Research from the bedroom

by Marc Masurovsky

Prerequisites:

Internet connection within reach.
Sufficient battery time in your laptop to last at least 3 hours.
And some tea…or coffee.

Nowadays, if you want to launch into a research project involving the history of art objects, known as “provenance research,” you can get do so without having to get up, except to make yourself a cup of tea or for most of you out there, a cup of java.

Let’s get started….

I have to assume that you have not registered for any paying online database like the premium version of MutualArt, artnet, artprice, etc…which we will not discuss today.

You will only rely on freely accessible databases. No questions asked…Your focus will be on Nazi-era cultural losses. That means the start date is January 30, 1933, Hitler’s rise to power. Not September 1, 1939, not March 10, 1938, not the fall of 1935. January 30, 1933.

The databases that are mentioned in this article are by no means the only ones in existence. They are some of the more important tools at our disposal to engage in critical historical and forensic research into the history of art objects that crossed through the grinder of the Third Reich, the Holocaust and the Second World War, combined.

These databases are all works in progress due to the mountains of information that exist which must be reconciled before being entered and made available to the public at large.

The obvious places to consult are:

1/ the database of the Koordinierungsstelle Magdeburg, which is under the aegis of the German Ministry of Culture and which has been recently absorbed into a reorganized “German Lost Art Foundation. The objects listed in the database were, for the most part, “lost” within the borders of Germany between 1933 and 1945, either through forced sales or outright confiscations and aryanization measures. The information can be very sparse or rather well fleshed out. Whenever an object’s claimant has retained a lawyer, you will find the name of the law firm that represents the interests of that claimant on the bottom of the dataset that you are exploring. Sometimes, there are intriguing details that make you wonder whether the object has ever been restituted.

Clicks: four clicks away from retrieving individual datasets.

2/ The ERR/Jeu de Paume database (formal title: Database of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paume) documents cultural losses, mostly in German-occupied France, but also contains objects taken in Belgium and the Netherlands. The period covered by the database is 1940-1945. No need to search in this database for objects misappropriated in Germany or Austria. The database provides as much information about the object from time and place of confiscation to the postwar if at all possible, based on archival records in the US, France, and Germany. You can get the total number of datasets fairly quickly by clicking on “search” without filling out any field in the “advanced search” function of the ERR database. As of 15 February 2016, there are 28849 datasets representing about 30,000 objects.

Clicks: three clicks away from retrieving individual datasets.

3/ Object database of the European Commission for Looted Art (ECLA)

The datasets cover losses throughout Axis-controlled Europe. There are overlaps between this database, lostart.de and the ERR database. There are substantial data on Hungarian Jewish losses. The provenance information can be skimpy.

Clicks: three clicks away from retrieving individual datasets.

4/  “Entartete Kunst” database at the Free University of Berlin

This database focuses exclusively on works of art which were de-accessioned and confiscated in Nazi Germany for being “degenerate”, thematically objectionable or the artists producing these works being undesirable for a host of reasons defined by the Nazi authorities. The provenance information can be skimpy on many of the objects, but, as with all databases, it’s best to have the objects on display.

Clicks: three clicks away from retrieving individual datasets.

5/ Getty Provenance Index

This art historical database, emphasis on art historical, is hosted by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, CA. It provides a different point of entry into the search for and identification of misappropriated objects throughout the duration of the Third Reich. Sales information from German catalogues can provide critical information to show one of the many paths borrowed by looted objects.

Clicks: four or five depending on how you enter into the Getty Research Institute.

This link gives you access to the Getty Provenance Index Databases.

5/ RKD website of the Rijksbureau v. Kunsthistorische Documentatie

Clearly one of my favorite websites, which specializes on Dutch artists. The search process takes you through artists, and their works. The information supplied on each work can provide a gold mine of information about the history of art objects. This website is invaluable.

Clicks: three if you start from the main site.

6/ Musées nationaux récupération database of unclaimed objects listed as being in French museums.

This is a hybrid website with an index of objects, known as MNR, and is hosted by the French Ministry of Culture. Searches can be deceptive and all-inclusive, meaning that you might collect information about objects that are not directly connected to your search. But, it’s a minor inconvenience. The historical information about each MNR object is quite detailed. One advantage with the MNR site is that you can correlate objects with dealers’ names, like Fabiani or Gurlitt. From that standpoint alone, the search can be instructive.  It's best to use the MNR database with the ERR database (above) and the MCCP database (below).

Clicks: at least two depending on how you start.

7/The Division for Looted Art of the Polish Ministry of Culture

This site provides you a digital version of objects by type which disappeared from Poland after the German Army overran its territory in September 1939. Losses are mostly from public collections but also include registered losses from some of Poland’s best known aristocratic families whose estates were thoroughly plundered.

8/ the Munich Central Collecting Point database is a digital representation of the index cards that the American personnel from the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives (MFA&A) section of the US Occupation Military Government in Germany (OMGUS) compiled to document the entry and exit of looted objects that fell into the hands of American troops in the closing months of WWII.

From the main website of the German Historical Museum which hosts this database, it requires at least four clicks to gain access to the main page of the MCCP database. From there, you can maneuver by artist, type of work, title, and owner or thief, depending on what kind of information you have. You will need to use variant spellings because there are many misspellings in this database. However, it is an important tool for research because of the information contained on the cards which complements what you can find in other databases. Oftentimes, as in the case of paintings, markings from the backs of the paintings will be indicated on the MCCP index cards. Therefore, you will need to click on the cards themselves and read the information extracted from the backs because sometimes it has been badly transcribed in the database.

Well, that’s it for today.

These eight databases, when combined, will provide you with information about cultural losses in Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland,  as well as a smattering from Austria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia.

By checking these sites, you are exercising multi-source due diligence. A detailed consultation of these online databases can sharpen your research strategy for an actual visit to a physical archive and/or an art historical library with documents that you have to consult, yes, the kind that you touch with your fingers and that are made out of paper or the microfilms and microfiche which hold photographic images of the documents that you need.

The database checking process is not lengthy, although it can be addictive. So beware.

