they had to stall. So Dietrich put up scaffolding in
the choir and told Lothar to go discover some more murals.

(29:29):
There are no murals in there at all. There never
were like nothing even slightly to work with. So loth
Are he's just like hitting the books, cramming. He's reading
about art from the Middle Ages, and like once again
he uses his own models, like his dad shows up
in there. That Hansey the actress, she's up in there,
he throws res buttan In is like a bearded king.

(29:51):
Why not, to quote Jonathan Keats writing for Forbes, quote
he painted in local laborers as monks, trade himself as
a patriarch. Within months, the walls of the choir were
resplendent with art. Twenty one Gothic figures stood ten feet
in height, embellished with friezes of animals and flowers. The

(30:13):
Marian Kirsch Miracle had a surprise post war sequel.

Speaker 3 (30:19):
The Terracotta Warriors, that all had individual like soldiers they
were based on He's just looking around.

Speaker 2 (30:24):
Okay, all right, you're you there, the mason you showed up.

Speaker 3 (30:27):
You happened to look like one of the shepherds.

Speaker 2 (30:30):
So like Lothar and Dietrich, they fought all the time. Yeah,
and Dietrich. Dietrich was only paying Lothart one hundred and
ten marks a week out of that eighty eight thousands the.

Speaker 3 (30:44):
Cash.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
Yeah, And so Dietrich would remind Lothar all the time, look,
you're just an assistant. You're nobody special here. You hold
a bas get up there and pay your mural.

Speaker 3 (30:53):
I got a monkey, and he was like.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
You know something, uh, Lothar, the city of Lubec hired me,
Dietrich Fay to bring this church back to its glory.
They didn't hire you.

Speaker 3 (31:04):
You know who discovers the work around here.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
So the low pay hurt, but it was the disrespect
and the lack of acknowledgment that hurt more for Lothar,
Like he loved these paintings. They're his, like literally he
even started marking some of the figures with his initials,
like those days are mind and he wrote at one
point he wrote on the wall, all paintings in this
church are by Lothar Maltska. And like Dietrich sees it

(31:31):
freaks out like goes and paints over it, just scrupture.

Speaker 3 (31:33):
It doesn't even do it like in like weird laugh,
like he's just literally.

Speaker 2 (31:37):
Lobarto German font totally in the old German script. So
one day this doctoral student shows up Johanna Kolbe. She
scales the scaffolding like no one was really going up there,
and what she saw was shocking, like super thick paint,
and Mary Magdalene was running around barefoot. So she goes

(31:59):
to the local town government to complain and blow the
whistle boo. Dietrich was like, you know what, she's a liar.
You can't look at her. She looks like a liar,
and the officials are like, you know what, You're totally right, Teatrick.
She's probably just confused. So they ignored her. Really, they
dismissed her. And the experts they're elated with this, like
supposedly these newly discovered.

Speaker 3 (32:21):
Murals more German history.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
On the walls, the Lubek Museum director Hans Arnold Grobkok wrote, quote,
ideas hitherto current as to the original aspect of Gothic
brick interiors will have to be revised in light of
the merits of the works here recovered.

Speaker 3 (32:39):
History been written.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
Uh huh Art historian Hans Jurgen Hansen he wrote, quote,
they exhibit a severe style, Byzantine influenced and still almost Romanesque,
and then he contrasted them with the ones in the nave,
which he found quote more animated, softer, entirely Gothic. So
he's like, they're amazing, They're totally different. I can't believe
in the arientime, Like wow, that Peter Hirschfeld wanted nothing

(33:03):
to do with it. All of a sudden, he calls
the murals quote the most important and extensive ever disclosed
in Germany. In fact, one of the finest intact frescoes
of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, extant through Western Europe.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
So he just wanted to get on like the art
shows and talk about it. He's like, let me talk
on the show. So, guys, there were photos.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
From nineteen forty two when the outer paint first peeled
away and the paintings were revealed, And if anyone had
cared to look at those photos, anyone other than that
grad student, they would have seen that some of the
saints had moved and that Mary Magdalene had indeed lost
her shoes. She had no sandals on where she had
sandals on before.

Speaker 3 (33:41):
Okay, whatever, they're like, is that major ly significant?

Speaker 2 (33:43):
Well, I mean what happened, Like did they get blown
off in the war? Where did her shoes go, well, you.

Speaker 3 (33:48):
Know after the war they wanted a lot more barefoot home,
like you know, taking care of the kids.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
He just like loathers like I'm not really good at
painting sandals.

