Bargain-Basement Masters?

A worried-looking man with a Hitler haircut marched into the prosecutor's office in the German city of Luebeck a fortnight ago, and told a story that made the cops gasp. His name: Lothar Malskat, 39, artist by trade, and one of the painters who restored the bomb-burned 13th and 14th century frescoes in Luebeck's Lutheran Church of St. Mary (TIME, Sept. 10, 1951). His trouble: he was an art forger and he wanted to confess his crimes. In the past few years, he said, he and another artist named Dietrich Fey, the boss of the St. Mary restoration job, had painted and sold to German dealers and collectors "approximately 600" clever fakes of everything from Rembrandts to Utrillos.

The cops hitched forward, told Restorer Malskat to go on. It all began, he said, in 1945, right after the war. He and Fey had worked together before. They made a good team, and they had one big thing in common: both were disgusted at the way unknown painters had to scrabble for a living. "All art collectors want to see is names," said Malskat. "So we decided to give them what they wanted."

The two of them, said Malskat, set up a regular production line for phony masters. Working steadily, even after they were commissioned to restore St. Mary's frescoes in 1948, they copied such masters as Degas, Corot, Gauguin, Renoir, Rousseau, Chagall, Munch, Utrillo. Malskat did all of the work; sometimes he copied famous old paintings, sometimes just imitated the style of old masters. He could do one in a day, got so good at the French impressionists that they took less than an hour. Fey forged the signature to paintings, said Malskat, then went out to peddle the fakes to German art dealers for a few hundred marks apiece, no questions asked.

Why had he confessed? Malskat said he was angry at Partner Fey for grabbing all the glory over the restoration of St. Mary's old frescoes. Last year, on the 700th anniversary of St. Mary's, Fey accepted an award for the excellent restoration. "During the celebration," said Malskat bitterly, "I, the man who had done all the work, was sitting in the backroom, where I had been given a bottle of beer."

Next day the cops checked Restorer Fey's apartment, and sure enough, there were 21 paintings and seven drawings. Fey was bundled off to jail and held incommunicado until the prosecutor could make a thorough investigation. At week's end, Dietrich Fey was still there, awaiting a formal charge; through his lawyer he issued a flat denial of Malskat's story. Malskat himself was at liberty, apparently ready and anxious to be the state's prime witness when & if a trial is called. And all through Germany, art collectors were making a quick, uneasy check of masterpieces they had picked up since the end of the war.

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