Recap of the Gurlitt case

by Marc Masurovsky

Two and a half years have elapsed since the Gurlitt case burst onto the international scene. Here is a recap as seen through the tinted glasses of plunderedart.

November 8, 2013

HARP petitioned the German government to release the complete inventory of all of the works of art found in the Munich apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt.

January 19, 2014

The Gurlitt Task Force members are highlighted and the questions raised about its efficacy in the face of opacity from the German government to request for information about the contents of the Gurlitt collection. Emphasis is placed on the dealings of his father, Hildebrand Gurlitt, as a privileged dealer and buyer for the Nazi government in the Reich and in occupied territories.

January 20, 2015

With Cornelius Gurlitt dead, progress on understanding the contents of the Cornelius Gurlitt collection eludes everyone. To add more spice to the already entangled saga of Cornelius Gurlitt, the world finds out that shortly before his death, he bequeathed his collection to the Kunstmuseum in Bern.

January 29, 2015

Monika Gruetters, Germany’s new Minister of Culture, has sought to appease domestic and international critics about the apparent inability of the Gurlitt Task Force to make any significant progress in identifying looted art amongst the more than 1400 objects seized in Munich and Salzburg. She has pledged more funding for provenance research, announced a reorganization of agencies in Germany responsible for provenance research and documenting Nazi thefts of art objectsinto a new Center for Lost Art.

April 23, 2015

The apparent consistent stonewalling by the German government to seek a speedy resolution to the Gurlitt mess made us wonderwhether there was any genuine desire to invest the necessary resources to make of the Gurlitt case an example of how to address ethically and scientifically the complex nature of ideologically motivated thefts of property owned by the victims of Nazism.

August 23, 2015

Ori Soltes, president of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project, reviewed one of the first English-language narratives to appear on the puzzle surrounding the unraveling of the Gurlitt case. This narrative, Hitler’s Art Thief, was penned by Susan Ronald.

January 25, 2016

With the merciful end brought to the less than satisfactory work of the Gurlitt task Force, a quick overview of the Task Force’s findings added even more confusion and perplexity to an already-opaque two year long research effort that resembled more an exercise conducted in the basement of the National Security Agency than a historical research effort aimed at shedding light on the activities of a very prolific Nazi-sponsored agent trained as an art historian and museum official, Hildebrand Gurlitt.

March 11, 2016

With the announced doubling of the research budget for the newly-formed Center for Lost Art, German Culture Minister Monika Gruetters sought to appease, once again, her critics, domestic and foreign, regarding the botched outcome of the now-defunct Gurlitt Task Force. She made a critical misstep by intimating that placing Jews on a German task force called theLimbach Commission would inject bias in its proceedings.

From the publicized discovery of the Cornelius Gurlitt art collection to the shuttering of the Gurlitt Task Force,  the German government has displayed a complicated dual face to its commitment to "deal with the past", its Nazi past, and to effect some measure of justice so that German society can move forward and address the complex crimes associated with thefts and misappropriations of property, especially cultural property. On the one hand, Germany has done a marvelous job addressing the horrors that its citizens perpetrated against Jews and other groups who were full-fledged members of German civil society until they were excluded from it.  German youth are some of the most advanced in the world, outpacing American and Israeli Jewish students, in their mastery and understanding of the events that shook their country and the conscience of the world between 1933 and 1945.  On the other hand, the German government has been unable and/or unwilling to put in place an efficient mechanism by which to identify, investigate, and process humanely, ethically, and legally, instances where looted cultural assets are found in German collections, private and/or public.  The Gurlitt Task Force is the perfect example of this systemic dysfunction and reminds us that it's easier to 'deal with the Holocaust' than with its details, exemplified by looted artistic objects once owned by Jews and which are currently displayed and traded on German territory amongst German citizens, businesses and institutions.

Much work still needs to be done.

