Nazi-Confiscated

Art Issues

Dr. Jonathan Petropoulos

PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, LOYOLA COLLEGE, MD

UNITED STATES

Art Looting during the Third Reich: An

Overview with Recommendations

for Further Research

Plenary Session on Nazi-Confiscated Art Issues

It is an honor to be here to speak to you today. In many respects

it is the highpoint of the over fifteen years I have spent working on this

issue of artworks looted by the Nazis. This is a vast topic, too much for

any one book, or even any one person to cover. Put simply, the Nazis

plundered so many objects over such a large geographical area that it

requires a collaborative effort to reconstruct this history. The project of

determining what was plundered and what subsequently happened to

these objects must be a team effort. And in fact, this is the way the work

has proceeded. Many scholars have added pieces to the puzzle, and we

are just now starting to assemble a complete picture. In my work I have

focused on the Nazi plundering agencies1; Lynn Nicholas and Michael

Kurtz have worked on the restitution process2; Hector Feliciano

concentrated on specific collections in Western Europe which were

 

1

 Jonathan Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill: The

University of North Carolina Press). Also, The Faustian Bargain: The Art

World in Nazi Germany (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press,

forthcoming, 1999).

2

 Lynn Nicholas, The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the

Third Reich and the Second World War (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1994); and

Michael Kurtz, Nazi Contraband: American Policy on the Return of European

Cultural Treasures (New York: Garland, 1985).
442 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

plundered3; Thomas Buomberger has been examining the Swiss

connection to this history4; Wolfgang Eichwede and his team in Bremen

have explored looting on the Eastern Front5; Konstantin Akinsha,

Gregori Kozlov, and Sylvia Hochfield unearthed the history of the Soviet

Red Army trophy brigades6; Willi Korte and Bill Honan showed that the

American G.I.s also stole works during and after the war7; and one could

go on and on (my apologies to those left off this brief list).8 Certain

events, notably the symposium "The Spoils of War" which was held in

New York in 1995 have facilitated this cooperation, and I am pleased to

say that there has generally been conscientious teamwork within the

 

3

 Hector Feliciano, The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World's

Greatest Works of Art (New York: Basic Books, 1997).

4

 Thomas Buomberger, Raubkunst -- Kunstraub: Die Schweiz und der Handel

mit gestohlene Kulturgüter zur Zeit des Zweiten Weltkrieges (Zürich: Orell

Füssli, 1998).

5

 See Wolfgang Eichwede and Ulrike Hartung, eds., "Betr.: Sicherstellung": NSKunstraub in der Sowjetunion (Hamburg: Edition Temmen, 1998); and Ulrike

Hartung, Raubzüge in der Sowjetunion. Das Sonderkommando Künsberg 1941-

1943 (Bremen: Edition Temmen, 1997).

6

 Konstantin Akinsha and Gregori Kozlov with Sylvia Hochfield, Beautiful

Loot: The Soviet Plunder of Europe's Art Treasures (New York: Random House,

1995).

7

 William Honan, Treasure Hunt: A New York Reporter Tracks the Quedlinburg

Hoard (New York: Delta, 1997). Also on this theme, see Kenneth Alford, The

Spoils of World War II: The American Military's Role in the Stealing of

Europe's Treasures (New York: Birch Lane, 1994).

8

 Other especially important studies include: Willem de Vries, Einsatzstab

Reichsleiter Rosenberg, Sonderstab Musik: The Confiscation of Music in the

Occupied Countries of Western Europe during World War II (Ann Arbor: The

University of Michigan Press, 1997); Wolfgang Eichwede and Ulrike Hartung,

eds., "Betr. Sicherstellung": NS-Kunstraub in der Sowjetunion (Bremen: Edition

Temmen, 1998); Mathias Frehner, ed., Das Geschäft mit der Raubkunst.

Fakten, Thesen, Hintergründe (Zurich: Neue Zurcher Zeitung, 1998); Günther

Haase, Kunstraub und Kunstschutz: Eine Dokumentation (Hildesheim: Georg

Olms, 1991); Ulrike Hartung, Raubzüe in der Sowjetunion. Das

Sonderkommando Küsberg, 1941-1943 (Bremen: Edition Temmen, 1997); Ernst

Kubin, Sonderauftrag Linz: Die Kunstsammlung Adolf Hitler. Eine Thriller der

Kulturgeschichte (Vienna: Orac, 1989); Jakob Kurz, Kunstraub in Europa, 1938-

1945 (Hamburg: Facta Oblita, 1989); Peter Manasse, Verschleppte Archive und

Bibliotheken. Die Täigkeiten des Einsatzstab Rosenberg Zweiten

Weltkrieges (St. Ingbert: Röhrig Universitätsverlag, 1997); Matila Simon, The

Battle of the Louvre: The Struggle to Save French Art in World War II (New

York: Hawthorn, 1971).
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 443

scholarly community.9 I make a plea today to broaden this circle of

cooperation so as to also include museum administrators and curators,

gallery owners, and government officials. If we are to continue to make

progress in writing this history and effecting a just restitution of the

displaced artworks, it must be a collaborative venture among individuals

in all of these spheres.

I have been asked to speak on the National Socialists' actions

with respect to artworks – an immense topic that is impossible to cover

in ten minutes. But I would start with the following observation: the

Nazis used art instrumentally as a part of their larger political and

ideological project. Their policies with respect to art are inextricably

linked to efforts to seize power within Germany, to conquer the

European continent, and to execute their genocidal program. From the

beginning, Hitler and the other Nazi Party leaders realized that artistic

issues could be used to attract supporters. The Party Program of 1920

contained provisions about art (namely, that modern art should be

viewed as "degenerate" and alien to the German people). By 1930, the

Nazi leaders had learned to utilize artistic issues as a means of attacking

political enemies. In Thuringia, where a Nazi had been appointed

Minister of Education (Kultusminister), the target was the left, whom

they associated with modernism – and indeed, they effectively forced the

relocation of the Bauhaus from Dessau to Berlin. By the mid-1930s, the

Nazi leaders were using art policies in their war against the Jews: the

traveling Degenerate Art Exhibition, which opened in 1937, contained

caustic anti-Semitic messages, and the expropriation of Jewish

collections, which became more common around the same time,

represented an important escalation of this war. Both developments

were, as many have noted, part of the process of dehumanizing the Jews

undertaken by the Nazis. Finally, the Nazis' project of seizing artworks

from foreign lands that they viewed as Germanic was an expression of

their geopolitical goals: the "Poland is really Germany" school of

thought, which sought to seize objects deemed German and eradicate

indigenous Polish culture, is but one example. In short, the Nazis'

cultural policies – and specifically their efforts to loot artworks – were

inextricably bound with the war and Holocaust, and this gives the project

 

9

 Elizabeth Simpson, ed., The Spoils of War: World War II and Its Aftermath:

The Loss, Reappearance, and Recovery of Cultural Property (New York: Harry

Abrams, 1997).
444 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

of restitution special urgency. One Polish scholar has made this linkage

as he recently called for "material restitution and moral indemnity."10

I think it helpful to outline the different categories of Nazi

plunder here at the outset; in part to gain a sense of the cultural objects

that were displaced, but also to communicate with more specificity how

the looting fit into the Nazis' ideological agenda. The first seizures

involved modern art – works labeled "degenerate" – from state

collections. This began by order of both Propaganda Minister Joseph

Goebbels and Adolf Hitler in 1937 and resulted in the removal of over

17,000 works from German museums (though certain objects actually

belonged to private individuals and were seized with no legal basis).11

While we do not know the fate of all these works – many were sent

abroad and some were burned in Berlin – it is important to note that there

have thus far been no claims on these works. The Nazis passed a law,

dated May 31st 1938, which legalized the sale of artworks purged from

state collections. German officials in the postwar period have recognized

this law – or at least not filed claims or sought restitution. I have heard

that some German museum directors and curators do not agree with this

policy and would like to see their institutions pursue certain artworks that

had been purged by the Nazis. But to repeat, there have been no claims

made on these works and the task until now has been simply to ascertain

the fate of these works (the first comprehensive list of the 17,000 purged

pieces surfaced only last year in London).

The second category concerns artworks taken from German and

Austrian Jews. Very often artworks were seized as part of Nazi

Aryanization measures: the taking over of Jewish-owned businesses,

including art galleries. This happened first in Germany on a limited

scale, and then was "perfected" in Vienna by Adolf Eichmann and his

cohorts who oversaw a "one stop" emigration office. This is part of what

scholars have termed the "Viennese model." These works, if found,

should be restituted to former owners or their heirs.

The third category is the property belonging to Jews outside the

Reich. This includes, in order of seizure, the property of Jews in Poland,

France, the Benelux countries, Greece, and subsequently the rest of

Eastern Europe. The Nazis established a network of agencies to carry

 

10 Jan Pruszynski, "Poland: The War Losses, Cultural Heritage, and Cultural

Legitimacy," in Simpson, ed., The Spoils of War, 52.

11 See the case of private property in the custody of the Berlin National Gallery

discussed by Anja Heuss, "Das Schicksal der jüischen Kunstsammlung von

Ismar Littmann," in Neue Zürcher Zeitung 188 (17 August 1998), 23.
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 445

out these operations: from Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich's

SS and security agencies (as well as their ancestral research organization,

the Ahnenerbe) to Alfred Rosenberg's Special Staff (the Einsatzstab

Reichsleiter Rosenberg or ERR) to Kajetan Mühlmann's commandos in

Poland and his office in the Netherlands. Works from this category, of

course, should be restituted.

Category four concerns artworks that belonged to non-Jews

living outside Germany. The majority of these cases occurred in Eastern

Europe: in Poland, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Hungary,

and the former Soviet Union. Very often the victims were aristocrats,

such as the Czartoryskis and the Lanckoronskis. This was part of the

Germanification program in Eastern Europe, although greed was also a

significant factor.12

Category five is the property belonging to religious

organizations. This would include synagogues (much of the Judaica was

sent to Prague in preparation for the museum to document a deceased

Jewish culture).13 Catholic churches in Eastern Europe and Free Masons'

temples in all the occupied lands also fell victim to the Nazis' plundering

commandos.

Category six is the property of the state. The Nazis refrained

from the wholesale expropriation of state collections in Western Europe,

and most of the state property that was seized came from the East. The

Soviets did not undertake evacuations as quickly as they might have –

such behavior was at times viewed as defeatist thinking – and they lost

many artworks as a result.

These are the six main categories, but they do not necessarily

cover all the losses incurred. For example, families that were implicated

in the July 20th, 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler also had artworks

confiscated (although the amount of property is much smaller than with

the categories noted above). Beyond the issue of categories, the question

remains, how many works did the Nazis plunder? Obviously, this

depends on how one counts cultural objects. Does one calculate every

coin in a collection? What does one do with books, rugs, church bells,

 

12 See Jonathan Petropoulos, "`People Turned to Ashes, Their Property Did Not':

Plundering and the Pursuit of Profit during the Holocaust," in Geoffrey Giles

and Eberhard Jäckel, eds., The Genesis of Nazi Policy (Cambridge/New York:

Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 1999).

13 A good treatment of plundered Judaica can be found in David Altshuler, ed.,

The Precious Legacy: Judaic Treasures from the Czechoslovak State Collections

(Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1983).
446 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

furniture, and other types of cultural property? Added to this problem,

there has been a tendency for individuals – in particular government

officials – to estimate numbers without adequate documentation.

Because of the lack of consensus on how to count cultural objects, the

estimates vary greatly. Even with respect to the restitution of objects by

the U.S.A. through their Central Collecting Points, the number of

returned objects ranges from 250,000 to several million.14 In terms of

paintings, sculptures, and objets d'art – that is, the fine art which serves

as one of the focal points of this conference – my own estimate is that the

Nazis looted approximately one hundred and fifty thousand art objects in

Western Europe and about a half million works in Eastern Europe. But I

would underscore the imprecise and even speculative nature of these

estimates.

There is a similar lack of precision with respect to the number of

artworks still considered missing. Again, all sorts of numbers are thrown

about: one scholar claims that in France alone, "many tens of thousands

of works stolen are missing today."15 But when one puts together lists of

specific objects, the numbers shrink considerably.16 There is still much

research to be done.

I would like to talk very briefly about how one does research into

the Nazis' looting – and how one tries to ascertain what is still missing.

This is a topic that will be taken up in greater detail in Friday's

symposium at the National Archives, but the methods may be outlined

here. The most important source of information is the national archives

of the combatant nations – including the U.S.A. Here can be found

copies of the Art Looting Investigation Unit reports, the foundation for

all research into displaced cultural property during World War II.

Important as they are, however, these reports contain mistakes (errors

that tend to be passed along by scholars). Furthermore, these reports,

which were written right after the war, do not specify the current location

of the artworks involved. Provincial archives often contain useful

 

14 For the figure of 250,000, see Haase, Kunstraub und Kunstschutz, 243. For

the figure of millions, see Lynn Nicholas, "World War II and the Displacement

of Art and Cultural Property," in Simpson, ed., The Spoils of War, 43.

15 Feliciano, The Lost Museum, 4.

16 The Belgian authorities claim 3,273 documented cultural objects to still be

missing, and this includes furniture. But furniture comprises only 5 percent of

this list; clearly this number should be much higher and this is a reflection of the

lack of precise information about such objects, Jacques Lust, The Spoils of War

Removed From Belgium During World War II, in Elizabeth Simpson, ed., The

Spoils of War, 62.
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 447

information – especially about the Aryanization of collections.

However, they are often closed to researchers (the French records have

been notoriously difficult to access), and again, they rarely reveal the

present disposition of the works. Museum archives constitute another

resource – one, I would add, that is largely untapped. To date, relatively

little of the information contained in museum archives has been

incorporated into the literature on looted art. And this information, in

contrast to that in historical archives, often has direct bearing on the

current disposition of the artworks. Museum archivists are not always

fully aware of what is in these records.17 I also understand that many

museums do not give access to the files in their individual curatorial

departments: it is these "deep files" which contain information about

dealers, prices, tax deductions, lawsuits, and so forth. In addition, there

are the records of commercial galleries. Again, these files have been

largely neglected. Yes, there are certain firms that have cooperated with

researchers. The Rosenbergs in New York, for example, have allowed

Lynn Nicholas, Hector Feliciano, and me to work with their papers. But

the Rosenbergs are fairly exceptional (and they are also victims trying to

regain lost works).18 Finally, there are the records of private individuals.

In this category I would place collectors, but also witnesses and

perpetrators. The latter – for example, individuals who catalogued

plunder for the ERR in the Jeu de Paume – have actually assisted a

number of scholars. But the participants in the looting program are

dying off and the window of opportunity is closing quickly.

In terms of research, I urge a more systematic effort to utilize the

records in these latter categories, and in particular, those in museums and

galleries. These are where we will find the documents that will permit us

to determine the current location of artworks. It is therefore essential

that researchers and the individuals who oversee these records develop a

 

17 See Jonathan Petropoulos, "Exposing Deep Files," in ARTnews (January

1999), 143-44.

18 Note that a few other galleries have also been willing to cooperate with

researchers: the Galerie Fischer in Lucerne has generally made its files available

to researchers, as has the Kornfeld Gallery in New York. See Buomberger,

Raubkunst, 18.
448 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

cooperative relationship. As most scholars who have worked in archives

know, a helpful archivist can be a godsend. And I have found that many,

indeed most, archivists really do want to help. This must be a team

effort, and the connection of this history to the Holocaust renders it a

moral imperative: we must all try to do the right thing.

As a practical suggestion, it would be extremely useful to

establish some mechanism by which researchers can become more aware

of the archival resources. What is needed is a central office or agency

that could collect a list of museums, galleries, and individuals who are

prepared to open their records. If they could also create finding aids and

send them to this office, that would help. There are various possibilities

for a central office: it could be at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's

Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies (something of a complement to

the database of survivor testimony that has been created). Or, it could be

in a new office which has just been formed called the Council of Art

Restitution and Research Organizations (CARRO for short). This is a

board comprised of representatives of the various organizations working

on the subject of cultural property displaced as a result of World War II:

the Holocaust Art Restitution Project (or HARP), the Commission for

Art Recovery of the World Jewish Congress, a new organization called

The Project for the Documentation of Wartime Cultural Losses (of which

I am a member), and so forth. CARRO might be the right place for a

central register of institutions and individuals prepared to help. The

point is that we must do what we can to facilitate teamwork and share

information. We are now at a special juncture in history – after the Cold

War but with survivors still among us – and we must make a concerted

effort to learn as much as we can about this history and effect a just

restitution of this displaced cultural property.

I would note in closing that this project of ascertaining precisely

what was plundered by the Nazis is just one of the three major tasks that

are necessary to bring closure to this history. Additionally, we need

more comprehensive international agreements to facilitate the

repatriation of artworks, and we need a more precise and consistent legal

framework in order to settle the claims. Only through a combination of

research, diplomacy, and legal reform can the issue of displaced cultural

property be resolved.
Ms. Lynn H. Nicholas

INDEPENDENT SCHOLAR

UNITED STATES

Plenary Session on Nazi-Confiscated Art Issues

The events of World War II led to the greatest displacement of

works of art in history. By early 1943 art specialists in the Allied nations

were quite aware of the Nazi confiscations and purchases of art objects

and their governments had declared all such activity illegal. They

realized also that these objects, as well as the national collections of all

the belligerents, most of which had been removed from their normal

locations, would be in great danger in the planned invasions of Europe.

It was only with considerable difficulty that military commanders were

persuaded to attach a small group of art officers to their staffs. The

primary duty of these officers was to prevent damage to historic

monuments and to salvage and secure movable works of art. While the

protection of buildings and monuments in the battle zones was often

impossible, the salvage of movable works, which they accomplished in

the chaos of war-torn Western Europe, was nothing short of miraculous.

In the Western countries responsibility for movable works of art

was returned to the local authorities as soon as those areas were liberated

from German control. But the situation within the borders of the Third

Reich was quite different. For here the arts officers were required to deal

not only with the German national collections, but with the vast

quantities of cultural objects confiscated within Germany and brought

from other countries. The objects were found in thousands of hiding

places and refuges. Under the most arduous conditions they were

secured and gradually taken to Collecting Points set up by each Allied

Command within its own Zone of occupation. Despite endless

international meetings, no coordinated Allied policy was ever developed

to deal with these objects. The restitution policies of the Western Allies

and of the USSR were, therefore, very different.

 The Western Occupation authorities did not wish to handle

individual claims, and it became Western policy to return an object to the

country from which it had been removed. Books, paintings, furniture

and every other kind of object, by the thousands, were sorted and

returned to both East and West. There were a few notable exceptions to
450 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

this rule (such as the Lubomirski drawings from Lvov) which affected

items taken from Eastern European nations. In the Western nations the

works were turned over to recuperation commissions which then dealt

with individual claims. Soviet Trophy Commission officers, on the other

hand, were instructed to take valuable works of art, regardless of

ownership, back to the USSR. In the fifties the Soviet Union returned

large quantities of art to state collections in Eastern Europe, but, as a

form of reparation for the immense damage done to their cultural

heritage by the Nazis, the nations of the former USSR still retain a

considerable number of objects from both public and private collections

in the West, including some confiscated by Nazi agencies from Jewish

owners.

In the years immediately following World War II the

recuperation commissions of the Western nations, staffed by a group of

extremely dedicated officials, and the agencies which superceded them,

returned tens of thousands of works to individual claimants. Heirless

works, mainly from Jewish communal holdings, were given over to

Jewish successor organizations for worldwide distribution. And in the

mid-sixties the West German government compensated many claimants

for a percentage of their unrecovered art losses.

But, after a time, the art restitution process, like so many other

World War II issues, though never officially terminated in countries such

as France, lost ground to the pressures of the Cold War and the desire to

return to life as usual. After the great bulk of objects had been returned,

and as the number of claims declined, both interest and funding

diminished, leaving a quantity of works in the hands of European

government agencies and museums where many still remain. These

works come from many sources, not always Holocaust related: some are

objects that were not returned to the previous owner because they had

been sold willingly to the Nazis. Other items were abandoned by

collaborationist dealers and may or may not have been confiscated. A

great many, of course, are works confiscated from Jewish collections

both known and unknown. Why certain works from known collections,

sometimes very prominent ones, were not claimed or returned is difficult

to understand. Indeed, from today’s perspective, a number of the

adjudications made by the recuperation commissions after the war seem

overly legalistic and unfair, and efforts are underway in several countries

to review them and to revive the entire restitution process. I am sure that

you will hear more about this activity from the individual delegations.

But not all displaced art was recovered by the allied agencies.

Items which were fed into the art trade, stolen by Nazi operatives from
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 451

their own agencies, or looted by soldiers and civilians of every nation,

went underground and have been dispersed all over the world. This

unrecovered art is the most difficult category to deal with, for we do not

know where or exactly what it is until it suddenly appears in a museum

or on the market and is recognized.

There is, at the present time, still no easy way for the layman to

check the status of a work about which he has suspicions. The

inventories and files relating to claims and confiscations compiled at the

end of the war had for the most part been relegated to storage and were

in disorder. A tremendous amount of work has been done in the last five

years to reconstitute and re-examine these files and a number of catalogs

of missing works have already been published. But much more

consolidation of records is necessary, and the remaining sealed archives

must be opened. The usefulness of internationally linked databases using

all these records is obvious, ` These databases should not only include

what is known to be missing a listing of works that have been returned

could eliminate weeks of expensive research and prevent false

accusations. The present agreements of museums and dealer’s

associations to vet their holdings would be greatly expedited by more

precise tools of inquiry.

The recovery of art assets is really a dual problem: some claims

concern only governments and others concern individuals. Governments

can negotiate via diplomatic channels, but the greatest problem facing

the individual claimant is the method to be used for recovery. By now

works can be anywhere in the world and the laws of different

jurisdictions are not uniform. The gathering of documentation in

different countries, often by very expensive lawyers with no particular

knowledge of the milieu in which the confiscation or sale occurred, can

take years. Detailed documentation is necessary, however, because

although works of art are individual, identifiable objects, there are many

of them and they are easily confused. It is, therefore, usually necessary

to determine if the claimant was the real owner, if the parties are talking

about the same object, or, for example, `whether or not the work was

restituted long ago and then resold.

There is no question that any work that can be shown beyond a

reasonable doubt to have been confiscated, stolen, or sold unwillingly

should be returned to its former owners or their heirs. Ideally the

determination of the validity of a claim should be made by an

international panel of experts. But this, I feel, is not enough, for,

realistically, some 50 years after the fact, some thought should be given

to the present holder of the work, who may not have anything to do with
452 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

the original confiscator or receiver of stolen goods. By now, proving

absolutely that something was or was not a good faith acquisition is

extremely difficult. Here I believe that government intervention is

necessary in order to limit the bitter and expensive litigation, which

seems to accompany even the most valid claim. A government might,

for instance, give some sort of tax relief to someone who willingly

returns an object belonging to a valid claimant.

Above all, I believe we must not forget the human and historical

context in which Second World War losses occurred. Nor should we

ignore the great efforts of restitution which were made at the end of the

war. That work was not finished, and now it is up to us to complete the

task and correct any injustices, and to do so in an equitable and civilized

manner.
Dr. Ernst Bacher

CHAIRMAN, AUSTRIAN ART COMMISSION

AUSTRIA

Restitution of Works of Art in Austria:

State of the Provenance Research

November 1998

Plenary Session on Nazi-Confiscated Art Issues

After 1945, the Republic of Austria passed in the years 1946-

1949 a total of seven restitution laws, two laws for the settlement of

claims regarding art and cultural heritage (1969 and 1986) and the

amendment passed in 1995 for the so-called “Mauerbach Sale”, an

auction of Nazi-confiscated works of art, to benefit Holocaust victims,

1996.

By January 1, 1949 over 13.000 art objects had been returned to

their rightful owners or their legitimate heirs of the over 18.500 items

which had been seized during the Nazi era or which had been voluntarily

given up to air-raid shelters. Restitution of the remaining objects was

spread out over the subsequent years to 1996.

The archives of the Federal Office for Monuments Preservation

(Bundesdenkmalamt) alone contain around 120.000 documents

designated as ”Restitution Materials” (decrees, various departmental and

institutional files, lists, correspondence, etc.). This figure does not

include further documentation in museums and collections as well as in

various ministries.

At the beginning of 1998 Federal Minister Elisabeth Gehrer

established a “Commission for Provenance Research” which was

charged with working through the historical material on the theme of

looted art at the Bundesdenkmalamt and in State Museums and

Collections. The goal of this very extensive historic survey was to shed

some light on the events of the looting during the period 1938-1945 and
454 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

to establish which dubious acquisitions may have been made by public

collections during that time. Furthermore, the restitution procedures of

the immediate post-war period are to be examined; from today’s point of

view, there are known accessions by museums and collections as a result

of the Export Ban which, by today’s standards are no longer supportable.

In the early 1990’s the Bundesdenkmalamt had already begun

systematic cataloguing and archiving- organizing the restitution material

in its keeping. Since 1998, these holdings are being researched

individually from a chronological and a subject view. There are three

main categories:

Salvage materials, part of the extensive system of air-raid

shelters; from 1943, valuable art and cultural heritage – both seized and

voluntarily given up for protection – stored in some 200 Viennese and

Lower Austrian castles, monasteries, churches and parish-houses until

after 1945.

