by Marc Masurovsky
How have the Wahington Principles on Nazi-confiscated Art of December 1998 reshaped the landscape of restitution of art objects suspected of having been illegally displaced and looted between 1933 and 1945?
The purpose of the Washington Principles has not been to promote actual restitution—the physical return of a looted and displaced art object to its rightful owners and their descendants. It is to provide a framework by which art museums (and by extension the art market) may find solutions to ownership disputes over these contested objects and help them settle or dismiss claims filed against them by the purported rightful owners. The key to the Washington Principles lies in the expression “just and fair solutions” coined by Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat, then an Under Secretary for Economic, Agricultural and Business Affairs, and currently the chair of the Washington, DC-based US Holocaust Museum’s Memorial Council. That expression is enshrined in Washington Principle #8.
8. If the pre-War owners of art that is found to have been confiscated by the Nazis and not subsequently restituted, or their heirs, can be identified, steps should be taken expeditiously to achieve a just and fair solution, recognizing this may vary according to the facts and circumstances surrounding a specific case.
When repeated daily for 28 years, the expression “seeking just and fair solutions” becomes embedded in the human psyche (much like a bad summer beach song that you can’t shake off). This expression constitutes in effect the substrate of a current possessor’s playbook with which to resolve ownership disputes submitted by purported rightful owners of contested art works and objects. The goal is to seek a reasonable solution where, one hopes, all parties will be more or less satisfied by the outcome.
The reality is a bit starker: like in a boxing match or a sports competition, only one person remains standing, regardless of what anyone tells you. There is nothing kumbaya about negotiating for the recovery of a looted art object. It sucks. More often than not, the process, the envisioned collegial dialogue with the possessing entity generally turns into a legal slug fest that can stretch on for years if not decades where appeals to moral and ethical norms fall by the wayside and the holder hides behind well-heeled legal defenses. When the just and fair solutions are invoked as a guide to resolving the dispute, you know that the claimant may not recover the physical ownership of the contested object but instead will have to accept a financial settlement that extinguishes the claim. In some sense, the just and fair solutions behave like a glorified fire extinguisher directly pointed at the claimant’s quest for justice (restitution).
If I sound derisive about the Washington Principles, it is precisely because they were never designed to help claimants, the victims of the act of plunder. They were framed to provide a shield behind which current holders could fend off claimants’ assaults on their beloved collections.
Still, let’s try to be positive.
Do the Principles actually help in any way in the recovery process? The results are mixed. Since the decision to restitute rests ultimately in the hands of the current possessor, lest it is ordered by a court to hand over the object, claimants must appeal to the possessors’ moral and ethical sense of justice and plead for it to “do the right thing.” A classic domination/ submission scenario where the cards are invariably stacked against the claimant who is forced to play the role of a submissive and solicitous creature.
Nevertheless, the Principles have decidedly left their imprint “with the passage of time” on the behavior of certain museums and auction houses. Assuredly, this evolution represents genuine progress. It has not led to a one-for-one relationship between claim and restitution. Instead, it has helped convince governments and cultural institutions to accept a dialogue with claimants and to pave the way for negotiations towards a settlement of the restitution claim.
Restitution lawyers routinely invoke the Principles as they seek restitution on behalf of their clients. Likewise, current holders’ lawyers invoke the principles to establish their right to maintain their ownership of the contested object. The temptation for some restitution lawyers to secure a settlement is always there instead of aspiring to an actual restitution which may trigger an extended tussle with the current possessor. An easy way out? Lengthy legal battles are very costly and most claimants cannot afford them.
The Washington Principles are “soft”. They are guidelines to be interpreted as one sees fit. A growing number of current holders nowadays realize that these Principles are here to stay (28 years later) and that they have become part of the landscape. They also are keenly aware that the keywords “just and fair” are not synonymous with “restitution” but instead signal that they can find an equitable outcome that is acceptable to their interests. Ultimately, the “just and fair” approach swings in favor of a current possessor not surrendering an object to the claimant. The Washington Principles have achieved their aim.
Claimants, on the other hand, have to make their peace with the fact that the laws of supply and demand combined with the absence of effective government regulations override the impact of genocide on decisions affecting the ownership of works and objects of art. If they wish to prevail against a current possessor, they must seek unconventional approaches and adopt unorthodox strategies that fall outside the established framework of a restitution negotiation. Claimants’ rights have a greater chance of success outside “the box” rather than inside “the box.”