Monika Gruetters’ “Jewish problem”

by Marc Masurovsky

On March 3, 2016, the New York Times published an article signed by correspondent Alison Smale which confirmed that the Gurlitt Task Force’s work had been transferred to the “Center for Lost Art” in Magdeburg, Germany, as part of a general overhaul of the German government’s agencies specialized in issues pertaining to looted art. Thanks to Minister Gruetters, this Center has received a badly-needed injection of funds which doubled its previous budget to reach six million euros, renewing her commitment to ensure that research would continue into the provenance of the Gurlitt collection's 1400 objects.

Monika Gruetters

Culture Minister Gruetters has been sharply taken to task by domestic and international critics for the slowness of the research into the possibility that works tainted by anti-Jewish persecution and theft during the Nazi years might be part of the now-infamous Gurlitt collection, “discovered” in 2012 and made public in the fall of 2013. As of now, five paintings are known to have been linked to a victim of Nazi plunder. There are more than 1400 works in the Gurlitt hoard.

Our problem today has to do with a comment that Minister Gruetters made in response to suggestions by Germany’s Jewish community that a member of that community be appointed to the so-called Limbach commission which hears claims for restitution of looted art present in German cultural institutions. The commission’s recommendations are non-binding and, so far, have been mostly hostile to claimants who, in almost every instance, live outside of Germany and are of Jewish descent.

Hence, the Limbach Commission’s objectivity and interest in furthering justice 70 years after the demise of the Third Reich, have been repeatedly called into question. This state of affairs has not prevented Minister Gruetters from pointing out that the presence of a “Jewish figure” at the Limbach Commission would be ill-advised because “that person would be the only voice who would be prejudiced.”

The seating of a member of the Jewish community of Germany on the Limbach Commission would be viewed as injecting bias into the commission’s proceedings. Ms. Gruetters’ comment is provocative for a number of reasons:

Jutta Limbach

1/ a Jewish member of the commission would automatically be prejudiced. In what direction, pray tell? For or against the claimant? As if the quality of being Jewish signified a taint on one’s capacity to be objective and impartial.

2/ the minister’s comment subsumes that Jews favor restitution and have never been known to oppose restitution.

3/ no one has questioned the prejudice or bias of the non-Jewish members of the Limbach Commission. Does the fact that the Limbach commission’s non-Jewish makeup ensure objectivity and impartiality in the proceedings to assess the merit of a claim put forth by a Jewish claimant, whose family once resided in Germany? If anything, ten years of proceedings at the Limbach Commission could make us wonder if, in fact, the commission’s good judgment is tainted, principally, because there is no “outside” voice amongst its members. In short, it behaves as an echo chamber of individuals reluctant to acknowledge the vicissitudes of history when it comes to cultural plunder on its territory, once ruled by the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP).

In passing, the presence (albeit in a minority) of members of the Jewish faith on the Gurlitt Task Force did not appear to have a negative impact on the work of that commission. If anything, those minority voices acted as foils to the “objective” wisdom dispensed by its “non-Jewish” members.

Ms. Gruetters’ tasteless comment reflects a longstanding problem inherent to postwar discussions about the Holocaust, reparations, restitution, and justice. The Jewish voice is still viewed as a voice containing implicit bias in its essence, which denies that voice the capacity to infuse critical thinking in its assessment of the consequences of genocide on individual members of the Jewish community and on the merit of claims for reparations and/or restitution.

Ms. Gruetters should understand that Jews do not speak in one single, unified, public voice on matters pertaining to restitution and reparations. In fact, that discussion is rife with dissenting opinions as one is likely to find among leaders and senior officials of Jewish organizations and Holocaust memorials voices that are indifferent or in fact hostile to restitution, especially in the cultural field. There are notable exceptions, as with the Commission for Art Recovery and the Claims Conference.

It would behoove Ms. Gruetters and other German officials, now and henceforth, to view Jewish individuals as critical thinkers rather than puppets who could not reason because of their appurtenance to their faith. If anything, debate is healthy especially among bureaucrats. It helps shake off the dust and inject fresh blood and new thoughts into an otherwise stilted conversation weighed down by the burdens of law and history, but apparently not sufficiently stirred with sprinkles of ethics and morality.