General material concerning the security, seizure, and

distribution of largely Jewish and monastery collections by the Nazis as

well as their restitution after 1945.

Documentary material (ca. 1.000 documents) with information

and data pertaining to persons connected with works of art and art

collections.

All these materials are presently being archivally organized,

foliated, re-housed and indexed so that a user is able to obtain primary

resource material in a concise and focussed manner (synopses, indexes,

information on size/extent of holdings, index of names, index by

medium, etc.).

Parallel to the research and organization of looted art and

restitution documentation at the Bundesdenkmalamt (Austrian Federal

Office for the Care of Monuments), the archives of the following State

Museums and Collections are also being searched: Kunsthistorisches

Museum (Museum of Fine Arts), Graphische Sammlung Albertina

(Albertina Collection of Graphic Arts), Österreichische Galerie,

Österreichisches Museum für Angewandte Kunst (Austrian Museum of

Applied Arts), Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (Austrian National

Library), Naturhistorisches Museum (Museum of Natural History),

Museum für Völkerkunde (Museum of Ethnography), Österreichisches

Theatermuseum (Austrian Theatre Museum), Technisches Museum für

Industrie und Gewerbe (Technical Museum), Museum des 20.

Jahrhunderts (Museum of 20t-Century Art), Heeresgeschichtliches

Museum (Military Museum), Bundesmobiliendepot (State Furniture
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 455

Collection); Pathologisch-Anatomisches Bundesmuseum (Anatomical

Museum).

The results of the provenance research in the Bundesdenkmalamt

as well as in the museums and collections will enable a better view of the

events during 1938 and 1945 and subsequent post-war period, and are

primarily geared at gleaning information about questionable acquisitions.

These facts will provide the basis and historic evidence for the legislation

governing the “Restitution of Works of Art from Austrian State

Museums and Collections” and its implementation.

Passed by Parliament on November 5, 1998, this federal law

creates the legal basis for the restitution of artistic and cultural artifacts to

the original owners or their legitimate heirs mortis causa according to the

following criteria: artistic and cultural artifacts which were kept as a

result of applications for export permits and were accessioned by state

museums and collections as “gifts” or “endowment”. All those art

objects falling into this category were already subjects of restitution

claims, were indeed returned to their owners and are consequently well

documented. In return for the issue of an export permit under the laws

prohibiting artwork exports, potential exporters agreed to “donate”

several of the items to Austrian museums and collections. From today’s

point of view and because of the fact, that in both the laws (1986 and

1995) governing the clarification of artistic and cultural artifacts the

application of the directives of the law prohibiting exports were

specifically excluded, the practices of the past are indefensible.

Artistic and cultural artifacts which, although they became state

property legitimately had nonetheless been the subject of legal

proceedings in the terms of the so-called Nullification Law

(Nichtigkeitsgesetz) of 1946 (nullification of legal proceedings and other

actions that occurred during the German occupation of Austria) which

itself is thus void. This includes questionable purchases during the 1938-

1945 period, as well as acquisitions after the war: e.g. in the post-war

period museum directors purchased works of art in good faith in the art

market from authorized dealers, whereby only later were doubts raised

about the integrity of the provenance. Cases such as this have come to

light in the course of the provenance research.

Artistic and cultural artifacts which, despite all efforts involved

in their restitution couldn’t be returned to their original owners or their

legitimate heirs and were thus transferred to state ownership as

unclaimed property. Also such indications came to light in the course of

our provenance research.
456 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

In all these cases the new law will rescind the export ban.

To execute this law an advisory panel has been established at the

Federal Ministry for Education and Cultural Affairs which will advise

the Minister authorized to transfer the items upon identifying those

persons legally qualified to receive the works of art.

In the cases where no original owners or their legitimate heirs

mortis causa can be ascertained for art objects, then these objects will be

transferred to the “National Fund of the Republic of Austria for the

Victims of Nazi Terror” for beneficial disposal.

As well as the professional staff of the Bundesdenkmalamt and

the mentioned Museums and Collections who have already been

entrusted with this work, free-lance researchers have also been taken as

the Federal Ministry for Education and Cultural Affairs has made special

positions available in order to accelerate progress.

By November, 1998 about one third (ca. 40.000 documents) of

the restitution material in the Bundesdenkmalamt’s archives) have been

reviewed. Progress in the above-mentioned museums and collections

varies; in those collections e.g. the Kunsthistorisches Museum, where

provenance has been researched for a number of years, the

documentation (containing 500 pages) has already been completed in

1998. Other institutions will take longer to complete the project.

The brief to research provenance in the form described above

applies only to the state museums and collections. Nonetheless, the

Provincial museums (Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien,

Landesmuseum Joanneum in Graz, Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinaneum

in Innsbruck, Residenzgalerie Salzburg, Oberösterreichisches

Landesmuseum in Linz etc.) have joined the research project and have

similarly begun to organize and search their archives from this

perspective.

The first results of the Commission’s work deal with artistic and

cultural property which had been previously held back from restitution

claim cases by the export prohibition law, and which thus came into the

possession of Austrian state museums and collections.

This is the actual situation of provenance research in Austria.

The next steps to execute the mentioned legislation governing the

“Restitution of Works of Art from Austrian State Museums and

Collections” will start within the next month.
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 457

For questions please contact:

Univ. Prof. Dr. Ernst BACHER

Leiter der Kommission für Provenienzforschung

Bundesdenkmalamt

Hofburg, Säulenstiege

A-1010 Wien

Tel.: 0043 1 53 415-200 or 201

FAX: 0043 153 415-252

e-mail: denkmal@bmuvie.gv.at

Mr. Valeriy D. Kulishov

CHIEF OF THE OFFICE OF RESTITUTION, DEPARTMENT FOR THE

PRESERVATION OF CULTURAL ASSETS, MINISTRY OF CULTURE

RUSSIA

Statement translated from the original Russian by the

U.S. Department of State Office of Language Services, Translating Division

Plenary Session on Nazi-Confiscated Art Issues

First of all, allow me, on behalf of the Russian Delegation, to

express our profound support for the goals and objectives of the

Washington Conference. We must not forget that among the more than

20 million Soviet citizens who perished during the last war there were

more than two million Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

As we understand it, one of the main objectives of this

conference is to develop international cooperation among all interested

states in searching for and identifying cultural assets that the Nazis

confiscated from their victims during the years of the Holocaust. As we

see it, this objective involves Russia, as the successor to the Soviet

Union, in the following way: by decision of the allies in the antiHitlerite coalition, the Soviet High Command was the supreme authority

in the Soviet Zone of occupation and was thus responsible for restitution

of allied property, including property belonging to victims of the

Holocaust, from all of occupied East Germany.

The difficult foreign policy situation of the post-war period,

which culminated in the “cold war”, as well as the atmosphere of secrecy

that surrounded and still surrounds the repositories of Russian museums

where so-called “trophy art” is kept, gave rise to the following

assumption: German cultural assets removed to the territory of the

Soviet Union after World War II as compensation for the enormous

cultural losses suffered as a result of the German occupation might also

include cultural assets confiscated by the Nazis from victims of the

Holocaust.

Before turning to an analysis of this assumption, I feel I should

remind you of the mechanism employed by the Nazis for depriving

Holocaust victims of their property. As you are well aware, this
460 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

mechanism varied depending on the country of occupation. In France,

for example, cultural assets confiscated from Jews became the property

of the French State. The Nazis insisted on “open” public auctions and

formally acknowledged that the French authorities had precedence in

selecting artworks for French museums; this was the case with part of the

confiscated Schloss collection, which was selected for the Louvre. In

Austria artworks confiscated from Jews were simply distributed among

the future Führermuseum in Linz and various Austrian museums.

Ostmark, as Austria was then called, was considered to be 100 percent

Aryan, and there were no complaints.

The cultural assets of Holocaust victims in Poland or the Soviet

Union became the property of the German state. For us such concepts as

“forced sale” and “ostensibly voluntary transaction” are purely abstract

ideas. There were no sales – forced or otherwise. There was only

flagrant robbery accompanied by the physical annihilation of the victims.

After the confiscation of Jewish property in France, Belgium and

the Netherlands, generally carried out by special units of the ERR – the

“Einsatskommando [rect: Einsatzstab] Reichsleiter Rosenberg” – the

very best artworks were selected by special agents for the future Hitler

museum in Linz. The special agents whose job was to satisfy the art

demands of other Nazi leaders, primarily Hermann Goering, were

equally active. These Nazi agents, especially the former director of the

Dresden Gallery, Hans Posse, did their jobs very professionally.

Artworks selected for the Führermuseum in Linz were shipped to

specially equipped collection points, located mainly in the Austrian Alps.

These collection points were discovered by special units of the U.S.

Army. Everything that either disappeared or was not found in the

American Zone should be sought in the West. It is unlikely that these

works could have found their way to the East.

Everything that was not looted by Hitler’s special agents in the

occupied countries of Western Europe was sold at auction. This applied

mainly to good, but not museum-quality, works, worthy of private

collections. At the auctions Germans readily purchased these items,

taking advantage of the artificially high exchange rate of the German

mark in relation to the other currencies of occupied Western Europe.

Given the wartime situation, some of the assets in this category could,

theoretically, have found their way to the eastern part of Germany.

As I have already noted, in the occupied areas of the Soviet

Union the Nazis simply looted their victims before sending them to the

gas chambers. In this connection, one should bear in mind that in

western Ukraine, for example, some wealthy Jews owned quite valuable
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 461

art collections that contained works of good, though not museum,

quality. Of course, these were not on a par with the collections of

Rothschild, Schloss, Mannheimer, Bondy, and others, and were thus of

no particular interest to Hitler and Goering’s special agents. These were

plundered by the lowest level Nazis and all these works vanished in the

direction of the West. Representatives of the Extraordinary State

Commission were never able to determine exactly what was in the

private collections looted by the Nazis and, accordingly, to identify even

a part of them in the Soviet Zone of occupied Germany.

It is necessary to bear in mind one other circumstance. By the

end of the war the cultural assets confiscated by the Nazis from their

victims in the East were literally burning a hole in the pockets of those

who had possession of them. They could have become material evidence

of their current owners’ complicity in Nazi crimes in the East. It is not

surprising that these individuals tried to get rid of them at any cost.

There is no doubt that these artworks ultimately found their way to the

West. The facts uncovered to date confirm this.

As an example of how the Soviet Union fulfilled its obligations

to its allies in returning allied property, in general, that was found in the

Soviet zone, and the property of Holocaust victims in particular, allow

me to cite some data from the summary report on the activities of the

Restitution Office of the Reparations, Deliveries, and Restitution

Directorate of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAG)

for 1946. Specifically, the report states the following:

• SMAG activities in searching for and identifying property in the

Soviet Zone, including cultural assets looted by the Germans in

the territory of the Soviet Union and allied countries, were

carried out in conformity with the laws and directives of the

Allied Control Council, and with SMAG orders and directives;

• the Office’s activities in this area were closely coordinated with

the Committee on Restitution Procedures of the Allied Control

Council;

• for the reporting period the Restitution Office received 869

restitution requests to search for and determine the ownership of

property subject to restitution from the Soviet Zone of occupied

Germany from the following allied states: France, Poland,

Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium,

and Denmark;
462 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

• 87,131 items of equipment and property subject to restitution

were identified in the Soviet Zone in 1946; these included

33,552 cultural artifacts (this figure includes books);

• of the above amount of allied property that was identified,

40,584 items belonged to the Soviet Union;

• it was established that the rest of the property (46,597 items)

belonged to the following allied countries: Poland (38,892),

Czechoslovakia (5,123), the Netherlands (955), France (761),

Belgium (101), Norway (23), Yugoslavia (14), Denmark (1);

• it proved impossible to determine whether the remaining 677

items of equipment and other property belonged to the state or to

some other party;

• in accordance with the Quadripartite Procedures for Restitution,

adopted by the Allied Control Council, all the equipment and

property that had been identified was turned over to the

appropriate allied countries.

The report lists the most important items of equipment and other

property that were returned to the allied countries. This list is far from

complete, but I would like to point out that the list of restored property

greatly exceeds the list of restitution claims received by the Soviet

Military Administration from the Allies.

This list also refers to cultural assets that were returned to

victims of the Holocaust. A large organ from a Prague synagogue was

returned to Czechoslovakia. In addition to the well-known Armistice

monument from Compiègne, the collections of paintings that had

belonged to French citizens Léonard Lévy, Paul Denique, and Pierre

Maurice [names transliterated from Russian] were returned.

In searching for and identifying cultural assets that belonged to

the allies and their citizens, the Soviet Military Administration in

Germany could proceed only on the basis of restitution claims submitted

by the interested countries and backed up by documentation. In the case

of state property this was relatively simple. It was much more difficult in

the case of property belonging to Holocaust victims. Nevertheless, I can

solemnly state that Russian archives do not contain any information or

documents which would indicate that the Soviet Military Administration

knowingly or intentionally kept property that belonged to Holocaust

victims, including cultural assets, when it was aware of the origin of

these items.
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 463

Because of the complex and confused circumstances surrounding

the post-war fate of cultural assets confiscated by the Nazis from victims

of the Holocaust, which subsequently ended up in the hands of other

physical and juridical persons, including the museums of some Western

and Eastern countries, it is extremely urgent that we establish, through

joint efforts, an international database that would be accessible to all

interested private citizens and organizations: above all, Holocaust

victims and their direct heirs and legal successors. Russia is fully

prepared to take part in establishing this database and, for that purpose,

to provide relevant documents from Russian archives.

Recently a great deal has been said about the new Russian law

on cultural assets that were removed and are currently located in the

repositories of Russian museums. The law does in fact establish Russia’s

right of ownership in cultural assets that were taken to Russia as

compensation for its enormous cultural losses. But I can assure you that

in Russia there is no law which would stand in the way of just and

legitimate restitution of cultural assets confiscated by the Nazis if

convincing evidence that they belong to Holocaust victims is provided.

Ambassador Ronald S. Lauder

CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD, MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

UNITED STATES

Plenary Session on Nazi-Confiscated Art Issues

When I was asked to be Chairman of the Commission for Art

Recovery for the World Jewish Congress, I knew it would be a difficult

task, but nothing prepared me for what lay ahead.

As you have just heard, although a great deal of art was found in

salt mines, warehouses, trucks and trains, and many pieces were returned

to the countries from which they were stolen – approximately 50% -

110,000 pieces of art worth between ten and thirty billion dollars today

are still missing.

It is my belief, because of these large numbers, that every

institution, art museum and private collection has some of these missing

works.

I question how many great institutions have held works of art for

50 years, knowing that what they have held didn’t belong to them, but to

Jewish families. It is only now that they are being forced to take some

action, action that they should have taken many, many years ago. How

many homes have works of art hanging on their walls from Jewish

families?

In France, after the war, many works were returned to prominent

Jewish families. However, 15,000 works of art remained unclaimed,

from which the French government allowed the museums in France to

select the 2,000 best works, and the remaining 13,000 were auctioned

off. Where is the record of these sales? Who benefited? These 2,000

works that remained in French museums have a special number.

France stopped trying to find owners after 1959. It was only in

1997, after being reminded by Hector Feliciano, that an exhibition was

held, and a list was published of these 2,000 works. It is time for the

provisional and temporary custody of the French museums to end. These

works should be returned to the families who owned them, and where no

families can be found, an auction should be held and the Jewish

Communities of France should benefit.

The Austrian government took a giant step forward when it

decided to hold an auction in 1996 of the works stored since the war at
466 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

Mauerbach. Today there is a complete search being done by the

government of Austria itself of the holdings of all its federal museums.

Research is being done to find the owners of the paintings that were

taken between 1938 and 1945.

The Netherlands also has works for which no owners were

found: they were placed in the care of the Netherlands Art Foundation.

Although they knew that there were objects in the museums that were

stolen from Jewish families, it was only after other countries started to do

their research that the Netherlands decided to look for pre-war owners.

They now have identified 3,900 works of art, and the government

estimates it will take three years to complete the research project. It can

be done in 6 months. An auction should be held.

Germany also received art that it knew came from Jewish

families. Did they try to find the owners or their heirs? No. They

simply set up a trust: the Gemälde Treuhand Verwaltung and distributed

it among museums.

In the Czech Republic, the museum in Brno acknowledges that it

has art once in the collection of the late Arthur Feldmann, whose

grandson, Uri Peled, now lives in Israel. Mr. Peled maintains, correctly,

that his family’s collection of old master prints and drawings was looted

by the Nazis. These works were subsequently nationalized by

Czechoslovakia and the Slovakian Museum. They have refused to return

the Feldmann works in their possession.

In Hungary, a portion of the collection of the Hatvany family is

now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest. The Hatvany heirs are

getting nowhere in their efforts. Sixty years later!

A great portion of the art that was not deemed appropriate for

German museums or for the new museum that was being created in Linz,

was sold through dealers to Switzerland. Douglas Cooper, the British

investigator, reported in 1945 that Switzerland had been the prime

destination. He identified quite a number of private collectors and sixteen

dealers in Switzerland who trafficked in Nazi-looted art. Chief among

these was Theodore Fischer, auctioneer and dealer, and Emil Bührle,

industrialist and collector. Paul Rosenberg, the eminent French Jewish

art dealer whose collection had been looted from a bank vault in

Libourne, traced thirteen of his pictures to Bührle. (He had to bring a

court case to strike a deal, in which Bürhle bought from Paul Rosenberg

the stolen Rosenberg pictures Bührle had already bought.)

Since Switzerland was neutral, the Allies could not monitor trade

there. No one knows how many looted works were sent to Switzerland.

Switzerland’s recent investigation into the past of the art owned by the
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 467

Swiss Confederation is a step in the right direction. But it doesn’t even

touch on the holdings of the majority of Swiss museums, private

foundations or private collections.

No one knows how many “hot” works are in Swiss bank vaults

or free ports – even today.

No one knows how many works went through neutral

Switzerland to Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, and from

there to the United States and other collecting countries.

In the United States, there are many works of art that have come

here right after the war and into the 1950’s and 1960’s through a second

or third party.

The United States is perhaps the most active country in finding

works of art through its Association of Art Museum Directors,

(“AAMD”). They met this past June and worked out guidelines for a

complete and thorough investigation of the provenance of all art for all

their museums, to determine if any of their works of art could have been

looted works from the Nazi era.

Perhaps the most important job my Commission is doing is

working on a database, so that we can cross-reference all works of art

looted during the Nazi era. And we will have as close as possible a

complete list.

This summer we did an experiment. We began to see what we

could uncover by going through catalogues: catalogues of permanent

collections and special exhibitions. My staff went to over 225 books of

museum collections and catalogues and found more than 1,700 works

that could be war loot. It is clearly much more widespread than museum

directors had thought.

We have a list of Nazi collaborators. Any work with those

names in the ownership history could be unrecovered Nazi loot. We are

comparing this art with claims from families, and we’ll let them know if

there is a match.

We invite you to send us the information, and we would

welcome your cooperation. But if you do not want to work with us in

this way, we will review all your publications anyway and find the works

with dubious provenance.

In the fifty years since the end of the war, the art world forgot,

maybe it chose to forget, the Nazi depredations – but we will not. Some

of the most notorious names appear in scholarly catalogues. Goering’s

name is there! The Linz Museum is there! In some German museum

catalogues, the provenance states that the art was “taken from the

possession of Jews between 1933 and 1945!” I hope that this is an
468 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

honest way of serving notice to possible claimants, and I have been told

that the museum will soon contact the Commission. Perhaps we can

work together to find the heirs to these paintings.

Some of the names of the most famous looted collections appear

in published provenances. Were all these works of art restituted and

legitimately re-sold? Of course not. There is either a collective amnesia

or a brazen openness in including these names in the published

provenances. But there they are. And they will go into the Commission’s

database to be matched against art claimed by looted families.

It is time for museums to set the same standard for ownership

that they expect of themselves for authenticity. Is the art genuine? Is the

art genuinely theirs?

Together, in the next few years, we must find out. We must set

the record straight, and put art back in the hands of the families from

whom it was stolen, simply because they were Jewish. For many

members of this generation, art is the only connection they have to

members of their family who perished in the Holocaust.

These works of art that were looted are the last “prisoners of

war.” We do not want to wait. We will find these works of art – now.
Mr. Earl A. Powell, III

DIRECTOR, NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

UNITED STATES

Plenary Session on Nazi-Confiscated Art Issues

I would like to thank you for this opportunity to speak today to

discuss the important subject of restitution of works of art seized during

the Third Reich. We join our museum colleagues in expressing our

profound concern for the victims whose artistic treasures were pillaged

during the holocaust. The National Gallery has been involved since the

end of World War II with the international effort to recover the looted

works. On June 23, 1943, President Roosevelt established the Roberts

Commission to promote the preservation of cultural properties and to

protect Europe’s treasures in war-ravaged areas. An independent

presidential commission, it was headquartered at the National Gallery

and several Gallery officials as well as those from the Metropolitan

Museum of Art and other institutions served on this Commission. The

Commission promoted the establishment of the Monuments, Fine Arts

and Archives (MFAA) section of the U.S. Army in post-war Germany

which, among other things, established “collecting points” where art

objects retrieved from the Nazis could be inventoried and protected

before their restitution.

Certain records of these and other restitution activities are

available for research at the National Gallery Archives. Copies of the

glass slides and gelatin negatives of the roughly 60,000 works of art in

one of the Army collecting points, called the “Munich Collecting Point,”

are available for research in our Photo Archives. As a matter of interest,

the historian and author, Lynn Nicholas, spent much time in our archives

while researching her book, The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s

Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War. The last

several years have brought forth an extraordinary amount of new

scholarship regarding the fate of many cultural treasures during and after

this terrible period. But more is needed and we are hopeful that new

revelations will shed further—and much needed—scholarly light on this

subject.
470 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

The National Gallery follows the practice of American art

museums of publishing annually a list of all acquisitions. In addition, the

Gallery has undertaken an extensive project, which began over a decade

ago and which will take years to complete, of the publication of a

projected thirty-volume detailed systematic catalogue of its entire

collection. Each volume, written by Gallery curators or other scholars, is

devoted to a particular school of painting, sculpture or decorative arts

area with comprehensive, scholarly essays on each work articulating the

history, style, content, and context with technical notes and artist

biographies, summarizing and expanding upon the literature in the field.

Ten of these volumes have been published, three more will come out in

1998, and the other volumes are in progress. Additionally, research on

works of art in the Gallery’s collection is often available in special

exhibition catalogues. As all of this new scholarly research is published,

the details regarding the history of ownership, or provenance, are added

to our curatorial records which are open to researchers. In an effort to

make as much information as possible available to the public around the

world, the National Gallery launched its World Wide Web Site a year

ago. A cornerstone of the site is the collection section, which contains

detailed provenance information on thousands of works of art in the

National Gallery collection.

It is a time consuming, expensive kind of research. We are

currently looking into a claim involving a work that was restituted by the

allied military government after the war. In this case the claim involves

legitimacy of ownership. The work in question is one of more than 20

drawings by Durer from the Lubomirski Collection which were returned

in the 1940s to a lineal descendant of the family which originally owned

them. This gentleman subsequently sold the drawings to several

purchasers in good faith. These works are now held in many public and

private collections in this country and abroad. The complexity of the

case, which involves rightful ownership, dates back to 1823 and involves

conflicting claims from more than one institution, and shifting national

boundaries. This is the only claim received to date by the National

Gallery. We are pressing on in our efforts to complete as thoroughly as

possible the necessary provenance research. It is a complicated and time

consuming task, which we trust will result in due course in a just

resolution of the claim. Should any other claim arise we will treat it with

the same commitment to establish the facts and achieve a resolution.

The National Gallery, along with other museum directors, participated in

the Association of Art Museum Directors’ Task Force dedicated to

finding solutions to these complex problems. We welcome the
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 471

opportunity to join with our colleagues in the museum community to

explore ways of continuing restitution as new information becomes

available.

Dr. Wojciech Kowalski

PROFESSOR, FACULTY OF LAW, UNIVERSITY OF SILESIA

POLAND

Restitution Policy of the Polish Government

Post-war to Present

Break-out Session on Nazi-Confiscated Art Issues: Government

Restitution Policies, Postwar to Present

Polish cultural heritage suffered severe losses in the course of the

19th and early 20th centuries; thus, when the restitution policy was framed

after World War Two, Poland, unlike many other states, could fall back

on its previous ‘wide’ experience in this field. The only difference

between World War Two and the former global war, or, other historical

perturbations was the range of damage to cultural property and degree to

which the plunder was organized,1 surpassing all previously suffered

 

1

 Cultural looting was carried out on the formal basis of special Nazi decrees

issued for occupied Poland and later for other countries in occupied Europe. See,

for example, full text of such “laws” issued for occupied Poland, W. Kowalski:

Art Treasures and War. A Study on the Restitution of Looted Cultural Property

Pursuant Public International Law. Leicester 1998, annex 1 and 2, p. 91-92. For

other countries see: R. Lemkin: Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Washington

1944. As an illustration of the character of these “laws” referring to private

property only two paragraphs of one of them only can be given. Regulation

concerning confiscation of the works of art in the German-occupied Poland

dated 16 December 1939:

“Para 1: Public possession of the works of art in the German-occupied Poland is

hereby confiscated for the sake of public benefit and use (...).

Para 2: The term of public possession of the works of art, (...) refers to: 1.

