Revisiting the numbers game

by Marc Masurovsky

Since 2011, the Holocaust Art Restitution Project (HARP) has periodically addressed the problematic of quantifying the thefts of art works, art objects, and other items of esthetic value, looted between 1933 and 1945 under National Socialist rule, during WWII and the Holocaust. After the conflict, there was no internationally-sanctioned and organized audit of cultural losses suffered by the victims of National Socialist and Fascist aggression on the European continent. Therefore, experts and amateurs alike have wallowed in the murky waters of estimations of human and material losses from 1945 to the present.

Regarding the scale of human losses, the international community accepts that between 45 and 55 million men, women, and children lost their lives as a direct and indirect result of the continental conflagration between September 1, 1939, and May 8, 1945. That figure includes the six million Jews targeted for physical extermination by the Nazi government. The continental theater of operations included 15 European countries (and North Africa) which were directly involved either as a result of being militarily occupied by Axis powers, annexed by Nazi Germany, or allied to the Axis: Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, the Soviet Union, North Africa (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia).

Wherever the German Army and the Nazi political and security apparatus went, there followed intense repression, the physical eradication of local populations accompanied by systematic, State-sponsored acts of plunder and illicit displacement of individual and communal properties.

By the time Nazi Germany agreed to terms of unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945, the Allies had realized that “art treasures” (museum-quality objects) were systematically looted across Axis-controlled Europe, stored away in gigantic depots or sold on the international art market to replenish the Reich’s warmongering coffers. Allied focus on “art plunder” went hand in hand with “rescuing the treasures of Europe” and returning them to the countries from which they had been forcibly removed. In and of itself, this task was barely manageable, but if you factored in “everything else” that was stolen, the task was simply unmanageable and would have required several decades of full-time focus by myriad specialists from the victorious nations to sort out what had been stolen by 1945, what was recovered, and what was still missing as of Victory-Day (V-E-Day).

The ex-Soviets always wanted to do things their own way, which, if you look back at the consequences of WWII on the Soviet Union’s infrastructure, human and industrial capital and cultural infrastructure, you might understand some of their reasoning. Their losses for the period of 1941-1945 are estimated in the millions. One snapshot of these staggering figures can be best summed up by their estimation of museum losses: 1,129,929 units of conservation comprising objects, rare books, manuscripts, as well as archival collections.https://lostart.ru/fr/svodnyj_katalog/

Some more elliptical estimates suggest that 20% of European art was plundered “from Jewish collectors and other individuals and organizations.” We don’t know what 100% amounts to, which would represent the universe of “stealable” European art. Hence, the 20% ratio seems a bit vapid and lacking substance. 

We still don’t really know…

In the media-hungry and attention-starved world that we all bask in, there has developed an insatiable appetite to provide numbers that explain the true extent of the plunder and what is still missing. These valiant self-interested pronouncements do not usually come from historians and experts who, for professional reasons, are reluctant to venture in such murky and troubled waters. They emanate from politicians, international personalities, media hounds, and anyone seeking attention for not more than 3 minutes but whose pronouncements will live on forever as random digital factoids on the Internet which end up restated and reposted blindly and thoughtlessly. Repeated enough times, they are true. Fact-checking, go take a hike!

So, what’s the problem exactly?

In November-December 1998, an international conference dubbed the Washington Conference on Holocaust-era Assets took place in Washington, DC. It brought together under one roof 44 nations and a smattering of NGOs to assess where we were with respect to honoring postwar claims for compensation and restitution submitted by Holocaust victims’ families to the governments of their adopted countries and against the main architects and perpetrators of the horrors unleashed upon them and their families—Germany and its allies. Although the results of the Washington Conference were mixed, a set of eleven principles was released on its last day to guide the art market and governments on how to address the possibility that looted art objects may have entered public collections and businesses and how to resolve these claims to everyone’s satisfaction (one would only hope…). These principles avoided mentioning anything about the private art market and—in true diplomatic verbiage—kept the notion of plunder at its vaguest and limited the main perpetrators to “the Nazis.”

