Is Switzerland changing the way it views Nazi looted art?

by Marc Masurovsky 

Here we are in the early days of 2022, looking back at 2021 and wondering if anything good came of it, notwithstanding the pandemic, the million plus deaths from COVID-19 alone, the repeated closures of public and private institutions, the inability to travel safely, the high-stakes gamble everyone of us faces when we go shopping, mingle in public places, take public transportation in order to escape from our confinement at home while we dodge the wily virus. It knows no borders, harbors no partisan bias and treats everyone equally without due regard to age, gender, occupation, faith and political affiliation.

What’s going on in Switzerland? 

In December 2021 alone, a number of developments have reshaped the restitution map in Switzerland as reported in the Swiss and international press. Two names have largely taken over center stage in the Nazi looted art story and the way it permeates life in Switzerland: Gurlitt and Bührle. The former has been ubiquitous since the transfer to the Kunstmuseum Bern of the estate of the late Cornelius Gurlitt who bequeathed his collection to the Bern Museum—the remnants that he had inherited from his father, Hildebrand Gurlitt. The estate consisted of more than 1400 works, mostly on paper, which Gurlitt, Sr., had amassed throughout the Nazi era and in the immediate postwar years (he died in 1956). Gurlitt, Jr., gradually dissipated its contents as his sole source of income with which he eased himself into old age.

Kunstmuseum Bern

Cornelius Gurlitt

Since 2014, the Kunstmuseum Bern has weathered international criticism over its acceptance of the Gurlitt estate. Could it have turned down the bequest? The Gurlitt collection, it must be said, has been a toxic affair from the get-go as Bern has had to learn to coexist with the indelible Nazi taint that accompanied the works. Its only way out was to take the bull by the horns and to make a conscious and very public attempt at researching the origins of each work—an exercise in due diligence, something we expect from any museum, large or small. Even more frightening was the possibility that tainted items had to be restituted, something that Swiss museums have been loath to do since the late 1940s, with few notable exceptions, using the stale but highly effective of “good faith” to justify the non-return of loot. 

Emil Georg Bührle

December 2021 has turned out to be a very busy month in the Swiss world of museums and art restitution. First off, a Social Democratic lawmaker, Jon Pult, introduced a parliamentary motion to establish an independent commission in Switzerland that would make recommendations on Nazi-era claims. A cross between the UK’s Spoliation Advisory Panel and France’s CIVS with a smidgeon of Austria’s Provenance Research Commission. This motion was prompted (the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back) following the news that the Kunsthaus Zurich had agreed to put on display 203 works from the collection of Emil Georg Bührle, a Swiss arms manufacturer who owed his fortune to his wartime dealings with the Axis powers and who frolicked on the international looted art market, buying up choice pieces confiscated from Jewish dealers in Western Europe. 

Kunsthaus Zurich

Several days after the announcement of Pult’s motion, the Zurich museum garnered headlines which should have prompted its director to hit the schnapps bottle. The Bührle incident triggered an international storm of disapproval and at least one Swiss Jewish artist demanded that her works be removed from the museum. Once the winds subsided, the museum ordered a group of experts to look into the wartime history of the paintings in Bührle’s collection. The kind of effort that had already been conducted in part or in whole by numerous researchers over the past several decades, including the New York-based Commission for Art Recovery. Will their findings be shared with the Kunsthaus experts? We don’t know but we sure hope so. 

Before Xmas 2021, the Kunstmuseum Bern announced that it would part with 29 works from the Gurlitt collection with a view to returning them to the rightful owners. Will it actually restitute them? Or will the museum seek a “fair and just solution” in order to retain custody of the objects under contention? 

As we get used to the humdrum of 2022 which strikingly resembles the din of 2021, let’s hope that Bern and Zurich come to their senses and forge an irreversible path towards a more ethical treatment of their collections.