by Marc Masurovsky
The process of recovery of looted cultural, artistic and religious objects is daunting for several reasons:
If action is not taken right away to recover a looted object, it becomes exponentially difficult to identify its current location. In the case of losses during the Third Reich, “recovery” was an absurd notion since the perpetrators of the thefts controlled the reins of political, legal, and economic power. Hence, the process of tracing the object could only occur after a regime change and with rules in place that would facilitate such searches. Moreover, if the works confiscated or plundered by the Nazi regime ended up in neighboring countries, what rights did the claimants have to recover such works, since Nazi Germany was a recognized nation in the community of nations, for better or for worse? What rights do they have now? Since most of the domestic losses suffered by Jews living in Germany were State-sponsored, there was no mechanism in place in other nations to deem the actions of the Nazi state illegal and the confiscated property subject to restitution. Therefore, if you lost your property in 1934 and if you survived all of the subsequent events provoked by the Nazis’ fury against the Jews and others, you would have to wait for at least 12 years to assert a claim of restitution.
If your missing object is located in the hands of a new owner, regardless of how that person or institution acquired the victims’ property, the laws governing property rights and title to “legally acquired” property prevent the plundered owner from obtaining restitution of his/her looted property without going through a complex tangle of legal and political maneuvers. In the absence of explicit mechanisms put in place by the national governments of nations where such looted objects have ended up, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to recover them. This state of affairs endures to this day and has been a continual source of frustration for victims of plunder with minimal accommodations made by governments and courts to facilitate the process of recovery.
If the looted object is declared part of the cultural patrimony of the nation from where it ended up, the recovery process involves a direct negotiation with that nation’s government, a very laborious discussion which usually ends in utter failure. What is the word of a dispossessed Jewish owner against that of an official who upholds the notion of cultural patrimony and inalienability of art objects located in State collections, whether those objects were looted during genocidal acts? Culpable countries hiding behind such imperialistic arguments are: France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, to cite the worst, Eastern European nations, all of the nations that once formed the Soviet Union.
When source nations seek the return of their looted patrimony which usually consists of antiquities illegally extracted from archaeological sites or illegally removed from religious and other sacred edifices, the wait can last for an eternity; it can also be circumscribed to anywhere from a year to several decades if the aggrieved nation is willing to compromise, accept trade offs like offer commercial advantages to the withholding nation, or agree to symbolic returns with a promise never to come back and ask for anymore as in the case of South Korea and the shabby treatment it received from France over a set of priceless manuscripts.
Aggrieved source nations include but are not limited to Greece, Turkey, Italy, South Korea, China, Egypt, Nigeria, Mali.
In other words, we have not made much progress in the past several decades. As provenance continues to become optional in art market transactions and most nations do not encourage their cultural institutions to be more forthcoming in publicizing the history of the objects that are part of their “patrimony,” nothing short of a cultural revolution will sway them to change course and become, god forbid, ethical.
Showing posts with label Greece. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Greece. Show all posts
18 October 2017
08 October 2016
Orphans
by Marc Masurovsky
Historian Lisa Leff pointed out in her recent book, “The Archive Thief,” how, in the late 1940s, the leadership of the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction (JCR) compared identifiable books recovered in former Nazi-held territories in the aftermath of WWII to “kidnapped children.” According to Rabbi Bernard Heller, the “theoretical” restitution” of these “kidnapped children” would be akin to reuniting them with their “overjoyed parents”. For those cultural assets that could not be matched with an identifiable owner, these “stunned waifs” would be placed in “foster homes” run by “loving foster parents.” As it turns out, these “abductees” ended up in a complex network of “foster homes” happy as pie to become the new “[foster] parents.” These new “homes” consist of museums, libraries, and other cultural institutions, State-controlled and/or private, Jewish and non-Jewish around the world.
The JCR was tasked with redistributing among Jewish communities worldwide (mostly in the United States, Europe and Palestine/Israel) those cultural objects bearing no obvious markings that might tie them to an owner. In their zeal, even objects that could have been reunited with rightful owners were treated as “waifs.”