Private collections of the works of art, which are subject to registration and

security procedures undertaken by the appointed commissioner to protect their

cultural and historical value, 2. The works of art in the exclusive possession of
474 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

losses.2 The fate of Jewish assets could be given as the best example

here.

For these reasons, the first attempts to formulate the concept of

liquidating the effects that the War had on Polish culture were initiated

right from the start - two months after the War broke out. It is at that time

that the first conspiracy group was organized to register the damage

inflicted upon culture and the losses resulting from the Nazi invasion of

Poland in September 1939. Soon the group, called the Department of the

Liquidation of the Effects of War, became an official agency of the

Polish Government in Exile in London, which operated in conspiracy in

the Nazi-occupied Poland. Also, in the structure of the Government in

Exile itself, Bureau of Revendication of Cultural Losses was established,

which, irrespective of considerable obstacles, remained in touch with the

above mentioned Department which operated in Poland. The data on the

losses and on the occupant’s policy3 that was thus obtained made it

possible for the Bureau of Revendication of Cultural Losses to initiate

the actions to be undertaken by the Allied agencies, for example, by the

Conference of the Allied Ministers of Education which worked in

London since 1942 until 1945.

In view of the above, it should be noticed that the Polish

restitution policy began to emerge very early and was mainly focused on

 

the Church, except for the property needed for everyday liturgy.” W. Kowalski,

op. cit, p. 91.

Introduction of such “laws” constituted, without any question, severe breach of

International Law of War. See, for example: I. Brownlie: International Law and

the Use of Force by States. Oxford 1963, A. McNair, A. Watts: Legal Effects of

War. Cambridge 1966. I. Brownlie: Principles of Public International Law.

Oxford 1979.

2

 On the scale of damage and losses see, for example: G. Mihan: Looted

Treasure: Germany’s Raid on Art. London 1944, Tentative List of Jewish

Cultural Treasures in Axis-Occupied Countries. Jewish Social Studies 1946,

Vol. 8, no 1. Supplement, W. Tomkiewicz: Catalogue of Paintings Removed

from Poland by the German Occupation Authorities During the Years 1939-

1945. Vol. 1. Foreign Paintings. Warsaw 1950, Vol. 2. Polish Paintings. Warsaw

1953. B. Biekowska: Losses of Polish Libraries During World War II. Warsaw

1994. L. H. Nicholas: The Rape of Europe. The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in

the Third Reich and the Second World War. New York 1994.

3

 On the basis of the information on losses received this way, Charles Estreicher,

head of the Bureau, was able to produce and publish their first account before

the end of war. See: Ch. Estreicher (ed.): Cultural Losses of Poland, Index of

Polish Losses During the German Occupation 1939-1943. London 1944.
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 475

two agencies: the one operating in the Nazi-occupied Poland- that is to

say, directly at the scene of the crime, and the other one in London,

which, at that time, was an important co-operation center for the Allies. I

emphasize these facts, as they had a fundamental impact on the approach

of the two agencies towards the principles upon which they framed their

respective restitution policies.4

The circles operating in secret in Poland favored the postulate of

reparations. Being everyday witness to the range of the inflicted damage5

and the methods that the occupational administration and several Nazi

agencies specialized in looting6 employed, home-based organizations

could not possibly imagine any other alternative way of indemnity. As

cultural property was damaged and removed from Poland with no trace

of documentation, and such activities were organized on massive scale,

effective restitution seemed irrelevant or practically impossible.

Moreover, in the process of organized removal of cultural property from

Poland, the Nazis were interested to keep only the most valuable works

of art, allocating the majority of plundered cultural objects to sale

through special agencies, such as Haupttreuhandstelle Ost, HTO (Central

Trustees Office, East).7 In view of this, the circles involved in the issue

 

4

 The process of formulating these policies and arguments raised during relevant

discussions, see: W. Kowalski: Liquidation of the Effects of World War II in the

Area of Culture. Warsaw 1994, see in particular chapter I entitled: Concept of

the Redress of Losses in the Field of Culture put forth by Polish Centres before

the end of War, p. 15 et seq.

5

 The first full report of the Nazi’s cultural policy in occupied Poland based on

their evidence was published in London in 1945. See: The Nazi-Kultur in

Poland by Several Authors of Necessity Temporarily Anonymous (Written in

Warsaw Under the German Occupation) London , HMSO, 1945.

6

 Today we would rather say - specialized in cultural cleansing. These agencies

included, among other organizations, SS art branch called Ahnenerbe (Ancestral

Heritage) and Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR). Rosenberg was

formally instructed by Hitler to “transport to Germany cultural goods which

appear valuable to him and to safeguard them there”. NA, RG 260/411, Keitel to

CIC France, September 17, 1940. L. H. Nicholas: The Rape..., p. 125. For more

information on the activity of SS Ahnenerbe, see: H. Lehmann-Haupt: “Cultural

Looting of the Ahnenerbe”. Office of Military Government for Germany (US),

Berlin, March 1, 1948, no. 183. On the role of both these agencies see several

remarks and facts given by L. H. Nicholas: The Rape.....

7

 To illustrate the scope and scale of the HTO activity, it is enough to quote a

fragment of one of its executive orders:
476 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

of reparation considered different options of the same, practically

impossible solution. Was there and is there any way to compensate the

loss of as unique objects as only the works of art can be?

For example, while considering what kind of indemnity could be

claimed for the destruction of the Royal Castle in Warsaw, deliberations

were made how many paintings could have been bought by a Polish king

in the 18th century with the money that had been used for extension

works on this castle. Several sources could even name which paintings

could have been bought, basing their estimations on the actual works,

which had been purchased at that time by a Prussian king. Furthermore,

because the paintings in question were still kept in Berlin, it was argued

that they should be claimed as compensation for the damaged Royal

Castle.8 Under such circumstances, the only realistic solution of repairing

the inflicted damage seemed to be the reparations ‘payable’ in cultural

property.

Unlike the organizations operating in Poland, the Polish

Government in Exile in London had a different view on liquidating the

effects of the War. On the one hand, it was difficult for them to fully

understand the extent of damage and plunder, as they had not witnessed

it in their own eyes. Living in the times of the omnipresence of mass

 

“I. In order to fortify Germanism and the defense of the Reich, confiscation is

ordered (...) of all objects mentioned in point II of this order on confiscation,

found in the territories which have (...) become a component part of the Reich,

as well as those found in the Governmentship General ( occupied central part of

Poland, add. W. K.) providing that these objects do not belong to the

Reichsdeutsch or the Volksdeutsch (two kinds of German citizenship, add. W.

K.), or that the Reichsdeutsch and Volksdeutsch do not own more than 75% of

the rights to the property. Most particularly, subject to confiscation are all

objects mentioned in point II found in archives, museums, public collections,

and in Polish or Jewish possession, but whose security and appropriate treatment

lies in German interest.

II. 1. Objects of historical and prehistoric provenience, records, books,

documents important for research on the history of civilization and public life,

and those particularly relevant to the question of German contribution to the

historic, cultural and economic development of the country as well as documents

of importance to current history. 2. Objects of artistic, cultural and historic

value, such as paintings, sculptures, furniture, rugs, crystal pieces, books, etc. 3.

Objects of interior decorations and objects of precious metals”. Document of

December 15, 1939. Further quotations: W. Kowalski: Liquidation..p. 20.

8

 For more detailed description of these discussions see: W. Kowalski:

Liquidation... p. 28-29.
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 477

media, one must remember that people acting in conspiracy under the

Nazi occupation could not possibly take photographs or make films.

However, on the other hand, any reparation proposals put forward before

the Allied bodies had to be realistic. Neither the political practice of the

states concerned, nor the international law recognized, at that time,

reparations in the form of cultural property. The only precedent in this

matter was made in Art. 247 of the Versailles Treaty, under which such

reparations were stipulated in favor of Belgium only and in purely

symbolic form.9 Although some far-reaching reparation proposals were

every now and then presented in England or the USA, including, for

example, a postulate to seize the German collections and divide them

among the injured states, these were only public opinion10 or private

bodies’ postulates.11 The respective governments were much more

moderate in their views. Due to political reasons, obvious reparation

claims tended to be limited and intermediate solutions were looked for

instead.

 

9

 Art. 247 of the Versailles Treaty, as well as the whole issue of cultural

reparations after the World War I is discussed in detail in W. Kowalski: Art

Treasures ....p. 33 et seq. See also detailed report on the negotiations which led

to the formulation of art. 247 in: P. Burnett: Reparation at the Paris Peace

Conference from the Standpoint of the American Delegation. New York 1940.

10 Rather radical stand of the British opinion was, for example, expressed in

“The Daily Telegraph” of March 16, 1943. A. E. Russel wrote that: “.increasing

attention is rightly being paid to the unparalleled looting committed by the

Germans in the occupied countries of Europe; looting not only of war materials,

live stock and food, but of major works of art and uncountable humbler of

treasures...Whereby the galleries of German cities contain large and well

catalogued collections of works of art and craftsmanship of all kinds and of all

countries, and of immense value. I suggest that at the end of the war an

International Restitution Committee should take possession of all such

collections with the view of distributing their contents between the various

ravaged nations. The confiscation should be sweeping, so that empty museums

and galleries would be a permanent reminder to the Germans that war does not

pay and a comptemptous rejection of their impudent claim to be the guardians of

Europe’s culture.”

11 In the USA one of such opinions was formulated by the Study Group of the

Council of Foreign Relations. They found proper, that “In default of restoration

of property which is of exceptional historical, artistic, or cultural value, the Axis

nations must substitute equivalent property of their own”. A Memorandum on

the Restitution or Indemnification of Property Seized, Damaged, or Destroyed

During World War II. In: Council of Foreign Relations. The Postwar Settlement

of Property Rights. New York 1945.
478 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

As Poland and Germany had been in close neighborhood for

ages and the cultures of the two nations intermingled in the course of the

centuries, one solution was self-evident. If the reparations could be paid

to Poland neither in German cultural property, which anyway was not

welcome in our country at that time, nor in world famous masterpieces,

which was politically unrealistic, the advanced claims would have to

concern the Polish cultural heritage which had been kept, in quite a few

cases, in German museums for several centuries. Following such

reasoning, actual attempts were made to prepare the claims for such form

of reparations, registered in the files of the Department of the Liquidation

of the effects of War operating in conspiracy. For example, it was

expected that numerous military accessories of Polish origin would be

handed over to Poland, as well as portraits of Polish historical persons

and some collections which had been purchased in Poland.

Another way of making good considered as feasible was in kind

restitution. On the basis of the exemplary in-kind restitution stipulated in

the Versailles Treaty, the proposal involved the compensation of

irretrievably lost cultural property by the works of art of equivalent

importance.

As a result of such reasoning, final drafts of some clauses of the

peace treaty were formulated by the Ministry in the Polish Government

in Exile, which was responsible for the preparation of the Polish

proposals for a peace conference. The drafts are the best representation

of the restitution concept adopted as an official standpoint the Polish

Party before 1945.

This gave priority to absolute restitution. Considering the

circumstances of the plunder, which was often made for the private

benefit of German soldiers or civil occupational authorities, the draft of

the peace treaty obligated the German Party to hand over all the Nazi

documentation concerning cultural property, including the registers and

inventories kept in German museums, etc.12 In-kind restitution was

 

12 Art. 3 of this Draft stated that since there were: “very many instances of

robbery of property by the German military and German officials who took

advantage of their position as the occupant for their own private use and due to

the resultant difficulty in finding these objects in Germany for they were not

included in any collections or government warehouses, German was under

obligation to order a compulsory registration in order to return the works of art,

historic objects of the art and crafts industry, historic mementos, cult objects,

books, documents, etc, seized in Poland by the said persons.” W. Kowalski:

Liquidation...p. 40.
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 479

considered as the next priority. This solution involved handing over the

works of art of equivalent value or importance, to compensate for

irretrievably lost cultural property, or, to rebuild historically important

works of architecture.13 The most comprehensive provision of the draft

was devoted to reparations of cultural heritage. The adopted principle

stipulated the supremacy of cultural reparations over any other

reparations, which was highlighted by a separation of the cultural

reparation postulates form the chapter devoted to reparations in

general.14 The postulate was supported with a list of claimed works of

art, at the top of which the cultural property of Polish origin was placed,

and next, different objects kept mainly in Berlin or Dresden museums

successively.15 I would also like to recall yet another interesting

postulate that, although proposed by one of the experts, had never been

included in the draft. It was a plan to create an international museum of

the plundered works of art, consisting of those object that had been found

but could not be returned to their rightful owners, as it was impossible to

determine who the owners were. According to the plan, this, so-called,

"Common Exchange Museum” was not supposed to have a permanent

base; instead, the idea was to transfer the museum collection from town

to town among the injured countries every few years. The crucial

reasoning behind this concept was a kind of “indirect” return of the

cultural heritage looted from a nation which had, quite probably, been

deprived of the objects

 

13 The relevant provision of the Draft was formulated as follows: “Germany has

bound itself to restore historic secular and church buildings as well as

monuments that had been destroyed by military operations and due to the special

orders issued upon their cessation (torn down, remodeled, etc.). Art. 4. W.

Kowalski: Liquidation...p. 41

14 This idea is reflected by the art. 1 of the Draft which reads: „Reparations and

requital for losses in the field of culture (...) for a clearly distinct area of

obligation and have priority over and above all other categories of imposed

obligations”. W. Kowalski: Liquidation...p. 41.

15 Art. 5 of the Draft provided in this respect: ”For the deliberate destruction and

damage, and for the loss of cultural property in the area of museum art

collections and artistic furnishings of the destroyed buildings, Germany is

obliged by the provisions regarding reparations and requital to deliver works of

art and objects of the arts and crafts industry in the number and type specified in

the enclosed Annex, in that the ill will of the Germans as well as the enormous

value of this property for the Polish nation is taken into consideration”. W.

Kowalski: Liquidation... p. 41. See also detailed description of the Annex, p. 42-

43.
480 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

After the war operations stopped in 1945, the Soviet-dependent

government took power in Poland but, in general, this had no influence

on the restitution concept formulated before the War was over.

Obviously, for political reasons, it was addressed to Germany only,

although even then it was difficult to conceal the massive removal of

cultural property by the Red Army from the formerly German lands

which were already granted to Poland, not to mention the tragic fate

experienced by the cultural heritage left in the former Polish eastern

territories taken over USSR. The above mentioned restitution principles

were adopted by the Ministry of Culture and Arts and had to be

presented to the Allies by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as Poland’s

official proposal.

The basic postulate was still absolute restitution of the objects

that could be identified. This postulate was the only one that was ever

executed in practice but only to limited extent. Its fulfillment was largely

possible thanks to the American military administration of the relevant

Occupation Zone in Germany, where most of the Polish cultural property

of great value was found, having been removed by the Nazis from

Cracow, Warsaw, etc. Due to good co-operation in this field, 34 362

cultural objects were returned to Poland in 1945 and 1946. As far as the

second postulate of in-kind restitution was concerned, initially, there was

also a chance to achieve it thanks to the attitude of the American

government, which at least up to the year 1947, was the only one that

supported such form of restitution. Thus, the principle of in-kind

restitution was introduced to the Definition of Restitution adopted by the

Control Council for Germany in 1947 as its official legal standpoint to

give grounds for the in-kind restitution proceedings in all the four

occupation zones. According to point 3 of this document, “As to goods

of unique character, restitution of which is impossible, a special

instruction will fix the categories of goods which will be subject to

replacement, the nature of these replacements and the conditions under

which such goods could be replaced by equivalent objects.” On the basis

of this indication, the Polish government approached the American

military authorities with a list of 64 paintings to be granted to Poland as

compensation for the paintings removed from our country by the Nazis.

However, 1947 was the year of the beginning of the Cold War, which put

an end to the chance of executing the provisions made previously by the

Allies. The reparation proposals turned to be entirely unacceptable in

practice for purely political reasons.
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 481

At that time, the Polish Ministry of Culture and Arts had already

some preliminary data on the war losses,16 and prepared comprehensive

general postulates of reparations and restitution claims from Germany.

Apart from the facilities to the damaged theatres, operas, libraries and

other cultural institutions, the claims comprised lists of works of art

grouped in different categories, including, for example: paintings of

various schools, old furniture, ceramics, tapestry, etc.17 The lists were

made in view of the objects to be found in the Dresden Gallery, which, at

that time was kept in the Soviet territory. The Polish Ministry of Culture

and Arts assumed that if Poland was to receive 15 % of the reparations

due to the USSR under the Berlin Treaty provisions, the same portion of

the Dresden Gallery collection could be claimed as well. Finally, this

postulate, just as the whole concept of reparations, were never officially

presented. Apart from some obvious political obstacles, the Polish

authorities at that time paid much more attention to economic

reparations, with particular focus on the industrial ones.

Following the ensuing unfavorable political climate, restitution

proposals were gradually limited, until, in principle, they became a

historical issue. As a result of these developments, in the early 1950s the

Bureau of Revindication and Reparations in the Ministry of Culture and

Arts was closed. Thus, the inventory of the War losses was discontinued,

stopping at the figure of 516 000 cultural objects including those that had

been completely damaged. The last attempt at restitution measures

undertaken at that time was the 1953 proposal made by the Polish Party

to exchange 117 German works of art for the 18th century architectural

designs of Warsaw buildings which were required to rebuild the city so

much damaged in World War Two. Irrespective of definite agreements

 

16 For more details on the methods used in collecting information about the

losses and their assessment, see: W. Kowalski: Liquidation..p. 67 et seq.

According to official report presented by Ambassador Wierbowski at the

meeting of the Deputy Ministers of Foreign Affaires in London in 1947, Poland

lost 43 % of the cultural property owned in 1939. For example, the National

Museum in Warsaw lost 100% of ancient art, 78% of Polish paintings, 58% of

foreign paintings, and 75% of the applied art.

17 For example, the lists include the following entries: from the Kaiser FriedrichMuseum in Berlin: 45 paintings of the 14th and 15th century Italian school, 62

paintings of the 16th to 18th century Italian school, 10 paintings of the 17th

century Spanish school, from the Neues Museum in Berlin: 3 Egyptian granite

sarcophagi, 10 Egyptian stone sarcophagi, 15 alabaster Egyptian vases, 10

Roman busts, 100 Greek vases, etc, etc. For further entries see: W. Kowalski:

Liquidation...p. 82-83.
482 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

made between Poland and East Germany on the diplomatic level, the

exchange had a unilateral character only - the German Party accepted the

paintings with proper solemnity but never gave the promised designs.

Due to the political changes initiated in Poland in the late 1980s

the problem of the liquidation of the effects of the Second World War

has revived as an issue of diplomatic negotiations. In the case of Poland

that means reopening of ‘old’ matters still to be settled with Germany

and we may say, ‘new’ matters related to Russia and other states in the

East of Europe, with which this dialogue could be entered into only

nowadays. In 1991 probably the last attempt was made to list the losses

suffered by Polish culture in World War Two. Up to the day on which I

am making this speech, the inventory has recorded 52 038 items

altogether. This figure includes single works of art and whole collections.

In terms of categories it covers, for example: 4600 paintings by Polish

masters, 3 730 paintings by foreign masters, 2363 pieces of sculpture, 3

250 gold-work objects, etc.

Irrespective of the future figure by which the present statistics

will be increased, it has always been evident that this task is impossible

to achieve as a whole. The documentation concerning cultural property

damaged or removed by the Nazis from Poland is incomplete as a result

of the methods by means of which the plunder and damage were made.

Therefore, if it is impossible to calculate the losses, how can they be

directly repaired?

Under such circumstances, what restitution policy should my

government adopt?

Because of the main focus of our conference, my remarks will

cover only the relations with Germany. For obvious reasons, I cannot

answer this question in full detail, but generally it would be my

suggestion to adopt the following principles.

On the one hand, the losses are still remembered in Poland and

they are still easily and clearly visible in many places and many cultural

institutions, so their character is not purely historical.

On the other hand, the restitution policy should also be

determined by the present and future political relations between Poland

and Germany, totally different from the political climate of the times

when the above discussed rigid restitution and reparations concepts were

formulated. Our present relations have been designated by ‘the treaty on
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 483

good neighborhood policy and friendly co-operation’18 signed several

years ago between the two countries and I am convinced that the

suggestive wording of this title is not only formal. In my opinion, the

issue of the lost cultural heritage seems to be the last unresolved problem

concerning the effects of the War. However, the way in which this issue

is to be settled should by no means disturb our good relations;

conversely, it should show that our two countries are capable of settling

even the most difficult disputes so the good relations between us are

permanent and long-lasting.

What will probably remain out of the old restitution concepts is

the expectation to receive back all the cultural property that was subject

of unlawful removal and can be restituted now. As far as other aspects of

the policy of liquidating the war effects is concerned, it should be based

on the general principles laid down in the above-mentioned treaty. First

and foremost, Art. 2819 stipulates that Poland and Germany will co-

 

18 Treaty between the Republic of Poland and the Federal Republic of Germany

on good neighborhood policy and friendly cooperation signed in Bonn on June

17, 1991.

19 Art. 28 reads as follows:

“1. The contracting Parties will co-operate in the field of the preservation and

protection of European cultural heritage. They will protect monuments.

2. The contracting Parties will assure particular care for located on their

respective territories places and cultural properties, which are the evidence of

historical events and of cultural and scientific traditions and achievements of

other Party, and will assure full access to them or will take steps to assure such
484 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

operate in the field of the protection of European cultural heritage. It also

includes the obligation of both parties to protect the objects of Polish

heritage that have been preserved Germany, as well as German heritage

located in Poland. As section 2 of the said Article emphasizes, these

efforts should be undertaken ‘in the spirit of concord and reconciliation’,

which, if really accepted by the two Parties, shall definitely facilitate the

settlement of even the most difficult issues connected with cultural

property and archival material.

 

access in case it is not in the State’s competence. Above mentioned places and

cultural properties are under legal protection of both Parties. Contracting Parties

will undertake initiatives in this respect in the spirit of concord and

reconciliation.

3. The contracting Parties will strive to resolve in the same spirit the problems

related to the cultural goods and archives starting with individual cases”.
Dr. Oliver Rathkolb

KREISKY ARCHIVES AND INSTITUTE FOR CONTEMPORARY HISTORY,

UNIVERSITY OF VIENNA

AUSTRIA

From ‘Legacy of Shame’ to New Debates over

Nazi Looted Art

Break-out Session on Nazi-Confiscated Art Issues: Government

Restitution Policies, Postwar to Present

1) INTERNATIONAL DEBATES 1984/1985

A few years before the Waldheim-Debate – in 1984 – Andrew

Decker criticized the “Austrian Style” of restitution of art work stolen by

the National Socialists after 1938, and he primarily focused on items

stored in a monastery outside Vienna (Mauerbach), which had been

turned over by the US authorities in Germany after they passed on the

supervision over the Central Art Collecting Point in Munich to the

Germans in 1951.1 These remaining 8,500 pictures, drawings and books

have still not been restituted partly due to the rather unprofessional and

reluctant handling by low level Austrian authorities to trace down the

owners (e.g., limiting the publishing of the list in the Austrian

government newspaper “Wiener Zeitung” in 1969, which is barely read

outside Austrian government circles) and the unwillingness of politicians

to solve the issue by passing a law in the parliament until July 1995 (in

 

1

 Andrew Decker, “A Legacy of Shame,” ARTnews 83 (December 1984): 55-75;

see also Andrew Decker, “How Things Work in Austria: Stolen Works of Art,”

ARTnews 92 (Summer 1993): 198-200. and Herbert Haupt, Das

Kunsthistorische Museum. Die Geschichte des Hauses am Ring. Hundert Jahre

im Spiegel der Ereignisse (Wien: 1991). More precisely Josephine Leistra, “The

Mauerbach Case,” Spoils of War, .3 (December 1996): 22-27.
486 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

1969 the Austrian parliament only agreed to enlarge the acceptance of

claims until the end of 1972).2

On Christmas Eve 1997, however, the international media began

to respond to a new debate. This time it focused on specific individual

Nazi era art claims by two families concerning two paintings from the

Austrian expressionist Schiele. The paintings were on display in the

Museum of Modern Art in New York on loan from the private (state

subsidized) Leopold Foundation.3 On January 7, 1998, the Manhattan

District Attorney confiscated the two paintings (“Portrait of Wally” and

“Dead City”) starting a criminal investigation into the ownership of the

paintings and providing evidence for a possible trial before a grand jury.4

It should be noted that this incident was not only a side show of

the “Swiss Nazi Gold Bank” discussion but became part of a much

broader debate in the US dealing with the sometimes dubious ownership

of alleged Nazi loot on display in several museums in the US and Canada

- paintings claimed by heirs of Holocaust victims.5 Before the “Austrian

incident” the “Holocaust Art Restitution Project” was established in

Washington, D.C. and the World Jewish Congress established a

“Commission for Art Recovery.” This commission is chaired by former

US Ambassador to Austria, Ronald Lauder, who also happens to be the

chairman of the MOMA.

In order to place the various events into a broader perspective I

shall try to analyze some of the historical reasons for the most recent

discussions. These discussions culminated in an international media

debate and a new – much more concerned – political debate in Austria

with an unexpected outcome. I cannot go into more details, why it took

nearly 10 years to solve the issue, although on the level of the key

decision makers like then Chancellor Fred Sinowatz and Minister of

Finance Franz Vranitzky, who in 1986 became Chancellor, the option of

an auction in favor of the Jewish community in Vienna and Jewish

organizations has been already agreed upon. The original idea along

these lines have been proposed in early 1980 by then Chancellor Bruno

 

2

 Paul Grosz, “Introduction,” in Christie’s, The Mauerbach Benefit Sale, Vienna,

October 29-30, 1996, Auction 5638.