The very existence of these databases makes it more difficult to argue that “you did not know” that an object in your care or that you wish to purchase or exhibit had a complicated history mired in theft and genocide where the victimized owner was never reunited with her property. That’s when all the trouble begins.

Thorough research drives restitution of looted art and yet….

by Marc Masurovsky

It is absolutely fair and just to ask why, in the past two decades, there have been no systematic efforts deployed to make funds available to advance research on missing art collections and other aspects of the cultural plunder that was visited upon civilians, Jewish and other, between 1933 and 1945. Some of those funds could have come from the sales of multi-million dollar works that had been restituted in past years. A conservative estimate puts at nearly 600 million dollars the total value of paintings restituted to claimants, mostly in North America, a large part of those works having come from losses suffered by members of the Austrian Jewish community, including works signed by Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, darlings of the over-hyped global art market.

It is true that there have been no publicized indications that historical research played a critical role in documenting the fate of the looted cultural objects that were restituted to claimants since the 1990s. And yet, good research produces good outcomes, an admission made even by the legal counsel to the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD). Perhaps lawyers are to be faulted for that state of affairs. Hard to tell. It is not so much their clever swordsmanship that has enabled the return of claimed works but the meticulous documentary trail that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that looted art works did belong to their clients at the time of their confiscation and ensuing misappropriation and that they had been illegally removed from their hands for reasons having nothing to do with their legal ownership of the works, but because of their belonging to a culture reviled by their persecutors.

Nevertheless, people are what they are and we should be thankful that the claimed objects have been returned to the rightful owners who are free to do what they bloody want with them.

As for the chronic absence of funding for research that could shed more light on the murky and dark corners of economic collaboration during the Nazi years, the unsavory role played by art dealers, collectors, museum officials, their friends in government, industry and finance, and many others, it will take brave, courageous, and selfless souls to open their checkbooks and fund such research efforts.

Ideas about establishing foundations, consortia, research-driven higher education programs, and public-private partnerships could fill volumes of idle chatter. Idle because they have led nowhere. Truth be told, where there’s a will, there usually is a way. And, in the case of historical research on cultural plunder during the Nazi era, the will does not rise beyond the threshold of cocktail discussions and “bons mots” exchanged during international conferences on Nazi looted art.

At present, institutional self-serving indifference and opportunism prevail among governments on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and cloud any reasonable discussion on how to fund historical research into cultural plunder during the Nazi years and the impact of the destruction of Jewish cultural assets on the postwar world. Those who bear the brunt of this state of affairs are the diplomats and politicians who have mastered the rhetoric of restitution only to suppress any effort to fund research.

The exceptions: groups like the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany and the Commission for Art Recovery are members of a rarefied club that have supported such research. The Claims Conference has supported for 10 years now the building and maintenance of the Jeu de Paume database of art objects looted in German-occupied France and the Commission for Art Recovery has fueled research efforts in part to assist in its international art recovery litigations. In a minor way, proprietary databases like the Art Loss Register and both leading auction houses, Christie's and Sotheby's, provided small but symbolic sums of money to jump-start such research in the late 1990s.

On a more hopeful note:

Recent progress in the understanding of cultural plunder in the past two decades must be acknowledged, although the work of many historians, researchers and scholars has not been translated into languages which could help reach a wider audience. Hence their findings are reaching a limited audience, namely in the German-speaking world and other linguistic micro-communities:

the Zentral Institut für Kunstgeschichte (ZIKG) in Munich, whose researchers are making a clear imprint on our understanding of the mechanisms of plunder in Nazi Germany and beyond,

the French Ministry of Culture on the works stuck in the purgatory of the Musées Nationaux Récupération (MNR), the CIVS and the Institut National de l'Histoire de l'Art (INHA) in Paris*,

the Dutch Restitution Committee which has amassed significant historical research to drive its decisions, regardless of how one agrees or disagrees with them*,

a research cell in Brussels focusing on M-Aktion staffed by an interdisciplinary trio of young scholars,

the Commission for Provenance Research in Vienna*

efforts conducted by British museums a decade ago which remain one of the best examples of how museums should publicize the results of their findings on individual objects,

a growing group of individual scholars and researchers who have made important contributions to the emerging field of cultural plunder. These scholars can be found in the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Portugal, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, the Ukraine, the Russian Federation, Greece, Finland, Israel, the United States and Canada.

This disparate international cacophony of research must be coordinated and given a cohesiveness to become truly useful for the generations to come. International symposia are not a panacea nor are a solution. International research centers must be established to coordinate such research, archives focused on plunder and its aftermath must be created to centralize key documents from a plethora of archival repositories found in dozens of countries, and graduate programs should be designed and offered to focus in an interdisciplinary framework on the complex question of plunder and its implications for civil society during and after the Nazi era.

* Last but not least, the five standing commissions on restitution--United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria--should adopt more "transparent" practices relative to the historical research that they use to reach their decisions--for or against the claimants--and make such research publicly accessible to benefit international scholarship.

Work in progress….

Ce que j'aurais voulu dire aujourd'hui mais n'en ai pas la force

Plaque Rose VALLAND
Source: MNR

Le crime contre l’humanité est imprescriptible. Le pillage qui l’accompagne est également imprescriptible. Et c’est peut-être pour cela que les gouvernements de tous les pays concernés directement ou indirectement par la deuxième guerre mondiale et la Shoah ont vite fait de passer des lois visant à exonérer un maximum de personnes, de parties tierces. Une épuration en bonne et due forme du marché de l’art a ainsi été évitée de justesse, au grand dam des victimes. Au fond, ces lois sont immorales et constituent un outrage à la société civile. La realpolitik de l’après-1945 exigeait que les crimes d’hier soient ensevelis et oubliés au nom de l’unité de la nation. Comment peut-on unifier une nation sur les cadavres de ses propres victimes ? Là, vous avez demandé l’impossible, en demandant à la victime d’accepter son tortionnaire, le brigand qui l’a dépouillé de ses biens et l’opportuniste qui a fait fortune en les recyclant. Comme on dit en anglais, « nothing personal. It’s only business. » Dans quel monde vivons-nous donc, un monde qui encourage ces compromis, ce déni du passé, quitte à l’effacer, le réécrire pour produire une version plus douce de l’Histoire. Une version douce du génocide, une version douce du pillage et de la spoliation. Nous vous spolions avec tous nos remerciements, merci d’avance. Veuillez donc vous adresser au bureau un tel si vous avez des questions concernant le prélèvement de vos biens, occasionnés par votre malencontreux statut de juif.

