0:15

Pushkin. Abraham

0:24

Bradius was nobody's fool. He

0:27

was the world's leading scholar of

0:29

Dutch painters, and particularly

0:32

of Johannes Vermeer, one of the

0:34

most admired and most mysterious

0:36

figures in European art. When

0:39

Bradius was younger, as an art

0:41

critic and collector, he had made his

0:43

name by spotting works wrongly

0:46

attributed to vermir Now,

0:49

at the age of eighty two, he was enjoying

0:51

a retirement swan Song in Monaco.

0:54

He had just published a highly respected

0:57

book in which he had identified two

0:59

hundred fake or misattributed

1:02

Dutch masters. His opinions

1:04

were viewed as so authoritative that

1:07

had been dubbed the Pope. It

1:10

was at this moment in Bradius's

1:12

life, in nineteen thirty seven, that

1:15

Haroard Bone paid a visit

1:17

to his Monaco villa. Bone

1:20

was also a pillar of the Dutch establishment,

1:23

a member of parliament who had spoken out

1:25

earlier than most against fascism

1:27

and anti semitism in Europe. Bone

1:31

had come to Abraham Bradius on

1:33

a mission of mercy. He told

1:35

Bradius that a Dutch family of anti

1:38

fascists were living in Mussolini's

1:40

Italy, and they needed to raise money

1:42

to emigrate to the safety of the United States.

1:45

But they had something to sell that

1:48

might be of value. Possibly

1:51

only Bradius had the expertise

1:53

to judge, and so

1:56

Bone unpacked the crate he had

1:58

brought out of Italy. Inside

2:00

it was a large canvas,

2:02

still on its ancient wooden stretcher.

2:06

The picture depicted Christ

2:08

at a and in the top

2:11

left hand corner was the magical

2:13

signature I the

2:16

mayor Johannes Vermir

2:18

himself. But Bone

2:21

was eager to know what did

2:23

Bradius think he was the

2:25

expert. The old

2:27

man was spellbound. He

2:30

delivered his verdict. Christ

2:32

at Amaeus was not only

2:34

a genuine Vermir, it was

2:37

the Dutch master's finest

2:39

work. We

2:41

have here. I am inclined to

2:43

say the masterpiece

2:45

of Johannes Vermir of

2:48

Delft quite a different

2:50

from all these other paintings, and

2:53

yet every inch

2:56

a Vermuir. When

2:58

this masterpiece was

3:01

shown to me, I had

3:03

difficulty controlling my emotion.

3:06

Appraham Radius used an interesting

3:08

word to describe his discovery. Almost

3:11

reverently. He called it

3:16

the Dutch word to describe something virginly

3:18

pure, and untouched. It

3:21

was an ironic choice of words, because

3:23

EMUs could hardly have been more

3:26

corrupt. It was a rotten

3:28

fraud of a painting stiffly

3:31

applied to an old canvase just

3:33

a few months before Gradius caught sight

3:35

of it. I'm

3:37

Tim Harford, and you're listening

3:40

to cautionary tales. The

4:04

trickery may have been crude, but

4:06

Abraham Gradius wasn't the only one

4:08

to be fooled. Cererard Bonne

4:10

had been lied to as well when he visited

4:12

Bradeus. It was as the unsuspecting

4:15

accomplice of a master forger,

4:18

and soon enough the entire Dutch

4:21

art world was sucked into the Khan

4:24

christ at Amaeus sold to the Boyman's

4:27

Museum in Rotterdam, which was desperate

4:29

to establish itself on the world stage.