Justice in the face of genocide continues to be elusive, performative and symbolic. In that sense, the Washington Principles are “performative.”
19 March 2026
15 March 2026
The Ides of March
by Marc Masurovsky
If we succumb to folklore, bad things are supposed to happen on 15 March, the day that Emperor Julius Caesar succumbed to 23 stab wounds at the Curia de Pompeyo in Rome in 44 BC. The culprits were for the most part Roman senators in open rebellion with Caesar. Brutus administered the fatal blow which produced the timeless retort from a dying Caesar: “Et tu, Brute?” (loosely translated as “you too, Brutus?).
Fast forward several millenia.
I picked 15 March as a random, yet symbolic, date as a pretext to take a (micro?) historical look at what unfolded on that day during and after the Nazi era. The following selection is mostly centered on France with snippets on Czechoslovakia and Belgium.
15 March 1939
France’s abandonment of the Sudetenland to the Third Reich gave the Nazis a green light to invade and occupy Czechoslovakia.
60,000 Spanish Republican refugees—children, women, soldiers and militiamen—fled to France to escape from Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s counteroffensive at the close of the Spanish Civil War. They were placed in several “concentration camps” established by the French authorities at Rivesaltes and Barcarès near Perpignan.
15 March 1941
Jean Seligmann, Jewish art dealer and collector, son and heir of the famous antiquarian Jacques Seligmann, underwent a second day of interrogation at the hands of agents of Gruppe 603 of the Geheime Feld Polizei (GFP) who had arrested him the day before on grounds of acts of sabotage for the Allies and financing Allied propaganda efforts. Dr. Karl Epting, an eminent figure in Franco-German intellectual collaboration during the war, also accused Seligmann of acquiring works of art from suspected Spanish “Red [Communist]” agents and colluding with the British and the Americans. Labeled a “terrorist,” Seligmann was executed by a German firing squad in mid-December 1941 at Mont-Valérien.
On the same day, a train with 25 cars lumbered from Paris to an imposing castle in Bavaria, Neuschwanstein, the main depot used by the ERR to store and inventory confiscated Jewish-owned art objects from Western Europe. The objects on the train were from the following owners: Rothschild family, Seligmann, Alphonse Kann, Halphen, Weil-Picard, Wildenstein and David-Weill. The Nazis had hastily packed the train and failed to register and inventory its contents before departure. A special team from the Paris ERR headed to the Bavarian castle for the sole purpose of inventorying the train’s contents.
While the loot train made its way to Bavaria, a Jewish art dealer, Paul Graupe, reached New York where he registered as a political refugee. He had to abandon many of his precious cultural belongings in a warehouse in Paris where they were later confiscated by German agents.
During a brief visit in Paris, Marshal Hermann Goering, who had a first right of refusal on all confiscated Jewish-owned collections, selected a number of objects for his private enjoyment which belonged to James and Alexandrine de Rothschild.
The ERR in Paris gave Josef Angerer, one of Hermann Goering’s agents in France during WWII, a wooden statuette of a seated woman which came from a crate numbered 686 that had been stored at the German Embassy in Paris and been transferred to the Jeu de Paume in late Fall 1940.
15 March 1942
Charles Laville, deputy secretary of the anti-Jewish “Institut d’Etudes des Questions Juives”, sold a vast quantity of photographs that were the property of Jewish art dealer Paul Rosenberg. He sold 4500 photos to Mr. Borelly, the owner of a journal called “L’Atalanque” for 10,000 francs and 1200 photos to a Parisian art dealer, Louise Leiris who managed the interests of Daniel Kahnweiler.
Rose Valland, curator and spy extraordinaire stationed at the Jeu de Paume, noted in her journals that the personnel of the Jeu de Paume were working overtime to make room for additional shipments of confiscated objects to the museum. Little did she know that these measures presaged the onset of the so-called “M-Aktion or Möbel Aktion”, a sweeping wholesale gutting of the contents of Jewish residences in the Paris region which lasted until June 1944. The overseer of this massive cleansing operation was SS Colonel Kurt von Behr, of the ERR in Paris.
The administration of the French concentration camp at Rivesaltes mobilized labor battalions comprised exclusively of Jewish male prisoners. They were referred to as “Palestinian groups.”
_(cropped).jpg) |
| Julius Caesar |
If we succumb to folklore, bad things are supposed to happen on 15 March, the day that Emperor Julius Caesar succumbed to 23 stab wounds at the Curia de Pompeyo in Rome in 44 BC. The culprits were for the most part Roman senators in open rebellion with Caesar. Brutus administered the fatal blow which produced the timeless retort from a dying Caesar: “Et tu, Brute?” (loosely translated as “you too, Brutus?).