Désolé, c’est la loi. On ne peut rien y faire.

Par contre, vos tableaux, votre mobilier, vos objets d’art sont d’une singulière qualitè qui intéressera sans aucun doute l’administration de nos musées. En cela, vous aidez à enrichir le patrimoine culturel de l’Etat. Soyez-en fiers, relevez donc la tête. Vous n’êtes pas une victime. Ces biens appartiennent à l’Etat dont nous sommes les garants.

Ce discours, quoiqu’hypothétique, reflète un aspect de la réalité historique : l’Etat s’arroge le droit de ne rien rendre au propriétaire lésé, surtout si l’objet spolié en lui-même plaît aux représentants culturels de l’Etat, ceux qui font les choix pour les collections.

Mais cela ne nous empêche pas de dire la vérité et d’exposer au grand jour la réalité des crimes commis contre ceux qui ne sont pas ici pour articuler leurs griefs.

C’est vrai que l’homme est cruel, que nous pouvons être cruels les uns envers les autres. L’Etat se rend cruel envers les spoliés en faisant montre d’indifférence et même d’hostilité à leur égard, et pourquoi ? parce qu’ils ont l’audace de réclamer leur bien qui languit dans ses réserves, ou pire encore, qui décore les murs de ses salles d’exposition ?

C’est de cela qu’il s’agit ici, le reste n’est qu’une farce. Pourquoi sommes-nous ici en train de débattre ce qui aurait dū être fait il y a des décennies ? pourquoi ces MNR ? la question aurait dû être réglée dans les années cinquante. Si vous les aviez tous vendus, il s’agirait d’une autre discussion. Mais non, ils vous plaisaient trop, ces tableaux, ces dessins, ces aquarelles, ces charmantes tasses, ces ivoires, ces pendants de luxe. Il fallait absolument que l’Etat les « protège » si possible ad perpetuitam. Espérons que personne ne vienne les réclamer, sinon on risque de les perdre. Donc, nous sommes ici parce que nos ancêtres en 1945 ont succombé au vice de l’avarice ? l’idée de posséder ce qui ne vous appartient pas vous donne tant de plaisir, tant de pouvoir ? En ce sens, la France ne fait pas un cas d’exception car tous les pays ont le même comportement, surtout ceux-là où l’Etat joue un rôle culturel important comme gérant et propriétaire d’œuvres et d’objets d’art et de biens culturels pour la Nation. Aux Etats-Unis, ce sont les musées privés qui jouent le rôle de Dieu comme garants et propriétaires de la Culture avec un K.

Je suis ici pour voir si vous êtes courageux. Si vous avez le courage de tourner la page et d’adopter un comportement plus éthique concernant la destinée des objets qui ne vous appartiennent pas mais qui demeurent toujours dans vos collections, et ce depuis plus de 70 ans. Avez-vous le for intérieur pour mettre fin à ce qui constitue en fait un deuxième larcin ? Vous savez bien que nous sommes sur cette terre pour un bref moment, et qu’à notre mort, il incombera à la génération suivante de vous poser les mêmes questions et de vous rappeler que vous êtes complice d’un crime contre l’humanité lorsque vous vous obstinez à ne pas restituer les objets qui sont dans vos sous-sols, vos entrepots, vos salles d’exposition, vos bureaux, vos chateaux et demeures, et qui ne vous appartiennent pas. Justice sera rendue lorsque vous accomplirez cette mission. Entretemps, mes enfants et mes petits-enfants viendront vous rappeler gentiment de vos responsabilités.

Time for a reckoning with the Cornelius/Hildebrand Gurlitt saga—Part One

Gurlitt
Source: the week.co.uk

Now that we are barely three weeks into 2014, the unfolding of the Gurlitt saga has turned into an international circus, one part media, one part international organizations, one part German government and one part other governments.

Where are we today, exactly?

Research:

Due to continued opacity on the part of the German government and the Gurlitt Task Force which is just as opaque, there is NO information whatsoever on how much research has been done to date on the 1400 or more items in the Cornelius Gurlitt collection. All we know is what is published on the lostart.de website, overseen by the Koordinierungsstelle Magdeburg. Truly impressive photos taken of the front and back of each object that the Gurlitt Task Force is willing to release to the general public for its viewing pleasure.

The people recruited to sit on the distinguished Gurlitt Task Force do not appear to be doing research. And even if they were, we would not know about it. That is the classic definition of opacity and the administrative definition of “classified information.” In other words, a gag order binds all members of the task force to secrecy. Can’t blame them, after all. All of those items in the Gurlitt collection are State secrets, right

If the Gurlitt Task Force is not responsible for actually conducting research, WHO IS? Where are the funds coming from to conduct such research? Is there enough money to undertake thorough research that might entail travel to different cities, extended stays in archival repositories, or to put it in professional terms, budget for significant billable time? Speaking of budgets, is there a budget to address that particular aspect of the research effort?

If there is an intention to research each and every item systematically, does that mean that no item from the Gurlitt collection will be released before such research is concluded? From what we gather, it does not really matter what the Gurlitt Task Force think or does, since the fate of the Cornelius Gurlitt collection remains in the hands of the prosecutor in Augsburg, Germany. So, what are we dealing with here? A public relations stunt?

Due to the sheer opacity that cloaks the Gurlitt Task Force, no one in their right mind should trust any statement coming from the German government and from any member of the Task Force on this and related matters because, much like NSA officials and other individuals working for organizations cloaked in secrecy, they are not paid to tell the truth, only what they are authorized to disclose, which is a shambles of a reflection of the truth. We should wonder what the truth is these days…

International representation on the Gurlitt Task Force:

As of now, Israel has three representatives:

Project HEART,

Shlomit Steinberg, Curator, Israel Museum, Jerusalem

Shlomit Steinberg
Source: Google

Yehudit Shendar, Deputy Director and Senior Art Curator,Yad Vashem.