4:32

Bradius urged the museum on

4:34

and even contributed to help pay

4:36

for the picture. And there are only

4:39

forty of ramers, and this is

4:41

the most important one. And

4:44

in my judgment, do more's beautiful

4:46

one. If we wait, we'll

4:48

lose it. The total cost

4:51

was five hundred and twenty thousand

4:53

guilders, compared to the wages of the time

4:55

that is well over ten million

4:57

dollars to day. Amaus

5:00

drew admiring crowds and rave

5:02

reviews. Several other paintings

5:05

in a similar style soon emerged

5:07

in the Netherlands. Once the

5:09

first forgery had been accepted as

5:11

a Vermeer, it was easier to pass

5:14

off these other fakes. They

5:16

didn't fool everyone, but like

5:18

a Maus, they fooled the people who

5:20

mattered. Critics certified

5:23

the fakes, museums exhibited

5:25

them, collectors paid vast

5:27

sums for them, a total of more than

5:29

one hundred million dollars in today's

5:32

money in financial terms

5:34

alone, this was a monumental

5:36

fraud. It

5:38

is also a puzzle. The

5:41

Dutch art world revered. Vermer

5:44

is one of the greatest painters who ever

5:46

lived. He painted mostly

5:48

in the sixteen sixties and had been

5:51

rediscovered only in the late eighteen

5:53

hundreds. As Bradius

5:55

said, only forty Vermeer

5:57

paintings were thought to have survived. So

6:00

the apparent emergence of half

6:02

a dozen newly discovered Vermeers in

6:05

just a few years was a major cultural

6:07

event, but also an

6:09

event that should have strained credulity.

6:13

But it did not. Why

6:20

don't look to the paintings themselves

6:22

for an answer. If you compare

6:24

a genuine Vermeer to the first

6:27

forgery Emaus, it's

6:29

hard to understand how anyone

6:31

was fooled, let alone anyone as

6:33

discerning as Abraham Bradius

6:36

Vermier was a true master. His

6:39

most famous work is Girl with a

6:42

Pearl Earring, a luminous

6:44

portrait of a young woman seductive,

6:46

innocent, adoring, and anxious

6:49

all at once. In the

6:51

Milkmaid, a simple scene

6:53

of domesticity is lifted by

6:55

details such as the rendering

6:57

of a copper pot and a display

7:00

of fresh baked bread that looks good enough

7:02

to grab out of the painting. Then

7:05

there's woman reading a letter. She

7:08

stands in the soft flight of an unseen

7:10

windows. She perhaps

7:12

pregnant. We see her

7:15

in profile as she holds the letter

7:17

close to her chest, eyes cast

7:19

down as she reads. There's a

7:21

dramatic stillness about the image.

7:24

We feel that she's holding her breath as she

7:26

scans the letter for news. We

7:28

hold our breath too. A

7:31

masterpiece, and

7:34

christ at Amaus it's

7:36

a static, awkward image by

7:38

comparison, rather than seeming

7:40

to be an inferior imitation of

7:42

Vermeer. It doesn't look like Vermeer

7:45

at all. It's not a terrible

7:47

painting, but it's not a brilliant one either.

7:50

Set alongside Vermeer's works, it seems

7:52

dour and clumsy. Yet

7:55

it fooled the world and

7:57

might continue to fool the world to this

8:00

day, had not the Forger been

8:02

caught out by a combination

8:04

of recklessness and bad

8:06

luck. For

8:11

the Forger, the beginning of the end

8:13

was a knock on the door. It

8:16

was just past nine o'clock in the evening

8:18

on the twenty ninth of May nineteen forty

8:21

five. The war in Europe

8:23

was at an end. The aftershocks

8:26

were not an officer

8:28

and an armed soldier from the Allied

8:31

Art Commission were the wands doing

8:33

the knocking. They were standing

8:35

at the top of the steps leading to the door of

8:38

three hundred and twenty one Kaiserskracht,

8:41

one of Amsterdam's most exclusive

8:43

addresses. Mister van

8:46

Megreen, Ah,

8:49

gentlemen, you have the advantage

8:51

of me. Lieutenant

8:53

Joseph Piller of the Provisional Military

8:55

Government. I

8:57

see old do

9:00

come in. The house was

9:02

lit by kerosene lamps. War

9:05

ravaged Amsterdam would have no electricity

9:07

for weeks to come. The

9:10

Dutch had just endured what they called

9:12

the hunger winter, with some people

9:15

reduced to eating gruel made from tulip

9:17

bulbs to try to stave off starvation.