Speaker 3 (33:57):
Yea. So Mary Magdalene was she like a big figure,
like I mean like figure well making. The French they
love Mary Magdalene? So is she also big?

Speaker 2 (34:05):
She's ever seen their painting like you know, this crowd
hanging out, she'd normally be their usual suspect.

Speaker 4 (34:10):
On So.

Speaker 2 (34:13):
Nineteen fifty one, the restored Church, they have the big
seven hundredth anniversary. The everyone's like yeah, high five and
skipping around. West German Chancellor Conrad Adenauer said, that's East
Erbund mine headn. I don't know whatever. It's uplifting, gentlemen.
I didn't say it right, but that's.

Speaker 3 (34:34):
East I think taking us up, gentlemen.

Speaker 2 (34:36):
So he said the murals were quote a valuable treasure
and a fabulous discovery of lost masterpieces.

Speaker 3 (34:43):
Dude, what better way to celebrate your what Septis centennial.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
Than with some art that's a farefoot Mary and so
the government they printed two million postage stands.

Speaker 3 (34:57):
Does Peter have an afro in this?

Speaker 2 (35:01):
That would not be allow. So the two million postage
stamps are printed with reproductions of the murals on them.
And this is like rebuilt Germany. This is Phoenix from
the ashes the thunder, so wonder okay. Time magazine said
the paintings were quote a major artistic fine and told

(35:23):
readers that quote the interior of the Marian Kirch looks
more as its original decorators intended than it has for
five hundred years. So in the months following this grand reopening,
one hundred thousand people came through to take a peep.
The town loved the attention, but they really really loved
the tourist money coming in. Everyone partied and celebrated the murals.

(35:45):
Dietrich like soaked up the adoration that the chancellor gave
him an extra one hundred and fifty thousand marks for
a job well done. Yeah, almost twice what the contract was.

Speaker 3 (35:56):
And the townsound a lot of pretzels and beers, so
they're all still happy with it.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
Then they also Dietrich gets a job. He's offered a
job as a university professor in Bond And then you
got Lothar forgot the parties, always getting the short end
of the still kind of broke. So he kept working
for Dietrich, but like he's getting more and more bitter.
I imagine, Yeah, he'd like stew over it. And they

(36:23):
work on you know, he and THEO, they're working on
these small projects for Dietrich. He just is chewing Theo's
ear off, nagging about it.

Speaker 3 (36:32):
Can you imagine that?

Speaker 2 (36:32):
Yeah, And like he's like THEO, I gotta get even,
I want revenge, Like I'm the real talent here.

Speaker 3 (36:38):
Joe Pesci and Casino.

Speaker 2 (36:40):
Completely anyway, So they sit there like Lothar is complaining,
but like they just keep working for him, and the
work they're doing is lining Dietrich's pockets. Let's go to commercial.
I'm about to hit you with some ads when we
come back. More moping Lothar.

Speaker 4 (36:56):
Hey we are back, look at us.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
Hey, how you doing this?

Speaker 4 (37:21):
Guy?

Speaker 2 (37:21):
Loth Ar mallscut.

Speaker 3 (37:23):
I'm trying to like it, you know, I love him,
Maybe I feel bad for him. Him and THEO down
there grouse and making the fakes.

Speaker 2 (37:31):
Faking it until he's making it. He's not making it,
creating lost masterpieces.

Speaker 3 (37:36):
He's rallying the people. Yeah, he's doing that. He's raising
some bacon only.

Speaker 2 (37:40):
No one knows about all the stuff that he's doing.
But that's about to change.

Speaker 3 (37:43):
Trying, it's about to change.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
May ninth, nineteen fifty two. Great May Lothar just gathers
up his courage strolls into the police station. He tells
them the Marian Kirch murals are fakes. I'm here to
tell you.

Speaker 3 (37:58):
Is he sober?

Speaker 2 (37:58):
He's totally sober. Dietrich Fay made him paint them. He's
like this, he made me do it. The whole thing's
a con. You all have been swindled by by Faye,
by Dietrick Faye and me, and we've all been cheated.
Everyone's shocked. They immediately put out a warrant for Dietrich's arrest,
and then they cut Lowthar a check for five hundred

(38:20):
thousand marks. Are you kidding, I'm totally kidding you.

Speaker 3 (38:22):
That is not what happened. Okay, No, nobody believed him,
say this does not follow. He gets arrested right, tossed.