Yehudit Shendar
Source: Google

Other groups represented include:

Agnes Peresztegi
Source: Google

the Commission for Art Recovery represented by Agnes Peresztegi, its Director of European affairs,

and the Claims Conference, represented by Ruediger Mahlo, director of its Frankfurt office.

Ruediger Mahlo
Source: Google

The only provenance researcher on the Task Force whose name has been made public is Sophie Lillie, who is based in Vienna, Austria, and a specialist in researching acts of cultural plunder in Nazi-occupied Austria.

Sophie Lille
Source: Google

Where are the representatives of countries which hosted visits by Hildebrand Gurlitt and where he indulged himself in shopping sprees worth tens of millions of Reichsmarks? Or have those countries forgotten that they were actually victimized by the National Socialist government of Adolf Hitler, his Wehrmacht, his SS, his Gestapo, and all other relevant emanations of the Third Reich specifically geared to oppress, suppress, arrest, confine, deport, exterminate, retaliate, steal, plunder, requisition and do all sorts of other things that ideological conquerors do when wishing to establish a New Order by force?

France and Holland?

Maybe the Dutch could take a pass on this one, but the French, well, the French cannot afford to take a pass on the Gurlitt Task Force. That’s tantamount to saying: we do not need to repatriate any additional works of art that were removed from French territory to the years of German occupation from June 1940 to August 1944. According to the international agreements of the time, that is, those enforced at least through the immediate post-1945 years, France and any other country occupied by the Nazis could repatriate any object that could be proven to have been removed from its territory by the German authorities. If that is the case, the French government should abolish the MNR category and return all items to those from whom they were either acquired or stolen. Why not? Or this is a flippant remark?

Could it be that France’s culture minister, Aurélie Filippetti, will make some kind of announcement about the Gurlitt Task Force at a January 30, 2014, symposium on the state of art restitution in France,organized by “Green” Senator Corinne Bouchoux?

Aurelie Filipetti
Source: Google

Aurelie Filippetti, French Culture Minister

Hildebrand Gurlitt paid regular visits to German-occupied France within months of the arrival of German troops on parade along the Champs-Elysées. He consorted with dozens of art dealers who were only too willing to sell their paintings, works on paper, furniture and other cultural objects to covetous agents of German museums, institutes, galleries, agencies, dealers and collectors. Many of those sellers in happy Paris were also recycling art looted from countless Jews who had fled the capital so as to avoid capture, internment, and deportation. Most did, some could not, and the fates were sealed. Is that important to the Gurlitt Task Force? Or does it consider that there is no blood soaking the art that the son of Hildebrand Gurlitt possesses?

Hildebrand Gurlitt
Source: Google

We do know that an invitation was issued to France for it to send at least one representative to the Gurlitt Task Force. But, as of now, France has not replied. Will it ever? Or is it too concerned about President Hollande’s growing harem? Or maybe the French government does not really care about what its own citizens did between June 1940 and August 1944 to a quarter million Jews and as many, if not more, men, women, and in some cases children who expressed their discontent with Vichy and the German occupation force? In the current atmosphere that plagues French citizens, the antisemitic, racist, and immigrant-hating National Front is expanding its reach amidst a disenchanted electorate, a not insignificant segment of France’s revered intellectual class shows its increasingly corrupt ways and cannot even think straight about what its recent history means for today and tomorrow, preferring to muddy the waters of antisemitism. We are not too surprised, therefore, if the current mood among French museum officials and government bureaucrats and cabinet members is simply to forget Vichy and to pretend that it is now just another “incident de parcours.” By the way, those very same French museum officials are not too happy with anyone asking questions about the provenance of many items in their collections that they hold sacred, as indelible pieces of the French cultural geist, organic components of the “patrimoine culturel de la nation.” An irrevocably untouchable part of France’s hallowed treasures.

Poor France! How easy it is to flush the truth down the proverbial toilet of selective amnesia!

Hildebrand Gurlitt was a major presence on the Paris art market, regardless of what one reads in historical monographs about Nazi art looting. That is the objective truth and the objective reality, however one wishes to measure it. One art dealer in Paris had a special room set aside where paintings were stored for Mr. Gurlitt to pick up, pay for, and have shipped to Germany. Mr. Gurlitt had regular customers throughout the Left Bank and the Right Bank—in those days, it did not matter where you shopped as long as there was someone willing to sell to you. Mr. Gurlitt is mentioned fairly regularly in postwar testimonials provided by Goering’s people like Walther Andreas Hofer, Gustav Rochlitz and others. Mr. Gurlitt was a significant player in the Nazi art trade. Period. Since the historical evidence is overwhelmingly compelling in this regard, why is no one doing anything to explain to the general public the true extent of Hildebrand Gurlitt’s reach into the fruits of Nazi plunder, starting from the purging of German State Collections, the hundreds of forced sales that brought to Mr. Gurlitt and his ilk truly fascinating and collectible works by German Expressionists, those “degenerates” so lovingly purged by Goebbels, himself a secret admirer of Expressionists, and his henchmen.

If one had to summarize Hildebrand Gurlitt, he was one of many dealers and eminent members of the German museum and gallery world who profited from the Nazi hypocrisy regarding modern art and the Nazi hierarchy’s lust for cultural assets that did not belong to it. More importantly, Hildebrand Gurlitt is the quintessential member of the cultural establishment in Axis-occupied Europe and the poster child for a postwar successful career in the arts and culture, both in Germany, but also in other parts of Europe and even in the United States and Latin America. How quickly everyone forgets especially when “Europe’s cultural treasures” are involved!