Ronald Lauder, who, at the time of the December 1998 Washington Conference, was Chairman of the Board of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the chairman of the recently-established Commission for Art Recovery (CAR), proclaimed that 110,000 art works were still missing, half of the total number that was allegedly stolen (or 220,000)-- a figure advanced without a hint of critical insight as to its veracity and on what facts it rested. He also placed a value on the missing works: 10-30 billion dollars (1998 value). This would assign an approximate value per object of 100,000 dollars, give or take 50,000. The average value of art objects looted from Jewish owners could be estimated grossly at between 5 and 10,000 dollars (1998) and that is still an uneducated guess. Only 5 to 15%--again, uninformed guesses based on years spent reviewing restitution claims and Nazi inventories of stolen property—reached or exceeded the values hypothetized by Mr. Lauder.

Mr. Lauder's estimates pale against those proffered by the Polish government. They estimate that their battered nation alone lost 600,000 works of art, many of which remain unrecovered. 

Since 1998, the London-based Art Loss Register (ALR), one of the most important proprietary (privately-owned) databases of stolen art in existence today, proffered an estimate of 200,000 stolen works of art, and even averred that 170,000 had been recovered and therefore that would leave only 30,000 still gallavanting about and waiting to be plucked for a handsome finder’s fee. These figures are astounding for several reasons: 1/ they are unjustified and unverifiable; and 2/ they presume a rate of restitution of more than 85%! A rather extraordinary feat which, it too, is surreally wrong. Of course I invite you all to fact-check this and contact ALR directly to verify or infirm the above.

600,000 art objects stolen, 100,000 still missing

This formula, backed up by no scientific research or historical documentation, has been the most popular mantra proffered by government officials, reporters, and restitution lawyers.

The most notable proponent of this statistic is Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat, currently Special Advisor on Holocaust Affairs to the US Secretary of State and an internationally-recognized authority on the diplomacy of reparations for Holocaust victims. He first posited (as far as we can tell) these figures at an international conference held in Prague (Czechia) in June 2009. Mr. Eizenstat repeated those figures as recently as 2018 which were reported in 2019 by the Washington Post.

These figures have also been repeated in the following media outlets:

-history.co.uk,
-Time Magazine,
-the Smithsonian Magazine in 2022,
-Swissinfo.ch
-Deutsche Welle
The DW article contradicts itself when, in the same breath, it posits that 5 million artworks changed hands illegally. Which is it?
-The LA Times, whose editorial board actually wondered whether the estimates might be much higher.
-National Public Radio
-and, of course, the US Department of State

Other far-flung estimates include:

-30,000 looted art works are still missing
-10,000 works are still missing

How do we stop the misrepresentation of one of the most heinous crimes committed against culture, against humanity as part of a genocide of the Jewish people?

When someone asks you how many objects were looted during the Nazi years (1933-1945), 

1/ you do not to provide an accurate figure because there is none. 

2/ You do not know how many objects have been recovered, 

3/ you do not how many have been restituted, and how many are still missing, regardless of style, value, and importance to art world denizens. 

4/ you must err on the side of caution and state in all seriousness: between six and ten million.

For more clarifications, see:

30 May 2011
Analysis of an address by Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat at Prague in June 2009

21 April 2015

The illusion of numbers
10 May 2015

The day after...
23 May 2018

Some frequently asked questions

Mutually assured destruction

by Marc Masurovsky

Is it possible to imagine an art world without due diligence checks, without databases to consult before buying an art object, before displaying it?

With the open conflict laying bare the inner workings of the London-based Art Loss Register, what are its subscribers thinking right now?

What are the auction houses, Christie’s and Sotheby’s, wondering about the reliability of the ALR in providing the service that it is paid to provide--due diligence, certifying as to the authenticity and the licit or illicit nature of objects being offered for sale on the global art market--with the usual caveats, of course...

And what about insurance companies? Those responsible for assessing the risk of a transaction involving art objects and providing the protection and safeguards that buyers, exhibitors, borrowers, collectors, dealers, require and are entitled to? What will they do if there are no recognized mechanisms which exist to vouch for authenticity, value, and origin?