Fast forward several millenia.
I picked 15 March as a random, yet symbolic, date as a pretext to take a (micro?) historical look at what unfolded on that day during and after the Nazi era. The following selection is mostly centered on France with snippets on Czechoslovakia and Belgium.
15 March 1939
France’s abandonment of the Sudetenland to the Third Reich gave the Nazis a green light to invade and occupy Czechoslovakia.
60,000 Spanish Republican refugees—children, women, soldiers and militiamen—fled to France to escape from Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s counteroffensive at the close of the Spanish Civil War. They were placed in several “concentration camps” established by the French authorities at Rivesaltes and Barcarès near Perpignan.
15 March 1941
Jean Seligmann, Jewish art dealer and collector, son and heir of the famous antiquarian Jacques Seligmann, underwent a second day of interrogation at the hands of agents of Gruppe 603 of the Geheime Feld Polizei (GFP) who had arrested him the day before on grounds of acts of sabotage for the Allies and financing Allied propaganda efforts. Dr. Karl Epting, an eminent figure in Franco-German intellectual collaboration during the war, also accused Seligmann of acquiring works of art from suspected Spanish “Red [Communist]” agents and colluding with the British and the Americans. Labeled a “terrorist,” Seligmann was executed by a German firing squad in mid-December 1941 at Mont-Valérien.
On the same day, a train with 25 cars lumbered from Paris to an imposing castle in Bavaria, Neuschwanstein, the main depot used by the ERR to store and inventory confiscated Jewish-owned art objects from Western Europe. The objects on the train were from the following owners: Rothschild family, Seligmann, Alphonse Kann, Halphen, Weil-Picard, Wildenstein and David-Weill. The Nazis had hastily packed the train and failed to register and inventory its contents before departure. A special team from the Paris ERR headed to the Bavarian castle for the sole purpose of inventorying the train’s contents.
While the loot train made its way to Bavaria, a Jewish art dealer, Paul Graupe, reached New York where he registered as a political refugee. He had to abandon many of his precious cultural belongings in a warehouse in Paris where they were later confiscated by German agents.
During a brief visit in Paris, Marshal Hermann Goering, who had a first right of refusal on all confiscated Jewish-owned collections, selected a number of objects for his private enjoyment which belonged to James and Alexandrine de Rothschild.
The ERR in Paris gave Josef Angerer, one of Hermann Goering’s agents in France during WWII, a wooden statuette of a seated woman which came from a crate numbered 686 that had been stored at the German Embassy in Paris and been transferred to the Jeu de Paume in late Fall 1940.
15 March 1942
Charles Laville, deputy secretary of the anti-Jewish “Institut d’Etudes des Questions Juives”, sold a vast quantity of photographs that were the property of Jewish art dealer Paul Rosenberg. He sold 4500 photos to Mr. Borelly, the owner of a journal called “L’Atalanque” for 10,000 francs and 1200 photos to a Parisian art dealer, Louise Leiris who managed the interests of Daniel Kahnweiler.
Rose Valland, curator and spy extraordinaire stationed at the Jeu de Paume, noted in her journals that the personnel of the Jeu de Paume were working overtime to make room for additional shipments of confiscated objects to the museum. Little did she know that these measures presaged the onset of the so-called “M-Aktion or Möbel Aktion”, a sweeping wholesale gutting of the contents of Jewish residences in the Paris region which lasted until June 1944. The overseer of this massive cleansing operation was SS Colonel Kurt von Behr, of the ERR in Paris.
The administration of the French concentration camp at Rivesaltes mobilized labor battalions comprised exclusively of Jewish male prisoners. They were referred to as “Palestinian groups.”
15 March 1943
The mass deportation of the Jews of Saloniki (Greece) began. The city council and the church authorities conspired to eliminate a fourth of the city's population--the Jewish community--concentrated in the Baron Hirsch section of the city close to the rail yards and seize the Jews' property and valuables. Only 1 in 10 Jewish residents of Saloniki returned home from the horrors of Auschwitz.
15 March 1945
The French Assembly passed a law declaring claimants responsible for presenting all material evidence in support of a claim of forced transfer of their property (duress) so that some form of indemnification could be provided to them in lieu of restitution. This law did not extend to financial instruments sold on the Paris stock market (Bourse). [Caffery to State, March 21, 1945, no. 1342, Secret, RG 84, Paris Embassy Confidential Files, 1945, Box 4, NARA.]