Hildebrand Gurlitt’s pedigree as a former museum director, gallery owner, and internationally known dealer, collector, and art specialist, made him nearly untouchable by the time Allied troops entered into Germany in spring of 1945 and liberated it from those Nazi scoundrels. Indeed, in the eyes of American conservative officials at the Departments of State and War, in the upper reaches of the American military, especially in the central office of the Occupied Military Government United States (OMGUS), he represented the future of a redeemed Germany, despite the fact that his best friends were all Nazi collaborators. He had Jewish blood, did he? So he said. God, that sounds vaguely “Aryan” in its resonance. A bit like other Nazis who had “Jewish friends” whom they protected and shielded from an inevitable fate. A cynical calculation to look like saints in an ocean of sinners…

Gurlitt, center, at the Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf, Germany, 1949, completely rehabilitated by the Americans
Source: Google

Why does having a Jewish relative make you a saint or someone unlikely to do “bad things”? As Theodore Heinrich, the former director of the Wiesbaden Collecting Point and “Monuments Man extraordinaire”, argued when asked about how he vetted “bad” Germans from “good” Germans, if a German art official was not a member of the Nazi Party and had a Jewish relative in the family, he had to be acceptable. No questions asked, please. Otherwise, you’ll insult the poor man, he’s suffered enough, hasn’t he? In the name of Kultur!!!

That’s how easy it was to get a clearance with the American cultural advisory group known as “Monuments Men.”

Let’s not get lost here.

Nickolsburg Castle
Source: Wikipedia

As the French so lovingly say it, Hildebrand Gurlitt refashioned himself a whole new virginity—il s’est refait une virginité. Like a savvy marketing guy who knows his brand better than anyone else, he knew how to sell himself and to whom he should address himself, whose protection he should seek and… voila. Guess who fell for it? American and British art connoisseurs, those heroes who waltzed into cities and towns ravaged by twelve years of racially-motivated dictatorial follies, many of them almost razed to ground level. From the cultural side, many museums barely kept their walls standing, those very museums that the American and British art connoisseurs were tasked to put back together, reopen and restock with “Europe’s cultural treasures.” Most of those treasures were safe and sound deep inside mine shafts and in the cellars of countless castles that were not bombed. Of course, there always are exceptions like that poor castle at Nikolsburg, in today’s Czech Republic. But again, it was an exception. German museums recovered most of their goodies, except for those that were stored in eastern portions of the Reich which Soviet troops overran.

Basically, unless you had blood on your hands and you gave the Nazi salute every five minutes, you were likely to get a job with the American cultural advisory group in the US zone of occupation in Germany … as an expert! Obviously you were an expert since you were directly involved in partaking in the recycling of loot all parts of the Reich for close to a decade! Priceless experience!! If I had been a Monuments Man, why, I would have hired folks like Hildebrand right there, on the spot!! Made my job a lot easier, believe me, and, best of all, he could point me to all of his other expert buddies so that we could ask them for their expert opinions. How much fun was that! Why waste time looking for a pedigreed anti-Nazi art specialist.

Stay tuned for Part Two…

or go see “The Monuments Men” for some serious entertainment. "Inglorious Bastards" revisited, as Clooney promises a rapt potential audience?

Un exemple atypique de restitution

by Thierry Bajou, Conservateur en chef du patrimoine, Service des musées de France, Ministère de la Culture et de la communication

[Editor's note: It is not every day that an official from the French Ministry of Culture, in this case Thierry Bajou, submits an essay to a blog on plundered art. This particular piece sheds some light on the work that he does on behalf of the French government which he serves with great distinction and devotion--identifying, locating, and, whenever possible, restituting looted works and objects of art to their rightful owners. We are finally able to present this article in its original version--our apologies to those of you who do not read French. It is somewhat lengthy but enlightening.]

Au début de l’année 2009, une personne habitant le centre de la France s’est présentée au commissariat de police de son quartier pour informer les autorités d’une situation peu banale. Celle que nous appellerons ici Jane Doe pour préserver son anonymat, venait de bénéficier d’un héritage comportant un ensemble de vingt-six œuvres d’art dont la tradition familiale rapportait qu’elles avaient été abandonnées à la fin de la guerre par des officiers allemands qui avaient pris logis au domicile de son grand-oncle et de sa grand-tante. Sans doute un peu perplexe face à des œuvres qu’on lui indiquait comme ayant été volées puis abandonnées, la police locale a saisi l’Office Central de Lutte contre le Trafic des Biens Culturels (OCBC) qui a lui-même contacté le ministère de la Culture et de la communication.

Jane Doe souhaitait se défaire de ces biens afin qu’« ils soient si possible restitués à leurs légitimes propriétaires » pour reprendre les termes qu’elle utilisait dans un mail qu’elle m’a adressé au Service des musées de France le 11 juillet 2010[1] ; elle y expliquait : « L'oncle et la tante de mon père, tous deux instituteurs […] ont hébergés pour une nuit, à la fin de la guerre, des soldats allemands qui rentraient chez eux. Pressés par le temps, semble-t-il, ils ont abandonné sur place ces tableaux, que l'oncle et la tante ont ensuite conservés pour je ne sais quelle raison (appât du gain?, difficultés de tous ordres à cette époque puis, ensuite, la crainte d'être accusés de recel ?). […] Quelques années avant sa mort, la tante, qui n'avait pas eu d'enfant, a confié ces œuvres à mon père en lui faisant promettre de ne pas les vendre de son vivant. Lui-même a adopté la même attitude et les a gardés jusqu'à son décès, survenu en août 2007 […] ».

On comprend l’embarras de cette famille qui a dû hésiter après guerre à mettre en avant le fait qu’elle avait hébergé des soldats allemands (mais il est douteux qu’elle ait eu le moindre choix) et de faire savoir qu’ils se retrouvaient en possession d’œuvres à la provenance présumée douteuse. Ils ont préféré le silence et, le temps aidant, l’aveu devenait de moins en moins possible…

Cet ensemble disparate d’œuvres de qualités très diverses, certaines étant même très médiocres portait des attributions volontiers fantaisistes ; il a donc fallu dans un premier temps les examiner afin de pouvoir tenter d’établir une connexion avec des œuvres spoliées.

