Werner Kudlich
Werner Kudlich can be briefly characterized as a Nazi cultural criminal. During his short life, he held several public offices and was awarded many honorary titles. His life came to an end at the very close of the Nazi era, which he himself had helped to build. This controversial figure, inextricably linked to the Silesia region, is worth remembering.
Werner Kudlich was born on November 19, 1903, in Opava to Walter Kudlich, a judge at the regional court, and his wife Sophie, née Wenzelides. The family’s significance is evidenced not only by the fact that his father, Walter, served as mayor of the city from 1908 to 1918, but above all by the figure of Hans Kudlich – a native of nearby Úvalno and the initiator of the abolition of serfdom in the Austrian Empire – of whom Werner was the great-nephew. Werner studied history and literature at the University of Munich and earned a doctorate in philosophy from the German University in Prague in 1928. He was married to Gretl, née Fuchs from Ústí nad Labem, with whom he had three sons – Otfried, Eckart, and Jörg. They lived together in an Art Nouveau villa at Na Rybníčku Street No. 33.
The late 1930s saw a rise in his career, which coincided with the rise of National Socialism. As an active member of the Sudetendeutsche Partei (SdP) and later the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), he also served as an officer in the personnel department of the SS-Totenkopfverbände. Thanks to his knowledge of the Silesian region, he was subsequently entrusted with a new assignment. From the late 1920s, he worked on a voluntary basis as a research assistant at the Silesian Provincial Museum in Opava, until becoming its director in 1938. He remained in this position at the institution – later renamed the Reich District Museum – until 1941, when art historian Edmund Wilhelm Braun succeeded him.
Werner’s brother, the lawyer Reinhart Kudlich, also held an important position in Opava. During the early years of the war, he served as mayor and enjoyed considerable popularity among the public there. However, as an active member of the SdP, he was criticized by the party apparatus for his often lenient approach toward opponents, and it was precisely this fact that apparently served as a pretext for his involuntary deployment to the Eastern Front, where he died in 1943. After the war, there were even efforts to rehabilitate his reputation, and some witnesses testified to his fair conduct during his time as mayor.
Following the incorporation of the Silesian territories into the Third Reich, Werner Kudlich became the organizer of the relocation of museum collections. As honorary art administrator for the Opava region, he was responsible for managing the Silesian museums and coordinating the relocation of confiscated works of art in the area. In the summer of 1940, Kudlich hosted a conference of Silesian art historians in Cieszyn, at which he presented his vision for the future of Silesian museology and received support for his efforts to reorganize the Reich District Museum in Opava. A year later, in July 1941, he further developed this concept at a congress of the Association of Local History Museums of the Sudeten Reich District.
Although Kudlich planned to turn Opava into the cultural center of the Sudeten District, such efforts were doomed to failure. Due to its geographical location and strong ties to Silesian regionalism, Opava remained in the shadow of other Sudeten towns, such as Liberec and Ústí nad Labem, where a solid foundation for scientific research had been established. Despite its undeniable ambitions, the Reich Museum´s focus was primarily regional, centred on the Silesian region, and Kudlich’s numerous acquisitions of collections from abroad – often previously looted by the Nazis – did not reverse this trend. Thanks to his reputation as an art historian, Kudlich also worked closely with other researches, who were likewise Nazi officials. From the Sudeten German community, one notable figure was the historian and archivist Kurt Oberdorffer, who held a leading position in the cultural department of the District Self-Government Office and was also responsible for reorganizing archival administration in the Sudeten region.
Werner Kudlich was not only the director of a prominent institution in Opava but also held a number of honorary positions that added to his prestige. He was a member of numerous scholarly institutions, including the Historical Commission for Silesia and the Ahnenerbe organization; he served as an expert for the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts; and he also served as a member of the Commission for Art and Literature Research at the Sudeten German Institute for Regional and Local History Research. In addition, he received many awards and was widely recognized throughout the Reich as a leading art expert.
Among his closest collaborators was Kajetan Mühlmann of the SS unit responsible for the confiscation of works of art in the occupied Polish territories. Together with Gustav Barthel, director of the Wrocław Museum, he was responsible for the so-called “securing of art treasures,” which in reality meant their systematic looting. The most famous case was the large-scale theft of valuable paintings by Renaissance and Baroque masters from the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków, including, for example, Leonardo’s Lady with an Ermine, Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man, and Rembrandt’s Landscape with the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Kudlich’s attention was increasingly focused on the General Government. He regarded this central and eastern part of Nazi-occupied Poland as a crucial area for his mission of seizing works of art.
As the war progressed, Kudlich’s business trips increased, and his personal priorities gradually shifted as well. It is doubtful whether he regarded his mission in Opava, in the midst of the war, as having been successfully completed. Rather, he felt there were more pressing tasks to be undertaken. As a staunch Nazi, Kudlich evidently felt the need to serve his country even more devotedly. He volunteered for combat and served as a military intelligence officer. A prominent figure in the Nazi regime, he died on April 13, 1945 in Kulmbach, Bavaria – the day the town was liberated by the American army. He had apparently been fatally wounded during the shelling.
Werner Kudlich is primarily remembered as a war criminal who participated in the systematic looting of works of art. In his hometown of Opava, the only surviving reminders of this once-prominent family today are a monumental villa and a family grave with a monument in the city cemetery.
Sources
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ŠOPÁK, Pavel. Osud jménem Slezsko. Říšské župní muzeum v Opavě a regionální identita v muzejní práci v Říšské župě Sudety (1938-1945). In: Ústecký sborník historický = Aussiger historische Zeitschrift. Ústí nad Labem: Muzeum města Ústí nad Labem, 2017, č. 1-2, s. 21-30.
Zemský archiv v Opavě. Fond Werner Kudlich. Inventární číslo 175. Karton 3.
Zemský archiv v Opavě. Fond Reinhart Kudlich. Inventární číslo 5. Karton 1.
Photos
Zemský archiv v Opavě. Fond Werner Kudlich. Inventární číslo 176. Karton 4.
Da VINCI, Leonardo. Lady with an Ermine [online]. Wikipedie. Dostupné z: URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leonardo_da_Vinci_-_Lady_with_an_Ermine.jpg [cit. 2026-09-22].
Author´s archive.