Jewellery with Nazi links set to break auction records

The auction of the late Austrian billionaire Heidi Horton's jewellery collection is expected to break the record set more than a decade ago by the late actress Elizabeth Taylor.

Taylor's gems were auctioned for nearly $116 million in 2011, with her admirer Kim Kardashian paying $64,900 for three Lorraine Schwartz bangles.

However, according to Christie's, more than 700 jewels owned by Horton are expected to fetch over $150 million in a series of auctions at the Four Seasons Hotel des Bergues in Geneva and online in May and November.

Heidi Horten, worth $2.9 billion according to Forbes, died last year aged 81.

The auction house has termed the collection as "the largest and most valuable" private jewellery collection ever to come to auction. It added that the auction could "eclipse" the 2011 Elizabeth Taylor Collection and the 2019 Maharajas & Mughal Magnificence auctions, which are the only two jewellery collections to achieve more than $100 million.

The Nazi connection

According to a January 2022 report by historians authorised by the Horten Foundation, Horten's husband Helmut Horten was a member of the Nazi party before being expelled.

Horten took over the textile company Alsberg based in the western city of Duisburg after its Jewish owners fled Germany in 1936. Adolf Hitler seized power in 1936.

He later took over several other shops that had belonged to Jewish owners before the war.

The auction house has stressed that the proceeds from the sale will go to the Heidi Horten Foundation, established in 2021 to support the eponymous art collection, as well as to medical research, child welfare and other philanthropic activities that the wealthy heiress supported.

"For our part, Christie’s will make a significant contribution from its final proceeds of the auction to an organisation that further advances Holocaust research and education," it added in its online statement.

Other pieces will be sold online from May 3 to 15 and in November.