3 New York Times, 24 December 1997.

4 New York Times, 8 January 1998.

5 Boston Globe, 24 July 1997.
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 487

Kreisky and Minister of Science and Research Hertha Firnberg.6 In the

following article I shall try to analyze briefly some of the 1945 ff. roots

of these public debates of the 1980s and early 1990s.

2) NATIONAL RESTITUTION FIRST - US ART RESTITUTION

POLICIES AFTER 1945

One of the central problems of postwar art restitution certainly is

the policy question of how to administer the return of stolen art in

Austria. On May 8, 1945, US troops took over authority over the greatest

collection of Nazi loot in Austria in the Alt Aussee salt mine (and other

repositories nearby like the Lauffen mine in Bad Ischl) which contained

works of art (7,000 paintings and drawings, and approximately 3,000

other items)7 – stolen and sometimes bought from all Nazi occupied

Europe to become part of the “Führermuseum” in Linz – a project close

to the heart of Hitler himself.8 Austrian resistance fighters and Austrian

museum experts had already taken care of the art treasures and prevented

the destruction by National Socialist and SS hard-liners.9

A considerable portion of the Alt Aussee loot was of “Austrian”

origin – some 700 paintings belonging to the Rothschild family and 500

paintings belonging to other Jewish families. Although the Rothschilds

and the other collectors and/or their heirs had been brutally forced out of

Austria by 1938 by the Nazi regime thereby taking their art treasures,

 

6

 Bruno Aigner, Information für Heinz Fischer, 20 June 1985 and Sinowatz to

Vranitzky, 4 July 1985, Bruno Kreisky Archives Foundation, Vienna, Franz

Vranitzky Archives, Mag. Krammer, Box Mauerbach.

7

 United States Allied Commission Austria, The Rehabilitation of Austria, 1945-

1947, Vol. III, Vienna (no publisher and no date, app. 1950) 67. (more details

concerning the legal and political aspects of preserving art 1918-1945 in: Eva

Frodl-Kraft, Gefährdetes Erbe. Österreichs Denkmalschutz und Denkmalpflege

1918-1945 im Prisma der Zeitgeschichte, Wien, 1997).

8

 Charles de Jaeger, The Linz File. Hitler’s Plunder of Europe’s Art (Exeter:

Webb and Bower, 1981), 19 and with more sophisticated analysis and academic

research by Jonathan Petropoulos, Art as Politics in the Third Reich (Chapel

Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996). See also Lynn H. Nicholas,

The Rape of Europe. The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the

Second World War (New York: Knopf, 1994), 346-350.

9 Katharina Hammer, Glanz im Dunkel. Die Bergung von Kunstschätzen im

Salzkammergut am Ende des 2. Weltkrieges (Wien: Bundesverlag, 1986), 119-

166.
488 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

these properties still were considered Austrian property and therefore

turned over to the Austrian government and subordinate administrative

institutions to carry out the restitution (e.g., Finanzlandesdirektionen, in

charge of the legal matters, and the Bundesdenkmalamt acting as the

overall art custodian). Due to criminal activities of individual art experts

(many of them active in the white-washing and expropriation machinery

of the Nazi regime) the Provisional government under State Chancellor

Karl Renner decided as early as 22 August 1945 to establish a

“Vermögenssicherungsamt” under the control of the Ministry of the

Interior.10 According to experts art objects worth 200,000.000

“Reichsmark” have “changed” owners during April and August 1945.

3) THE “RANSOM” CASES OF THE ROTHSCHILDS’ AND

After the so-called “Anschluß” of Austria in 1938

“Reichsdeutsche” officials especially - both from the Gestapo and the

cultural administration (including Austrian museum experts) confiscated

a large number of art collections from Jewish owners (among them well

known collections like the collections of Alfons Rothschild, Louis

Rothschild, Rudolf Gutmann, Oskar Pick, T. Goldmann, Felix Haas,

etc.), which were stored in the “Zentraldepot” in the Vienna Hofburg and

were reserved for the “Führermuseum” in Linz. In 1941 this depot was

transferred to Kremsmünster and parts of the local deposit in Hohenfurth

were moved to Alt Aussee in February 1944.

When the Austrian Bundesdenkmalamt was authorized by US

authorities and the Allied Commission to take over the individual

restitution responsibilities the prewar legal framework again began to

influence the transfers. Since 1918 a special Export Control Law

(“Ausfuhrverbotsgesetz”), amended in 1923, enabled the

Bundesdenkmalamt to decide which art treasures were allowed to leave

the country, ignoring the nationality of the owners. This meant, however,

that after 1945 – despite the fact that Jewish owners with Austrian

 

10 Staatsratsprotokoll, 22 August 1945, Archiv der Republik, Wien, Sammlung

Staats- und Ministerratsprotokolle post 1945; the author owes this reference to

Dr. Theodor Venus, Vienna. More details concerning the legal and political

aspects of preserving art 1918-1945 in: Eva Frodl-Kraft, Gefährdetes Erbe.

Österreichs Denkmalschutz und Denkmalpflege 1918-1945 im Prisma der

Zeitgeschichte, Wien 1997.
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 489

nationality who had been persecuted and many of them killed in the

Shoah (nearly one third of the Jewish Segment of Austrian society) have

lost their citizenship automatically (!) – suddenly the traditional Austrian

legal order began to overrule the National Socialist atrocities and

individual pains and material losses as if nothing has happened. These

treasures again were considered “Austrian” and an integrate part of the

Austrian cultural heritage. In the pragmatic restitution procedure this

meant that the original owners had first to prove their ownership – which

under the circumstances of exile, imprisonment and the Second World

War was very difficult to fulfill.

In the case of large collections like the collections of the

Rothschilds this was a relatively easy task, since the “curators” have

even produced a printed catalogue in 1939 (classified top secret and

printed in a very limited number). It became difficult when the “legal

owners” wanted to export their property because only a very few wanted

to return at this stage (as most of the Austrian authorities and many

Austrians were eager to keep the surviving Austrian Jews out of the

country). In a “Restitution Compromise” (Rückstellungsvergleich) the

lawyer of Clarice de Rothschild for example agreed that from 16 art

objects, held by the Ferdinandeum in Innsbruck 14 will be restituted

(including an export license), 2 will be turned over by Ms. Rothschild (1

to the Albertina and 1 to the Ferdinandeum).11 The same procedure was

used when dealing with old music instruments of the Rothschild

collections although here most of the instruments stayed with the

Kunsthistorisches Museum as a permanent loan.12

4) ‘OTHER’ RESTITUTIONS OF ART OBJECTS AND EXPORT

CONTROL

Another case illustrating the rather shabby habit of restitution

after 1945 in the field of arts is the equestrian painting of Bellini from the

Sarah Lederer Collection. Ernst Lederer, a well known art historian, has

been "dazu bewogen" (induced) to “donate” this valuable painting to the

Republic of Austria in return for an export license for a fragment of the

large Lederer collection which was destroyed at the end of the war by SS

 

11 GZ 29.036/47, Archiv der Republik, Wien, Bundesministerium für Unterricht,

Box 99.

12 GZ 29.102/47, Archiv der Republik, Wien, Bundesministerium für Unterricht,

Box 165.
490 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

troops at Schloß Immendorf (including famous paintings by Klimt and

Schiele) or like the textiles and drawings disappeared during 1938-

1940.13 In such a case Austrian courts would refuse to accept any claims

for compensation. The famous Klimt Fries in the Lederer collection was,

however, not included in the export license, and it took until the 1970s

when Chancellor Bruno Kreisky himself started negotiations for the

Republic of Austria to buy the Klimt Fries from Lederer.14 When Erich

Lederer had tried to get back the Bellini painting in the 1950s the

Austrian Ministry for Education refused, although a confidential internal

evaluation of the Ministry opposed to the use of the Export Control Law

for such deals ("Vorgang immerhin im Ausfuhrverbotsgesetz nicht

gedeckt"). The Minister, Heinrich Drimmel, himself decided not to

restitute, but at least admitted that the Export Control law should be

changed.

This rather strange – and from my point of view both immoral

and illegal procedure – has been developed before 1938 and accepted by

the collectors (e.g., in the case of the Rothschilds), but after the

Holocaust, exile and emigration and the Second World War restitution

issues should not be effected by such “deals” since the State of Austria

has lost the right to decide about the fate of properties of the Jewish

minority so brutally persecuted both by fellow citizens and German

Nazis and even after 1945 were deprived of their citizenship (they had to

apply again for Austrian citizenship and needed a permanent residence in

Austria, a procedure which however has been changed in the recent years

as one of the positive consequences of the Waldheim debate).

It would be a falsification to state that the Republic of Austria

after 1945 did not restitute property to former citizens in exile, but by

doing so used a rather complicated legal procedure, executed sometimes

by a highly passive or even resenting bureaucracy.15 The main reason,

however, why restitution issues and “Jewish claims” (concerning heirless

property, advocated by Jewish organizations) became such sensitive

issues both within the Austrian political debate and in the concrete

 

13 Erich Lederer, Archiv der Republik, Wien, Bundesministerium für Unterricht,

Sammelmappen, K 131.

14 Bruno Kreisky, Der Mensch im Mittelpunkt. Der Memoiren dritter Teil, ed.

Oliver Rathkolb, Johannes Kunz und Margit Schmidt (Wien: Kremayr &

Scheriau, 1996), 44f.

15 Compare for more details on this issue Brigitte Bailer, Wiedergutmachung -

kein Thema. Österreich und die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus (Wien: Löcker),

1993.
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 491

handling of individual cases can be traced down in the political

perceptions of some of the “fathers” of the Second Republic like the

Chancellor Karl Renner, who in his first political memorandum in April

1945 pleaded for restitution of the Jewish property ("Rückgabe des

geraubten Judengutes"16) not in favor of the individuals, but in favor of a

restitution fund, which would distribute shares to the individuals in order

to hinder a massive return of the exiles ("um ein massenhaftes, plötzliche

Zurückfluten der Vertriebenen zu verhindern"). The legal Department of

the Austrian Foreign Office refused to accept a legal obligation with

regard to Jewish claims since the Austrian state was not considered being

the legal successor of the Nazi regime; only due to “political reasons”

restitution should be granted under the presumption that National

Socialist Germany alone was considered responsible for the Holocaust

and World War II and seen as “the” perpetrator.

“Aryanized” property was secured as early as May 1945, but it

took until 1946 and the following 6 restitution laws to provide the legal

framework for this ambivalent approach of “restitution” due to political

reasons. The state of Austria until very recently considered herself a

victim of National Socialism and Germany, a myth which began to erode

during the Waldheim debate in 1986 and was buried at least officially by

Chancellor Franz Vranitzky in 1993.

To come back to the return of stolen art, it is correct to say that

the large and famous collections have been restituted to their owners if

they were found in 1945 in one of the repositories. The right to export

could be “organized” as shown above, although in some cases in the first

months after the end of the war and before Austrian bureaucracy took

over restitution responsibilities, direct restitution was executed. A good

example is the Gutmann collection: Rudolf Gutmann, a Canadian citizen,

identified his property in 1946 in Alt Aussee and his Austrian lawyer

needed only an export permission from the Ministry of Finance, which

was granted.

 

16 Österreichisches Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Archiv - Nachlaß Karl Renner,

NL 1-3, Do 721, Mappe 9.
492 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

5) THE PROBLEM OF LOST ART

5a) The “Eastern” Problem

But even in the case of Gutmann he ran into trouble when he

tried to seek restitution of 41 Rembrandt engravings which were

transferred to Germany by one of Hitler’s art experts, Posse, and in 1945

were confiscated by the Red Army. Official applications were not

successful, so then he tried to bribe Eastern German officials with

$20,000 since the engravings have shown up in the Soviet Zone of

Occupation in Germany. It could not yet be clarified whether he was

successful – in 1957 they were still missing – but his problem is a typical

one in the postwar era. Thousands of art objects were at first confiscated

in Austria and then transferred to “Reichsdeutschland,” both for party

functionaries and private individuals.

There does exist a list of losses concerning private (mostly

Jewish) collections dated 1957 and Austrian museums and monasteries17

 

17 List of public property

Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien

Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Wien

Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien

Stadt Salzburg

Mozarteum Salzburg

Österreichische Bergbaumuseen

Österreichisches Apothekermuseum, Wien

Zisterzienser Stift Heiligenkreuz, NÖ

List of private (mostly, but not exclusively) Jewish property

Nachlaß Rudolf von Alt

Dr. Biermann

Carl Blaas

Dr. Josef und Gusti Blauhorn

Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer

Oscar Bondy

Margarete Buchstab

Karoline Czeczowiczka

Ernst Duschinsky

Hortense Eissler

Valerie Eissler

David Goldmann

Dr. Philipp von Gomperz

Rudolf Gutmann
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 493

since bureaucracy kept track of those cultural treasures which were

borrowed for decoration in National Socialist offices or in private

residences of party leaders like “Karinhall” of Hermann Göring (only

few could traced down like two of these tapestries from Karinhall in

 

Dr. Otto Habsburg-Lothringen

Dr. Felix Haas

Henriette Hainisch

Bruno Jellinek

Karpeles-Schenker

Stephan Kerlin

Dr. Norbert u. S. Klinger

Nettie Königstein

Dr. Felix Kornfeld

Moriz von Kuffner

Henriette Lainzer

Graf Anton Lanckoronski

Prinz Eduard Liechtenstein

Margit Löffler

Leidinger (Hanna Rhode)

Fritz Mandl

Franz Matsch

Egger Möllwald

Berta Morelli

Benno Moser

Kunsthandlung Nehammer-Prinz

(Kunsthändler Oskar Hamel)

Kunsthandlung Plobner

Albert Pollak

Ernst Pollak

Frau Reichel

Alphons Rothschild

Louis Rothschild

Schiff-Suvero

Arthur Spitzer

Dr. Alfons Thorsch

Hedwig und Viktor Wimpfen

Georg A. Wolf

Kunsthandlung Wolfrum

Paul und Andy Zsolnay

Ing. Herbert Zucker-Hale
494 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

Poland, which were restituted to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in

1976)18.

5b) The whitewashing problem

Not only the Cold War hindered the search for stolen art post

1945, but so did the fact that some Nazi party functionaries have been

able to hide their – mostly – stolen art treasures (most of them did not

show up in the postwar era). An illustrative case is Baldur von Schirach,

the former Hitler Youth leader and later Reichsleiter and Gauleiter in

Vienna. In 1942 he had bought from the Vugesta (Verwaltungsstelle für

Umzugsgüter jüdischer Emigranten), an agency of the Gestapo,

confiscated Jewish property to the value of Reichsmark 42,092

19(obviously partly through the Dorotheum, the state owned Austrian

auction house, which was heavily used for “whitewashing” and selling

machinery for looted art objects which were not under

“Führervorbehalt,” being reserved for Adolf Hitler). Among other

objects he “bought” was a Lucas Cranach, Madonna with Child, from the

confiscated Gomperz collection – which is still missing. Was it taken by

Schirach, who in 1948 declared that he did not know about the original

owner, or was it stolen in 1945 from the Schirach Villa in Vienna –

either by Austrians or by Russian soldiers or confiscated by the Red

Army, or did he sell it through his family to a collector/art dealer

overseas?

This “selling” constitutes one of the major problems for the

location of stolen art post 1945 on an individual basis, since the

Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section of the US occupation forces

both in Germany and Austria concentrated on the large collections which

were deposited in several salt mines and castles throughout Austria to be

protected against air-raids. By May 1948 nearly 2.5 million objects,

 

18 Gerhard Sailer, “Austria,” Spoils of War, International Newsletter, .3

(December 1996), 35; again published in Elisabeth Simpson, ed. “The Spoils of

War. World War II and Its Aftermath: The Loss, Reappearance and Recovery of

Cultural Property“ (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997), 88-91. In a rather

strange analysis Gerhard Sailer omits the theft of Jewish-owned artworks so that

the editors had to refer to this immoral and shameful chapter of recent cultural

history in a separate editorial remark.

19 Bernard B. Traper, Transcript of interrogation, National Archives, Record

Group 260, ACA Austria, Box 365 Folder: R&R 51.
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 495

including 468,000 paintings, drawings and sculptures had been restituted

by US authorities in Germany.20 The Alt Aussee art works have been

secured and partly transferred to Munich and as far as Austrian property

was concerned mostly brought to Vienna under the custody of the

Bundesdenkmalamt. As referred to above US authorities did not deal

with individual restitution cases. According to the Bundesdenkmalamt

10,000 works from different repositories have been restituted under the

title of “Jewish property.”21

6) HEIRLESS PROPERTY

As documented on the basis of individual cases in the 1984

article by Andrew Decker the real long range political problem in the

Austrian restitution story was the fact that in 1969 8,422 objects in

Austrian care were still not restituted, and the deadline for the claims was

extended to December 31, 1970 after public intervention by Simon

Wiesenthal - but still was limited and due to rather poor public relation

only 71 objects could be returned.

No active policy has been worked out to trace down at least the

names of the owners of this “heirless property,” although Sophie Lillie,

one of the young experts consulted for the Christie’s auction in 1996

clearly recognized the possibility to read “the inscriptions on the back of

the canvases and frames. ‘Aryanization’ numbers, inventory numbers

from secret Nazi depots and/or gallery labels chronicle a kind of

unconscious history of Mauerbach, revealing or concealing in codified

form the stations of theft ...”.22 I, however, do not agree with Hector

Feliciano, that all, or most, owners and/or their heirs could have been

traced down even in 1996 by active research.23 The chances to identify

the original owners would have been relatively high – especially by

using the original lists gathered by US officials and experts after 1945

and material stored in German and Austrian archives. At the same time it

is obvious that a large segment of these art objects did belong to people

who did not survive the Holocaust.

 

20 John Dornberg, “The Mounting Embarrassment of Germany’s Nazi

ARTnews 87 (September 1988), 138.

21 Hammer, Glanz, 258.

22 Unpublished research proposal by Sophie Lillie, September 1996.

23 Hector Feliciano, Spoils of War 3 (December 1996), 25f
496 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

The auction in 1996 was a financial success – due to well

prepared sponsoring activities by the US Jewish Community on the first

day – and a wise political decision, turning over the ownership of the

Mauerbach collection to the Jewish Community of Vienna. The sale

brought a total of ATS 155,166,810 and the net profit will go to people

who suffered under National Socialism and/or their descendants in need

of material assistance.

The handling of the Mauerbach case by Austrian bureaucrats and

some politicians since the 1960s, however, reveals a strange mixture of

ignorance and stubbornness to admit the Nazi policies and brutal

Austrian collaboration on all levels and the postwar problems of

restitution. Symbolic for this policy was the tendency to close

Mauerbach like a fortress to the public, which in return increased the

fantasy of American journalists and led to conflicts with the French

Embassy by refusing French curators (e.g., Pierre Rosenberg, now

director of the Louvre) in 1973 to see the Mauerbach collection when

trying to locate lost French art objects. In 1987 at least 17 paintings were

shown to members of a French claim commission, the rest kept closed by

the Ministry of Finance.24

On the one hand Austrian politicians especially – already

decades before the Waldheim debate – have feared a public debate about

Austrians taking part in the Nazi machinery of the Holocaust, which

means primarily that they feared negative press reports in the United

States (overestimating the political interest in Jewish issues in the US in

the 1960s, but obviously influenced by perceptions which came close to

the “Jüdische Weltverschwörung” (“Jewish Conspiracy against the

World”) and the influence of Jewish journalists on the “Eastcoast,”

propagated by the Nazis. At the same time they feared an Austrian

debate about Jewish property which would again reveal an even stronger

Austrian contribution to the execution of the National Socialist

persecutions and, on the side of the former members of the NSDAP,

would lead to opposition to one of the two leading parties. Frankly put,

politicians of the Great Coalition after 1945 (up to the early sixties)

always tried to postpone the settlement of the Jewish claims and if they

were not hard pressed by the Allies, especially the US, would even have

postponed the restitution procedures. Highly sensitive issues like the

return of rented (not owned) apartments, pensions, bank accounts, etc.,

were always excluded due to opposition from the voters. It should be

noted here, that the Department of State, too, did not press the Austrians

 

24 Hector Feliciano, Spoils of War 3 (December 1996), 25f.
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 497

hard on the “Jewish Claims issue” (compared with claims of US oil

firms), although the settlement of these claims was part of the Austrian

State Treaty. The State Department even took over the negotiation

initiative from the Jewish organizations in 1958/59 and settled the claims

on a rather low financial level.25

This explains why since the 1960s this issue of “heirless

property,” too, did not move – no one wanted really to stir up the issue,

because no one wanted a political debate which then would result in the

unmasking of the myth of the Austrian victimization under National

Socialism (although on an individual basis many non-Jewish Austrians,

too have suffered under the Hitler regime or have been killed). In the

field of the “stolen art” this certainly reveals the collaboration of art

dealers, auction houses, museum experts and curators in the mostly

organized plunder of art collections of their Jewish fellow citizens, as

well as the fact that many fellow citizens – many of them not members of

the NSDAP – stole art objects from Austrian Jews, and tried to hide the

truth after 1945. Still today there is a tendency in self descriptions of

museums and the Bundesdenkmalamt to hide the truth or to smoothen

this brutal chapter of Austrian cultural history and again present the

Germans as the overall Nazi perpetrators. Fortunately, the political

debate has moved forward.

As an appendix, however, it must be noted that the “human

factor” should be more important when analyzing the spoils of the war

and talking about restitution. Still the value of forced labor and the

human factor should be of much higher importance both in analytical and

legal debates. Still the “thieves” are more guilty than the “middle men”

who sold or bought stolen art. On the other hand the historical debate

moved on also dealing with the post-1945 history of the Nazi war loots.

Art objects are an important component of national memories and

images. Therefore historical reflections concerning the cultural heritage

of museum and private owners ought to be part of an open-minded

democratic memory.

This new trend in 1998, certainly a positive result of the

Waldheim-Debate and the increasing knowledge about the atrocities of

the Nazi regime and the Austrian collaborators, is best exemplified by

the debate following the seizure of the two Schiele paintings in the

MOMA in January 1998. At first the public and political debate in

Austria concentrated on the ownership of the two paintings – at least in

 

25 Oliver Rathkolb, Washington ruft Wien. US Großmachtpolitik und Österreich,

1953-1963 (Wien: Böhlau, 1997), 212-232.
498 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

the case of the “Wally-Portrait.” This issue was cleared in favor of

correct transactions leading up to Leopold.26

On January 14, 1998, the Austrian Minister of Education,

Elisabeth Gehrer, asked for a comprehensive examination of all

transactions in Austrians museums during 1938-1945, but it took until

the end of February that the internal commission was set up. Since then

the debate has shifted from the 2 Schiele cases to the broader debate

about immoral treatment received by major collectors like the

Rothschilds and their heirs post-1945 (unearthed by the author of this

article and made public in an article in “Der Standard,” January 14,

1998). But it took another month (until a series in the same newspaper

appeared on looted art from the Nazi period) that this fact really became

an issue. Reluctantly even the director of the Kunsthistorisches Museum,

Winfried Seipel, now pleaded for the return of plundered art work.27 In

the 1960s, however, an inter-ministerial committee turned down requests

of the widow of Louis Rothschild, Hildegard Countess Auersperg, who

tried to regain the 4 valuable oil paintings from her late husband’s

collection.28 And still in 1974 Austrian bureaucracy turned down efforts

to solve this problem of immoral trade-offs.

There are still many smoking guns in Austria’s Nazi past, but

obviously a new generation of journalists, academics and politicians are

prepared to face this past and unearth the truth – even if this hurts not

only the national memory, but also means concrete efforts for restitution

of material losses. The new political trend in Austria – certainly a

positive result of the Waldheim-Debate and the growing broader

knowledge about the atrocities of the Nazi regime and the Austrian

collaborators - is best exemplified by the debate following the seizure of

the two Schiele paintings in the MOMA in January 1998. In the first

weeks the public and political debate in Austria concentrated on the

ownership of the two paintings.

In a broader context the Austrian Minister of Education,

Elisabeth Gehrer, asked for an overall examination of all deals in

Austrians museums during 1938-1945 on January 14, 1998. In the

meantime the debate has shifted from the 2 Schiele cases to the broader

debate about immoral deals with the major collectors like the Rothschilds

and their heirs post 1945, a fact by the way unearthed by the author of

this article and made public in an article in “Der Standard”, 14 January

 

26 News 4/98, 140.

27 Boston Globe, 5 March 1998.

28 Archiv des Bundesdenkmalamtes, Wien, Karton 52.
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 499

1998: Large collections were restituted to the owners but under the then

existing “Export Prohibition Law” they were forced to trade in selected

art objects (chosen by the state museum officials and worth in some

cases 10% of the whole collection) in order to obtain an export license.

But it took another month in 1998 (until a series in the same

newspaper appeared on looted art from the Nazi period) that this fact

really became an issue and even the director of the Kunsthistorisches

museum, Winfried Seipel now, pleaded for the return of these immoral

trade offs.29 In the 1960s, however, an inter-ministerial committee turned

down requests of the widow of Louis Rothschild, Hildegard Countess

Auersperg, who tried to regain the 4 valuable oil paintings from her late

husband’s collection. And still in 1974 Austrian bureaucracy blocked

efforts to solve this problem of immoral trade-off.