Monday afternoon rant: is cultural destruction in the 21st century inevitable?

by Marc Masurovsky

Palmyra

 As the world sits by and watches ISIS forces overwhelm the town of Palmyra, shudders go down our collective spines and dread overcomes us as we wonder: what will the fundamentalist warriors of the Daesh do to the archaeological treasures that lie beneath the surface of Palmyra?

"cradle of civilization"

The so-called “cradle of civilization” that we all grew up with has survived assaults for thousands of years, stemming from the rise and fall of previous caliphates, kingdoms and empires vying for influence in the Crescent.

The US Congress is readying to pass a law that enshrines an organic connection between national security and cultural heritage. If the law passes, the US will appoint, at no extra cost to the US treasury, an international coordinator whose job it will be to stay on top of the constant assaults against culture in conflict zones at the hands of “terrorists” and assess how those acts affect American national security and evaluate strategies on how to counter those assaults.  It is undeniable progress that the debate over cultural heritage has led to the explicit necessity to coordinate international efforts to protect cultural sites from destruction wrought by armed maniacs.

The secretary general of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, has shared her outrage about the events unfolding in war-battered Syria and its neighbor, Irak. How bad does it have to get when governments allow themselves to be eaten up alive and watch the legacies of thousands of years of culture vanish before their eyes on their own territories? Worse. What does it say about them? What does it say about us?

What does outrage alone do to stem the tide of destruction?

The German Minister of Culture, Monika Gruetters, expressed her own dismay that Germany had become a turnstile for “conflict antiquities” streaming from areas controlled by ISIS and other zones under the control of armed groups in the Mideast. She went as far as threaten to regulate the trade in antiquities by requiring a complete and detailed provenance for each item entering or exiting Germany, an effort that could lead to placing a chokehold on the illicit trade in “conflict antiquities” at least in Germany.

The trade has responded in kind reiterating its oft-proffered self-serving defense that it can police itself and its members are honorable and would never trade in anything illicit. If not them, who is?

We know by now that the global trade in looted antiquities operates on the same principle as the international narcotics trade. Where there is a demand, there is a ready supply. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist or a CIA hack or privy to the world’s darkest secrets to understand this truism. Why would anyone dig holes in the ground, extract from their matrix priceless artifacts that could help us understand the societies that produced them and for the thieves to go through all sorts of extra-legal gymnastics just to find out that there are no buyers? Most are not trained archaeologists, they seem to be guided by “scientists” and “experts”. They are under contract to perform a task whose aim is to supply looted antiquities in exchange for badly-needed money.

As it turns out, those who acquire looted antiquities are everywhere, the market can barely keep up with the demand from individuals with disposable incomes and deep pockets worldwide, generalists and specialists alike, who want these objects for reasons that we need not go into here. The international art trade and the antiquities market are fueling in part the ISIS strategy to overtake archaeological sites and pillage them, much like Chinese officials, desirous to sate their citizens' apparent addiction to ivory, are commandeering the mass killings of elephants and rhinoceroses in Africa.  Contract killing to fuel addictions with no regard for the environment and no respect for life on earth.  Like all addictions, they spread calamity everywhere. The collateral damage is irreversible.

What will the Chinese do when there are no sources of organic ivory left?

What happens when all the antiquities have been extracted? Will ISIS push into other countries like locusts and harvest more antiquities?

What kind of a world do we live in which tolerates such abuses? It’s as if history does not matter, we don’t matter anymore. Since the Nazi period, humankind has become far less human and has descended into a numbing tolerance and acceptance of the worst abuses that people could dream up against others. Actually, it’s not clear anymore what the word “human” actually means.

It’s as if the past does not count any longer except for the messages and images that ooze through our smartphones or other digital pop culture delivery mechanisms. There will always be pictures of Palmyra to enjoy and glean in quiet admiration and respect for what once was and is no longer. Sigh! So should we weep if the real thing disappears? After all, we always have Instagram.

Cowardice, cynicism and indifference fuel the ISIS strategy. The ISIS bullies on the Middle Eastern block are winning because they are well aware of our own impotence to act, much like the Serbian forces did during the Bosnia crisis of the early 1990s and the orchestrators of the genocide in Rwanda  in spring 1994, to name but a few human rights disasters, no, human, man-made disasters.