9:21

But Lieutenant Pillar could see that at

9:23

three hundred and twenty one Kaisers Gracked

9:25

there was plenty of everything. Pillar

9:28

got to the point a

9:30

masterpiece by Johannes Vamir

9:33

the woman taken in adultery

9:36

had been found in the possession of a German

9:39

Nazi, and not

9:41

just any Nazi, but Hitler's

9:44

right hand man, Hermann Gering.

9:47

The Germans, being Germans, had kept

9:49

good records, Pillar followed

9:52

the money through various middlemen and

9:54

eventually traced five different

9:57

Vermeer paintings back to deals

9:59

with van Megren. At

10:04

that point the trail went cold.

10:08

Where he obtained these Dutch

10:10

treasures? I am not able

10:13

to help. I know nothing of this,

10:16

and DI mentioned mister Vennigren.

10:18

Where did the money come from?

10:21

It wasn't just a one mansion. Van

10:23

Megren owned fifty six

10:26

other properties in Amsterdam alone,

10:28

commercial properties, private homes,

10:30

apartment blocks, even a hotel.

10:34

At number seven hundred and thirty eight,

10:36

Kaisers gracked a fifteen minutes

10:38

stroll away. He hosted regular

10:40

orgies at which sex workers were

10:42

rewarded for their exhausting efforts

10:45

by being offered the chance to grab a fistful

10:47

of jewels in the hallway as they left. Decades

10:53

before the war, the young van Megren

10:55

had enjoyed some brief success

10:57

as an artist in middle

10:59

age. As his jowls had loosened

11:02

and his hair had silvered, he

11:04

had grown rich as an art dealer,

11:07

very rich. Indeed, Van

11:11

Megren was arrested and marched

11:13

at gunpoint across town to prison. He

11:15

responded with furious denials,

11:17

trying to bluster his way to freedom, but

11:20

after a round the clock interrogation, Van

11:23

Megren cracked. Idiots,

11:26

if you think I sold a vermir to that fat

11:28

girring, but it's not a

11:31

famir. I painted

11:33

it myself. It's absurd. I

11:36

can't prove it. There's another

11:38

painting underneath the one, gurring heads

11:41

I painted right over it. Give

11:43

me paper and charcoal and I'll sketch

11:45

the composition for you. X Ray

11:47

the fake Vermeer and you'll see

11:50

it's not the only one either. I

11:52

painted other vamiers and a couple

11:54

of de Huche and ms

11:57

Emaus in the Bouments that's

12:00

mine too. The fraud had

12:02

unraveled not because anyone spotted

12:05

these forgeries, but because the forger

12:07

himself confessed, and

12:10

why wouldn't he? The alternative

12:12

was worse. Selling an irreplaceable

12:15

Vermeer masterpiece to hermann Goering

12:18

was treason, and treason

12:20

could carry the death penalty. Better

12:22

for Van Magren to admit to the less heinous

12:25

crime of forgery and claim that

12:27

the Vermeers had never actually

12:30

existed. All Van Magren

12:32

had to do was to prove it.

12:43

When I first heard the story of the fake

12:45

Vamier, I was charmed by the idea

12:48

that the despicable Gurring had

12:50

been duped by a master forger. I

12:52

loved the irony of the situation Van

12:54

Magren found himself in. In order

12:57

to avoid a firing squad, he needed

12:59

to prove that he had committed a different

13:02

crime. We'll get back to

13:04

that. I wanted us to focus

13:06

first on Abraham Bradius,

13:09

the art critic who first fell

13:11

for the fraud. I began my new

13:14

book, The Data Detective, with

13:16

the story of this forgery. The

13:18

Data Detective is a book about how to

13:20

think clearly about the world, and

13:23

I wanted to start with Bradius because

13:26

add a question, how

13:29

could a man as expert as

13:31

Abraham Bradius have been

13:33

fooled by so crass a forgery?

13:37

The answer is this, when

13:39

we're trying to interpret the world around

13:41

us, we need to realize that

13:43

our expertise can be drowned

13:46

by our feelings. When

13:48

Bradius wrote I had difficulty

13:51

controlling my emotion, he

13:54

was alas correct.