Still enough smoking guns are buried in Austria’s Nazi past, but

obviously a new generation of journalists, academics and politicians are

prepared to face this past and unearth the truth - even if this hurts not

only the national memory, but also means concrete efforts for restitution

of material losses. On November 5, 1998 the National Council of the

Austrian Parliament unanimously passed a law to restitute looted art

from the Nazi period (including the immoral trade off since the export

prohibition law has been amended not to include these objects

previously). Since this law is limited to State owned collections

provincial and municipal authorities have established research

commissions to screen their collections after Nazi looted art (e.g. the

Historical Museum of Vienna or the museums of the City and of the

Province of Upper Austria in Linz, etc.).

 

29 For the “Kunsthistorische Museum” see the unpublished report by Herbert

Haupt in cooperation with Lydia Göbl, Die Veränderungen im Inventarbestand

des Kunsthistorischen Museums während der Nazizeit und in den Jahren bis

zum Staatsvertrag 1955 (“Widmungen”), Wien June 1998. This report is the first

one of a series from the “National Museums” and seems to be intended to be

published. Dr. Haupt takes a very different position on postwar restitution issues

than outlined in his previous book “Das Kunsthistorische Museum.” Die

Geschichte des Hauses am Ring. Hundert Jahre im Spiegel Historischer

Ereignisse, Wien 1991. Other forthcoming publications are a series of articles on

the Nazi art loot in Austria from a research conference before the Mauerbach

sale, edited by Theodor Brückler (Böhlau Verlag, Vienna, Spring 1999) and an

enlarged version of the articles by Hubertus Czernin (in cooperation with

Gabriele Anderl and Thomas Trenkler) for “The Standard,” which will appear in

the Molden Verlag in Vienna (January 1999).
500 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

THE PROBLEM OF “LOST LOOTED ART” RECONSIDERED:

Therefore it seems now important to focus on those art objects

which never have been located by the Allied authorities immediately

after the end of the war and which have only been partly destroyed. In

order to document this future research focus which needs stronger

international networking and cooperation of European (Eastern Central

European and Western European) and American, Canadian museums, art

dealers and collectors as well as a functioning internet data base, I shall

present two concrete cases: One bases on the research of Oliver

Kühschelm who traced down three art objects which had belonged to the

collection of Philipp Gomperz in the Moravian Gallery in Brno, Czech

Republic, which had been confiscated in 1942 (only 30 of the 85 art

objects looted by the German Reich have been restituted after 1945).

Another painting from the Gomperz collection, a Luca Cranach with

Child, was „bought“ by the Vienna Reichsleiter Baldur von Schirach and

sold by a New Yorker art dealer after 1952, who refused to identify the

buyer of the stolen object. My own research on the Lederer Collection

unearthed concrete evidence that 44 etchings by Rembrandt have been

looted in 1938 and only 3 could be returned after 1945. 41 have been

taken by Hitler’s special commissioner for the "Führer Museum" in Linz

to the Dresdner Gallery in 1941, and seemed to have still existed in the

first postwar years. An extensive research by the director of the gallery,

Dr. Wolfgang Holler in November 1998 did not unearth more

information on the whereabouts of these Rembrandt etchings, but they

could have been transported to the Soviet Union and were not part of the

returned art works after 1957.

The Cold War hindered a European wide research effort

concerning looted art by the Nazi regime, a fact which can be

documented in numerous cases. Therefore it seems to be of utmost

importance to include Eastern Central European and if possible Russian

national and provincial/municipal collections into a database approach of

“lost looted art.” In order to start with this approach concerning “art

objects“ looted on the territory of Austria during 1938 and 1945

(including partly the immediate postwar loot) I placed a 60 page list of

more than one thousand missing art objects (both from public, but

primarily private ownership) into the world wide web

(http://members.vienna.at/kreisky/naziartloot/). This list has been

collected by the Bundesdenkmalamt and the Ministry of Education in

1957 – which means that maybe a few of these objects have been

restituted in the meantime, but the overall percentage is still missing.
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 501

This presentation is based on a paper presented at the German

Studies Association Conference (September 26, 1997), Washington,

D.C., with the panel “Kunstraub and Memory” and rewritten for this

Holocaust era conference.

Mr. Richard Bevins

HISTORIAN, LIBRARY AND RECORDS DEPARTMENT, FOREIGN AND

COMMONWEALTH OFFICE

UNITED KINGDOM

Britain and the Restitution of Art Looted

from Occupied Countries during

the Second World War

Break-out Session on Nazi-Confiscated Art Issues: Government

Restitution Policies

Although the course of the war meant Britain's art treasures

escaped the plundering inflicted on the collections of occupied Europe,

the UK played a significant role in shaping the wartime Allied response

to the art losses suffered by her European Allies and in attempts to make

good those losses after the defeat of Germany in May 1945. Almost from

the moment in 1942 when officials and others in London began to

consider how to respond to news about the fate of works of art in

territories occupied by Germany, the governing assumption was that a

relatively simple process of returning identifiable property subject to an

act of dispossession by the enemy would follow the liberation of the

occupied countries and the defeat of Germany. Implementing such a

restitution policy, however, was not a simple matter.

Those developing restitution policy generally regarded works of

art in theory as a distinct category, thanks to their unique and easily

identifiable character and the intangible values attached to them, but their

restitution could not in practice proceed in isolation. Tempting though it

was to deal with works of art in advance of resolving a myriad of

contentious claims from newly-liberated countries for essential and

scarce items like railway locomotives and factory equipment, progress,

or lack of it, on the wider problems of restitution and reparations in the

end determined the success of efforts to restore looted art to its original
504 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

owners or their heirs. It took the 4 Occupying Powers in Germany until

1946 to reach agreement on a definition of restitution, and then to agree

on how to interpret this definition. Only then was it settled precisely

what kind of property was eligible for restitution, how restitution would

relate to reparation, what procedure to follow to process claims and what

to do if a particular item was not available for restitution. Restitution of

some of the most easily identifiable examples of the looted art found in

the British Zone of Germany had gone ahead on a provisional basis in

advance of these agreements being reached in the Allied Control Council

(ACC) but a proper legal and administrative process existed only after

they had been concluded.

The Allies’ basic intention to do something in response to

Germany's exploitation of Occupied Europe had first been expressed

formally in the Inter-Allied Declaration against Acts of Dispossession

Committed in Territories under Enemy Occupation or Control issued by

Britain and 16 other governments of the United Nations on 5 January

1943. Britain had been prompted to instigate discussions during 1942 on

such a Declaration with her Allies by a growing awareness of the scale

on which Germany was conducting a systematic looting of the

Continent’s material and cultural assets and the accompanying

realization that the easy disposal of many of these assets in neutral

countries was aiding her war effort. In their Declaration the signatories

stated their determination to “combat and defeat the plundering by the

enemy Powers of the territories which have been overrun or brought

under enemy control” and reserved their rights “to declare invalid any

transfers of, or dealings with, property, rights and interests of any

description whatsoever which are, or have been, situated in the territories

which have come under the occupation or control, direct or indirect, of

the Governments with which they are at war”. The Declaration was silent

on how the Allies might “combat and defeat” the plundering of Occupied

Europe and at that stage of the war there was in fact very little that could

be done to enforce it. Foreign Office officials recognized that effective

action could only follow victory over Germany, but those taking and

disposing of looted art had been placed on notice that the Allies intended

to counter their efforts.

For the remainder of 1943 little could be done in London except

continue to collect information about art losses and begin preparations

for when the Allies were in a position to take physical control of

Germany’s plunder. On the military side this saw the creation by the

Civil Affairs Directorate of the War Office of Monuments, Fine Arts and

Archives (MFA & A) branches to be attached to the Headquarters of
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 505

each the Allied Armies. These were intended primarily to accompany

advancing troops and direct efforts towards avoiding damage to cultural

objects in the battlezone and take looted art left behind by retreating

enemy forces into protective custody. British policy planning began in

earnest following the establishment of the Macmillan Committee in the

spring of 1944 in the run up to the invasion of Normandy. This was an

independent non-governmental body of art experts appointed at the

direction of the Prime Minister which met under the chairmanship of

Lord Macmillan, a distinguished QC and a Trustee of the British

Museum. The Committee, whose formal title was the British Committee

on the Preservation and Restitution of Works of Art, Archives and other

Material in Enemy Hands, met 11 times between May 1944 and April

1946 (all but 3 of its meetings were held before the end of 1944). It was

directed: “to be at the service of His Majesty’s Government in

connection with the post-war restitution of monuments, works of art, and

archives misappropriated by enemy governments or individuals in the

course of the war”; to co-operate with the Roberts Commission (which

had been set up with a similar brief in the USA) and other sources of

relevant information and expertise and “to investigate and consider the

technical problems (other than legal) of restitution.” Despite this focus

on restitution in its terms of reference, at its outset the Committee was

preoccupied with preparations to preserve and protect artworks,

monuments, churches etc likely to be at risk during the imminent fighting

in Northern France.

Not until the summer of 1944 did it turn its attention to the

development of the outlines of a restitution policy for looted art. The

Committee submitted a number of informal papers to the Prime Minister

and Foreign Secretary on, for example, the need for an international body

to oversee the claims process, undertake searches for lost works and act

as a central clearing-house of information. The Committee’s thinking did

not always chime with that of Whitehall- Anthony Eden told the

Committee that it would impossible for any international body that was

set up to act independently of the military or civilian authorities in

occupied Germany. A rather plaintive request from Lord Macmillan to

Eden in September 1944 for “some guidance from you as to the direction

which [the Committee’s] further work should take so as best to fulfil the

purpose of their appointment” hints at the rather marginal impact of the

Committee's work and its decline into semi-obscurity in 1945.

By the spring of that year, when the Rhine was about to be

crossed by the Allied Armies advancing from the West and the Russians

were within reach of Berlin in the East, a significant amount was known
506 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

in London about how the Germans had stripped many of Western

Europe’s art collections. This knowledge principally concerned the

organizations and some of the individuals responsible for the looting and

was derived from the information gathered by the network operated by

Britain’s Ministry of Economic Warfare to support the economic

blockade of Germany, supplemented by information acquired in the

liberated territories. Contrasting examples of what was available are the

individual reports based on intelligence sources about the activities of the

notorious Alios Miedel, art agent for Goering, who arrived in Spain in

the autumn of 1944 with 2 large American cars and a large number of

paintings from Holland, including works by Rubens and Van Dyck and a

short paper summarizing German efforts to loot art prepared for the

information of the British Legation in Berne in February 1945 in advance

of the first visit by a member of the MFA & A branch to Switzerland to

trace looted art.

Although this knowledge of how the Germans had looted art

often included information about what had been taken from particular,

usually high-profile, collections, the MFA & A branches fanning out

across a defeated Germany naturally did not know what looted art they

would find in the devastated country or whether it would have survived

the fighting and the bombing, whether it had been hidden in Germany,

dispersed amongst German cultural institutions, passed into private

hands or sold in neutral countries. It was only when they were in

possession of the country and able to divert attention from the immediate

task of preserving vulnerable sites from further damage to discovering

caches of looted art and relevant archives that the first decisions were

made on how to deal with the looted art in Allied hands.

The War Office issued an interim directive to the Deputy

Commander-in-Chief of the British Zone of Germany, General

Robertson, on 14 August. This set out interim measures for the

restitution of identifiable works of art which had been subject to an act of

dispossession by the enemy and had been located in the territory from

which they were subsequently removed at the date of the German

invasion of that territory. The directive was confined to works of art

whose “identification is prima facie obvious and whose ownership is a

matter of common knowledge” and to those works known by the staff of

the British Element of the Control Commission to be in the British Zone.

Inquiries about other works were only to be pursued where

circumstances permitted and information about art covered by the

directive was to be passed direct to the national government concerned.

The directive had been inspired by Lt-Colonel Sir Leonard Wooley (head
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 507

of the MFA & A branch) in June in response to the public announcement

by SHAEF shortly after the conclusion of hostilities that the bulk,

perhaps 90%, of the art looted by Germany in Western Europe had been

recovered, in the 586 art deposits found by Allied forces. The FO

endorsed Wooley’s initiative, noting “It is fantastic that we should not be

able to hand looted works of art back to their owners, when their origin is

known to all the world” and accepted the risk that going ahead with this

kind of interim arrangement for art would expose the Control

Commission to unwelcome pressure to agree to similar arrangements for

all looted property.

Despite this kind of support, and the effort that went into framing

the procedure set out in the directive in as simple a fashion a possible,

almost no works of art had been restituted from the British Zone by the

end of the year. Part of the explanation for this can be found in the two

problems that were raised by the Control Commission shortly after

receipt of the separate War Office telegrams containing the directives on

interim measures for the restitution of looted art and other property. The

first problem was that the War Office directive placed responsibility for

handling claims on a Restitution, Deliveries and Reparation Division of

the Control Commission which did not yet exist. The second, and more

fundamental, problem was raised by the Control Commission’s request

for a definition of “an act of dispossession . . . i.e. to what extent is

payment made by Germans in money or in kind for removed goods to be

taken into consideration in deciding whether property is loot.”

The War Office answered this on 18 September by saying goods

should be included in the interim restitution directive irrespective of

whether they were paid for by the Germans. The Control Commission

appears, however, to have hesitated at the implications of following such

a sweeping directive. In a letter to HS Gregory of the Trading with the

Enemy Department of 27 November on the subject of works of art

purchased by Germany during the war, Wooley agreed that “to regard all

sales to Germans by citizens of the occupied countries as having been

made under duress would widen the issues unduly and establish a very

dangerous precedent.” He considered that “there are only about a dozen

objects in the whole British Zone which are really loot coming under the

definition given in SUGRA 18, but there are a very great numbers of

objects [elsewhere he referred to many “thousands of second-grade”

Dutch paintings in the British Zone] which do come under that definition

but were purchased and not directly looted.” A great deal of pressure was

being placed on the UK by the newly-liberated countries of Western

Europe on the subject of restitution in general and “purchased and not
508 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

directly looted” art was a prominent grievance cited by the Netherlands

and France when making their case in London. On 4 December Coulson

described restitution in a letter to Sir William Strang (Political Adviser to

the Commander-in-Chief of the British Zone) as a “burning political

question” and said he was “very much afraid that things are boiling up

It was this political background that prompted officials in the

British Zone to ignore the continuing lack of a 4 Power agreement on a

definition of restitution, ease the practical and administrative difficulties

that had been hindering any implementation of SUGRA 18 and proceed

with the return to the Netherlands in early 1946 of a substantial quantity

of looted but purchased art and looted church bells. January 1946 also

saw the Allied Control Council reach agreement on a definition of

restitution.

The Control Council had been split primarily by differences

between the French and Soviet Delegations, who had sharply differing

views on the share of German resources that should be devoted to

restitution as opposed to reparation. The French were much less

interested than the Russians in reparation and sought to broaden the

spread of restitution by arguing for the return of all property removed to

Germany. Conversely, the Russians argued that only goods removed by

force should be eligible for restitution, for the less that was restituted the

more that was available for reparation. The chief British and American

concern was to see that whatever was recovered from Germany did not

so weaken her that she would become a burden to them; in practice this

meant they leant more to the Russian than the French point of view. This

came out particularly clearly in their desire to restrict the extent to which

goods could be replaced by German equivalents if restitution of the

original was impossible. The definition agreed by the Allied Control

Council on 21 January conceded little to the French position. After

reaffirming that the question of restitution to Allied countries “must be

examined, in all cases, in light of the declaration of 5 January 1943” the

text stated that restitution “will be limited in the first instance to

identifiable goods . . . taken by the enemy by force. . . Also falling under

[this] measure of restitution are identifiable goods produced during the

period of occupation and which have been obtained by force.” However,

all other property removed by the enemy was eligible for restitution only

to the extent consistent with reparations. The definition went on provide

for replacement of “goods of a unique character” subject to certain

unspecified special instructions and conditions and concluded by noting
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 509

that contact on all restitution questions would be with the government of

the country where the objects were looted.

This agreement enabled the restitution of property taken from

occupied countries and found in Germany to proceed on a legal basis.

After its conclusion the Control Commission authorities in the British

Zone were able to move rapidly to return, especially to the governments

of the Netherlands, Belgium and France, the vast mass of the works of

art which the Control Commission had taken custody of. It was the

responsibility of the government of the country from which the art had

been taken to allocate returned art to individuals and determine to what

extent an individual claiming restitution had in fact collaborated in

selling a work to the occupying power.

More problematic than the art which had come into the custody

of the Commission authorities was art in private German hands. Steps

were taken to compel individuals to reveal details of property they had

acquired from occupied countries during the war and to enforce the ban

on the sale, transfer and export of such property. Searches were carried

out for particular items alleged to have been looted. Special provision

was made to enable claimant countries to send teams of investigating

officers into the Zone, something which the Dutch had pressed for in

view of the enormous amount of art removed by purchase from the

Netherlands and their well-founded suspicion that a substantial

proportion of it was in private hands in the British Zone. Tracing such art

and returning it to its original owners was a task of a different magnitude

to the process of returning the collections which had come under British

control in the immediate aftermath of Germany’s collapse. In comparison

returning the works of art gathered in the main British Collecting Point at

Celle was relatively straightforward once the legal framework had been

agreed given the easily identifiable nature of much of this art and the

discovery of many of the records which the Germans had kept of their

looting.

A second category of art whose restitution remained difficult

even after the ACC had settled on a definition in January 1946 was of

course art which had been transferred to the neutral countries during the

war. Though the Allies had, in a declaration of 5 June 1945 assumed

supreme authority in Germany and claimed the right to exercise control

over German assets abroad in the Communiqué of the Potsdam

Conference issued on 2 August 1945, such authority was extremely

difficult to apply in practice. The Allies had limited leverage over the

neutrals and attempts to apply the claimed right to dispose of looted

assets deposited in their countries were fiercely resisted.
510 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

Substantial information was available in London as the war drew

to an end to suggest that Switzerland had been prominent amongst those

neutrals receiving art looted by the Germans. Accordingly, Squadron

Leader Cooper, of the MFA and A Branch, was dispatched there in

February 1945 to investigate this trade. His reports of this visit, and a

second, longer, one he made in the autumn of that year, give a vivid

account of the involvement of a number of Swiss dealers in efforts by

several individual Germans, most notably Goering, to build up

collections of looted art.

In his first report, Cooper detailed his efforts to identify some of

the looted art which had reached Switzerland and through what channels

and set in train further investigations to be carried out by the Legation.

He noted that it appeared that very few people were involved in the

traffic in looted art in Switzerland and that he had not discovered

anything linking Swiss museums or the more important collectors to

looted art. Although he had spoken to most of those involved in the

trafficking, and amassed considerable evidence about which works had

passed through their hands, he was unsure what had happened to looted

art once it reached Switzerland and considered there was no limit to the

quantity of works of art which may been deposited by, or was being held

for, those who involved themselves in handling the loot. By the time he

completed his second report he was able to give a more authoritative

account of art looted from Allied nationals and discovered in

Switzerland. In his description of the negotiations Allied officials had

held with the Swiss (in which he had taken part) to secure the right for

the owners of looted assets to try to recover their property from

Switzerland, Cooper revealed the practical and legal obstacles to be

surmounted in any attempt at restitution of art from Switzerland.

The story of British policy towards restitution of looted art

mirrors that of restitution in general. At the war’s end restitution was one

of the most pressing problems confronting both the governments of the

newly-liberated countries which had suffered so terribly and the

Occupying Powers in Germany. But these governments had other equally

pressing problems- securing reparations for some of their material losses,

demobilization, the needs of millions of displaced persons, how to feed,

house and pacify a devastated Germany for example. Many of these

problems demanded solutions which conflicted in some way with an

ideal restitution policy. In the circumstances of 1945 and 1946,

restitution of looted art from the British Zone of Germany was an

immense, intractable, task. The task was not completed down to the last

painting, some individuals were certainly left with cause for grievance,
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 511

but intensive effort had resulted in much effective restitution of art to

governments of the countries from which it had been taken. The Western

Allies’ recognition that they had not been able to complete the task of

restitution meant that the Bonn Conventions (signed in 1952 and

effective from 1955) which terminated the Occupation regime in western

Germany included provision for the Federal Republic to establish an

Agency to handle outstanding matters relating to the restitution of

cultural property.

Mr. Nikolai Gubenko

DEPUTY CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON CULTURE, STATE DUMA

RUSSIA

Break-out Session on Nazi-Confiscated Art Issues: Government

Restitution Policies: Postwar to Present

Ladies and gentlemen,

Each one of us, who participates in this conference, bears a great

responsibility because it touches interests of two sides: of victims and

their executioners, the good and evil. We cannot permit any ambiguity,

any streamlining.

The organizers of the conference asked me to clarify certain

details of the Law “On cultural Treasures Transferred to the Union of

Soviet Socialist Republics as a result of the World War II and Located on

the Territory of the Russian Federation” adopted by the Russian

parliament. During the procedure of drafting the law (and it took three

years), the Law was attacked by mass-media, government officials and

public figures of Germany. I cannot, but admire the unanimity with

which certain European countries supported Germany in its negative

reaction to the Law.

This reminds me the unanimity of certain countries on the eve of

the World War II. It is known, that one of the main objectives of this

war, criminal from the point of view of the international law, was the

genocide against the Slavic, as well as Jewish races. “One of the main

assignments, said Hitler, is to halt the growth of the Slavic race. I have

the right to dispose of millions from the sub-race, who are multiplying

like worms.” Fieldmarshal Reihenau, in an order to the Nazi army

wrote: “The principal objective of the campaign against the

Jewish-Bolshevik system is the outright destruction of its power and

influence of European culture. No historic or art treasures of the East

have any significance.” “An outrage and tyranny will be on extremely

fitting form of government for the people of the USSR,” - seconded him

relchsleiter Rosenberg, the one who headed the Department, which

robbed our museums, libraries and churches. The “Ost” plan

emphasized: “The matter not only deals with the destruction of

government. More important, is the destruction of Russians as nation.”
514 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

27 million killed, of them - 2 million Jewish compatriots; 1710

(Seventeen hundred and ten) fully or partly destroyed cities, 70000

(seventy thousand) villages, 1670 (sixteen hundred and seventy) ruined

churches and mosques, 532 synagogues, 237 chapels, 427 destroyed or

looted museums, nearly 200 (two hundred) million destroyed and stolen

books, more than 600,000 (six hundred thousand) lost cultural works.

This is the amount of the USSR's losses in the World War II. At the

Nuremberg Process the Soviet Union offered 39 volumes of

documentary evidence of the destruction and looting of its cultural

property. What other country could provide such evidence?!

And in the context of the problem we envisage here, a

discriminative approach towards peoples of the USSR-victims of the

Nazis is not permissible, because the Soviet Union suffered the most.

Russia has a normal right to compensation. But because the mass

media is attacking our international rights with regards to our Law I

would like to present to you the arguments of Parliament of the Russian

Federation.

Fascist Germany and its partners in crime can console

themselves in the hope that the international rights lag behind the moral

principles of humanity; that the criminal actions which took place 53

years ago will no longer be considered criminal from the legal point of

view. I reject this assumption.

The law is based on the international legal principles and other

acts, specified in article 2 of the Law. Among the conference materials is

the English translation made by US experts.

All these international legal acts are maintained for all aspects on

transferred cultural treasures, retain their validity for property relations

developed in response to these documents. The property rights of Russia

including the right to transferred cultural values acquired as

compensation for caused damaged emerge just from these documents.

The grounds for this statement are in the peace treaties with

former enemy states signed in 1947. For instance, the Paragraph one (1)

of Clause 79 (seventy nine) of the peace treaty with Italy that is identical

in relevant aspects to similar treaties with Bulgaria, Hungary and

Romania states: “Every Allied power shall possess the right to take,

retain, abolish or initiate any other action in respect of property, rights

and interests in a whole that for a day of entry into force of the present

treaty shall be located at its territory and belong to Italy or Italian

citizens, and also use this property or its gain for the purposes this power

considers as desirable.”
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 515

It follows that the instruction of the Allied powers concerning

property of former enemy states and their citizens found at their territory

was the term of the peace treaty. This standard does not contain any

exception concerning cultural values.

The fact of refusal of former enemy states of any claims towards

Allied powers confirms this conclusion.

For example, item 1 of article 76 of the Peace Agreement with

Italy, identical to the corresponding articles of the Peace Agreements

with Bulgaria, Hungary and Finland, states (I quote): “On behalf of the

Italian Government and the Italian citizens, Italy gives up all claims of

all natures to the Allied and United Powers, which were associated

directly with the war afforded by measures taken in the result of the War

in Europe after the first September 1939.”

1 can remind you of one more document adopted by the Control

Council in April 1947. The document “Quadrilateral Procedure of

Restitution,” stipulated: “If the restitution of the object itself is

impossible, the right of the exacting side to restitution is satisfied by

compensation from German property with articles equivalent value.” It is

clearly obvious, that in these cases the substituted object became the

property of the exacting side. The same condition was applied to the

Peace Agreement signed in 1947 with the axis countries.

Item 9 of article 75 of the Peace Agreement with Italy (as well as

the Peace Agreements with Bulgaria and other satellite countries)

envisages: “If in individual cases, it is impossible for Italy to restitute

cultural objects - taken by the Italian army from the territory of a United

Nation - which have artistic, historical and archaeological value, then

Italy must compensate that United Nation with similar objects with

approximately equivalent values.”