Yver Adéle, Académies d'hommes nuns
Source: Google

A la lumière des seules informations disponibles sur leur provenance, il est difficile de déterminer si ces œuvres ont fait l’objet de véritables spoliations ou d’une simple rapine par les Allemands. La distinction peut paraître spécieuse mais, en droit français, la distinction n’est pourtant pas sans conséquence, puisque dans le premier cas ils seraient « restituables » au terme de l’ordonnance du 12 novembre 1943 portant « nullité des actes de spoliation accomplis par l'ennemi ou sous son contrôle »[2], tandis que dans l’autre, ils pourraient ne pas l’être, puisqu’il s’agirait d’une simple manœuvre délictueuse de droit commun, couverte aujourd’hui par la prescription en raison de l’ancienneté des faits…

Après vérification, il s’avère que six d’entre elles ont effectivement été spoliées et avaient été réclamées à la Commission de Récupération Artistique après guerre ; à ce titre, elles sont mentionnées dans le Répertoire des Biens Spoliés publié en 1947-1949[3]. Elles étaient réclamées avec d’autres œuvres par un monsieur Raymond Bollack [4] ainsi que l’a bien vu mon collègue Alain Prévet, des archives des musées nationaux.
 
Associer des œuvres à une personne spoliée est une chose ; identifier le ou les ayants droit actuels de cette personne en est une autre… Par un heureux hasard, nous avons eu la chance de faire ce lien. En effet, il se trouve qu’en date du 4 avril 2000, une personne avait écrit à la Direction des musées de France pour demander des informations concernant les œuvres citées par le Répertoire des Biens Spoliés et réclamées par un oncle maternel, Raymond Bollack[5]... Bien sûr, à cette époque, mes prédécesseurs n’avaient pas pu être en mesure d’apporter la moindre information à ce sujet. Dans son courrier, cette personne émettait des suppositions concernant la disparition des œuvres : « […] ce que je crois savoir, c’est que le contenu de l’appartement que mon oncle partageait avec ma grand-mère à Paris avait été mis à l’abri et retrouvé dans sa quasi-totalité après la libération. Ces tableaux faisaient-ils figure d’exception et avaient-ils été égarés ou volés au cours du transfert ? Se trouvaient-ils dans une petite maison de campagne que mon oncle possédait dans la région parisienne et dont le contenu fut sans doute pillé ou bien dans un coffre de banque ? […] ». Les circonstances précises du passage de ces œuvres des mains de leur propriétaire à celles des soldats allemands resteront sans doute sans réponse… Il en va de même de leur passage d’une maison de la région parisienne à leur abandon dans le centre de la France.

Reste la question du sort des vingt autres œuvres dont la provenance n’a pas été identifiée…

Hirsch Auguste, Enfant jouant avec un lézard
Source: Google

Aucune des autres œuvres en la possession de Jane Doe n’a pu être mise en relation de quelque façon avec des objets spoliés. La seule œuvre qui aurait pu à titre d’hypothèse être rapprochée d’une œuvre spoliée est une typogravure mesurant 70 x 85 cm, Fête champêtre au pied du mont Saint-Michel, d’après Emile Bayard, puisqu’une aquarelle de cette composition a été réclamée par M. Jules Emile Jorel auprès de la CRA. Mais cette dernière feuille était une aquarelle mesurant 47 x 60 cm. Il est donc impossible de les confondre l’une avec l’autre puisque technique et dimensions sont différentes[6]. …

Dans son mail du 11 juillet 2010, Jane Doe écrivait : « […] c'est dans un grenier, mélangés à d'autres dont je suis sûre de la provenance (portrait du grand-oncle par exemple !) que je les ai retrouvés. J'ai même ajouté des tableaux visiblement plus récents, mais que je ne me souvenais pas avoir vu accrochés aux murs de mes parents ou grands-parents ».

Il est donc vraisemblable que des œuvres accaparées par des Allemands aient été mélangées avec des œuvres qui étaient propriété pleine et entière de la famille du centre de la France. Nous avons donc décidé de proposer à cette famille de récupérer les œuvres restantes dont la valeur vénale est minime, pour ne pas parler de l’intérêt artistique.

L’une des questions qui se sont posées au Service des musées de France dans l’instruction de ce dossier était de déterminer s’il convenait d’inscrire ces œuvres sur les inventaires des MNR et s’il fallait faire, le cas échéant, une distinction entre les œuvres qui pouvaient être restituées et les autres. Après de longues réflexions, il a été décidé de procéder plus simplement et de n’inscrire aucune de ces œuvres pour ne pas formaliser ce dossier à l’excès.

Bodmer Karl, Deux études de tetes de sanglier
Source: Google

Ce choix repose sur plusieurs raisons. Les MNR sont en effet placés sous la responsabilité juridique du directeur des archives du ministère des Affaires étrangères qui en a confié la gestion, la conservation et la diffusion de l’information les concernant au ministère de la Culture et de la communication[7]. Il aurait donc fallut recueillir l’accord de cette tutelle juridique. En outre, au terme du décret du 30 septembre 1949 qui, mettant fin aux activités des institutions chargées des restitutions mises en place après guerre, institue les MNR, il est indiqué que ceux-ci sont « un choix des œuvres d’art retrouvées hors de France », ce qui n’est pas le cas de ces œuvres retrouvées en France. Il convenait enfin que les œuvres soient inventoriées par les musées nationaux ou les départements du Louvre concernées puis aussitôt radiées de ces mêmes inventaires. Il en aurait résulté un allongement très sensible du temps d’instruction de ce dossier et nous avons privilégié une attitude plus pragmatique afin de gagner en efficacité et rapidité en allégeant les procédures administratives.

Ce cas très particulier ne semble pas devoir être véritablement exceptionnel et il ne fait pas de doute que des œuvres partageant l’historique de celles que nous avons pu restituer, demeurent encore dans des familles. Comme le suggérait Jane Doe elle-même sur les motivations qui ont conduit sa famille à garder le silence après la guerre, les raisons en sont sans doute multiples, depuis l’appât du gain à la crainte de représailles. Certes, d’aucuns s’empresseront de les blâmer ; pour ma part, je préfère saluer la courageuse décision de Jane Doe qui a remis les œuvres à la police pour que la vérité puisse se faire jour, et certaines d’entre elles recouvrer leur véritable propriétaire. Grâce à elle, c’est tout une famille qui a pu revisiter son histoire et, en quelque sorte, se la réapproprier.

