jurisdiction. Still, he was summoned before a commission, and only managed to hold on to his position thanks to the Lord Mayor, Friedrich Krebs, who had been an early member of the Nazi party and oversaw the closing of over 500 Jewish-owned businesses in Frankfurt during the first year of the Third Reich. Krebs also belonged to Alfred Rosenberg’s Combat League for German Culture, a rival of Goebbels’ Ministry to promote Nazi-approved art and attack modernism. Krebs did not consider Swarzenski as a threat.

Friedrich Krebs

In 1935, Swarzenski met Alfred Barr, director of the Museum of Modern Art of New York (MoMA), at the Parisian gallery of Paul Rosenberg. At this meeting, Barr asked to borrow Dr. Gachet for a van Gogh retrospective that he was organizing at MoMA.Upon his return to Frankfurt, Swarzenski wrote to the "Ministry in Berlin" requesting permission to lend the painting. The Ministry denied the request. Alfred Wolters, the Nazi-designated successor of Swarzenski as director of the Städtische, dispatched a photograph of Dr. Gachet to Goebbels, at his request. Communication between Wolters and the Ministry focused on paintings in the museum’s collection that could be sold for a profit. Wolters, a close friend of Swarzenski, explained that selling Dr. Gachet would be a terrible loss for the city of Frankfurt. Moreover, it had not been acquired with city funds, but had been a gift of a private citizen, Victor Mössinger. Friedrich Krebs, a vocal opponent of modern art, also wrote to Berlin, asking that the Frankfurt collections should be spared. Dr.