Speaker 2 (38:32):
Him out, and they told a local newspaper that quote,
this is the lamentable case of a painter gone crazy.

Speaker 3 (38:39):
Oh yeah, they're like, he's huff there's an expression. My friends,
Derek His German mother used to always say, it's about
the turpentine to mock and it makes a turpentine makes
a painter crazy.

Speaker 2 (38:49):
Oh really German expression, That's probably what people used all
the time. That's probably what they said.

Speaker 3 (38:55):
Like their version is mad as a hatter.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
Yeah, and so that's what they said. They've been he's
been huffing. So people, they wanted him tossed into an
insane asylum for even suggesting such a thing. Not not
the soul asylum, like a runaway trains are an insane assylum.
I prefer the first, the oversized sweater and the white
dreads and the piercing Come on, Sarah, So did they

(39:20):
at least go look at the murals? Did they know
it's too high up? Man? Did they look at the
actual pictures that are yeah? How about no? No, no,
But the pictures that loath Are took with him to
the police station, that he himself took with his own camera,
that detailed the entire process from oh crap, the original

(39:41):
paint isn't even there to uh, let's just do a
clean slate to toda.

Speaker 3 (39:46):
So they just were willfully ignored. They're like, do not
mess up our backs please, we have finally secured the
bag for the town.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
Put those photos away. I'm not looking. They're turning their heads,
like put them away. Put them away?

Speaker 3 (39:58):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (39:59):
So loath are big. He went to the national media.
Oh and he made the rounds. He did interviews, He
pointed out all his like inside jokes and the differences
from the original.

Speaker 3 (40:09):
To Spiegel around where's Spiegel around here?

Speaker 2 (40:12):
And then the city of Lubec issued an official statement quote,
rumors and accusations against the renowned art expert doctor Fay
are of no consequence and purely malicious gossip.

Speaker 3 (40:25):
This is so unexpectedly un German, right, the whole not
caring about the precision and the truth of Like this
is actually the thing. I mean, like, I know what.
They're humans too. I'm not trying to get on a
high horse about Germans, but as a culture, they tend
to really like things to be a little bit more.
Buy the book exactly.

Speaker 2 (40:41):
So okay, thought Lothar, think, think, Lothar think, come on,
there's got to be something I can get to trick on. Yes,
the first church. Oh right, So it goes back to
the police station and he confessed to that pre war
phony Turkey restoration and that was the one that they
used to get all the future restoration contract starting. This

(41:02):
did not help. So now they're like, you know what,
you are a serious nutcase. You are super cuckoo. So
is there anything else that you're responsible for painting?

Speaker 3 (41:11):
Now?

Speaker 2 (41:12):
Are you a Viking?

Speaker 3 (41:13):
Was?

Speaker 2 (41:13):
Did you paint Assistine Chapel?

Speaker 4 (41:15):
Do tell?

Speaker 2 (41:15):
Like they're just brushing them off. Church officials issued a
statement quote, any charges at present being leveled at the
Restore Dietrich Fay are as yet insufficient to rouse our misgivings.
The work of preservation will therefore continue under the Restore
Dietrich Fay. Like they're like totally back in their boy

(41:35):
and I don't know why they talk like that.

Speaker 3 (41:37):
This seems very un German too. This is another on German.

Speaker 2 (41:40):
Nothing's adding up.

Speaker 3 (41:41):
But only going makes sense is they want to keep
that tourist dollar rolling in.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
That's the only thing. So loth are lawyered up good Man. Yeah.
He hires an attorney named Willie flot Wrongly Willy, I
don't know Willy flot wrong it was to say so
he's fills the beans to flat wrong about all the
fake restorations and the art forgeries that he did, right, yeah,

(42:06):
the Picassos, the renwas he had evidence there too. So
looking over all of the materials, the lawyer is like
thinking about it, and then Lothar's like, I got an idea,
why don't you file charges against Dietrich and me you
be the one to file him. Oh yeah, So then
the cops have to do something, and they did so

(42:28):
Flatrong goes to the police. Dietrich gets arrested and they
search his house and the cops find seven paintings and
twenty one drawings, all forgeries matist de go Chagall Beckmann.

Speaker 3 (42:40):
And in various states of preparation.

Speaker 2 (42:43):
I think they're all just completed.

Speaker 3 (42:44):
Oh okay, like his little you know, gallery, his.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
Own home stable. And so here's this like famous lauded
preservationist with a house full of fakes. The town and
the church. They got a group of experts together to
go and inspect the murals, like for realness. Time, climb
on up there, Hansil, like.