13:57

Nobody had more knowledge of Vermeer

13:59

than Bradius, but Van Maghren

14:02

understood how to turn Bradius's

14:04

knowledge into a disadvantage.

14:07

The story of how Van may and fool

14:09

Bradius is much more than a footnote

14:12

in the history of art. It can teach

14:14

us why we buy things we don't need, fall

14:17

for the wrong kind of romantic partner, and

14:20

vote for politicians who betray

14:22

our trust. It explains

14:24

why so often we buy into statistical

14:27

claims that even a moment's thought

14:29

would tell us can't be true.

14:32

Van Megren was not a brilliant

14:34

artist, but he was a brilliant

14:36

con man. He intuitively

14:39

understood something about human

14:41

nature. Sometimes

14:44

we want to be fooled. In

14:49

twenty eleven, Guy Mayraz,

14:51

then a behavioral economist at the University

14:53

of Oxford, conducted a test

14:55

of wishful thinking. Mayraz

14:58

showed his experimental subjects

15:01

a graph of a price rising

15:03

and falling over time, and told them

15:05

that the graphs showed recent fluctuations

15:07

in the price of wheat. He

15:10

asked each person to make a forecast

15:12

of where the price would move next, and

15:15

offered them a small cash reward if

15:17

their forecasts came true. But

15:20

Mayras had also divided his experimental

15:23

participants into two categories.

15:25

Half of them were told that they were farmers,

15:28

who would be paid extra if wheat prices

15:30

were high. The rest were

15:32

bakers, who would earn a bonus

15:35

if wheat was cheap. The

15:37

subjects could earn two separate

15:39

payments, then, one for making an accurate

15:41

forecast, and the second a

15:44

windfall if the price of wheat happened

15:46

to move in their direction. Yet

15:49

may Ras found that the prospect of

15:51

the windfall influenced the forecast

15:53

itself. The farmers

15:56

hoped that the price of wheat would rise, and

15:58

they also predicted that the price

16:00

of wheat would rise. The bakers

16:02

did the opposite. They hoped and predicted

16:05

that the price of wheat would fall. This

16:09

is wishful thinking in its purist form,

16:12

letting our reasoning be swayed by our

16:14

hopes. It's just one

16:16

of many studies demonstrating what

16:18

psychologists call motivated

16:20

reasoning. Motivated

16:23

reasoning is thinking through a topic

16:25

with the aim of reaching a particular conclusion.

16:28

Sometimes it's a conscious process, as

16:31

with a lawyer in the courtroom or a candidate

16:33

in a political debate, but we often

16:36

don't know we're doing it. It can be something

16:38

as simple as sports fans convincing

16:40

themselves that game after game,

16:42

referee after referee is biased

16:45

against their team. Wishful

16:49

thinking isn't the only form of motivated

16:52

reasoning, but it is a common one. A

16:54

farmer wants to be accurate in his forecast

16:57

of wheat prices, but he also wants

16:59

to make money, so his forecasts

17:01

are swayed by his avarice. And

17:04

an art critic who loves Vermeer

17:07

is motivated to conclude that the painting

17:09

in front of him is not a forgery

17:12

but a masterpiece. It

17:17

was wishful thinking that undid Abraham

17:19

Bradius. He knew and loved

17:22

vmir better than anyone alive and

17:24

was keen to be the man to discover one

17:27

final work by Vermir. But

17:30

it was more than that. Bradius

17:32

had a pet theory about Vermir. He

17:35

had become fascinated by the gap between

17:37

Vermeer's early works, which had biblical

17:39

themes, and his later, more

17:42

famous portrayals of everyday

17:44

domestic life. No known

17:46

paintings existed in that gap. What

17:49

lurked undiscovered in those apparently

17:52

fallow years. Wouldn't it be

17:54

wonderful if another biblical work

17:56

were found. Bradius

17:58

also speculated that the Dutch master

18:00

had, as a young man, traveled

18:03

to Italy and been inspired by the

18:05

religious works of the great Italian

18:07

artist Caravaggio. This

18:09

was conjecture. Not much was

18:11

known about Vanmia's life. Nobody

18:14

knew if he'd ever seen a Caravaggio.