Therefore, according to the abovementioned acts, the Soviet

Union had the right to confiscate and own the cultural treasures of former

hostile states.

At the same time the former hostile countries confirmed their

denial of claims of all nature, including those dealing with assets, to the

Allied Powers and the United Nations.

One of the opponents of the Law Mr. Kurt Zir from the Zurich

University ironically noted, that “Russia discovered new sources of

international public law.” It is not astonishing, that Russia “discovered”

the documents of the Control Council in Germany and the Peace

Agreement of 1947, signed by the governments of many countries, but it

is really astonishing, that these acts are still ignored by many opponents

of the Russian Law, who in their critical remarks first of all cite the
516 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

declarations, conventions of UNESCO and other acts of international law

of the 50's - 70's being fully aware that no legal document is retroactive.

Furthermore, you know that not every Allied Power and states of

the anti-Hitler coalition had rights for restitution. In the resolutions of the

Control Council from the 17th of April 1946 it was clearly indicated:

“The right for restitution is granted only to the states, which were

completely or partially occupied.” For example, the United States of

America has no right to claim any restitution, because its territory was

not occupied. Much less Germany has no right to claim restitution,

because it carries the biggest responsibility for waging the cruelest war in

the history of mankind.

The discussion about the legitimate nature of the acts of the

Control Council possessing absolute legal and executive power at the

territory of Germany can be considered groundless. Their competence

and efficiency were confirmed in the Joint Declaration by the

governments of the German Democratic Republic and Federal Republic

of Germany, addressed on the 12th of September 1990 to the ministers of

international affairs of the USSR, Great Britain, USA and France. This

Declaration states: “The measures on withdrawal of assets, adopted on

the basis of the rights and supremacy of the occupational authorities (in

1945-1949) are irreversible. The German government, considering the

historic development, takes this into evidence and will not publish the

regulatory acts, which may contradict the above cited part of the Joint

Declaration.”

For lack of time, I will briefly touch upon some principles of the

Law, in order to fulfill the recommendations of our conference.

Although, when put into practice, these recommendations do not possess

any measures of enforcement. The process of restitution of the cultural

treasures is, to a greater extent, a problem of bilateral relations, where the

main source of jurisdiction and the only act to become law is the treaty,

the agreement between the countries.

Article 8 of the Law clearly defined the transferred cultural

values, which is not included in the definition of the property of the

Russian State and can be conveyed to the other countries and individuals.

Firstly, these are cultural values, with regard to which the

interested state will provide evidence that it demanded its restitution

before expiration of the terms, determined by the Peace Agreements with

Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Finland. The council of ministers of

the USSR determined the term in the Soviet zone of occupation in

Germany - the 1st of February 1950.
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 517

Second, cultural values, which belonged to religious

organizations and private charity organizations, which did not serve the

interests of Nazism.

Third, cultural treasures, which belonged to the individuals,

deprived of these assets because of their active fight with Nazism. In this

includes those who were involved in national defense from occupation

and those who were taken for their race, religion and national origin.

In accordance with recommendations of the Council of Europe,

cultural treasures, representing family relies, may be given to the

representatives of the families, that owned them.

Taking into account the legal character of the retrieval of cultural

treasures in 1945-1949, which took place only at the government level of

the interested countries, the law maintains the established rules. The law

states: “Claims on transferred cultural treasures... can be made by the

government of the state, who makes a claim of these treasures, strictly to

the government of the Russian Federation; claims of individuals and

legal entities, municipal organs, social and other organizations and

corporations will not be accepted.”

And finally, the German side consistently proclaims that they

have none of our treasures on their territory. Nevertheless, in 1990 the

weekly magazine “Zeit” wrote: “The Russians were robbed twice, first

by fascist Germany and then by their allies. 80% fell to Americans. The

English, French and Russians were satisfied with 20%.” The relations

between USA and Russia are too delicate now that I would not like to

elaborate on this subject for the lack of time. I admit that “Zeit” has

dispersed this information with the purpose that search of Russian values

shall be directed on the wrong track.

It is hard to imagine that Germans did not know the location of

the transferred Russian cultural treasures or even the direction they

traveled with respect to its territory.

I won't be amazed, if cultural treasures of the victims of the

Holocaust are hidden in the same “coves,” as the cultural treasures

removed from the Soviet Union.

In June of 1945 the prominent representatives of scientific and

cultural communities of our country - actor Mihoels, writers Bergemson,

Sutskover, the academicians Obnorskii, Lebedev, Shishmarev, professors

Greenberg and Feter - turned to Stalin with the following letter: “Dear

Joseph Vissarionovich! The Germans have destroyed all the Jewish book

depositories on all territories, which they temporarily occupied. They

carried away manuscripts that were centuries old, antiquity works, and

rare books of great value. The basis for further study of Jewish culture in
518 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

the USSR is seriously damaged. We believe that in conjunction with the

decisions of the Crimean Conference that ordered the Germans to

compensate by nature all the distraction they inflicted. Germany firstly

should be obliged to return to the USSR all that was stolen and taken to

Germany; Secondly, to remove the monuments of Hebrew culture stored

in book archives of Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, and Leipzig and

transferred them to the corresponding libraries and museums of the

USSR.”

Hundreds of thousands of similar letters came from the

Ukrainians, Russians, Tartars and representatives of hundreds of other

nationalities which where victims of Hitler's genocide.

One year ago, when our Law was not yet adopted, Russian mass

media conducted a research of public opinion. The result was unanimous.

86% supported the Law. And it is natural, because the language of this

Law is the language of justice.

Those who perished are gone. In the same Jews there are

Russians, French, a lot of other nationalities all together. They are my

father, Ukrainian, who went to the front when I was yet in mother's belly.

They are my mother, Russian, who has been hanged by Germans in

Odessa because she hid Jews, when I was eleven months old. They are

dead victims. We must think about today’s people. It will be a shame to

divide into “ours” and “aliens” those victims who survived. We must

unite all efforts aimed at just compensation for every victim of the

tragedy regardless of nationality.
Mrs. Charlotte E. van Rappard-Boon

HEAD INSPECTOR, MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, CULTURE AND SCIENCE

THE NETHERLANDS

The Fate of Works of Art in the Netherlands

During and After World War II

Break-out Session on Nazi-Confiscated Art Issues: Government

Restitution Policies, Postwar to Present

Just before World War II the once thriving art trade in the

Netherlands came to a virtual standstill due to the economic

circumstances and the threat of the war. At the start of 1940 most art

dealers were in the possession of large stocks of works which had

remained unsold for some years. On the other hand, in the Netherlands

the possession of works of art in private hands was not restricted to the

rich and very rich bourgeoisie but, as was the case in the seventeenth

century, many moderately prosperous middle class families possessed

one or more good quality paintings, Chinese blue and white ceramics and

other precious antiques. Amongst these families was a large number of

families of Jewish descent who, thanks to the open Dutch society which

had welcomed them in the times when they were persecuted elsewhere,

had flourished in the trade and the liberal professions.

These two factors form part of the explanation why the

disappearance of works of art from the Netherlands to Nazi Germany -

whether by looting, confiscation or sale - took place on such an

unprecedented scale.

As happened in France, already during the German occupation

Dutch art historians started compiling lists of works of art which they

knew to have left the country. Also, already during the war the exiled

Dutch Government in London prepared an extensive and complex set of

measures with regard to legal restitution. One of these Dutch measures
520 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

forbade to sell Dutch assets, including objects of art, to the enemy

without prior permission.

As soon as the war ended, efforts to track down works of art in

Germany and to return them to their original owners were gathered

together in a single service, called the Netherlands Art Property

Foundation (SNK). This service cooperated closely with the allied forces

in Germany, especially with the Monuments and Fine Arts & Archives

Service (MFA&A). On the basis of detailed lists made up from forms in

which missing works of art were reported, the Allies tried to find as

many works of art as possible. These forms were based in requests by

private persons and on information compiled by the Foundation itself

from the administration of objects confiscated by the Germans, on

transport lists of works looted by the Germans or by firms which

collaborated with them and on records of sales by auction houses and art

dealers. These efforts were often severely hampered - as ours are still

today - due to the fact that only well-known works of art were known in

detailed descriptions detailed enough to recognize them easily or were

even photographed.

Identification of a work of art listed for example: as "Farmers

making merry at a tavern by the workshop of van Ostade" without any

measurements of further description, is an extremely fortuitous business.

Hundreds of paintings must exist answering to this kind of caption. Thus

mistakes in identification of objects were made and not always corrected

afterwards. Also, works of art that were nearly impossible to identify,

mostly decorative art, were shipped back to the country that seemed the

most likely to be their country of origin. In this way most Delft

blue-and-white tiles were sent to Holland though they might as well have

come for example form a French collection.

All the same, seeing how people in the office of the Art

Foundation worked in those years, when Holland was recovering from its

great war losses and money and means to run an adequate administration

were scarce, one is filled with admiration. Without a computer, but using

an endless amount of paper files and lists ordered according the artist

names, original owners, art dealers or auction houses they reconstructed

the provenance of many works of art.

The Foundation recovered many thousands of objects of art and

returned them to their rightful owners, and also organized "viewing days"

for people to identify their property. Many objects which were recovered,

were works that had been sold during the occupation by the art trade

violating Dutch law. These objects became in principle the property of

the Dutch State. Objects for which the owner could not be found or for
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 521

which claims could not be recognized because of lack of proof came

under the custodianship of the State. What remained, after restitutions to

the owners and after sale of part of the objects, was registered in the

1950's and forms the so called NK-collection of the Dutch State. Details

about the work of the Netherlands Art Property Foundation can be found

in the introduction of the report Origins Unknown.

This report, which is available here today, was published by the

Dutch Government in April 1998. It also describes the methods of

investigation which we use today. Recently questions concerning these

remaining works of art have been asked. Might not modern methods of

research, use of database and vast modern documentation systems such

as that of Netherlands Institute for Art History enable us to find more

information about original owners than was previously possible? The

pilot study was done for a hundred works of art, both paintings and

decorative art. Because sufficient new details concerning the provenance

of these objects were found, the Dutch government decided to extend the

study to comprise all objects of the NK-collection which were

recuperated after the war. Of course, after all these years much of the

documentation which might have helped is lost or destroyed, but by

gathering circumstantial evidence from catalogues of pre-war

exhibitions, of private collections, of art dealers administrations, of

insurance lists, etc. links might be found which were lost before.

Because a work of art can mean an extremely personal tie with

the past and can have great emotional value for a family, the Dutch

government plans to proceed on a case by case basis regarding the

restitution of works of art of the NK-collection. It is still possible for a

private person to file a claim on an object in the NK-collection, provided

it regards a work of art which has not been previously claimed and of

which sufficient proof of the original ownership can be found. Also

earlier claims which were not accepted before can be filed again if

substantial new facts have come to light. This year two paintings have

already proved to belong the Jewish families that did not file claims after

the War. These paintings are being returned to their rightful owners.

The works of art of which no new facts concerning their

provenance are found during the investigation, will stay available in the

future if new facts come to light.

Works of art in the possession of private owners who are in good

faith, are in principle protected by Dutch Civil Law. However, in these

cases possible claimants and present owners can apply to the Netherlands

Institute for Art History and our office, for more information concerning

provenance and possible postwar claims. Possible solutions for these
522 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

cases could include arbitration and a decision by common consent along

the lines similar to the American Museums Association.

In the same way as the State Government is researching its

collections, the Dutch museums under the aegis of the Dutch Museum

Association are researching the acquisitions made during the war and in

the after-war years, to investigate whether they acquired objects which

were looted or confiscated by the enemy from Jewish owners. The

museums are conducting their own research aided by the Inspectorate for

Cultural Heritage which checks the museum data and adds facts which it

has found during its own research.

If there is any evidence that objects were Nazi confiscated

Jewish property, it is expected that the governing bodies of the

Museums, will make every effort to ensure that they are returned to their

original owners of their heirs.

With regard to the timetable of the state and museums

investigation, the museum investigation will be finished and published

next year. The State investigation will be finished in three years time and

its interim-results will be published during those years in regular reports.

Further details about the investigations and about restitution of

art objects can be found in several leaflets which we brought with us.

We hope these investigations solve most outstanding questions

about the provenance of art objects, though truth commands us to say

that some of these will probably never be answered.
Colonel Seymour J. Pomrenze

FIRST DIRECTOR, OFFENBACH ARCHIVAL DEPOT

UNITED STATES

Personal Reminiscences of the Offenbach

Archival Depot, 1946-49:

Fulfilling International and Moral Obligations

Break-out Session on Nazi-Confiscated Art Issues: Identification of

Art, Archives and Databases

INTRODUCTION

In late February 1946, my colleague First Lieutenant Leslie 1.

Poste, a Library and Archives specialist, drove me through a blinding

snowstorm to Offenbach. En route, Lt. Poste briefed me on the

Offenbach Collection Point's origins, his role in selecting a building

within the I.G. Farben complex on the Main River, and his concern that

restitution operations be expedited in accordance with military

regulations. Since its establishment in July 1945, the operation had yet to

restitute any materials.

Lt. Poste also reviewed the operations of Hitler's Einsatzstab

Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) and its educational branch the Institut zur

Erforschung der Judenfrage (Institute to Research the Jewish Question).

The ERR, backed by German military forces, had traced Jewish,

Masonic, Socialist, and other anti-Nazi cultural objects throughout

Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe and had deposited them in many

places, especially in Frankfurt am Main in the Rothschild Library,

Hungen and Hirzenhain in Hesse, and all over Bavaria. The ERR targets

ranged from occupied Ukraine to the French-Spanish border and from

Greece to the British Isle of Man. The ERR even raided Italy, an axis

power. After Kristallnacht, the ERR collected items to save and use them

for Nazism.
524 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

Lt. Poste also described the U.S. combat and occupation

operations to protect and restitute the looted collections. He and other

Museums Fine Arts and Archives personnel felt the collections at the

Rothschild Library and other places should be moved to a single large,

secure facility. The I.G. Farben building at Offenbach was their site of

choice.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF OFFENBACH

My first impressions of the Offenbach Collecting Point were

overwhelming and amazing at once. As I stood before a seemingly

endless sea of crates and books, I thought what a horrible mess! What

could I do with all these materials? How could I carry out my

assignment successfully? Beyond the mess, however, was an even

larger mission. Indeed, the only action possible was to return the

items to their owners as quickly as possible.

The Offenbach Collecting Point was housed in well-guarded

five-story concrete building suitable for use as a warehouse following

repairs. Inside, however, there were only six or seven Germans,

headed by an U.S. civilian with displaced person status, who did very

little. Many crates, packages, stacks, and loose piles covered several

floors. Clearly, the operation was not being run effectively. My

mission was to revive this organization in order to accomplish my

mission successfully. Hence I launched the following actions.

THE OFFENBACH ARCHIVAL DEPOT

The Offenbach Archival Depot was officially established under

military directive, in conjunction with Monuments, Fine Arts and

Archives Wiesbaden, on March 2, 1946. As Director of the Offenbach

Archival Depot (OAD), I received extensive authority and broad mission

responsibilities within Greater Hesse. The operation's new designation

indicated my function as archivist. Archival principles, such as

restoration of the original order, were crucial at this stage. As part of the

directive, an organization chart served as a blueprint for action by three

branch chiefs responsible for administrative, operations, and liaisons,

respectively.
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 525

The OAD needed many hardworking personnel, and requested

about 50 people a week throughout March 1946 from the local German

employment office. By March 28, the OAD had nearly 180 employees.

Good working conditions were essential. Heat, light, clean floors,

repaired windows, and heavy-duty shelves were provided. U.S. sources

requisitioned and supplied enough coal and gasoline. And the large OAD

maintenance staff - about 30 - did an excellent job of ensuring a pleasant

working environment in the depot.

The I.G. Farben complex had security staff on site, as did the

OAD. Together, security watched employees for theft items, particularly

small books that were easy to hide. Some thefts did occur - some were

detected, others were not. Spot checks of OAD employees were also

conducted. Some staff members were even strip-searched. Moreover,

internal telephones on each floor were activated through an OAD

switchboard.

SORTING, IDENTIFYING, PRESERVING

The OAD received tons of materials from Frankfurt, Hirzenhain,

Hungen, and many other German locations. By March 25, 1946, the

OAD had processed - received and/or shipped - over 1.8 million items

contained in 2,351 crates, stacks, packages, and piles.

Crates, stacks, packages, and piles bearing some indication of the

country of origin were spot checked and set inside pending restitution

claims. Following some classification by country and by language, the

semi-identifiable piles awaited further processing. The unidentifiable

books and other materials were left alone until an opportunity arose for

careful study by competent persons - professionals like Professor Pinson,

Chaplain Isaiah Rackovsky, Rabbi Maurice Liber, Dr. Gershom

Scholem, Lucy Dawidowitcz, and knowledgeable displaced person

volunteers. Much thought was given to improving and expediting the

identification process. My successor, Captain Isaac Bencowitz, who

began to intern at Offenbach in April 1946, designed a somewhat unique

system, which I called the "Bencowitz sorting system," identifying books

from ex libris bookplates or stamps found inside book jackets.

Many books and documents required care and preservation as a

result of mishandling, damage during transit, water, mold, and neglect.

The OAD did not possess any equipment or materials for care and

preservation. Luckily, I learned that one of the employees - a former

monk - had worked with documents at a religious order. I assigned him
526 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

to devise homemade care and preservation techniques. One method he

used for drying wet books and documents involved hanging them from

clothespins and applying extra heat. The technique worked very well.

RESTITUTION

What did the OAD accomplish? As of August 1947 some

2,000,000 books and other identifiable materials had been restituted and

distributed. I am proud - at this late state - to relate to you that the United

States restituted well over 93 percent of the Nazi-looted materials. Five

countries -Germany (Berlin), the Netherlands, France, the USSR, and

Italy received the following quantities of materials: Germany (Berlin),

700,000; The Netherlands, 329,000; France, 328,000; the USSR,

232,000; and Italy, 225,000.

In addition to items restituted to governments, the YIVO

Institute for Jewish Research with worldwide headquarters in New York

received 92,000 items. Under direction of the U.S. State Department, I

supervised the return of these materials to the United States in June 1947.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee distributed, on loan,

of 24,000 books to the Displaced Persons; and the Library of Congress

Mission received some 20,000 books. German institutions other than the

Preussisches Staatsbibliothek received 50,000 items; Poland 25,000; and

Belgium, Czechoslovakia, United Kingdom, Greece, Hungary, and

Yugoslavia each received less than 10,000 items.

OAD HISTORY

Both Isaac Bencowitz and I understood Offenbach's importance

and the need for an historical record of its activities. We wrote detailed,

factual monthly reports. We prepared pictorial albums - I did the first

one, and Bencowitz did three others. We saved correspondence relating

to OAD operations, including liaison relationships. These items are on

deposit in over 20 archival boxes in the U.S. National Archives in

Washington, D.C. as well as deposited with Yad Vashem in Israel.

Bencowitz also recorded his experiences in his diary, from which

I share an eloquent entry describing the signification of Offenbach's

history:
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 527

I would walk into the loose document room to take a

look at the things there and find it impossible to tear

myself away from the fascinating piles of letters, folders,

and little personal bundles. Not that what you held in

your hand was so engrossing, but rather what the next

intriguing item might be. Or, in the sorting room, I

would come upon a box of books which the sorters had

brought together, like scattered sheep into one fold -

books from a library which once had been in some

distant town in Poland, or an extinct Yeshiva. There was

something sad and mournful about these volumes ... as if

they were whispering a tale of yearning and hope since

obliterated... I would find myself straightening out these

books and arranging them in the boxes with a personal

sense of tenderness as if they had belonged to someone

dear to me, someone recently deceased

AFTER OFFENBACH

I returned to Offenbach in 1947 on assignment for the Library of

Congress Mission to arrange the transfer to New York of the vast YIVO

archives. Later, I briefly participated in restituting the Collegio

Rabbinico de Firenze's historic library, including the incunabula, to Italy.

I have remained involved in restitution efforts throughout most of my

military service, primarily as the U.S. Department of Defense

Representative to the U.S. Interagency Committee on Captured

("Seized") Records and other restitution-related assignments. I worked

with German representatives of Konrad Adenauer to return German

military records. I also participated briefly in the transfer of the U.S.

Army Berlin Documents Center to the State Department, which have

been turned over to the German government.

In retrospect, Offenbach proved to be a most unusual and

challenging assignment - a high point in my 35 years of military and

civilian service. Offenbach was a very unusual part of what I call the

"cultural Holocaust." Participating at Offenbach on the greatest book

restitution in history now seems truly providential. I share Lt. Poste's

sentiments that,

Facts and figures on the Offenbach Archival Depot fail

to reveal the intensely moving story of this phase of
528 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

restitution activity. Through the depot passed the

remnants of age-old cultures, and particularly of a

culture which survived despite the vicissitudes of

interminable persecutions and periodic massacres.

These books and objects were what was left of the

hundreds of Jewish institutions of learning, of Jewish

communities, wiped out by the Holocaust. Few can

fathom the depth of the Jewish tragedy of which

remnants stood as a sad memorial.

CONCLUSION AND OUTLOOK

In closing, I am inspired by actions of the international

community to convene at the Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era

Assets to resolve lingering issues of restitution and archival access. To

this end, I support and encourage efforts to identify items improperly

restituted, and to negotiate with rightful owners for redistribution of such

materials. in addition, I recommend governments and institutions

-examine and report the fate of restituted materials as well as prepare

inventories and provide access to archival materials restituted vis-à-vis

Offenbach.

It is at this exciting moment in history, that silent archives where

facts have gathered dust and awaited the avenging moment of their

revelation may at long last find voice.
Dr. Constance Lowenthal

DIRECTOR, COMMISSION FOR ART RECOVERY,

WORLD JEWISH CONGRESS

WORLD JEWISH RESTITUTION ORGANIZATION

UNITED STATES

Break-out Session on Nazi-Confiscated Art Issues: Identification of

Art, Archives and Databases

The Commission for Art Recovery was formed to reunite prewar owners (or their heirs) with art that was looted from them by the

Nazis and their collaborators. It will also locate and recover heirless art

for the benefit of Jewish communities.

The formation of the Commission was announced at a meeting

of the World Jewish Restitution Organization in September 1997. It

operates through the World Jewish Congress - American Section. Ronald

S. Lauder is the Chairman.

I began as director in mid-January 1998. The Commission has a

staff of five. Menachem Rosensaft serves as Special Counsel.

The problem we seek to address is familiar to everyone attending

this conference. Much has been written about, and our speakers in the

plenary session have already described, Nazi art confiscations from

private collections and from Jewish art dealers' inventories.

Nazi art thefts were a violation of international law at the time

they took place, even though the Third Reich enacted laws to give the

appearance of legality to some transactions. Knowledge of this led to the

Allies' Declaration of London, which suggested that nullifying forced

sales would be important. Taking spoils violated Article 56 of the 1907

Hague Convention, to which Germany was party. Nazi confiscations of

cultural property were crimes at the Nuremberg Trials.

In addition, these thefts were inextricably linked to genocide.

Often the looting immediately preceded the escape of the victims, or for

the less fortunate, their deportation and extermination.

Some plunder was official, and some was the result of aggressive

collecting by high level Nazi officials like von Ribbenntrop and

Hermann Goering. During the German occupation of France, Goering

regularly visited the Jeu de Paume, the little museum on the Place de la

Concorde. New shipments of art seized from Jews arrived every day.
530 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

During his frequent visits, Goering made his choices, and his initials

were stamped in the margin of the inventories of seized Jewish

collections next to those items that he wanted.

The western Allies were well aware of the looting and

investigated it after the war. It is well known that the Allies found vast

stores of art in caves and mines. Some belonged to Germany's museums,

but much of it was confiscated art destined for Hitler's planned museum

in Linz. They also found traincars near Berchtesgaden filled with art

amassed by Goering.

Some art that the Nazis looted from Jews was found, at the end

of the war, in the Soviet sector. This was not returned; Soviet policy

determined that Red Army Trophy Brigades would remove it to the

former Soviet Union. Collections of Hungarian Jews, for example those

of the Hatvany and Herzog families, are today in Russia, looted first by

the Nazis and later taken by the Soviets.

The western Allies returned, and could only return, what was

found on German territory after the war. Art confiscated from German,

French, and Belgian Jews that had already been absorbed by the art

market, through Jew auctions and wartime trades, was untouched by

these efforts.

The first step in re-uniting Jewish confiscation victims with their

art is to identify it. This is called for in the Principles circulated by Under

Secretary Eizenstat's office. The Commission for Art Recovery has

designed a computer database to assist in ways that were not possible

until now. The New York State Banking Department Holocaust Claims

Processing Office is using the same software, and the two organizations

are sharing all information.

The simple concept of the database is a matching of "Lost and

Found" art that is executed in a very sophisticated way. The

Commission's database will match claimed works of art with published

works whose whereabouts are usually known and whose provenances

give reason to believe that they might have been looted. The software

developed for the Commission by Gallery Systems, Inc. is unique in this

ability.

We are soliciting information from claimants on the art they lost.