Perhaps history does not count anymore. Let’s just watch Palmyra turn into Swiss cheese and explain to the children that it’s ok.

If Palmyra does disappear or is transformed into a maze of mole-like tunnels denoting systematic looting, we all let it happen.  Is it logical then to promote armed intervention as the only viable solution to protect Palmyra and other remnants of the “cradle of civilization”?  Are we ready to die for the cause of world culture and our past heritage?

We have reached a breaking point where our current national leaders the world over do not want to risk global war over the destruction of cultural sites but they sure are willing to do so because one country might or might not have a nuclear bomb.

None of this makes any sense.

Let’s drink some tea, play cards, watch the sun set and indulge in idle chatter. It’s safer that way.

Or let's act. But how?

The Gurlitt indictment: Washington Principles vs. the German government and its partners

by Marc Masurovsky

Leave it to the diplomats, the pundits, the negotiators, the strategists, the civil servants, and those with a vested interest in doing business with our German colleagues to temper their speech, downplay the problem and minimize the fallout and significance of the Gurlitt Affair.

Reminder: In late 2012, the late Cornelius Gurlitt, a resident of Munich, was placed under tight surveillance by Bavarian law enforcement and German customs over alleged improprieties, fiscal and otherwise. The surveillance led to a search of Gurlitt’s apartment which revealed the existence of at least 1400 works and objects of art.

The rest has become history.

February 2015: Cornelius Gurlitt has been dead for almost a year. His last desire was to bequeath the totality of his art collection to a museum in Bern, Switzerland, the Kunstmuseum Bern. No explanations given. As from the beginning of the publicizing of the Gurlitt Affair in November 2013, everyone “out there” has been left guessing and speculating in the face of stultified, stony posturing from local, regional, and Federal German officials.

Let’s put the Gurlitt Affair to the test of the Washington Principles, a non-binding document drafted and accepted in December 1998 in principle as non-binding a set of recommendations, shall we say—for the art market and governments alike to follow in order to facilitate the location, identification of looted works and objects of art, and resolve as equitably as possible the ensuing mess produced by a claim for those identified looted objects.

Principle 1: Art that had been confiscated by the Nazis and not subsequently restituted should be identified

Have all Gurlitt items been identified and properly labeled as looted? As far as the public is concerned, the answer is NO.

Principle 2: Relevant records and archives should be open and accessible to researchers, in accordance with the guidelines of the International Council on Archives.
Have the relevant records been made available to researchers in order to facilitate the tagging of Gurlitt-owned items as either looted or ‘clean’?

Since the research has been tightly controlled under a pall of secrecy and quasi-national security by the German government, the answer is readily NO. The few documents that have been published on lostart.de have been redacted.

Principle 3: Resources and personnel should be made available to facilitate the identification of all art that had been confiscated by the Nazis and not subsequently restituted.

Those resources that are alluded to should have come in the form of money and personnel. Many suggestions—collegial ones at that—had been made by various parties inside and outside Germany to allow for the most open and collaborative research and information-sharing process. That did not happen. Few monies have been allocated—we presume—to the overall research effort, tightly controlled by the so-called Gurlitt Task Force. Therefore, the answer is NO.

Principle 4: In establishing that a work of art had been confiscated by the Nazis and not subsequently restituted, consideration should be given to unavoidable gaps or ambiguities in the provenance in light of the passage of time and the circumstances of the Holocaust era.

Gaps and ambiguities permeate the status of objects in the Gurlitt collection, precisely because Principles 2 and 3 supra have been molested and neglected. Those independent maverick researchers who have given time and resources to complete their own understanding of the history of the objects in the Gurlitt collection have been stymied in their searches. Hence, the gaps and ambiguities remain vast and deep for the greatest majority of the item in the Gurlitt collection. How much consideration will be given to those gaps and ambiguities in establishing whether or not the objects are “tainted” or “clean” shall be left to the authorities and to the Kunstmuseum Bern, a terrifying prospect.

