Among the items on offer at auction are exceptional 20th-century pieces by Cartier, Harry Winston, Boivin, Van Cleef & Arpels, as well as an important selection of pearls, jade and Bulgari creations from the 70s, 80s and 90s.
Christie’s will launch an online auction Wednesday of hundreds of pieces of jewelry owned by Austrian billionaire Heidi Horten, whose husband, a German businessman, made his fortune during the Nazi rule.
The origin of this wealth sparked criticism of this auction, which was criticized by some historians in the media.
More than 700 jewels in the possession of this Austrian shepherd (1941-2022) are part of this collection, which is valued at more than $150 million.
Four hundred pieces will be distributed indoors in Geneva on May 10 and 12, and the rest will be shown online from May 3 to 15 and then in November.
The sale may surpass previous records set by Christie’s when sales of properties owned by actress Elizabeth Taylor in 2011 and the “Maharaja and Mughal Magnificence” group exceeded $100 million in 2019.
“This is a historic moment for Christie’s,” said Anthea Pearce, Head of Europe, Africa and the Middle East at Christie’s.
Among the items on offer at auction are exceptional 20th-century pieces by Cartier, Harry Winston, Boivin, Van Cleef & Arpels, as well as an important selection of pearls, jade and Bulgari creations from the 70s, 80s and 90s.
The Austrian billionaire died in June 2022, a few days after the opening of a private museum in Vienna displaying her art collection. And according to the classification of Forbes magazine, her fortune amounted to 2.9 billion dollars.
Born in the Austrian capital, Horten worked in a law firm after completing her studies at the Hotel College. According to Christie’s, she met her future husband while on vacation with her parents in an Austrian village, before marrying him in 1966.
Horten, who owned one of the largest supermarket chains in Germany, died in 1987 in Cralew, in the Swiss canton of Ticino, where the establishment bearing his name is located.
Member of the Nazi Party
The foundation describes him as “an entrepreneur with a strong sense of social responsibility”, who launched “the first German department store based on American consumer habits” in the late 1950s.
The canton of Ticino asserts on its website that it “built its empire since the 1930s, during which time it acquired many properties.”
In 1936, three years after Adolf Hitler became German chancellor, Horten took over the textile company Allsberg after its Jewish owners had fled, before taking over several other pre-war Jewish-owned shops.
He was later accused by some of profiting from the dispossession of Jewish property by transferring ownership of businesses they owned.
According to the canton of Ticino, “After the end of World War II, he was captured by the British and held until 1948 in an institution in western Germany.”
According to a report published in January 2022 by historians commissioned by the Horten Foundation, including Professor Peter Horace, Horten was indeed a member of the Nazi Party, before his expulsion from it, and was later exonerated by the De-Nazification Committee.
“Christie’s has never had any intention of withholding information about Horton’s well-documented history,” Christie’s general manager Guillaume Cerutti told AFP on Sunday. “We have added relevant information to our sales documents and our website to ensure that the facts are clear to all.”
The decision to proceed with the auction was taken “after careful consideration, including the significance of the auction’s charitable impact, as well as awareness of Horten’s well-documented business practices during the Nazi era, including his purchase of coercively sold Jewish businesses.”
Proceeds from the auction will go to the Heidi Horton Foundation, which was established in 2021 to support the collection that bears her name, as well as the medical research, child protection and other charitable activities the wealthy heiress has supported for many decades.
Christie’s will donate a “significant contribution” from commissions related to the sales to “an organization that advances research and education related to the Holocaust”.