The Secret Intelligence Branch of the OSS in Paris launched an investigation into the wartime activities of Michel Skolnikoff who had acted as the main go-between for the Germans to corner the French and Monegascan hotel market through a network of agencies that cloaked the identity of the beneficial owner behind the purchases of these hotel properties, namely Skolnikoff. The previous day, Allied representatives had met at the US Embassy in Paris and decided to place Skolnikoff on the British “Black List” and the US “Proclaimed List.” Skolnikoff had already fled to Spain where he resided at the Hotel Palace in Madrid. [From Saint, BB/036 [London] to Saint/BD001 [Lisbon], Subject : Michel Skolnikoff, Secret, 11 April 1945, RG 226, Entry 109, Box 14, NARA.]
15 March 1961
Mr. Rossignol, an advisor to the ORE, a Belgian agency responsible for war reparations and economic relief, ordered Louis Cahen, the chief curator of the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren, to take custody of objects from Congo and Angola which Allied officials had repatriated from Germany after 1945. These objects had a total market value of 15000 francs. Cahen objected because the provenance of these objects was suspicious. Rossignol insisted that he serve as their “custodian until further notice.”
Selected sources:
Czechoslovakia
Dr. Karl Epting
https://www.ifz-muenchen.de/en/vierteljahrshefte/vfz-archive/issue-index/2023/issue-july-2023
15 March 1945
The French Assembly passed a law declaring claimants responsible for presenting all material evidence in support of a claim of forced transfer of their property (duress) so that some form of indemnification could be provided to them in lieu of restitution. This law did not extend to financial instruments sold on the Paris stock market (Bourse). [Caffery to State, March 21, 1945, no. 1342, Secret, RG 84, Paris Embassy Confidential Files, 1945, Box 4, NARA.]
The Secret Intelligence Branch of the OSS in Paris launched an investigation into the wartime activities of Michel Skolnikoff who had acted as the main go-between for the Germans to corner the French and Monegascan hotel market through a network of agencies that cloaked the identity of the beneficial owner behind the purchases of these hotel properties, namely Skolnikoff. The previous day, Allied representatives had met at the US Embassy in Paris and decided to place Skolnikoff on the British “Black List” and the US “Proclaimed List.” Skolnikoff had already fled to Spain where he resided at the Hotel Palace in Madrid. [From Saint, BB/036 [London] to Saint/BD001 [Lisbon], Subject : Michel Skolnikoff, Secret, 11 April 1945, RG 226, Entry 109, Box 14, NARA.]
15 March 1961
Mr. Rossignol, an advisor to the ORE, a Belgian agency responsible for war reparations and economic relief, ordered Louis Cahen, the chief curator of the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren, to take custody of objects from Congo and Angola which Allied officials had repatriated from Germany after 1945. These objects had a total market value of 15000 francs. Cahen objected because the provenance of these objects was suspicious. Rossignol insisted that he serve as their “custodian until further notice.”
Selected sources:
Czechoslovakia
Dr. Karl Epting
https://www.ifz-muenchen.de/en/vierteljahrshefte/vfz-archive/issue-index/2023/issue-july-2023
Charles Laville
Index cards on art looting suspects, RG239 E34 b1 NARA, available on fold3.com.
Mr. Rossignol
A. Rossignol, ORE to L. Cahen, Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale, 6 September 1961, AR 2/AGR 2-Dépôt Joseph Cuvelier, 020/510, Archives du Royaume, Brussels, Belgium.
Index cards on art looting suspects, RG239 E34 b1 NARA, available on fold3.com.
Mr. Rossignol
A. Rossignol, ORE to L. Cahen, Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale, 6 September 1961, AR 2/AGR 2-Dépôt Joseph Cuvelier, 020/510, Archives du Royaume, Brussels, Belgium.
Jean Seligmann
Erste bericht, Kommissariat 1, GFP 603, 15 mars 1941, B323/287, Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Germany
Erste bericht, Kommissariat 1, GFP 603, 15 mars 1941, B323/287, Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Germany
Acronyms:
ERR: Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg
ORE: Office de Récupération Economique
Archives:
Archives du Royaume, Brussels, Belgium
Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Germany
fold3.com
NARA: National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD
Photo credits:
Julius Caesar, courtesy of Wikipedia.
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