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Johannes Matthaeus Koelz, a painter, was living in a small cottage in the Bavarian forest estate of Hohenbrunn. One morning he travelled to nearby Munich on a routine visit to police headquarters to renew his exit visa for a planned trip to Italy.
Some time after mid-day he sent a telegram to his wife asking her to meet him in the city. They later returned home together.
At some point during the following night Koelz instructed a young man from the local woodmill to take his major work - a triptych which had occupied him since the early 1930s and cut it into pieces.
He left Hohenbrunn at dawn, arranging for his family to follow. Koelz, his wife Claire and their children Ava and Siegfried crossed the mountainous border country and, two days later, reached Austria. It was the first stop on a journey that would take them to England.
Meanwhile the state police had raided their home and interrogated family members left behind. They were searching for the painter and his triptych, a massive anti-war painting which not only questioned the horrors of war but also the rising power of the Nationalist Socialist Party and by implication, its leader, Adolf Hitler.
©
DACS 2001
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