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[1] A la faveur de la restructuration dont l’administration française a fait l’objet ces dernières années, l’organigramme du ministère de la Culture et de la communication a été modifié en 2009 et l’ancienne Direction des musées de France est devenue le Service des musées de France intégré à une Direction générale des Patrimoines.
[2] Cette ordonnance, qui traduit dans le droit français une déclaration signée par les Alliés à Londres le 5 janvier1943, fonde encore aujourd’hui les restitutions des MNR
(Cf. http://www.culture.gouv.fr/documentation/mnr/TJ/TJ-1943-11-12.pdf).
[3] Cet ouvrage est disponible en ligne dans son intégralité sur le Site Rose Valland
(http://www.culture.gouv.fr/documentation/mnr/MnR-rbs.htm), y compris les volumes ne concernant pas les œuvres d’art. Figurent également des volumes annotés par l’administration française indiquant le sort réservé aux demandes de restitution.
[4] Le nom de Raymond Bollack n’apparaît pas dans les documents de l’ERR ; il est impossible de déterminer si ces domiciles ont été vidés par la Möbel-Aktion.
[5] Cet homme (1891-1986), polytechnicien puis ingénieur, travailla dans une entreprise familiale de parfum proche de Chanel. Décoré de la Légion d’Honneur en 1918, comme son père Jules en 1915, pour son action pendant la guerre de 1914-1948, il se réfugia à New York en 1940 ; il ne devait revenir en Europe qu’en 1964 pour s’installer à Genève (Cf. document inédit rédigé en mars 2012 par un de ses neveux qui s’est penché sur l’histoire familiale à la faveur de la restitution des œuvres).
[6] La typogravure, Fête champêtre au pied du mont Saint-Michel, a été éditée en 1896 par Boussot, Valadon & Cie d’après Emile Bayard. La peinture correspondante a été vendue chez Michaan’s Auctions à Alameda, CA, le 12 juin 2006, lot n° 1029.
[7] L’explication réside dans le fait que les institutions mises en place après la guerre pour effectuer les restitutions étaient placées sous la responsabilité du ministère des affaires étrangères. Son service d’archives a donc été jugé comme héritier en quelque sorte de ces institutions dissoutes depuis longtemps.

Three Impressionist paintings, three (or rather two) destinies

On March 1, 1941, the Paris art dealership of Durand-Ruel ships to its German client, Mr. Wolfgang Krüger, three high-priced paintings by noted French Impressionists:

1/ “Les Meules, le matin” by Claude Pissarro, painted in 1899

Les meules, le matin, Claude Pissarro
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art

2/ “Promenade sous bois”, by Auguste Renoir, painted in 1910

Promenade, sous-bois, Auguste Renoir
Source: Culture France

3/ “Noyers, plaine de Veneux-Madon,” by Alfred Sisley.

Noyers, plaine de Veneux-Madon, Alfred Sisley
Source: Culture France

While in Paris during the German occupation of France, Mr. Krüger, a Berlin-based businessman and avid art collector, enjoyed his stays at the Hotel Saint-James & Albany. He paid 385,000 Francs for the three Impressionist works.

Fate would have it that the Pissarro painting ends up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, courtesy of a bequest in the name of an American scion and philanthropist, Douglas Dillon. The odd thing about the provenance of the Pissarro is the name of the person who ostensibly owned it prior to Durand-Ruel, to whom that person had sold it in early 1941. Funny time to sell Impressionist works of art. But, let’s not think the worst of this work. The Met should be innocent until proven otherwise. The name of that previous owner is Braunthed, who lived in Neuilly sur Seine, a very wealthy suburb of Paris, home, in the 1930s, to some of the wealthiest members of the Jewish community and especially to German Jewish refugees who had settled there after Hitler had come to power in Germany.
Until someone can clear up who “Braunthed” is, the mystery remains as to the circumstances under which “Braunthed” sold the Pissarro painting to Durand-Ruel eight months after the Nazis began to plunder Jewish collections in the Paris region. Moreover, no one has asked Durand-Ruel why it made it a habit of selling wonderful works of art to German industrialists, bankers, and aristocrats, during World War II. Perhaps, their client relationship dated back to the roaring twenties. Still, that's no excuse, is it?

The two other works suffered a less glamorous fate, despite the fact that they were purchased from Durand-Ruel by the same individual, Wolfgang Krüger, at the same time. Allied troops "captured" or "liberated" the one by Renoir and the other by Sisley, after the fall of the Third Reich.  Before being repatriated to France as of "unknown origin," they allegedly went through the Munich Central Collecting Point (MCCP).  At least, the Renoir painting--Promenade, sous-bois-- did, according to the French Ministry of Culture.  If so, there is no trace of it in the MCCP database produced by the Deutsches Historisches Museum (DHM) under the supervision of Angelika Enderlein.  The so-called Munich number--7519--does not correspond to a painting by Renoir, but rather to a work by Panini.  Back to square one. 

 "Promenade, sous-bois" ended up at the Renoir House (Maison Renoir) in Cagnes-sur-Mer as MNR 207 where it keeps company to another ill-fated MNR painting by Renoir, “la Femme au puits”, also known as MNR 579, while the Sisley adorns the walls of a municipal museum in the birthplace of the "damned poet" Arthur Rimbaud, Charleville-Mézières.  Why on earth did that small town receive the painting by Sisley? Political favor? Enriching local collections with stolen property? Who knows? In any event, the Sisley painting that once belonged to Mr. Krüger is now branded as MNR 209.

And so it goes.

Three paintings purchased from the same art dealership in Paris during Year Two (or Year 1.5, depending on how you count) of the Nazi occupation of France, ending up in two different nations, one ostensibly unfettered by the shackles of war while the two others remain in that purgatory called MNR. Why did the Pissarro not end up in the French Museum system as a MNR painting? According to the Metropolitan Museum's website, the first post-1945 owner of the Pissarro was Robert F. Woolworth, who then consigned the painting to the now-defunct Knoedler Gallery in New York.  Where did Mr. Woolworth obtain the Pissarro? From Mr. Wolfgang Krüger? or from yet someone else?

What made the Renoir and Sisley works fit that category despite the fact that they shared a common wartime fate? If anything, the Pissarro is far more suspect than the Renoir and the Sisley.