18:17

Van Maghren was a forger who understood

18:20

his victim all too well. He

18:23

created Ameeus to fulfill all

18:25

Bradius's dreams. It was

18:27

on a biblical theme, and, just as

18:30

Bradius had argued, all along was

18:32

a homage to Caravaggio. When

18:34

Bradius saw the picture, he

18:37

had no doubts. Why

18:39

would he Van Maghren's

18:41

unwitting stooge, Herold Boone wasn't

18:44

just showing Bradius a painting bone,

18:46

was showing him evidence that had been right

18:49

all along. In

18:52

the final years of his life, the old

18:54

man had found the missing link

18:56

at last. But

18:58

his wishful thinking really this powerful.

19:01

Yes, Abraham Bradius was emotionally

19:03

involved. He loved Vermeer, He

19:06

was proud of his record as a connoisseur. He

19:08

was death but not to miss the chance of a major

19:10

discovery. But shouldn't his expertise

19:13

have enabled him to spot such a crude

19:16

khn. The French

19:18

satirist Moliere once wrote,

19:21

a learned fool is more fullish

19:24

than an ignorandue. Perhaps

19:27

Moliere was right. If

19:29

people with deeper expertise

19:31

fall into the trap of wishful thinking,

19:34

they're able to muster more reasons

19:36

to believe whatever they really wished to

19:38

believe. One recent

19:40

study by Maggie Toplach and other

19:42

psychologists found that intelligence

19:45

was no defense against motivated reasoning,

19:48

and an older study something of a modern

19:50

classic, also throws light on

19:52

the question. The political scientists

19:55

Charles Tabor and Milton Lodge

19:57

looked at motivated reasoning about

19:59

two political hot button issues,

20:02

gun control and affirmative action.

20:05

They asked people to evaluate various

20:08

arguments for and against each position,

20:10

and they found, as he might expect,

20:12

that politics got in the way of people's

20:15

ability to dissect the strengths

20:17

and weaknesses of different points. More

20:20

surprising, however, was that simply

20:22

reading the arguments pushed people

20:24

further towards political extremes.

20:27

They grabbed onto arguments they liked and

20:29

quickly dismissed or forgot about counter

20:31

arguments. Even more striking

20:34

was that this polarizing effect was

20:37

stronger for people who already knew a

20:39

lot about civics and politics. These

20:41

well informed people were better at cherry

20:44

picking the information they wanted and

20:46

dismissing the rest. More

20:48

information and more expertise produced

20:51

more strongly motivated reasoning.

20:54

From his Monaco villa in nineteen

20:56

thirty seven, Abraham Bradius

20:59

offers us the perfect warning about

21:01

the dangerous combination of wishful

21:03

thinking and deep expertise.

21:07

Bradius noticed details about the

21:09

forgery that a less skilled observer would

21:11

have missed, and those details

21:13

supported the conclusion he wanted to reach

21:17

those telltale white dots

21:19

on the bread For instance, the bright

21:21

speckles seemed a bit clumsy to the

21:23

untrained eye, but they reminded

21:25

Bradius of Vermeer's highlights

21:28

on that tempting loaf of bread in

21:30

the milk maid. The composition

21:32

echoed a tense and understated

21:34

painting of the Amaus scene by

21:37

Caravaggio. That resonance

21:39

would have been lost on a casual viewer, but

21:41

it was not lost on Bradius. He

21:44

would have picked up other clues designed

21:46

to show Amaus was the real thing.