How do law enforcement agencies from around the world feel about this conflict between two organizations that are there to assist them in identifying and seizing looted antiquities and art objects? Granted, they are accustomed to working with rather unsavory groups and individuals for the greater good, but this is the art world of which we speak at a time when antiquities are disappearing in the hands of armed thugs worldwide.

What would happen if all of the due diligence checkpoints disappeared in a furnace of mutually assured destruction such as the conflict between ALR and ARG is turning into? Should sanity not prevail, the global art world will probably have nowhere to go to get its USDA certificate of good provenance and due diligence, the fig leaf behind which it can safely decide to sell, to buy, to display, to lend, to borrow, to collect.

What will judges do when faced with cases predicated on due diligence, or the absence thereof? Which sources will a judge countenance as worthy of issuing such a certificate, should ALR and ARG collapse in a conflict reminiscent of “Dr. Strangelove”?

Much as with the current American presidential election landscape, the due diligence machine which has been put in place for the past thirty years to provide a minimum amount of protection against theft and forgeries in the art market is about to collapse, unless cooler heads prevail.

It is time to think seriously about establishing a global system of due diligence that does not rely solely on what Albion has to offer us. For those of you who do not know what “Albion” is, it is the 

Albion

name given to the island of Great Britain before it was Great Britain. One ancient site was Londinium, which is today’s London.

Londinium

Silver linings

by Marc Masurovsky

You know how this old saying goes: Every cloud has a silver lining.

In this case, the silver lining has a cloud around it, if you can visualize it.

In April 2011, the plundered art blog publicized the presence of a painting by Caspar Netscher “Dame mit Papagei/Lady with a Parrot” at the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal, Germany.

Von der Heide Museum, Wuppertal

Lady with a Parrot

This painting had been the rightful property of Hugo and Elizabeth Andriesse, a family in the banking business in pre-WWII Brussels, who, because of their appurtenance to the Jewish faith, were forced to flee from the invading German armies in 1940.

Seeking refuge in New York, they never looked back. Mr. Andriesse died during WWII and his widow lived until the 1960s. She pursued claims for the return of the family property, but gave up when ordered to by the Belgian government in the 1950s because many of her cultural assets could not be located.

Having no children, the Andriesse heirs named as their heirs local charities in New York City. To this day, some of these charities receive a monthly check for at least 700 dollars as ordered by the application of Mrs. Andriesse’s will.

In February 2015, the plundered art blog cited as an exception to the current German mindset of opposing restitution of Nazi looted art to rightful owners, the stance taken by the leadership of the Wuppertal Museum to return the Caspar Netscher painting to the heirs of the Andriesse family.

To be perfectly frank, I had undertaken in 2013 a series of discussions first indirectly then directly with that museum to find a way of doing the honorable thing—restitution. I was struck by the museum’s desire to be ethical and part ways with a gorgeous example of Netscher’s work in order to uphold the highest standards when it comes to resolving complex restitution issues that involve objects in the permanent collection of a museum.  

In January 2014, I broached the matter with restitution officials in New York in hopes of convincing them to intercede as an impartial third party. Their research confirmed that the heirs to the painting were not individuals but local charities. It did not take too many phone calls to discover that a law firm based in New York and Berlin had put an end to all of these informal discussions, as representatives of the Andriesse heirs, namely four charities serving the New York metropolitan area. In effect, we were all locked out of any process to find a creative solution to this restitution problem.

Frankly I was dismayed. Several months later, the painting was restituted and in June 2014 was sold at auction at Christie’s New York for at least five million dollars. The charities received their fair share and the lawyers received their contingency fee for not doing much of anything. All the hard work had already been done, the ground plowed, the information about the painting publicized, and, just as important, the museum leadership alerted, and the Wuppertal city council aligned with the museum's stance to restitute the painting.

In April 2015, a regular contributor to the plundered art blog reported on the TEFAF Maastrict Art Fair, an annual event bringing together the elite of the international art world. She noted the presence of the Caspar Netscher painting being offered for sale at a price higher than that fetched at Christie's in June 2014,  with very little indication of the painting’s troubled and exciting history.

Are there lessons to be drawn from this event?