Principle 5: Every effort should be made to publicize art that is found to have been confiscated by the Nazis and not subsequently restituted in order to locate its pre-War owners or their heirs.

Publicity and openness characterized the clamor unleashed on the German authorities for their failure to even make public the list of objects found in the Gurlitt apartment and later on in a house in Salzburg, Austria. The answer is therefore NO.

Principle 6: Efforts should be made to establish a central registry of such information

The same clamor that characterized Principle 5 supra applies to Principle 6. A central registry was supposed to be established on the website of the Koordinierungsstelle Magdeburg, www.lostart.de. But the process was painful, mind-numbing and grossly inadequate, mired in bureaucratic obstruction and political games that defied comprehension. After all, we were only dealing with art objects. The answer is NO for the German government. However, as a result of the Gurlitt will, the Kunstmuseum Bern became the de factor body through which the lists of Gurlitt-owned items would be released, a massive cop-out on the part of the German government if you ask anyone about this. So, the answer is a tepid YES for the Kunstmuseum Bern.

Principle 7: Pre-War owners and their heirs should be encouraged to come forward and make known their claims to art that was confiscated by the Nazis and not subsequently restituted

As a result of a violation of most of the preceding Washington Principles, pre-war owners and heirs could not readily come forward owing to the near-absence of information on the items in the Gurlitt collection and the method by which they had been acquired, and from whom. Several families did come forward, though, and asserted their claims early in 2014. As of this writing, it does not appear as if any claimed items have been restituted to the heirs of the pre-war owners. Hence, the answer is NO.

Principle 8: If the pre-War owners of art that is found to have been confiscated by the Nazis and not subsequently restituted, or their heirs, can be identified, steps should be taken expeditiously to achieve a just and fair solution, recognizing this may vary according to the facts and circumstances surrounding a specific case

In light of the negative response to Principle 7, the answer to Principle 8 is obviously NO.

Principle 9: If the pre-War owners of art that is found to have been confiscated by the Nazis, or their heirs, cannot be identified, steps should be taken expeditiously to achieve a just and fair solution.

A number of international Jewish organizations and other interested parties have come forward and made numerous suggestions about how to dispose of the ‘heirless’ component of the Gurlitt commission. This initial determination of “heirless” is contingent on the research and the ability to fill gaps and ambiguities in the history of the objects in the Gurlitt collection. According to the agreement signed by the German government with the estate of the late Cornelius Gurlitt and the Kunstmuseum Bern, 2020 is the deadline at which a final determination will be made about the status of the objects being researched under the aegis of the Gurlitt Task Force and by the Kunstmuseum Bern. Some have suggested that the “heirless” items be sent to Israel. Others have asked that they be sold and the proceeds distributed among needy Holocaust survivors and their families. The German government has tentatively endorsed the idea that the “heirless” items should be housed and displayed in a German museum “for a while” once the last ‘clean’ items are transferred to the Kunstmuseum Bern and the “identifiable” items have been returned to their rightful owners. A fair and just solution? So far it’s been unfair and unjust. Therefore, we must cast an interim NO until further notice.

Principle 10: Commissions or other bodies established to identify art that was confiscated by the Nazis and to assist in addressing ownership issues should have a balanced membership

The Gurlitt Task Force was mostly stacked with German civil servants. Only three individuals with noted ties to restitution advocacy and to research on looted art were accepted on the Task Force. The new Center for Provenance Research announced by German Culture Minister Monika Gruetters is supposed to include something akin to an advisory board that might have as many as 13 members. Who will they be? Who will recruit them? On what basis? Nothing specific, as usual. Therefore our answer is NO.

Principle 11: Nations are encouraged to develop national processes to implement these principles, particularly as they relate to alternative dispute resolution mechanisms for resolving ownership issues.

The verdict on Principle 11 is mixed. The Gurlitt Affair demonstrated that the German government’s process to handle questions of looted art in German private and public collections in a fair and equitable manner is broken and ineffectual. NO to Germany.