21:49

There's a jug in the painting, just a jug

21:51

to most observers. That Bradius

21:54

would have noted that it was in a seventeenth

21:56

century style, not the sort of

21:58

vessel available in biblical times. That

22:01

is just the sort of anachronism that indicates

22:03

an authentic work. But

22:06

van Megren was a step ahead here,

22:09

aimed a seventeenth century antique and

22:11

used it as a prop There were seventeenth

22:14

century pigments too. Van

22:16

Magren had duplicated Vanmeer's color

22:18

palette and his materials. It

22:20

bought year's worth of rare lapis

22:23

lazually paint from a London supplier

22:26

in order to produce an authentic Vermeer

22:28

blue. An expert such

22:30

as Bradius could spot at nineteenth

22:33

or twentieth century forgery simply

22:35

by looking at the back of the painting and noting

22:37

that the canvas was too new. Van

22:40

Magren knew this. He had painted his

22:42

work on a seventeenth century canvas,

22:45

carefully scrubbed of its surface pigments,

22:48

but retaining the undercoat and its

22:50

distinctive pattern of cracking. And

22:52

then there was the simplest test of all, was

22:55

the paint soft The

22:57

challenge for anyone who wants to forge an

22:59

old master is that oil paints

23:01

take half a century to dry completely.

23:04

If you dip a cotton swab into some pure

23:06

alcohol and gently robbed the surface

23:08

of an oil painting, and the cotton

23:11

may come away stained with pigments. If

23:14

it does, the painting is a modern

23:16

fake. Only after several

23:18

decades will the paint hardened

23:20

enough to pass this test.

23:23

Bradius had identified fakes

23:25

using this method before, but

23:27

the paint on Emmaus stubbornly

23:30

refused to yield its pigment. This

23:33

gave Bradius an excellent reason to

23:35

believe that Emaus was old and

23:38

therefore genuine, and

23:40

Magren had fooled him with a brilliant

23:42

piece of amateur chemistry.

23:45

The forger had figured out a way to mix

23:47

seventeenth century oil paints

23:49

with a very twentieth century material,

23:52

phenol formaldehyde, a

23:55

resin that, when gently cooked for

23:57

two hours, turned into the robust

23:59

new material known as baker

24:01

light. No wonder, the paint

24:04

was hard and unyielding. It

24:06

was infused with industrial plastic.

24:10

Bradius had half a dozen subtle

24:13

reasons to believe that Amaeus was

24:15

of Ameer. They were enough

24:17

to dismiss one glaring reason

24:19

to believe otherwise that

24:21

the picture doesn't look like anything

24:23

else Vanmeir ever painted. I'm

24:27

no art critic, but to my eyes the

24:29

painting is drab. The eyelids

24:31

in particular catch my attention. They're

24:34

droopy and strange and very

24:36

distinctive of Van Magren's other

24:38

work. But then I'm

24:41

looking for a van Magren. Gradius

24:44

was looking for a Vermeer. Listen

24:47

again to that extraordinary rave

24:49

review from Abraham Gradius. We

24:53

have here. I am inclined

24:55

to say the masterpiece

24:58

of Johannes Veramir of Delft

25:01

quite a different from all his

25:03

odor paintings. And yet every

25:07

inch of quite

25:11

different from all his other paintings.

25:13

Shouldn't that be a warning? But

25:16

the old man desperately wanted to believe

25:18

that this painting was the Vermeer he'd

25:20

been looking for all his life, the

25:22

one that would provide the link back to Caravaggio

25:25

himself. Van Meghren

25:28

set a trap into which only a

25:30

true expert could stumble.

25:33

Wishful thinking did the rest.

25:43

It's hard not to love the story

25:45

of the clever forger who fooled

25:47

the experts and scanned the Nazis

25:50

hand. Van Meghren seemed to be David

25:52

Versus Goliath, Robin Hood and the

25:54

Scarlet Pimpernel all rolled into

25:56

one. Many biographies

25:59

have been written about him, including two

26:01

authoritative books by Edward Dolnick

26:04

and by Jonathan Lopez. Several

26:06

movies have been made too, doing

26:09

the recent The Last Vermeer. Van

26:12

Maghren his Box Office. His

26:15

early biographers made him out to be a

26:17

misunderstood trickster, hurt by

26:19

the unjust rejections of his own art,

26:22

but happy to outsmart his country's

26:24

occupiers. One oft

26:26

reported story is that Gering,

26:29

awaiting trial in Nuremberg, when

26:31

told he had been duped by Van Magren

26:34

looked as if for the first time

26:37

he had discovered there was evil in

26:39

the world, and the authorities

26:42

responsible for bringing Van Magren to

26:44

justice unwittingly helped

26:46

make his story world famous.