Decades later, European governments explained how they treated Jewish-owned assets in the post-Holocaust world and if they had made any effort to return them or make them available to their owners or next of kin. For example, the Swedish authorities issued a report in 1997 on “orphaned” assets located in Swedish financial and other institutions. To them “orphaned” meant that assets had remained “unclaimed” for decades following the end of the Holocaust. In Greece, “orphaned” property was transferred to an organization responsible for aiding needy survivors, most likely with the proceeds from liquidating such “orphaned” assets. The same scenario also unfolded in countries like Austria and France with greater or lesser success.
In 2008, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem staged an exhibit called “Orphaned Art: Looted Art from the Holocaust at the Israel Museum.” More than 1200 “orphaned” items are catalogued at the Israel Museum. The Jewish Restitution Successor Organization (JRSO) was the main collector of these cultural “orphans”. It operated in post-WWII Germany and Austria to locate, identify and disperse objects tagged as Jewish-owned, mostly without an identifiable owner to whom to return the found objects. The JCR was its redistribution arm.
Marilyn Henry, who wrote a regular column for the Jerusalem Post before her untimely death in 2011, argued that these “orphans” should be transferred to European Jewish cultural institutions since they came from European nations subjected to Nazi rule and terror. She mentioned how Benjamin Ferencz, the noted former chief prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal of Nuremberg, described recipients of “orphaned” assets as their new owners, rather than their trustees or custodians.
In other words, the new “parents” held clear title to these cultural “orphans.” Ferencz’s comment could be interpreted as a clear rebuke to any attempt by claimants, relatives of the unfortunate “parents”, to obtain restitution of these “objects”, in other words, reuniting them with their “families.”
Throughout the post-1945 era, museums, libraries and other cultural institutions have been transformed into massive “foster” homes for “orphaned” objects. In line with Ferencz’s comment, one can understand more clearly how Jewish museums around the world have been reluctant, remiss and even hostile to the idea of restituting any of the “orphans” that they lovingly curate and nurture as “foster parents.” Even the US Library of Congress played dumb in the late 1990s when faced with the evidence that they held at least a thousand valuable books spanning three centuries of noted Jewish authorship which it had obtained after WWII.
The London-based European Commission on Looted Art (ECLA) has described “orphaned” works as having no prior ownership history. If we adapt that line of thought liberally and argue that any cultural object is an “orphan” whose previous ownership history is non-existent, the vast majority of cultural objects currently sitting in cultural institutions worldwide or being offered for sale by auction houses across the globe should be dubbed as “orphans” in want of their “parents” due to the sheer absence of a provenance that describes their history. Surely, we cannot accuse the art world of being so cruel and insensitive, can we?
Incidentally, and this might be completely irrelevant, the US Senate considered a bill in 2008 referred to as the “Orphan Art Bill” which would regulate how copyrighted images can be used whose owners cannot be located. A law addressing similar issues was passed in the United Kingdom in 2013. Without getting in too deep into a legal swamp, users of copyrighted orphan works would not be penalized in their use and reuse of such images as long as they had been diligent in seeking out the purported owners of the images. However, the US Copyright office noted recently that “the ownership status of orphan works does not serve the objectives of the copyright system. For good faith users, orphan works are a frustration, a liability risk, and a major cause of gridlock in the digital marketplace.”
Can the same reasoning be applied to cultural objects “orphaned” as a result of genocidal policies? Should we view cultural “orphans” as a liability risk? Not if we accept the Ferencz verdict of clear title to these objects.
And yet…
If we do generously apply that reasoning to cultural assets “orphaned” as a result of the violence that cost the lives of six million individuals of Jewish descent, we would have to question the level of diligence exerted by new “owners” (according to Ferencz) of “orphaned” cultural assets. In most cases, such diligence has not even been a consideration simply because the reigning assumption amongst the new “foster parents” was that the rightful owners had perished and not left any relatives who could become the new “parents” of these “orphaned” assets.