Speaker 3 (43:02):
Business is real, bring your big ladder.

Speaker 2 (43:04):
Yes. So in their October twentieth, nineteen fifty two report,
they said, quote, the twenty one figures in the choir
are not Gothic, but painted freehand by Malscat. The painting
described as old by the restoer Fay does not lie
on the medieval layer of mortar, but on a post
medieval layer. It cannot, for this reason alone, be considered original.

(43:27):
So finally, finally.

Speaker 3 (43:30):
Like someone's like actually looking at the building.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
Yeah, And the same goes for the ones in the
nave repainted. The bishops are like, sure you should sure
the murals are fake and that if quote if the
restorer Dietrich Fay, has fraudulently succeeded in getting his work
recognized as faithful restoration. This was possible only because of
an extremely cunning deception which misled not only the church

(43:53):
administration as proprietor, but also curators and art experts.

Speaker 3 (43:57):
The bishops are like, you know, God works in a
mist serious ways. I don't know what So.

Speaker 2 (44:01):
Good you guys, we had no idea. The devil was
at work, boys.

Speaker 3 (44:05):
One of them. I'm telling you this is supernatural.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
For nearly a year, the prosecutor just conducts scores of
interviews just gathering this information. The questions brought the heat
so much so that the church superintendent requested earlier retirement,
and then another church official just up and moved to
East Germany. Yikes, he's like going the wrong way.

Speaker 3 (44:31):
Over the wall. What are you doing here?

Speaker 2 (44:35):
It is bad for me back, trust me on this.

Speaker 3 (44:37):
You are the first person to this.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
Okay, well here have like a gray up.

Speaker 3 (44:42):
I don't know, you know, you know you can't kill
still be a priest here, right, He's like, I don't care.

Speaker 2 (44:47):
Uh so that chief architect Bruno Fendrick, he was named
co defendant in the indictment and the phony restores are
on trial. But also like all the people that you
know threw the money at him. A local paper wrote, quote,
the real defendants are not the forgers, but the experts
and officials who failed to exercise proper care. They didn't

(45:08):
mind being deceived. Had Molscat 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 forgers themselves,
so at least they're kind of on that. And like
in case you couldn't guess, this trial was huge, huge,

(45:28):
hottest ticket in town. They moved it from the courthouse
to a dance hall where they do like swing dance
and like hey, daddi.

Speaker 3 (45:36):
Oh, they got a band for the courtroom.

Speaker 2 (45:38):
They had to accommodate all the people that wanted to
sit in the gallery. There still wasn't enough room even
with an occupancy number of four hundred, so they set
up chairs outside in the garden and they broadcasted the
trial on a loud speaker.

Speaker 3 (45:52):
They go, like, schnitzel vendors walking through the nitzle was thick.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
It was the oil in the air, and like pres oh,
my god, so much like large nugget salt on the pretzels.

Speaker 3 (46:05):
Boy.

Speaker 2 (46:06):
So August tenth, nineteen fifty four, the trial starts. Okay,
looth Are said that he confessed because quote, everybody raved
about my beautiful murals, yet Fay got all the credit.
Nobody even knew my name. So he's like, you, guys,
I'm an artist. I'm a genius. And then he said,
quote I love to do thirteenth century painting. Nothing to it.

Speaker 3 (46:28):
So often when you have these art foragers, it comes
down to like, what about me, guys. I'm not supposed
to make all the money. I just want you guys
to say that I'm the prettiest painter.

Speaker 2 (46:37):
There is so good at this, you guys, which it
always bums me out because they're great artists and he
has multiple skills. They can't do it on their own.

Speaker 3 (46:45):
They had nothing to say.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
Yeah, it is exactly so. Even as he's like praising himself,
he starts ragging on the experts who got full quote.

Speaker 3 (46:54):
It couldn't help himsel he is what he says.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
One art critic raved about the prophet with the magic eyes.

Speaker 3 (46:59):
It was modeled on my father.

Speaker 2 (47:01):
Another gushed about the spiritual beauty of the splendid figure
of Mary, so far removed from our present day image
of womanhood. For that painting, I used a photograph of Hansey.

Speaker 3 (47:10):
No tech, not Hansey, one of my favorite models. To you, so, the.

Speaker 2 (47:16):
Prosecutor asked, at a time when X ray apparatus, court slamps,
and the most modern technical equipment seemed to exclude the
possibility of large scale art forgeries, how could a second
rate painter have fooled the nation's leading experts? And there's
like that stings, But then he tells them, He tells
them quote, people like to be fooled today. We just

(47:38):
gave them what they wanted.

