 Hitler was pleased with Posse's work, and in 1940 awarded him the honorific of "Professor", something the Führer did for many of his favorites in the arts, such as Leni Riefenstahl, the actress and film director; architects Albert Speer and Hermann Giesler; sculptors Arno Breker and Josef Thorak; Wilhelm Furtwängler, conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic; actor Emil Jannings; and photographer Heinrich Hoffmann; among others.In October 1939, Hitler and Benito Mussolini had made an agreement that any Germanic artworks in public museums in the South Tyrol – a traditionally German-speaking area which had been given to Italy after the First World War in return for entering the war on the side of the Triple Entente – could be removed and returned to Germany, but when Posse attempted to do so, with the assistance of Heinrich Himmler's "Ahnenerbe", the Italians managed to keep putting things off, and no repatriations ever took place.Posse died in December 1942 of cancer.