Mystery…

Overview of the first year of activity on the “plundered art” blog

In order to know who you, the readers of “plundered art”, are, Google provides a potent tool—Google Analytics—which provides a glimpse of the readership of a blog or a website. In the case of “plundered art”, the following can be said:

You, the readers of “plundered art”, are mostly women, followed closely by men. More than one third of you are at least 35 years old.

Your favorite posts were, in descending order of popularity:

1. Van Gogh's 1889 depiction of his mutilated self smoking a pipe—PR 144
2. The five Schiele drawings of Karl Maylander
3. Jacopo Zucchi, "The Bath of Bathseba": or how pieces of a story build a new story about the same story ex post facto
4. Nazi looted art conference at Lafayette College, Easton, PA: a debriefing (II)
5. Nazi looted art conference at Lafayette College, October 26-28, 2011: a debriefing (I)
6. In search of a triptych "Purificato Mariae" by Marco d'Oggione
7. MNR (Musées Nationaux Récupération) Notes—R 6 P « Femme au turban, » by Marie Laurencin
8. The Hemer case or how a claimant does not want to be a claimant
9. The Wildenstein reality check
10. French loot in Poland

You live in more than 1000 cities and towns located in 90 countries across 5 continents.

Many of you speak at least one of the following languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Hebrew, Czech, Hungarian.

You work in global auction houses, multinational companies, national and supranational government agencies like the European Commission, the “Ministère des Affaires étrangères et européennes” in Paris, the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, the United Nations, UNESCO, the US Department of Justice and the US Department of State.

On the academic front, you hail from universities, academies, and institutes in the Americas, the West Indies, Europe, and Asia.

You also work for international news agencies, libraries and archives, as well as world-renown art museums and galleries.

WOW!

Restitution vs. replacement-in-kind: a French approach to cultural plunder

When the Allied powers became gradually aware of the extent of the cultural looting being perpetrated by the Nazis and their local henchmen across continental Europe, they formulated a number of principles which, on face value, were high-minded and honorable.

In the Allies’ view, all items stolen or forcibly removed from the possession of civilians in Nazi-occupied territories should be restituted to the rightful owners upon cessation of hostilities. In other words, once peace returned to the European continent, those who had been stripped of their belongings because of who they were and what they were could obtain the return of those objects, as long as they could be located and identified as theirs. Through an elaborate and ill-organized system of claims, the Allies processed hundreds of thousands of requests for restitution of cultural and other assets.

The simplicity of Allied intentions to return stolen objects to their rightful owners quickly ran afoul of customary international law whereby the rights of nations supersede those of individuals. In terms of property recoveries and returns, Allied diplomats swiftly veered off course and established the preeminent principle of repatriation—the return of looted objects to the country from which it had been forcibly removed. Once repatriation had taken place, the recipient country was held responsible for restituting those returned objects to their rightful owners.

The French postwar authorities responsible for cultural restitution publicly and vociferously stated what many of their formerly occupied neighbors—Belgium and Holland in particular—kept to themselves: that their cultural losses were so extensive that they were entitled to replace those items looted from their territory with items that resembled or were close in value and theme to those which they had lost to the Nazi invader. More specifically, the French government included replacement in kind in its panoply of measures designed to repair the harm done to the French “patrimoine” or “cultural legacy.”  Allied protestations were duly noted (The US and Great Britain opposed replacement policies which were implemented by France and the Soviet Union).

How did this translate into practice?

French missions would set out for the US occupation zones of Germany and Austria armed with lists of objects looted by Nazi officials between 1940 and 1944. The easiest place to find those objects was at the many collecting points established by US authorities to centralize the collection, identification, and disposal of items located across their respective zones of occupation which they suspected of being looted cultural property. Many items were identified as having been acquired in France during the war and therefore could be turned over to the French authorities for return to France.

A careful study of cultural objects assembled under the rubric of “Musées Nationaux Récupération” or MNR allows us to reach certain conclusions.

1. the American government allowed French recovery missions to repatriate any art object found on German or Austrian soil for which the French laid a claim on the presumption that the item had come from France.  As an example, a search on the word "probablement" (probably) in the "Musées Nationaux Récupération" database yields 222 items which may not be of French origin, but were handed over to France and incorporated into various city and national museums.
    
2. Many of those items claimed by the French government had been acquired from merchants, dealers, and galleries in German-occupied France. Whether or not the transaction involved an object looted from a Jewish owner or not was immaterial. The fact is that the object had been acquired in France during the war and brought back to Germany or Austria by its new owners.
    
3. Based on the aforementioned, any transaction involving art objects which had occurred in occupied France entitled postwar French authorities to claim those objects as property of the French State regardless of the nature of the transaction.

Photographies prises au Jeu de Paume sous l'Occupation
Source: Site Rose-Valland -- MNR

Who wins?

Clearly, the seller won because he or she was paid fair market value and more for objects sold under Nazi rule.

Clearly, the French government won because it obtained for free items traded during the occupation on the so-called “legitimate” art market, the market against which neither Vichy nor the German occupation authorities dared intervene because it was so lucrative and bountiful for all parties.

In sum, replacement in kind benefited postwar France by replenishing and embellishing its State collections. The French recovery missions, staffed by Museum curators and art specialists, acted as selection committees for vetting future accessions to their collections.

Were the sellers collaborating with the Germans by selling freely and openly to them? If so, were they punished with heavy fines and even jail terms or loss of voting rights? Aside from fines levied against a handful of the most notorious art market dealers, everyone did fine and continued to trade “sans inquiétude”—without any worry whatsoever.

Since most objects in the MNR category were acquired on the “open market” in France during the German occupation, chances are that they had nothing to do with an act of persecution motivated by racial, political, or other motives. For that reason alone, these objects should be removed from the MNR category because it is hypocritical to equate them with objects in that list that truly were plundered from Jewish victims who remain unidentified.

Interestingly enough, real estate that had been owned by Jews and expropriated from them during the Vichy years, to a large extent, was never restituted after the war, even if it was clear as crystal that the property had been subject to an act of plunder through expropriation and forced sale. The same holds for true for factories, stores, banks, investment firms, and other forms of assets, which continue to be claimed today, albeit with highly inconsistent results.

Time to stop picking on France. This story of failed restitution applies universally to all European countries.