Page "Han van Meegeren" Paragraph 2

During World War II, wealthy Dutchmen, wanting to prevent a sellout of Dutch art to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, avidly bought van Meegeren's forgeries.

Nevertheless, a falsified " Vermeer " ended up in the possession of Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring.

Following the war, the forgery was discovered in Göring's possession, and van Meegeren was arrested on 29 May 1945 as a collaborator, as officials believed that he had sold Dutch cultural property to the Nazis.

This would have been an act of treason, the punishment for which was death, so van Meegeren fearfully confessed to the forgery.

On 12 November 1947, after a brief but highly publicized trial, he was convicted of falsification and fraud charges, and was sentenced to a modest punishment of one year in prison.

He never served his sentence, however ; before he could be incarcerated, he suffered a heart attack and died on 30 December 1947.

It is estimated that van Meegeren duped buyers, including the government of the Netherlands, out of the equivalent of more than thirty million dollars in today's money.