Often their descriptive information is insufficient to identify it. Of

course, people who fled the Nazis were unlikely to have carried detailed

inventories of their collections with them. One claimant's Austrian

mother made her inventory from memory in the London Underground

during the Blitz.
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 531

The Commission developed its claim form with the help of

colleagues at the Art Loss Register and the New York State Banking

Department Holocaust Claims Processing Office. Claimants may contact

the Commission's office or download claim forms from our website

(www.wjc-artrecovery.org).

We also ask for accurate information about the various names,

residences, and dates of birth of the victims.

To help improve the quality of information for claimants, we

will cross-index claimant family names with those in Nazi looting

records and with names of homeowners insurance policyholders whose

policies had art schedules. If the names match, we will then obtain copies

of the Nazi inventories or the insurance art schedules and fill in the

descriptive information. Even if a grandchild-claimant is unaware that

his family had insurance, we may be able to get a list of art and antiques

from an old insurance policy. These are fairly detailed inventories that

can supplement claimants' recollections and strengthen a case.

Our criteria for describing art are compatible with museum

standards and the Getty Information Institute's "Object ID", which is

used by many types of organizations that need to identify art, including:

law enforcement agencies, insurers, etc. Our database will also use two

authority vocabularies developed by the Getty Information Institute for

geographic names (Thesaurus of Geographic Names - TGN) and for

artists' names (Union List of Artists' Names - ULAN). These computer

aids make it possible to find the works of an artist even though his name

may have many variants, i.e. Michelangelo Merisi is known in Italian

and in English as Caravaggio, in French as le Caravage. Jan Brueghel (or

Bruegel) the Younger was also known as "Velvet" Brueghel. Likewise,

place names vary in languages and time, but our computer will recognize

that Lemberg is Lvov is Lviv.

We are now officially accepting claims, but even before a public

announcement, the Commission received correspondence and telephone

calls from 55 families whose losses occurred in eight countries: Austria,

Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, and

Yugoslavia. We have met with relatives of Alphonse Kann, Jacques

Goudstikker, Jacques Helft, and Georges Wildenstein.

To develop our catalog list of Found art, we drew up a list of the

names of looted families and art agents and middlemen mentioned in the

reports of the Office of Strategic Services investigators and in "The Rape

of Europa" by Lynn Nicholas and "The Lost Museum" by Hector

Feliciano.
532 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

Since many looted works of art were sold and entered the art

market before the war was over, we guessed that some portion of the

highest quality works would be published. Our staff went to the library

and looked for provenances that included the names on our list or were

simply blank for the critical years. These are works that could be

matched with art sought by our claimants. We began with catalogues of

permanent collections and exhibitions assembled from museums and

private collections. Our research team will go on to catalogues raisonnes

(the scholarly publications that include all the works of a particular

artist), and other exhibition catalogues.

In just four months, after consulting about 220 books, we found

over 1,700 possible matches. The scholars who prepared these

catalogues have included such names as Goering, the Fuhrer Museum in

Linz, Hans Wendland, apparently without self-consciousness. The

Commission's findings reveal that these works are more numerous than

previously assumed. When museums said they thought the problem was

small, they were sincere. I believe that most current possessors have no

idea of the art's tainted past. I believe that many of the scholars who

included names of once notorious dealers in published provenances

simply didn't recognize the names as having a connection with Nazi art

looting.

The Commission's customized software will compare works of

art with works of art and report possible matches to us, based on the

number of category characteristics they share, categories like artist's

name, subject, medium, approximate size. Even if the art matches on all

criteria, this only means that further research is necessary. It may be a

looted work of art that was never returned or it might be a recovered

object which was sold legitimately by the pre-War owners.

The working database will neither be on the Internet nor

"published." We are happy to share claimed art information with other

restitution organizations and with the art market. We would welcome the

opportunity to add other lists of claimed art to ours. We also welcome

lists from museums of works whose provenance has gaps during the

critical years, or has names of persons involved in the trade of Nazilooted art.

The Commission has an agreement with the Art Loss Register to

share information about the art claimed so that those works of art will be

checked against the upcoming auction sales at the major houses (the Art

Loss Register checks about 400,000 auction lots annually). This was

arranged early on, so we designed our database for ease of electronic

information transfer. We are open to discussions about sharing
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 533

information with other organizations. As I mentioned, the New York

State Banking Department Holocaust Claims Processing Office has

chosen to use the Commission's database.

I have held talks with people in the art world (museums, dealers,

auction houses), with law enforcement agencies, government officials,

and art restitution groups. I believe this is essential. The solution to this

problem requires cooperation across the board internationally, in the

public and private sector, in the art trade and insurance industry.

An Advisory Committee for the database is in formation. Its

members include Jane Kallir, President of Galerie St. Etienne and an

expert on Egon Schiele; Robert Bergman, Director of the Cleveland

Museum of Art; Charles Moffett, Sotheby's Vice President for

Impressionist & Modern Paintings and a former curator and museum

director.

In the coming months I expect to work with scholars of

international law and others to study and develop Principles of Return to

guide the Commission's work. The Principles put forward for adoption

by this conference do not apply readily to looted art held by private

individuals. Yet, I believe that most works of art that we will find will be

in the hands of good faith purchasers who, under European legal

systems, acquire good title. Many of the looted works have changed

hands several or many times since 1945, and many of the buyers would

be considered good faith purchasers under law. I am well aware of the

difference between European law and that in the United States, Canada,

and the United Kingdom. Here a thief cannot pass good title, but time

limits may curtail a victim's rights. In Europe, a good faith purchase

confers good title.

Some heirless works may be found in museums. We need to

develop policy on heirless art (a) when there is one work of art in a

private or public collection, and (b) when countries have not returned art

to pre-war owners and a large number of works is under a single,

national administration.

In spite of the complexities that surround this problem which we

have inherited, I am hopeful that new research, new identification

techniques, and a new will shall resolve it – a will demonstrated by this

Conference. Our joint efforts can help to correct the inequities we have

tolerated for too long.

Mr. Ronald S. Tauber

CHAIRMAN, THE ART LOSS REGISTER, INC.

UNITED STATES

Restitution of Looted Art: A Practical Approach

Break-out Session on Nazi-Confiscated Art Issues: Identification of

Art, Archives and Databases

This Conference on Holocaust era assets has the opportunity not

only to formulate general principles, but also to encourage practical steps

to help restitute looted art to rightful owners. I am the Chairman of the

Art Loss Register Inc. which represents the world's largest private

database of stolen art. The company was formed principally by the art

and insurance industries in order to help identify and recover stolen art,

to deter the trade in stolen art and to provide a central checkpoint to

prospective purchasers and lenders. The database now comprises more

than 100,000 items reported to have been stolen worldwide, and each

year the Art Loss Register examines 400,000 auction lots to uncover

stolen or looted items. Auction houses participating in this screening

program include Sotheby's, Christie's, Phillips, Bonhams, Dorotheum

(Vienna), Lempertz (Cologne), Bukowskis (Stockholm), Villa Grisebach

(Berlin), and Finarte (Milan).

The majority of items on our database consists of contemporary

thefts. Earlier this year, however, with the financial support of certain of

our shareholders, principally Sotheby's and Aon Corporation, we began

the expansion of our activity relating to Holocaust era assets. Based on

our extensive experience in helping to recover stolen and missing art, we

are convinced that a practical approach will result in identification and

recovery of looted art. In general, the practical approach relies on two

steps. First, to the fullest extent possible, all items of looted art should

be entered on a database open to all organizations working in this area.

Second, items on the database should be continuously checked against

art entering the commercial market at the point of sale.
536 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

There is at present no single international listing of looted art and

many of the existing publications, produced mainly just after the war, are

now inevitably out of date. Our aim, working with others, is to create as

complete a database as possible of works of art looted by the Nazis,

Soviets, or others from public or private collections, preferably, though

not exclusively, with claims attached. The Art Loss Register has

carefully built bridges to the World Jewish Congress Commission for Art

Recovery, the New York State Holocaust Claims Processing Office and

the Holocaust Art Restitution Project. Our efforts represent an unusual

level of cooperation between the private sector, government and

philanthropic agencies. We are exchanging data and have succeeded in

creating a unified Wartime Losses Claims Form.

Claims are accepted where there is a reasonable chance of

identifying the item and the claim is judged to be authentic. Additional

validation of claims would be required at the point of identification.

During the past year, 560 Holocaust looted artworks have been reported

to the Art Loss Register to add to the approximately 4,000 missing

artworks from museum collections from Belgium, France, Germany,

Hungary, Italy and Poland. All registrations of looted art from private

individuals are free of charge, and the ALR will not charge its customary

recovery fee when it is able to identify an individual’s looted artwork in

an auction house catalog or elsewhere.

The diversity of the art reported to us during the past year is

striking. We registered on our database a portrait by Paul Gauguin of his

son, Emile. This painting was seized by the Nazis from the collection of

Jakob Goldschmidt in the early 1930's. The painting was sold at the

Hans Lange auction house in September 1941 with other works

confiscated from Jewish collections to raise money for the Hitler Jugend.

We have also registered Impressionist pictures from the Paul Rosenberg

collection; a Marieschi painting looted by the Gestapo in Vienna in 1940;

a series of five hunting tapestries seized from the Berlin Oppenheimer

collection on the orders of Hermann Goering; a collection of Dutch Old

Masters apparently seized by Allied troops in Austria in 1945; and other

paintings seized as war loot by the Red Army.

The first pillar of the practical approach, then, is the creation of a

comprehensive database. The second pillar is the continuous

examination of the commercial art market. Our staff of twenty examines

auction house catalogs from around the world, responds to dealer,

customs and police inquiries and is identifying the location of a stolen

item nearly every day. Since our formation in 1991, we have recovered

in excess of $75 million in value. To illustrate the effectiveness of our
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 537

process, during just the past eighteen months we identified a Manet, a

Monet, two Picassos, a Giacometti, and a de Kooning among many other

items of lesser value; some of these pictures were reported stolen more

than twenty years ago. In our view, as the database of looted art grows,

we will be able to make significant matches in the commercial

marketplace. Please understand that the auction houses are totally

supportive of our efforts. They are not concerned that we will cause the

withdrawal of some lots from sale. Quite the contrary, their business

requirement is that a comprehensive data base be built as quickly as

possible so that they can be assured that they do not offer looted art for

sale in their salerooms.

As I have said, The Art Loss Register is committed to providing

a pragmatic response to the task of identifying and, where possible,

returning looted art to its rightful owners. We recommend that this

Conference urge the adoption of the following practical guidelines with

respect to the purchase, sale and ownership of works of art:

First, commercial sellers – galleries and auctioneers – should

undertake due diligence, prior to sale, to determine the rightful

provenance of a work of art through consultation with relevant databases

and appropriate experts on art looting. The screening by the ALR each

year of approximately 400,000 auction lots against the database of claims

is a key part of this process. Increasingly, galleries are also using our

service. The ALR is underpinning the screening program by providing

the auction houses with a research effort that highlights pieces in

catalogs whose provenance suggests that the item may have been looted

and might therefore be problematic.

Second unless it is clear that the seller has already done so, a

potential purchaser of art should consult the databases and appropriate

experts to determine the rightful provenance of the item in question.

The third recommendation concerns works of art held by public

and quasi-public institutions. The ALR is helping the museum

community conduct due diligence with respect to the acquisition and

display of works of art. In the United States, approximately twenty

museums – including the Chicago Art Institute, the Metropolitan

Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Boston Museum of Fine

Arts, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Indianapolis Art

Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art – are checking acquisitions,

donations or existing exhibits against the ALR database. Many museums

are already searching their holdings to determine whether any of the

works may constitute looted art. We recommend that every museum and

public institution be urged to conduct a rigorous self-examination of its
538 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

holdings in line with the statement adopted by the American Association

of Museum Directors in Worcester this past June. These institutions

should then create an inventory of "problem" pictures where the

provenance is unclear or has problematic gaps. The creation of such an

inventory of "problem" pictures, stored alongside the register of losses,

would allow researchers and others to focus on potentially looted works.

This Conference serves an important purpose. Nothing that we

do today can compensate for the catastrophes imposed by the Nazis on

the Jewish people and so many others during the Holocaust era. We

must do what we can, however. And we can and must see to it that all

practical steps are taken to return stolen property to its rightful owners.

Ronald S. Tauber is the Chairman of The Art Loss Register, Inc.

He is a former partner of the investment banking firm of Goldman, Sachs

& Co. and a former partner of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, a New York

law firm.
Gilbert S. Edelson

ADMINISTRATIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND COUNSEL,

ART DEALERS ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA

UNITED STATES

Break-out Session on Nazi-Confiscated Art Issues: Identification of

Art, Archives and Databases

I speak today as a representative of the Art Dealers Association

of America which is known as ADAA. ADAA is a non-profit

association of America’s leading dealers in works of fine art, that is

painting, sculpture and works on paper from the early Renaissance to the

present.

ADAA’s members are sensitive to the issues involved in Nazilooted art. Many art dealers and their families, including past and

present ADAA members, were victims of Nazi persecution. Their

inventory and their private collections were looted. Some perished, some

were imprisoned in concentration camps, some came to the United States

where they have made important contributions to the cultural life of this

nation.

We don’t know precisely how many works were looted by the

Nazis. We don’t know precisely how many looted works were returned

to their rightful owners. We don’t know how many looted works were

not returned, or where they are now. We will never have complete

answers to these questions, but we must do everything in our power to

assemble the information. We can speculate and debate, but it is more

important that we act, that we get on with the work to be done in this

country. What is that work? I suggest the following:

First, we must stop all traffic in unrestituted Nazi-looted art.

Second, we must seek to identify works which are subject to

claims, and their owners.

Third, we must seek to resolve claims fairly and expeditiously.

First, as I have said, all traffic in unrestituted art must be ended.

To that effect ADAA has pledged that its members will not knowingly

sell such works.

ADAA members will continue to research the history of the

works of art which they offer. That research will be professionally

conducted by individuals uniquely qualified to do so by virtue of their
540 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

specialized knowledge and experience. ADAA members know that

research into a provenance is not a title search and that there are

frequently gaps in a work’s provenance for perfectly legitimate reasons.

They are also aware of the fact that because certain dealers’ or collectors’

names appear in a provenance does not necessarily mean that the work

was looted and not restituted. I should note at this point, as a slight

digression, that ADAA members will continue to assist museums which

make inquiries about the provenance of works in their collections.

Our second task is the identification of unrestituted works and

their owners. Many months ago, in testimony at the hearings so ably

conducted by Congressman Leach, we said that the single most effective

tool which dealers, collectors and museums could utilize in determining

whether a given work of art has been stolen is a reliable, central source

of information about its identity and the identity of any claimants to the

work. We urged the creation of a central database containing that

information.

We understand that such a database is now being created and

will be maintained by the World Jewish Congress’ Commission on Art

Recovery under the effective leadership of Connie Lowenthal. ADAA

will, of course, fully cooperate with this enterprise. One of our members,

Jane Kallir, has been invited to join the advisory committee. She and

other ADAA members will make their expertise in works of art and their

experience in the field of stolen art available to the World Jewish

Congress. We urge all other interested parties to do likewise in the hope

that the database will be as complete as possible and fully operational at

an early date. ADAA members will, of course, avail themselves of this

important facility. They will also be consulting the Art Loss Register

which is taking a very active and commendable role in the maintenance

of a database of stolen works of art, now including Nazi-looted art.

I note that the FBI has placed information about stolen works of

art on the Internet, where it is widely and freely available. I hope that the

database on Nazi-looted art will also be on the Internet.

We believe that the first priority of a database ought to be the

assembly and dissemination of claims by victims or their families of

specific, identified works. We also believe it important that any claimed

work be identified as precisely as possible.

Our next task is the resolution of claims. In the United States,

our experience in the resolution of claims of ownership has thus far been

limited. In the past 40 years, there have been only four or five court

cases of which I am aware which involve Nazi-looted art.
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 541

Even on the basis of our limited experience, however, we know

that a case involving Nazi-looted art can involve difficult and complex

issues of law and fact. In such a case, a purchaser in good faith may be

sued by the original owner, from whom the work was stolen. One of two

innocent parties will be hurt.

American law favors the original owner. Under our

jurisprudence good title to a stolen work does not pass. The European

legal system, however, favors the good faith purchaser. Even in the

United States the law varies from state to state on such issues as the

applicable statute of limitations.

Likewise, any case involving Nazi-looted art may present

difficult factual problems. After all, the claimed work was looted more

than 50 years ago. Identification of the work may involve special

problems. Witnesses may be gone; memories may be bad.

Any lawsuit is therefore likely to be lengthy and expensive. The

costs could exceed the value of the work. And there is something else

which serves to make such a case longer and more expensive — passion.

I know of no lawsuit which engenders more passion, this side of the

bedroom, than an action involving a work of art, especially one involving

possession of the work.

We therefore urge the parties to any claim involving Nazi-looted

art to consider mechanisms which exist for resolving claims without the

necessity of litigation, such as mediation, arbitration and alternative

dispute resolution. There have been suggestions that such cases be

resolved by a commission or committee of experts. I would not agree. It

must be kept in mind that each case is fact specific, and that it will

therefore be decided on the basis of its unique facts. Each case will

therefore require different expertise, which may be beyond the

competence of a single committee. There are no “art experts”; there are

only experts in specific and limited fields. Moreover, to the extent

possible, the parties should be able to choose their own mediator,

arbitrator or such other aide in the non-judicial resolution of a claim.

ADAA and its members are prepared to make their expertise

available at no cost to parties who attempt to settle claims without

litigation. Resolving such disputes promptly, fairly and inexpensively is

in the base interest not only of the parties involved but of the entire art

community.

Dr. Konstantin Akinsha

RESEARCH DIRECTOR,

PROJECT OF DOCUMENTATION OF WARTIME CULTURAL LOSSES

UNITED STATES

Break-out Session on Nazi-Confiscated Art Issues: Identification of

Art, Archives and Databases

The establishment of different databases, collecting information

about art works looted during WWII, is now a popular topic within the

circle of scholars and representatives of organizations and groups

involved in the search for the 'disappeared' cultural property of the

victims of the holocaust. There are many plans and ideas to create a

"total" database, which will include all possible claims and information

about nearly every artwork looted during the war. Unfortunately such an

undertaking doesn't appear very realistic. When we are addressing the

problem of the cultural property lost during the war, we are talking about

hundreds of thousands of paintings and objets d'art. It is difficult to

believe that tomorrow some organization will be ready to collect such a

quantity of information from archives throughout Europe and put it into

computer format.

Much more productive are the efforts of some European

countries (for example Austria) to post Internet lists of claims collected

by the governments in the first post-war years. However, not all

European governments are ready to make such information public. They

have a good reason. In many countries (for example the Netherlands,

Belgium, France, Austria) a portion of the art works returned by the

Allies after the end of the war was sold through government organized

auctions. The ground for such sales was that the "owners" of the pieces

were never found. However in many cases provenance of the works of

art proposed for sale was not carefully checked.

Today the traditional argument against putting information about

post-war claims in the public domain is that such a step could violate the

privacy of claimants. It seems, however that the real reason behind the

secrecy is different: to avoid scandals that could start if some art works,

sold by the governments after the war, will be recognized and claimed by

their real owners. The majority of recently established databases are of a

practical, workaday nature. Their task is to collect information about
544 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

claims and to provide detailed descriptions of the disappeared art works.

However, not only "practical" databases could be of help in the research

and understanding of the Nazi looting of Europe. No less important is

historic research, which could have both a practical and academic value.

Unfortunately, the Nazi looting of European culture is a part of the

history of the 20th century, as it is a part of art history and the history of

taste. Without detailed research of this dark chapter of our past, we will

never understand it in its complexity.

I represent the Project of Documentation of Wartime Cultural

Losses, an academic organization, the task of which is to research and to

put in the public domain information about the confiscation and removal

of cultural property during the war. We recently opened our web site,

which you can find at the address: doc.proj@loyola.edu. The first project

put by us on the web is dedicated to the looting of the Jewish collections

of France. It includes reproductions of some documents of the notorious

Arbeitsgruppe Louvre of the Einzatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg,

responsible for confiscation of the Jewish art treasures in occupied

France. In addition to lists of confiscated paintings selected for the

Hitler museum in Linz and the private collection of Field marshal

Herman Goering, we put on our web site photographs of exhibitions of

looted art organized by the Nazis in Jeu de Paume, then the collecting

point of the stolen masterpieces. These photos, proudly produced for the

ERR files, were never published before. Using albums of photographs of

thousands of paintings and objets d'art confiscated in France, which were

presented by Alfred Rosenberg to Adolf Hitler, we succeeded to

recognize art works put on display in the Jeu de Paume. You can see a

virtual reconstruction of the notorious Nazi exhibitions of stolen art on

our web site. By clicking on artworks displayed in the halls of Jeu de

Paume, you will receive enlarged photos of them and information from

which collection they were confiscated. At the moment we are

researching the routes of the Nazi traffic of art works to Spain and South

America at the end of WWII. Soon the results of this research will

become available on our web site.

The Documentation Project is beginning research of the history

and collections of the Hitler Museum in Linz. We hope to compose a

complete catalogue of the most important Nazi collection of looted art in

wartime Europe. We believe that if such information were available to

the public it could be not only benefit historians and art historians but

could prevent unpleasant scandals connected with the appearance of art

works with Fuhrer museum inventory numbers on the international art
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 545

market. For complete research of the looting of cultural property during

WWII Russian archives are extremely valuable.

I was surprised today by the statement of Mr. Kulishov, a

representative of the Russian delegation, that Russian archives are open

to researchers. It is not true. They are even more closed than in the

beginning of the 90s. Mr. Kulishov quoted in his speech some documents

from the Archive of the Soviet Military Administration of Germany –

until this day independent researchers had no chance to cross its

threshold. The notorious "Osobi" (Special) Archive – the collection of

documents confiscated by the Red Army in the occupied European

countries – remains closed to historians. Access to such museum

archives as the archive of the Hermitage or the archive of the Pushkin

Museum is strictly limited. Mr. Kulishov said that he has no information

about Jewish cultural property kept in Russian special depositories. I

want to give just a few examples - unique paintings from the collections

of Hatvany and Herzog, Jewish families from Budapest, confiscated by

the infamous Eichmann are today in the Pushkin Museum. The paintings,

which include masterpieces of Goya, El Greco, Manet and Degas, were

found by the Red Army in a little town Regensburg near Berlin and

transported to Russia. Until this day a collection of the Torah scrolls

confiscated by the Nazis in Hungary is collecting dust in the library of

Nizhni Novgorod. In Moscow archives such as the archive of the

Rotschild family, confiscated by the Gestapo in Vienna, and the archive

of David Herzog, a professor of the Würzburg University and a member

of the Rabbinate of Würzburg, whose house was burned out by the

Nazis, are kept in the "Osobi" archive. It is possible to multiply such

examples.

Today Russian representatives told us that according to the law

on "cultural property removed to the territory of the Russian Federation

in a result of WWII" adopted by the Duma, but not signed by president

Yeltsin, Jews whose property was confiscated by the Nazis and than

removed to the USSR can claim it back. But it is difficult to claim

something if you don't know where it is. In the mid 50s, when the Soviet

government was preparing to return the collections of the Dresden

Gallery and other East German museums, the content of the Soviet secret

depositories of art works confiscated in the occupied countries of Europe

was checked. It was discovered that more than 1000 paintings stored in

the vaults of the Hermitage and the Pushkin Museum had no provenance.

Soviet experts had no idea about provenance of thousands of works on

paper, sculptures, tapestries, and objects of furniture. It is possible to

guess that some of them belonged to obscure and not well documented
546 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

German private collections. But a possibility that these "ownerless" art

pieces, found on the territories of the Third Reich after the end of the

war, once belonged to the European Jews is very high.

If Russian officials really want to return property to Holocaust

victims and their survivors, they have to give an international art experts

the opportunity to see and research these artworks of "unknown origin"

that are now stored in different museum depositories. In his speech Mr.

Kulishov mentioned that the Russian Federation will be happy to

participate international efforts on the establishment of databases, which

could help to trace art pieces disappeared during the war. Russia has a

good chance to help the research of the Nazi confiscation of art. In the

end of the war many important Nazi archives, which could now shed

new light on the looting of the European culture, were confiscated by the

Soviet forces and transported to Moscow. Among such collections are

documentation of Sonderauftrag Linz (the organization responsible for

collecting art works for the Hitler museum) which includes personal

diaries of Hans Posse, the first curator of the Fuhrer collection.

Important documents of ERR, the archive of SS and other valuable

sources are still hidden in Russian archives. The open access to this

documentation could be of great help for the researchers working to

create databases of looted art.
Mr. Ori Z. Soltes

FORMER DIRECTOR, KLUTZNICK NATIONAL JEWISH MUSEUM

UNITED STATES

Spoliated and Restitutable Art

and Their Databases

Break-out Session on Nazi-Confiscated Art Issues: Identification of

Art, Archives and Databases

The following talking points note what I and my colleagues

believe are the key issues that require consideration if an equitable

resolution of this complex problem, both with respect to individual

claimants and with respect to human history, is to take place. These

points attempts to take into consideration the rights of claimants, which

rights seem elsewhere to be missing in a conference which has as its

most notable lack the presence (which is to say the absence) of claimant

representatives – and has offered certain pre-digested conclusions from

its outset, from the alleged number of objects stolen from Jews to

conclusions about “what claimants should want and get” in lieu of their

works of art.