These poor “orphans” are routinely sold and resold through bookstores, antique shops, galleries, auction houses, Jewish and not, thus bouncing from one “loving foster parent” to another. If Rabbi Heller’s analogy holds, the treatment of these “orphans” constitutes systemic abuse and grievous neglect under the guise of providing a “good home” to those “waifs”.
Let’s face it, no systematic effort has been made in the past 80 years to find the “parents.”
You do know that objects are not people, something that, ironically, officials of Holocaust memorial institutions and even Jewish groups explain when they justify why they do not focus on cultural claims or include acts of plunder and misappropriation in their exhibits and educational programs. Isn’t it twisted irony that those responsible for the relocation and redistribution of “orphaned” objects grounded their arguments in anthropomorphic language to emphasize the humanitarian and profoundly sensitive motivations underlying their mission—to find new homes for the cultural wreckage of the Holocaust? Little did we know that these metaphors eliminated any possibility of viewing restitution as a viable solution to the fate of our “waifs”.
Historian Lisa Leff pointed out in her recent book, “The Archive Thief,” how, in the late 1940s, the leadership of the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction (JCR) compared identifiable books recovered in former Nazi-held territories in the aftermath of WWII to “kidnapped children.” According to Rabbi Bernard Heller, the “theoretical” restitution” of these “kidnapped children” would be akin to reuniting them with their “overjoyed parents”. For those cultural assets that could not be matched with an identifiable owner, these “stunned waifs” would be placed in “foster homes” run by “loving foster parents.” As it turns out, these “abductees” ended up in a complex network of “foster homes” happy as pie to become the new “[foster] parents.” These new “homes” consist of museums, libraries, and other cultural institutions, State-controlled and/or private, Jewish and non-Jewish around the world.
The JCR was tasked with redistributing among Jewish communities worldwide (mostly in the United States, Europe and Palestine/Israel) those cultural objects bearing no obvious markings that might tie them to an owner. In their zeal, even objects that could have been reunited with rightful owners were treated as “waifs.”
Decades later, European governments explained how they treated Jewish-owned assets in the post-Holocaust world and if they had made any effort to return them or make them available to their owners or next of kin. For example, the Swedish authorities issued a report in 1997 on “orphaned” assets located in Swedish financial and other institutions. To them “orphaned” meant that assets had remained “unclaimed” for decades following the end of the Holocaust. In Greece, “orphaned” property was transferred to an organization responsible for aiding needy survivors, most likely with the proceeds from liquidating such “orphaned” assets. The same scenario also unfolded in countries like Austria and France with greater or lesser success.
In 2008, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem staged an exhibit called “Orphaned Art: Looted Art from the Holocaust at the Israel Museum.” More than 1200 “orphaned” items are catalogued at the Israel Museum. The Jewish Restitution Successor Organization (JRSO) was the main collector of these cultural “orphans”. It operated in post-WWII Germany and Austria to locate, identify and disperse objects tagged as Jewish-owned, mostly without an identifiable owner to whom to return the found objects. The JCR was its redistribution arm.
Marilyn Henry, who wrote a regular column for the Jerusalem Post before her untimely death in 2011, argued that these “orphans” should be transferred to European Jewish cultural institutions since they came from European nations subjected to Nazi rule and terror. She mentioned how Benjamin Ferencz, the noted former chief prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal of Nuremberg, described recipients of “orphaned” assets as their new owners, rather than their trustees or custodians.
In other words, the new “parents” held clear title to these cultural “orphans.” Ferencz’s comment could be interpreted as a clear rebuke to any attempt by claimants, relatives of the unfortunate “parents”, to obtain restitution of these “objects”, in other words, reuniting them with their “families.”