26:50

Forensic chemists quickly verified

26:52

that, as Van Megren claimed, the

26:54

paintings were hardened with bakolite and

26:56

aged with India ink. But

26:59

in an absurd stunt, prosecutors

27:02

challenged Van Magren to prove that

27:04

he was the forger by painting a

27:06

picture in the style of a maus,

27:09

and of course he did. One

27:12

breathless headline reported he

27:14

paints for his life. Newspapers

27:19

in the Netherlands and around the world

27:21

couldn't tear their gaze away from

27:23

the great showman. By

27:25

the time the trial came in nineteen forty

27:27

seven, the charge was forgery,

27:30

not treason or collaboration. Everything

27:33

was set for a media circus

27:36

in which the charismatic Van Magren was

27:38

the ringmaster. Called

27:40

the next witness, mister Renz stribes

27:45

your honor, I'm a little

27:47

nervous. I don't know anything

27:49

ab old art. Don't worry.

27:52

These lawyers don't know anything

27:54

either. Spoiled

27:59

smister van Negren. Please, when

28:02

van Megren himself took the stand. He

28:05

spun his story that he'd only

28:07

forged the art to prove his worth

28:09

as an artist and to unmask

28:12

the art experts as fools. But

28:14

mister van Megren, you'll sold these

28:16

figs for high prices, your honor.

28:19

Had they sold them for low prices,

28:21

it would have been obvious that they were

28:23

favor and Magren had

28:26

them all spelled under

28:29

order in the court. In

28:31

his closing statement to the court, he

28:33

claimed again that he hadn't done it for the money,

28:36

which had brought him nothing but trouble.

28:39

The newspapers and the public lapped

28:41

up his story. Van Maghren

28:44

was found guilty of forgery, but

28:46

was cheered as he left the court room.

28:49

A Dutch opinion poll found that, apart

28:52

from the Prime Minister, Han Van

28:54

Meghren was the most popular man

28:56

in the country, and that

28:59

was his final bow. A few

29:01

days after being sentenced, Van Magren

29:04

was admitted to hospital with heart trouble. A

29:06

few weeks later, he died a

29:09

hero, without ever serving

29:12

a day of his prison term. For

29:14

a while, there was even talk of

29:16

putting up a statue of the man

29:19

who fooled Girring. There's

29:22

just one problem with this picture

29:25

of Hand van Magren as a lovable

29:27

rogue. He was, in fact

29:30

an enthusiastic Nazi taking

29:35

England. One is a book illustrated

29:37

and published by Hand van Magren.

29:40

It's so sinister looking that

29:42

Jonathan Lopez, Van Magren's

29:44

biographer has hidden his copy

29:47

away so that visitors don't see it.

29:50

It's an evil book full

29:52

of grotesque, antisemitic poetry

29:54

and illustrations using Nazi

29:57

iconography and colors. It's

29:59

lavish, with no expense spared

30:02

in the printing of the book, no wonder

30:05

given whom Van Magren hoped might

30:07

read it. The was

30:09

hand delivered to Adolf

30:11

Hitler with a handwritten declaration

30:14

in artist's charcoal to

30:16

all my beloved fur in

30:19

grateful tribute und

30:22

von Mager. Remember

30:26

where we began our cautionary tale.

30:28

Harard Bone came to Abraham Bradius

30:31

with a maus at, a story about

30:33

an anti fascist family with an old

30:35

canvas in a back room, desperate

30:38

to escape from Muslin's Italy and

30:40

hoping that the work might be worth something.

30:43

They were a figment of Van Megren's imagination.

30:47

Bone was just another victim of

30:49

the forger's cynical gift for pushing

30:51

all the right emotional buttons.

30:55

Bone had spoken out against fascism

30:57

and anti Semitism, and Van

30:59

Megren the secret fascist

31:02

Cruelly spannam a yarn about heroic

31:04

dissidents as a ruse to get the

31:06

painting into the hands of Abraham Brady.