Speaker 3 (47:39):
Yeah, exactly so.

Speaker 2 (47:41):
January twenty sixth, nineteen fifty five a verdict. The judge said, quote,
although the ascertainable material damage done may not have been excessive,
it seriously endangered the restoration of Mary and Kersh as
a whole. The dishonest behavior of those engaged upon it
undermined confidence in the proper execution of all the reinstatement work. Then,

(48:04):
as Jonathan Keith wrote and Forbes quote, in other words,
the offense was not fundamentally a crime of property damage,
but rather the infringement was psychological robbery of faith, theft
of a miracle.

Speaker 3 (48:15):
Totally, yeah, violation.

Speaker 2 (48:18):
It's so beautifully put.

Speaker 3 (48:19):
So the architects, thank you, ohamn, oh okay whatever.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
Your assessment of a violation of faith was so writing this, yeah,
I think crying this isn't sweat because so hot stone
write this in Can I paint it on a fresco?
So the architects and then THEO they got slap THEO
they like they were like, you get out of here, YouTube,

(48:44):
just don't do this again. They're like, bye, guys. Dietrich
got twenty months in.

Speaker 3 (48:48):
Prison, okay, almost two.

Speaker 2 (48:50):
Years, and then Loath are eighteen months okay, yeah whatever.
After sentencing Lothar skipped out and went to Sweden. Never
catch me. He didn't Layloh there. So he goes and
he tries to make money by being infamous and like
he sold paintings. He did the interior of Stockholm's trick
Kroner restaurant in the fourteenth century Gothic style.

Speaker 3 (49:13):
Painted he's now known for.

Speaker 2 (49:14):
Yeah, he busted out some turkey murals at the Royal
tennis courts. Let me give you a turkey, But that
didn't last long. He gets extradited back to Germany in
late nineteen fifty six, served his time, and then he
just for the next thirty two years until the end
of his life, just lived a quiet life, painted, did

(49:34):
his own little paintings.

Speaker 3 (49:36):
Did he get to a place where he actually was
able to generate art?

Speaker 2 (49:38):
Probably? I mean he was generating his own art.

Speaker 3 (49:40):
Sure, But but did anybody enjoy it?

Speaker 2 (49:41):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (49:42):
So he wasn't doing showings later on.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
I think he just kind of faded out. What about
the murals though?

Speaker 3 (49:50):
Erin Elizabeth the murals?

Speaker 2 (49:52):
Do you remember Peter Hirschfeld?

Speaker 3 (49:54):
Do I?

Speaker 2 (49:55):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (49:55):
Forget?

Speaker 2 (49:56):
At first he's like no, girl, and then he's like
yes girl.

Speaker 3 (49:59):
Yeah. Now he's mad girl, so he's like super livid.

Speaker 2 (50:04):
Has a plan, he said. Quote. The forgeries should first
be plastered over so as to obtain a clear surface
free from all theoretical preconception, and thus enable careful plans
to be laid for an ideal solution of the problem
by substituting true works of art for forgery, honesty for insincerity,
for consequent obliteration of the stain upon morality. It should

(50:28):
be considered the duty of any truly Christian community to
carry out this task. He makes it into a holy war.

Speaker 3 (50:35):
He does.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
And that's exactly what happened to the choir murals Like
the frum scratch scratch workers covered it up. No one's
the wiser gone. But then the Nave art restorer Sep
Schuer explained quote the Nave forgeries were deliberately left as
they were. They constituted a sort of warning to all
concerned with art, either as amateurs or professionals. Detail there

(51:01):
so I'll leave you with this gem to ponder from
Jonathan Keats okay quote, the contradictory responses reflect our emotional
ambivalence toward a betrayal of trust, whether to obliterate or
to commemorate the offense. Yet whichever decision is made, the
sting of injury will pass and people will recover their belief.

(51:23):
According to the Lubeck entry in Rough Guided Germany, a
bay decker for the twenty first century, Gothic frescoes of
Christ and Saints add color to otherwise plain walls of
Marian Kirsch. The pastel images only resurfaced when a fire
caused by the nineteen forty two air raid licked away
the coat of whitewash. Malscat is not mentioned, nor is

(51:44):
his moral staying apparent in the church. For a new
generation of tourists, the murals are again miraculous, are they are? They?
Says Aaron. What's your ridiculous takeaway? Thanks for asking?