The fact that most of the items purchased by Cornelius Gurlitt’s father came from German-occupied France would have subsumed that the French government play a leading role in the resolution of the Gurlitt Affair. It did not. Therefore, the answer is NO for France.

The United States on whose territory and on whose initiative the Washington Principles were developed has always been looked upon as the moral standard bearer when it comes to questions of restitution and reparations stemming from the Holocaust and WWII. Its government was unusually quiet during the unfolding of the Gurlitt Affair. Its representatives took forever to even express their concerns about “justice”. Hence, the US gets a failing grade and a big NO.

So, what’s the verdict? Did the Washington Principle fare well in the unfolding and ensuing liquefaction of the Gurlitt Affair? It appears not, since 9 out of 11 principles were either violated or ignored.

What does that mean for the future? Nothing good unless the pressure points to effect meaningful change  come from other venues like the European Union to put some order in the house and mandate that governments in Europe behave properly when it comes to the treatment of plundered cultural objects in their midst.

The never-ending post-Gurlitt “process”

by Marc Masurovsky

What is one to make of all this hoopla concerning provenance research in Germany? It took an ill-managed investigation into the activities of an octogenarian art collector, Cornelius Gurlitt, followed by a raucous international outcry to stimulate a debate over how museums in Germany treat their collections and the extent of knowledge they possess about the origins of the objects they own and curate.

Monika Gruetters to the left of Chancellor Angela Merkl

Since the announcement in early 2014 by Monika Gruetters, German Minister for culture, that she would increase funding for provenance research into the origins of art works in German state collections, the post-Gurlitt “process” has become even more bogged down in bureaucratic molasses as if the creation of yet another organization will magically make the problem of looted art simply go away.

The new entity, German Lost Art Foundation (Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste), will move to Magdeburg, Germany, in April 2015. Magdeburg is where one can find the Koordinierungsstelle Magdeburg, run by Michael Franz and his deputy, Andrea Baresel-Brand. It is the official German governmental database on art looted during the Third Reich, known as lostart.de. One can find in that database the items which make up the residual of the Gurlitt collection, euphemistically known as the “Schwabing Art Trove.” The Foundation will receive 6 million dollars a year to bolster provenance research, or triple the annual allocation to provenance research in Germany up to now.

Judging by Ms. Gruetters’ own statements regarding the creation of the German Lost Art Foundation, the Office of Provenance Research (Arbeitsstelle fuer provenienzforschung), run by Uwe Hartmann, and the “Degenerate Art” program at the Free University of Berlin directed by Meike Hoffmann, will remain independent and might benefit from the largesse of the new Foundation.

Professor Uwe Schneede heads up the honorary board of the Foundation and Dr. Hermann Simon chairs its Research Council. Prof. Schneede is a highly respected figure in the German art world and Dr. Simon, head of the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin, a leading scholar of Jewish life in Germany and especially the Berlin Jewish community.

Hermann Simon

Uwe Schneede

A board of trustees (Stiftungsrat) constitutes the governing body of the Foundation which comprises 15 drawn from Federal, regional and municipal institutions throughout Germany. One big question concerns the funding of the Foundation: do the monies come only from German public sources or will there be an expectation that private entities should contribute to the Foundation? If so, which ones? How much information will the public receive on the underwriting of the Foundation and how it spends money on research?

The Foundation's Stiftungsrat

Added to this top-heavy approach to provenance research, let’s not forget the Kuratorium, an advisory body consisting of 9 to 11 individuals, some or all coming from outside Germany. Are they specialists, pundits, heavy lifters in international reparations negotiations relative to assets looted during WWII? None of this is clear. Why so many people to oversee provenance research in Germany? Are these 11 advisors going to be savvy about the intricacies of the ways in which artistic, cultural and ritualistic objects changed hands illegally between 1933 and 1945 or is this going to be another political love fest aimed at placating foreign critics of the German way of examining cases of cultural plunder dating back to the Third Reich?

For a full reading of the articles establishing the Foundation, please click on the following link:

http://www.kulturgutverluste.de/images/Satzung_Deutsches_Zentrum_Kulturgutverluste.pdf