On the plus side, the painting was identified, located, and restituted to the rightful heirs as designated in the Andriesse will. Much of this would not have happened without the benevolent research made public both on the ERR/Jeu de Paume database (since mid-October 2010!), on the plundered art blog and the intervention of a senior German museum official who helped bring to the von der Heydt Museum news about their painting being stolen property.

The down side of this story is the risk associated with making public information that might end up enriching unscrupulous members of the legal profession and others who make it their specialty to hunt for “treasure” disguised as art objects-expensive art objects-very expensive art objects which still need to be restituted and for which a claimant has been identified and the location of the unrestituted, claimable object revealed on public websites.

It’s an unfortunate trade off that I/we have agreed to in order to educate the public and make information about cultural plunder available to the masses as well as to a specialized audience.

The risk is that we provide the opportunity for some people with means and resources to make a significant amount of money for little to show for it at the expense of exploring more creative solutions to restitution which can benefit the great many of us. In the case of the Netscher painting, one scenario was for the painting to be placed on permanent loan at the museum by the fortunate buyer who had acquired it at auction. Instead the painting has been flipped and has become another prize for speculation on the international art market, at the expense of the public.

There is no real solution to this problem, unfortunately. One alternative would be to opt for the lockdown of all data concerning looted cultural assets inside proprietary, confidential, password-protected databases, hidden from public view, in order to shield the objects from unwanted publicity that attract financial predators uninterested in history, culture and education and ethics, and solely looking for a good payday.There are several databases that fulfill this requirement already--the Art Loss Register and Art Claim, part of Art Recovery Group, both in London.

Since the 1990s, there have been no attempts to establish clear, ethical mechanisms by which to facilitate the return of looted cultural property to rightful owners. No government, no international organization has desired to create such mechanisms and, by exerting such cowardice, have allowed the market and its legal practitioners to take over the process of restitution at the expense of the public good.

The Holocaust should not be the subject of treasure hunts and opportunities for enrichment, in the name of restitution. The process of locating, identifying, and restituting a looted object should provide unique opportunities to educate and to raise awareness and to allow these objects to benefit the public through on-going displays in cultural institutions, which can be accompanied by well-conceived explanatory texts and further opportunities to enrich the public’s understanding of a most heinous crime committed in the context of mass conflicts and atrocities.

ALR and ARG

by Marc Masurovsky

Clothing stores are lined up side by side, seeking our attention, with their fabrics, hues and colors. Restaurants beckon to satisfy our taste buds with their offerings, presumably reflecting cultural preferences from around the world. That is the commercial and social world in which we live. The same should hold true for commercial databases collecting information about art stolen decades ago or yesterday. Their field of advertising lies in the virtual world far from our prying eyes. If you seek that kind of service, you must search for it in cyberspace. Your search brings up at least two proprietary (private, for-profit) art databases and a small clutch of freely accessible sites that cover specific geographic areas.

The universe of proprietary stolen art databases, strangely enough, emanates from London, UK—the Art Loss Register (ALR) whose CEO is Julian Ratcliffe, and Art Claim, which is part of the Art Recovery Group, launched last year, headed by Christopher Marinello, former executive at ALR.

Although ruthless in its manifold expressions, competition can be “healthy."  Right now, having two proprietary, for-profit, stolen art databases is better than leaving the market of commercial stolen art due diligence to a single outfit. Comparative shopping, which consumers prefer and are accustomed to, is an integral part of due diligence, checking multiple sources as long as your budget allows it. Still, searches for objects through ALR and Art Claim can be costly and therefore are largely confined to businesses involved directly or indirectly with art and cultural institutions than individuals engaging in personal or academic research.

In order to thrive, both companies have a duty to offer what’s best for the art world and for those who have been victimized by art thefts, whether motivated by anti-Semitism, civil unrest, or plain greed and criminal self-interest. It is in the best interest of the consumer to encourage a multi-source approach to due diligence. The more resources are available, the theory goes, the more likely a consumer of art and culture can exercise her due diligence in ascertaining that an object carries with it no taint, no trace of illicit activity that could jeopardize its ownership or display.

Live long and prosper!

Julian Ratcliffe, CEO, ALR

Chris Marinello, CEO, ARG