Throughout the post-1945 era, museums, libraries and other cultural institutions have been transformed into massive “foster” homes for “orphaned” objects. In line with Ferencz’s comment, one can understand more clearly how Jewish museums around the world have been reluctant, remiss and even hostile to the idea of restituting any of the “orphans” that they lovingly curate and nurture as “foster parents.” Even the US Library of Congress played dumb in the late 1990s when faced with the evidence that they held at least a thousand valuable books spanning three centuries of noted Jewish authorship which it had obtained after WWII.
The London-based European Commission on Looted Art (ECLA) has described “orphaned” works as having no prior ownership history. If we adapt that line of thought liberally and argue that any cultural object is an “orphan” whose previous ownership history is non-existent, the vast majority of cultural objects currently sitting in cultural institutions worldwide or being offered for sale by auction houses across the globe should be dubbed as “orphans” in want of their “parents” due to the sheer absence of a provenance that describes their history. Surely, we cannot accuse the art world of being so cruel and insensitive, can we?
Incidentally, and this might be completely irrelevant, the US Senate considered a bill in 2008 referred to as the “Orphan Art Bill” which would regulate how copyrighted images can be used whose owners cannot be located. A law addressing similar issues was passed in the United Kingdom in 2013. Without getting in too deep into a legal swamp, users of copyrighted orphan works would not be penalized in their use and reuse of such images as long as they had been diligent in seeking out the purported owners of the images. However, the US Copyright office noted recently that “the ownership status of orphan works does not serve the objectives of the copyright system. For good faith users, orphan works are a frustration, a liability risk, and a major cause of gridlock in the digital marketplace.”
Can the same reasoning be applied to cultural objects “orphaned” as a result of genocidal policies? Should we view cultural “orphans” as a liability risk? Not if we accept the Ferencz verdict of clear title to these objects.
And yet…
If we do generously apply that reasoning to cultural assets “orphaned” as a result of the violence that cost the lives of six million individuals of Jewish descent, we would have to question the level of diligence exerted by new “owners” (according to Ferencz) of “orphaned” cultural assets. In most cases, such diligence has not even been a consideration simply because the reigning assumption amongst the new “foster parents” was that the rightful owners had perished and not left any relatives who could become the new “parents” of these “orphaned” assets.
These poor “orphans” are routinely sold and resold through bookstores, antique shops, galleries, auction houses, Jewish and not, thus bouncing from one “loving foster parent” to another. If Rabbi Heller’s analogy holds, the treatment of these “orphans” constitutes systemic abuse and grievous neglect under the guise of providing a “good home” to those “waifs”.
Let’s face it, no systematic effort has been made in the past 80 years to find the “parents.”
You do know that objects are not people, something that, ironically, officials of Holocaust memorial institutions and even Jewish groups explain when they justify why they do not focus on cultural claims or include acts of plunder and misappropriation in their exhibits and educational programs. Isn’t it twisted irony that those responsible for the relocation and redistribution of “orphaned” objects grounded their arguments in anthropomorphic language to emphasize the humanitarian and profoundly sensitive motivations underlying their mission—to find new homes for the cultural wreckage of the Holocaust? Little did we know that these metaphors eliminated any possibility of viewing restitution as a viable solution to the fate of our “waifs”.
11 April 2015
Russian olive branch to Greece in the form of an icon
by Marc Masurovsky
On April 9, 2015, Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, delivered the equivalent of an olive branch to Alexis Tsiras, newly-elected premier of Greece. Mr. Tsiras has the ingrate task of extricating Greece from a near-fatal case of economic catastrophe. On the occasion of his first State visit to Moscow, Mr. Tsiras received an icon representing “St Nicholas the Miracle Maker and St. Spyridon” as a gift from Mr. Putin. This was no regular icon. It had been plundered during the German occupation of Greece between 1941 and 1945. Somehow, an unnamed Russian businessman acquired it from the descendants of the German officer who had stolen the item. The icon ended up in Putin’s hands and was turned over to the Greek government as a gesture of good will towards Greece and as an act of repatriation of looted cultural property from WWII.