31:10

Of course, Bone fell in love with

31:12

the idea. After

31:15

the war, the Dutch didn't have much

31:17

time for collaborators. There

31:20

were too many of them, and some of their crimes,

31:22

such as colluding in transportation

31:24

of Jews to death camps, were

31:26

too awful to ignore. There

31:29

was little sense of reconciliation or

31:31

forgiveness. The traitors were

31:33

shamed in the streets or worse

31:36

so, what would have happened

31:38

if Hitler's personally inscribed

31:41

copy of Taken England One had

31:43

been discovered before Van Magren's

31:46

trial. The discomforting truth

31:49

is that it was discovered. A

31:51

Dutch resistance newspaper had published

31:54

the news that Van Magren's personally

31:56

dedicated book had been found

31:59

in Adolf Hitler's library.

32:02

Van Magren waved it away,

32:04

claiming that it signed hundreds of copies

32:06

of the book and the dedication must have been

32:08

added by someone else. It's

32:11

a ludicrous excuse, but

32:13

people believed it. That

32:15

seems incredible. Handvan

32:18

Megren had prospered mightily under

32:20

Nazi occupation, buying

32:22

up a portfolio of expensive properties

32:25

and holding those decadent parties.

32:27

You don't get to act like that in

32:29

German occupied territory unless

32:32

you've made friends with a few Nazis. But

32:35

handvan Megren sensed that the Dutch

32:37

people needed a new story, something

32:40

upbeat, a lighthearted tale

32:43

of boldness and trickery in

32:45

which a Dutchman had struck back against

32:47

the Nazis, and he gave

32:49

it to them. A man who

32:51

should have been viewed as a traitor reshaped

32:54

his reputation into that of a patriot,

32:57

even a hero. He manipulated

32:59

the emotions of the Dutch people as

33:02

he had manipulated the emotions of Abraham

33:04

Radius before the war. Abraham

33:07

Radius desperately want of a mere

33:10

The Dutch public desperately wanted

33:12

symbols of resistance to the Nazis.

33:15

Wishful thinking is a powerful

33:17

thing. Hand van Maigren

33:20

knew how to give people exactly

33:23

what they wanted. If

33:33

you'd like to hear another cautionary tale

33:35

about a trickster who Captivated a Nation.

33:38

One of my favorite episodes is Cautionary

33:40

Tales Season one, episode

33:42

two, The Rogue Dressed

33:45

as a Captain enjoy Key.

33:49

Sources for this episode include The

33:51

Man Who Made Vermeers by Jonathan

33:54

Lopez, The Forger's Spell

33:56

by Edward Donnick, and my own book

33:59

The Data Detective Ten Easy

34:01

Rules to Make Sense of Statistics.

34:04

For a full list of references, see Tim

34:06

Harford dot com. Cautionary

34:08

Tale as is written by me Tim Harford

34:11

with Andrew Wright. It's produced by

34:13

Ryan Dilley and Marilyn Rust. The

34:15

sound design and original music is

34:18

the work of Pascal Wise. Julia

34:20

Barton edited the scripts. Starring

34:23

in this series of Cautionary Tales

34:25

Helena Bonham, Carter and Jeffrey Wright,

34:28

alongside Nazzar Elderazzi,

34:31

Ed Gohen, Melanie Guttridge, Rachel

34:33

Hanshaw, copnaholbrook Smith,

34:36

Greg Lockett, Messiah Munroe

34:39

and Ruthless Wright. This

34:41

show wouldn't have been possible without the work

34:43

of Neil LaBelle, Jacob Weisberg,

34:46

Heather Fane, John Schnarz, Karlie

34:48

mcgliory, Eric Sandler, Emily

34:51

Roster, Maggie Taylor Ann,

34:53

Yellow Lakhan, and Maya Kanig.

34:56

Cautionary Tales is a production

34:59

of Pushkin Industries. If

35:01

you like the show, please remember to rate,

35:04

share, and review

35:12

by