Speaker 3 (51:55):
Oh my gosh, Malscat my man. Yeah, that lothar of
them all people he deserves. I think like they should
make him another church, right, Like that's like all anachronistic,
Like the church is wrong, like part of it's Baroque,
part of it's like Byzantine. Then he gets to go
in there and paint it into something, just like lean

(52:17):
into it. And you know how many people would go
to see that freaky church? Yeah, see some things like
just that way, he'd have something to say to be
a whole joke. But the point being is, like it's
my takeaway, if you will, ridiculous as it is, is
he could actually do a bit on himself and have
people want to come out and see it and still
be referencing his whole like, hey, look when I got

(52:39):
over on these people. Yeah, well you know, I guess
he got happy just going and living quietly. Sure, Elizabeth
does mine? I do? I do? I do.

Speaker 2 (52:49):
I think it's interesting that they felt the need to
maintain this history right then, you know, even even if
in the face of the fact that there's nothing to
work with, instead of saying, well, let's recreate, let's do
a new one in the style of today, or borrowing
from their styles, because the whole point is to celebrate,
you know, the story of Christ right in this church.

(53:11):
But really, the whole point of these elaborate things within
churches is to celebrate the achievement of man on earth
in the name of God.

Speaker 3 (53:19):
Yeah, good point.

Speaker 2 (53:19):
So it's like, why wouldn't you say, here, here, we
can have this achievement of what we can do now,
this fascination with the past I mean I understand wanting
to preserve, you know, something that's beautiful and enduring, but
this wasn't enduring. And so it's either like try and
totally fully reproduce it with an acknowledgment that it's a

(53:40):
modern reproduction, or just do it anew But it doesn't
make it any less of a miracle, you know what
I'm saying, Like for something to stand and to persevere
and blah blah blah.

Speaker 3 (53:49):
Not in special but thirteen hundred yeah, no, I mean honestly,
like they painted something, everyone's like, oh, this is the original. Yeah,
we could no offense, do a nice painting here, and
then one hundred years from now people be like this
is I'm twenty or whatever.

Speaker 2 (54:02):
Like Lofar who's really talented and he can do these things,
and people look at it and they're moved. They have
that emotional response, which is the point of the art
to begin with. Like it's not to have a certain
name on it or certain date, it's what what is
the response to the art? How do you close that
circle of communication.

Speaker 3 (54:19):
And humble yourself in time? Yes, like we could be
meaningful to people one hundreds years from no, exactly, So
I just be on that rone.

Speaker 2 (54:25):
So I say, let him go nuts in there.

Speaker 3 (54:27):
I love that. I love when you say let him
go nuts.

Speaker 2 (54:28):
I want everyone to go nuts the summer of dark, Elizabeth,
I'm telling you how to keep it nuts. Dave. You
know what I need after all that, I need to
talk back.

Speaker 3 (54:42):
Oh my god, I let you.

Speaker 5 (54:51):
Hey, it's destrude and I just want to say, I
listen to your Sophie Smith episode many times and I
can't expect why, but it just tickles my brain cells.
So thanks for everything.

Speaker 2 (55:07):
I'm so glad that your brain cells are tickled. That's
my goal.

Speaker 3 (55:12):
What's Elizabeth like? I'm like, well, what you likes to
tickle brain cells?

Speaker 2 (55:15):
Astra? I am so pleased that you like Soapye, I
love Sophie Smith. Wow, ma'am uh. That's it for today.
You can find us online at ridiculous crime dot com.
We're also at ridiculous Crime on Twitter and Instagram. Email
us at ridiculous Crime at jamail dot com, and then,
most importantly, download the iHeart app and leave us a

(55:36):
talk back. Come on, man, you got plenty of room
on your phone for another app reach out. Ridiculous Crime
is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and
edited by Saxon Turkey Farmer Dave Kusten, starring Annalise Rutger
as Judith. Research is by Mary Magdalen's Shoe Plug, Marissa

(55:57):
Brown and Andrea Song Sharp and Tear aka third Angel
from the Left on the wall of the nave. The
theme song is by unemployed Rick Rubber, Thomas Lee and
Travis Dutton Muralist to the Stars. Host wardrobe is provided
by Botany five hundred. Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot
and Mister Andre. Executive producers are Ben But what if

(56:19):
the turkeys were native to Europe Bowlin and Noel, and
then the Vikings took them to North America, Brown dus
Quime Say It one More Times.

Speaker 1 (56:39):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts.
My Heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.