This is how the story has been reported in about 90 per cent of international media outlets.
Naturally, as any inquisitive child would wonder, some questions are worth asking:
1/ who was the German officer in question?
2/ what happened to him?
Only one article mentioned the name and position of the German officer responsible for the theft of the icon. Other articles did indicate that this German officer was tried and executed by the postwar Greek government, in the middle of Greece’s Civil War (1944-1949). Most articles simply passed over these details, instead they focused their attention on the gift of the stolen icon to Greece and the circumstances of Mr. Tsiras' meetings with Mr. Putin.
The German officer’s name is Friedrich Wilhelm Müller. He spent his entire adult career in the Wehrmacht. During WWII, General Müller became deeply enmeshed in the repression and suppression of a number of villages on the Island of Crete between 1942 and 1944. These massacres earned Müller the title of “butcher of Crete.” He was later transferred to the Eastern Front and was captured by Soviet Forces in East Prussia. Handed over to the Greeks, he was tried and convicted of war crimes. Müller was executed by firing squad in May 1947. He was 49 years old.
On April 9, 2015, Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, delivered the equivalent of an olive branch to Alexis Tsiras, newly-elected premier of Greece. Mr. Tsiras has the ingrate task of extricating Greece from a near-fatal case of economic catastrophe. On the occasion of his first State visit to Moscow, Mr. Tsiras received an icon representing “St Nicholas the Miracle Maker and St. Spyridon” as a gift from Mr. Putin. This was no regular icon. It had been plundered during the German occupation of Greece between 1941 and 1945. Somehow, an unnamed Russian businessman acquired it from the descendants of the German officer who had stolen the item. The icon ended up in Putin’s hands and was turned over to the Greek government as a gesture of good will towards Greece and as an act of repatriation of looted cultural property from WWII.
 |
| Tsiras (left) with Putin (right) |
Naturally, as any inquisitive child would wonder, some questions are worth asking:
1/ who was the German officer in question?
2/ what happened to him?
Only one article mentioned the name and position of the German officer responsible for the theft of the icon. Other articles did indicate that this German officer was tried and executed by the postwar Greek government, in the middle of Greece’s Civil War (1944-1949). Most articles simply passed over these details, instead they focused their attention on the gift of the stolen icon to Greece and the circumstances of Mr. Tsiras' meetings with Mr. Putin.
The German officer’s name is Friedrich Wilhelm Müller. He spent his entire adult career in the Wehrmacht. During WWII, General Müller became deeply enmeshed in the repression and suppression of a number of villages on the Island of Crete between 1942 and 1944. These massacres earned Müller the title of “butcher of Crete.” He was later transferred to the Eastern Front and was captured by Soviet Forces in East Prussia. Handed over to the Greeks, he was tried and convicted of war crimes. Müller was executed by firing squad in May 1947. He was 49 years old.
The Russian news site “news.rin” reported that Müller stole the icon from the Monastery of Sparta.
Additional questions have no apparent answers right now but should be given extra weight:
3/ how did the Russian businessman find the descendants?
4/ why did the Russian businessman turn over the icon to the Russian government?
5/ what does this gesture towards Greece signify in terms of Russia’s overall stance on repatriation and restitution of looted cultural property on its territory, including the Jewish books from Thessaloniki, which might not have been discussed during Mr. Tsiras’ visit to the Kremlin?
6/ Is this a signal of greater empathy towards Greece, leading to other returns of cultural property?
 |
| A monastery in Sparta |
3/ how did the Russian businessman find the descendants?
4/ why did the Russian businessman turn over the icon to the Russian government?
5/ what does this gesture towards Greece signify in terms of Russia’s overall stance on repatriation and restitution of looted cultural property on its territory, including the Jewish books from Thessaloniki, which might not have been discussed during Mr. Tsiras’ visit to the Kremlin?
6/ Is this a signal of greater empathy towards Greece, leading to other returns of cultural property?
 |
| An image of St. Spyridon |
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