1. No single database can ever be infallibly complete on this

subject, due to the vastness and far-flung nature of the material, the lapse

of time between the Nazi era and our own and the vagaries of human

memory and human record-keeping. Certainly a registry such as that

which currently exists, the Art Loss Register, has proven itself flawed

with respect to stolen works both within and outside the Holocaust

context – this I note not as a criticism, for the percentage rate of success

for ALR is very high, but as a statement of historical fact and as a

reminder that no one entity can accomplish it all.

2. Nonetheless, a database as a beginning point, not as an

endpoint, is extremely desirable: the longer we wait to begin doing

something, the more mired the issues become in impossibilities. The first
548 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

priority, to quote my colleague in the Holocaust Art Restitution Project,

Marc Masurovsky, is “to create a list of Holocaust art losses on all

unsettled Holocaust art claims arising from the Second World War which

were filed with the American occupation military government of

Germany and Austria between 1945 and 1951.” Most such data are

contained, in fact, in one record group at the National Archives, here in

College Park, MD, and HARP has already done some of the leg work.

3. The next crucial series of phases would include the

consolidation of this list with the claims currently being processed

though various agencies, such as the Commission on Art Recovery,

(whose chairman, Ron Lauder, reiterated CAR’s commitment to

championing the cause of claimants, yesterday), the Art Loss Registry

(which has, as its Holocaust claims Director, Sarah Jackson, mentioned

yesterday, begun to process such claims gratis), and the Holocaust

Claims Processing Office (which has received scores of inquiries over

the past several months). It would also include – and this is obviously of

equal significance – the cooperation of all such countries, including the

United States, who would order the complete declassification of all

archival documents, civil and military, which have to do with Holocaust

art thefts and their recovery after war’s end. This the French have begun

to do at last, and this the Russians – specifically, Valeriy Kulishov, of the

Ministry of Culture – vowed, in yesterday’s afternoon plenary session, to

do. Presumably that sincere gesture can and will be echoed by similar

acts of willingness to be accessible, on the part of other countries with

archives that would help further to clarify the relationship between

claimants and that which they would claim.

4. Each country would, then, ultimately, produce a registry of

restitutable items located in their public holdings. For example, if, as is

by now common knowledge, the French possess some 2,000 such works,

these would be publicized in order to encourage claimants to come forth.

In any case, the consolidation of all of these national and institutional

registries would – and could, for the technology to do so is there – be

consolidated, matching up unresolved claims with items still held in

public institutions.

5. The residual would constitute the core of heirless cultural

property. But the effort, if it is to be pro-active and not essentially

passive, would go and could go further. All heirless property – property

with no recognized claimant assigned to it – would be set aside and an

effort made to locate claimants. This would require a substantial outreach

campaign – but the precedent of the use of print, electronic and on-line

media to facilitate such a massive search, is there, having already had a
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 549

“dry run” in the search for claimants with regard to Swiss bank accounts.

Such a project could be managed jointly by organizations that are already

in place to accomplish the various aspects of such an enterprise.

Financing for this could be half public and half private. Some funds, for

example, could come from the Holocaust Victims Redress Act of 1998,

sponsored by Congressman Leach. Half could come from funds raised by

the Jewish community, most of whose major organizations have claimed

serious interest in this matter. The total of $10 million is not beyond

reach, and would support a process that will take 5 to 7 years to

complete.

6. But for this to succeed, the kind of cooperation and sincere

dedication that was evident 53 years ago in the efforts of the Art

Restitution Commissions will have to resurface. Congressional

legislation on a bi-partisan basis would have to support it. Museums,

auctions houses, dealers and collectors must actively support the creation

and distribution of the above-described international registry, look into

their collections and their souls and continue to champion multi-sourced

due diligence as we move between past and future. Practically, this

means discontinuing the campaign on the part of some members of the

art world to alter New York State legislation and undercut the rights of

Holocaust claimants; to gut current law and oversimplify the issue of

restitution by referring its questions to a simple and single database. It

means cooperation on the part of such groups, rather than seeking to

reduce the rights of claimants either to a time-specific window in which

to lodge a claim or to a process of adjudication that denies them the right

ever to reclaim their works of art. (Indeed that same attempt at problemreduction also proposes to respond to any and all claims by means of a

penny for dollar cash settlement. This banalizes the issue and equates

works of art qua family heirlooms with old shoes and used tires). It

means not hiding the demand for due diligence behind the false claim

that the art market will revert to economic chaos if the pursuit of claims

is ongoing and if multi-sourced due diligence in purchasing, auctioning,

gifting or lending of works of art is demanded. This assertion is false for

the obvious reason that, if art were not big business, and if art movement

did not continue even while people were being destroyed by the millions

half a century ago, the problem which we are addressing would not exist,

and thus there is no reason to suppose that multi-sourced due diligence

will significantly disturb, much less destroy the flow of art.

7. Where the matter of difficulties to resolve issues of restitution

are concerned we applaud the notion of a group to arbitrate claims and

keep the struggle out of the law courts. The question is who should serve
550 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

on such an important team, so that it be balanced and fair. I would

suggest that it might include not only two art historians, two lawyers and

two museum professionals, two claimant representatives, two Holocaust

researchers, as well as one or perhaps two individual(s) from congress,

but also a journalist – someone like a Morley Safer – who is committed

to yielding just conclusions in such matters but with clearly no partisan

ax to grind. Moreover, the goal of such a team should be to consider the

claimant’s desire as to how, if a claim is validated, it should be resolved,

and not simply the penny for dollar restitution that has been proposed

and ignores the human, as opposed to art market reality of claimants’

claims. This means not assuming, as a point of departure, that claimants

will be happy to settle for cash rather than art, which is insulting to them

and unsubstantiated. This can surely be an option, but neither the only

option nor the desired goal. Moreover, the notion that has been put forth,

that such cashification (my own word; forgive the neologism) of claims

could be funded by redirecting the Holocaust Victims Redress Act Funds

in that direction is inherently fallacious since, if the moneys intended for

research – precisely to help answer complicated provenance questions –

are eliminated, then the ability of the team to makes its determinations

will be severely undercut, and with that ability, its very raison d’être

demolished.

8. Such a team would have as a goal the assertion of claimant

rights even as it would not assume that a claim was automatically valid,

but would seek, bolstered by the expertise of its members, to determine

that validity. Moreover, two different further categories of difficulties

would confront it. One sort is where the holder of a work of art is a

private collector; the other is where the holder is a public institution – be

it a museum or a government. In both cases, some compensation to a

good-faith purchaser might be necessary. In the first instance,

compensation might come in the form of government intervention:

offering a tax-break, for example, to the purchaser required to give up

his/her work of art, could be a solution. In the latter instance, the team

could further help broker an agreement between claimant and museum

that would permit the museum to cede title to the claimant, but allow the

work of art in question to remain, on long-term loan, in the hands and on

the walls of the institution in question – thus no museum would be

threatened by the sudden loss of massive parts of its collections – where

it would hang side-by-side with heirless works. Similarly, all such works

would have text panels explaining the painful history of ownership with

has left a hole in their provenance, and educating the public about a

subject which is an integral part of human history – and about which
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 551

there is at present virtually no education inside or outside of museums (a

serious contradiction of the educational mission of museums, it seems to

me). Such works would hang side-by-side with the wonderful array of

works of art lucky enough to have had no part in this grim chapter of art

history.

9. At issue, then, is both the resolving of claimant matters that

have emerged out of the past, together with the restrengthening of our

resolve to connect yet unidentified claimants with their objects; and

maintaining our resolve with regard to multi-sourced due diligence

matters in the future. We have a historic opportunity to restore, even after

so many decades, some of what was forcibly taken half a century ago as

part of an extraordinary outburst of genocidal fervor, and more

fundamentally, to begin writing the last chapter of Holocaust history and

give it a reasonably happy ending. And we have the opportunity to assure

that the failure of due diligence over the past half century, which has

yielded problematic claims questions today, will be replaced by an

unequivocal willingness – mirroring that exhibited by our nation in 1946,

and eventually and unaccountably abandoned over the years which

followed – to do the morally responsible thing. I hope that we have the

courage and conviction to write that last chapter with justice and

humility, as we face simultaneously back on the past and toward the

future.

Thank you for your attention.

Mr. Philippe De Montebello

DIRECTOR, METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART,

U.S. ASSOCIATION OF ART MUSEUM DIRECTORS TASK FORCE

UNITED STATES

Break-out Session on Nazi-Confiscated Art Issues: Principles to

Address Nazi-Confiscated Art

Thank-you, Congressman Leach:

It is a pleasure to appear before you again, as I did last February

before the House Banking Committee that you chair, to have yet another

opportunity to discuss the guidelines that American art museums have

adopted in principle – and also set in motion in practice –that is, to deal

fairly, forthrightly, and comprehensively with the issue of spoliated art

from the Nazi/World War II era in Europe.

These guiding principles have now been in effect in the United

States for six months. My colleagues here from Europe have had a

chance to review the document and they have expressed general

agreement with its content. Some have indicated that they, too, will be

adopting similar guiding policies, adapted to their own country’s

situation.

When I testified on Capitol Hill 10 months ago, you may recall, I

did so not only as Director of the Metropolitan Museum, but as

Chairman of a Task Force of the Association of Art Museum Directors,

assigned specifically to devise a comprehensive policy on this issue. I

indicated then that our Task Force, composed of nine other art museum

directors, would report back within four months with a policy to guide to

art museums in North America. And this we did.

On June 4, at the AAMD annual meeting in Worcester,

Massachusetts the Task Force report was discussed extensively, fully

endorsed, and adopted unanimously. We coalesced around a broad set of

principles, guidelines, and recommendations to deal proactively with the

issue of works of art confiscated during the Nazi regime and not

restituted to their legitimate owners or their heirs.

I will not read the entire report at this time. For whomever

wishes it, I have copies of it as well as of the public announcement that

accompanied its release last June 4th.
554 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

In the 10 minutes allotted me I’ll offer a brief summary of the

substance of the Task Force guidelines, and provide an update on how

one museum at least, the Metropolitan, has moved to put the report’s

words into action.

Principally, the Task Force Report called on American art

museums to begin to conduct a comprehensive review of their collections

to ascertain if any works may have been unlawfully confiscated during

the Nazi/World War II era, and never subsequently returned.

We agreed that to do so, we would make maximum use of

traditional research from scholars, donors, auction houses, dealers, and of

course, all of the standard literature, all of whom –or which-- might shed

information on provenance hitherto unavailable or unrecorded. And we

agreed that we must also take advantage of high-technology databases

and computer linkages that are scheduled to be established by various

third parties – computerized records that promise wider access to, and

more reliable cross-referencing of, previously dispersed data: I cite, for

example, plans for such an undertaking by the Commission for Art

Recovery, established by the World Jewish Congress.

Such databases promise the possibility of a future in which

claimants and art museums alike can use the Internet to gather and

compare all available information about the provenance of a work of art -

-now all widely dispersed--as well as the existence of any known past or

present challenges to ownership. It is in these databases, ultimately, that

lies the best hope of dovetailing information and access to hitherto

unknown information – not only claims, I hasten to add, but possible

postwar restitution or entirely proper subsequent sales.

Our report also, called on art museums to respond promptly to

any and all claims by owners or heirs of allegedly confiscated art, and

proposed resolving such matters “in an equitable, appropriate, and

mutually agreeable manner,” ideally utilizing the avenue of mediation to

help resolve claims, most of which, it was acknowledged would be sui

generis.

Finally the Task Force guidelines recommended seeking as much

provenance information as possible in the future before accepting gifts,

bequests, and making purchases; and it discouraged borrowing works of

art for loan exhibitions that were known to have been illegally

confiscated during the Nazi/World War II era and never restituted.

By taking these concrete actions, art museums placed themselves

firmly on record as committed to acting swiftly and proactively to

conduct the necessary research that will help us learn more about works

for which full ownership records have remained stubbornly unavailable –
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 555

hidden, for example, in this nation’s own previously classified World

War II documents, or in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Therein, incidentally, lies the key to a critical difference that

exists between Swiss or Italian bank or insurance companies and the

American Art Museum, a difference that is too often blurred. Indeed

“omnibus” conferences such as this one --and I do not contest its

enormous merits, encourages such blurring: namely, the implied equating

of works of art somehow “secreted” in museums with “hidden” financial

assets. I think everyone knows that this equation is patently absurd --nor,

incidentally, were U.S. museums acquiring art in Europe during the Nazi

era-- but rhetoric does get out of hand in this highly emotional arena. Of

course, a mountain of books, journals, catalogues, press releases, and

similar materials testifies to the contrary, and to museums’ propensity for

celebrating their collections, not hiding them.

The fact is, museums proudly announce acquisitions – the Met

has joyously recorded in recent weeks the purchase of works by Jasper

Johns and Van Gogh – and frankly, if my press office had not generated

considerable press attention, internationally, someone would now be

looking for other work! And of course, museums display new

acquisitions prominently in their galleries, indeed all new acquisitions at

the Met have a special and highly visible blue sticker on the label.

Museums publish their art in widely-read illustrated catalogues, as well

as in scholarly journals, and lend them to special exhibitions all over the

world. They can be seen on ubiquitous postcards and posters that

decorate dormitory rooms at colleges all over the country. We are, to

mix a metaphor, an open book...when it comes to new acquisitions or the

ongoing scholarship and research to which we also subject works of art

that have long resided in our collections.

All that said, and I assure you that I offer this reminder of past

practices strictly as a useful prologue to future practices, let me report on

our progress in fulfilling the mandate of the Task Force I chaired.

The work is exhaustive. Frankly, it is also exhausting – of

resources, time, and human energy alike. But it proceeds. It will not,

however, be done overnight; indeed no amount or money or industry at

this point could guarantee the swift completion of the task: too much

vital information is still unavailable. In most large museums at least, the

systematic examination of indices, acquisition records, and entry cards,

some of them written generations ago in now-fading ink, is an inherently

slow and painstaking process. But it has begun: The Metropolitan

Museum’s own curatorial departments –there are 18, entrusted with over

2 million works of art, are reviewing the records of all works of art
556 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

acquired since the war and they report regularly to me and to the office

of the Secretary and Council’s. The Met is in the process of creating an

illustrated, computerized collections management system, a project that

will permit even greater access to the Museum’s works of art. But this

effort, too, is far from complete.

We continue to do our research, index card by index card,

collection by collection – and I am assured that other museums are doing

so as well. Our ability to fill in all the blanks in the provenance is likely

to depend, in part, on unpredictable outside factors, such as the

publication of further declassified, or previously unknown records, and

their eventual, and indispensable ordering by archivists. As a case in

point I would note that just a few weeks ago, a secretly compiled report

of the OSS listing more than 2,000 people who allegedly handled art

looted by the Nazis, was again made public, and again made news. There

may be other such reports yet unopened.

I would caution, too, that it will unavoidably take time to

construct the kind of databanks necessary to make a much-needed hightech, cross-referencing archive function usefully. As is well known, no

web site is more valuable than the data it contains. And I must point out,

hopefully to good effect in this international forum, that the cooperation

of European art museums, and of course, of their governments, in this

data-building effort will be crucial to the success of any future data base.

I have probably exceeded my allotted time, Mr. Chairman. But

to summarize: the AAMD has adopted a policy; American museums are

committed to a comprehensive review of their provenance records, and

many have undertaken them; we await eagerly the day when

computerized data bases will provide easily accessed information on

claims and restitution; we believe that many of our colleagues in Europe

support this approach and are prepared to follow it themselves, a vital

step toward crucial cooperative research; and we hope that whatever

classified material remains shrouded in secrecy, here and abroad, can

finally see the light of day to further illuminate our efforts.

Ladies and gentlemen, we believe in no principles more than

those of fair title and public access to works of art. They have guided

our policies of collecting and exhibiting art for generations. We are

committed to re-examining our own records to ensure that neither goal is

overlooked in the promotion of the other. And we welcome the notion

that such an effort should be, as it now appears to be, a truly global one.

On the issue of the spoliation of art in the World War II/Nazi era,

the genie is, at last, out of the bottle, and no resistance, apathy, or silence

can ever fit it back inside again. We trust that all those who would right
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 557

so hideous a wrong will work to insure that information is sought,

disseminated, and shared, legitimate claims addressed, and that great art,

untainted by lingering doubts on its ownership, will remain available to

the widest possible audiences.

Thank you.

Mrs. Françoise Cachin

DIRECTOR, THE MUSEUMS OF FRANCE

FRANCE

Issues of Unclear Provenance and Principles to

Address Nazi-Confiscated Art

Break-out Session on Nazi-Confiscated Art Issues: Principles to

Address Nazi-Confiscated Art

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Because this session is dedicated to the provenance of artwork,

the difficulties we are faced with, and the experience already acquired in

this area, Mr. Amigues, the Director of Archives and Records at the

Foreign Ministry, and myself have decided to present the work of each of

our agencies conjointly, since the Foreign Affairs and the Museums have

continually collaborated in this area, the Quai d’Orsay being in charge of

investigating restitution request cases, and the State-owned museums

being the custodians of the MNR artwork as well as the experts in history

and art.

In introduction, I simply want to recall the role played by the

Management of the Museums of France as early as during the war in

protecting the French private heritage. This approach has facilitated later

searches and restitution: the handling of private collections, particularly

Jewish-owned, as part of State-owned collections when evacuated early

in the conflict, the fictitious recording of threatened private collections in

the inventory of public collections as a measure of protection, Rose

Valland’s courageous deeds in the Galerie du Jeu de Paume which had

become a sorting center for the collections looted by the ERR, the

involvement Jacques Jaujard, who was director of the State-owned

Museums, in this resistance and subsequently in the creation of the

Commission for Art Retrieval, as well the involvement of the curators of

the Louvre in the searches made for restitution and in setting-up a
560 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

directory of Despoiled Assets, are some of the widely recognized

historical facts.

What may not be as widely known, but is important to recall so

as to understand the present situation, is the fact that the artwork referred

to as "MNR" was put under the custody of the Museums of France, in

accordance with the Decree of September 30, 1949. These paintings,

totaling 2,058 pieces, have not been claimed. They could not be returned

since their origin was unknown. The 1949 Decree called for these

paintings to be exhibited: this was accomplished between 1950 and 1954

at the Chateau of Compiègne to allow potential owners to come forward

and claim the artwork.

That same Decree also called for these paintings to be registered

on temporary inventories, separate from state-owned collections: this

was done in each department of the public museums involved (paintings,

sculptures, drawings, objets d'art, etc.).

However, one of the provisions of the 1949 Decree was not

fulfilled: the setting, through legislation, of a deadline for claiming this

artwork. Since this deadline was never established, the Museums of

France have always kept the MNRs available for possible claimants, a

deed recently recognized in a dual appraisal of both our Chancery and

our State Council. Thanks to the research made by former members of

the Artistic Retrieval Commission, particularly by Rose Valland, about

thirty additional paintings were recovered in the 1950’s in addition to the

45,400 paintings retrieved after the war. After the Compiègne exhibition,

and because all the paintings could not be permanently exhibited, the

MNRs were distributed among State-owned museums and stored in

provincial museums and government property. Even though part of this

artwork is stored in custodial museums, the MNRs remain listed in stateowned collections catalogs, particularly those of the Louvre and the

museum of Orsay, and also in the catalogs of temporary exhibitions of

MNR artwork.

However, in the past several years, we have entered a new phase

in the way we perceive the tragic events of World War II. I believe that

this is because the generation of victims and witnesses of atrocities from

that period has led way to new generations for whom duty of justice and

memory prevail. This is also related to specific events, such as the fall of

the Berlin Wall which brought back the despoiling issue back to the

table, again revealing to us, among other things, that a considerable

amount of artwork had nearly been ignored right until then.

Historians, such as Mrs. Lynn Nicholas, whose very enlightening

speech you heard yesterday and whose book was translated into French
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 561

in 1995, journalists, such as Eric Conan and Yves Stavridès, who were

the first ones in France to expose the subject of looted art in the weekly

"L’Express," or even Hector Feliciano, in his book Le Musée Disparu

("The Missing Museum") helped draw the attention of the public power’s

opinion on these issues.

The Management of the Museums of France itself very soon

became eager to inform the public and answer questions. It is in this

intent that, in November 1996, it held an international colloquium titled

"Looting and restitution. The fate of the artwork that was removed from

France during World War II." About fifteen experts as well as French

and foreign witnesses came to speak about the events that took place

during the Occupation and in the post-war period, and the current dealing

with the issue of despoiled artwork in France and other countries. At the

same time, we set up a database on the Internet, on the server of the

French Ministry of Culture, listing the complete catalog of MNR artwork

along with pictures.

With the help of the research we have been conducting to find a

"pedigree" for each of these pieces of art, a research that I will soon share

with you, this catalog has been continually updated since then.

Finally, in the spring of 1997, we held an exhibition of MNR

artwork at the Louvre, the Center Georges Pompidou, the Orsay

museum, the Sèvres museum, the castle of Versailles, and in about one

hundred other provincial museums. Many MNRs are already on

permanent display at these museums, but we also wanted to boost

viewing. Over the next few months, millions of inquiries were made into

our database, and during the exhibition, we received a large number of

calls from Jewish and non-Jewish families who had lost artworks during

the war. Unfortunately, less than ten of these claims pertained to MNR

artwork. Since then however, five MNR pieces were returned to their

legitimate owners: paintings from Foujita, Gleizes, Picabia and Utrillo,

and a drawing from Granet. However, I think it is important to underline

that four of these art pieces were not claimed by the families after the

war.

As I indicated earlier, we have begun a large scale investigation

on the history of each of these MNR art pieces. Since 1997, this

investigation has benefited from the support of a Commission created on

the initiative of the Prime Minister in order to investigate the despoiling

of Jewish assets in France. This Commission is chaired by Mr. Jean

Mattéoli. About ten researchers thus undertook the task of systematically

analyzing publications, particularly descriptive catalogs and mostly
562 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

archives. In fact, we are also researching additional resources provided

by:

• the Art Retrieval Commission archives in Paris;

• the Office of Private Assets archives in Paris;

• the collecting points archives kept here in Washington at the

National Archives,

• the German intelligence archives, particularly the

Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (EER) that are available

for consultation in Koblenz.

Also, we will soon begin researching archives kept in Berlin, as

well as, I hope, a number of private records collections.

However, this work is facing obvious difficulties, from which I

will list at least three:

• First of all, 2000 pieces are being researched. Their origin

could not immediately be established after the war by the Art

Retrieval Commission experts, such as Rose Valland and

Carl Dreyfus, although they had direct knowledge of their

contemporaries’ collections and the tribulations undergone

by them.

• Many of the often substandard quality paintings could not be

traced back. Even the iconography, such as landscapes or

unidentifiable portraits, was of little help.

• Research conducted on the 1,000 pieces other than paintings,

such as sculptures, antic objects, furniture, tapestries,

ceramics, is even more complex because these objects are

particularly difficult to identify due to descriptions such as:

"cup made of Sèvres porcelain," "Chest," "wing chair," etc.

The detailed results of these searches, which have nonetheless

progressed significantly, will be included in a report currently being

prepared by the Commission chaired by Mr. Jean Mattéoli. I can

however give you today an initial overview of the conclusions that we

reached.

Apart from a certain number of very clear-cut cases, which do

not cast any doubt about their itinerary during the war, numerous

questions remain about the history of many MNRs. For example, the

origin of most of the 38 MNR exposed at the National Art

Museum/Center Georges Pompidou remains unknown in spite of lengthy

research conducted by this museum’s curatorship. As for 980 older

paintings that were studied by a team from the Louvre, the research

indicates that most were bought from art dealers, at public sales at the
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 563

Drouot Hotel, or directly from French individuals by German museums

such as those of Essen, Wuppertal, Dusseldorf, Vienna, and the museum

that Hitler had planned to put in Linz, etc., dealers, brokers, dignitaries

and Reich officials, without it being possible to determine the conditions

that this artwork was sold under. It is likely, even certain, that others

were despoiled or looted, but for now, the owners’ identity remains

unknown.

CONCLUSION

It is our intention that, regardless of what happened, the results

of this research, which will be led to a completion in spite of difficulties,

be made available to the public to the largest extent possible. Hence, I

can announce to you that, in addition to the database made available on

the Internet over the past two years, and which is regularly updated, we

plan to release of a series of publications over the upcoming years: as

early as next year, a catalog of MNR paintings will be released, including

over 1000 pieces, and, another one containing other objets categories will

appear in 2000. The purpose of these researches and publications is to

ease recovery and restitution. In this regard, all the MNR artwork, proven

to have been despoiled and the provenance of which will have been

established, will evidently be returned to their legitimate owners. For

those whose origin is uncertain or questionable, it is the duty of the

Mattéoli Commission to make proposals about their fate to the French

government. The government will then make the appropriate decisions.

It is my opinion that, as the many requests directed to us during

the exhibitions of Spring 1997 demonstrated, we should expect more

new developments on the artwork that disappeared before and right after

the war than that found and kept in French museums under the name of

MNR. In fact, a number of masterpieces from the famous SCHLOSS

collection, from instance, reappeared on the market over the last few

years. We tend to believe that, if we continue to be watchful, these types

of discoveries will increase over the upcoming years. Finally, should I

remind that large sets of artwork, even masterpieces, still remain

"frozen" in some countries.

I will now let Mr. Louis Amigues speak and describe in much

detail the restitution requests currently underway.

Ambassador Louis Amigues

DIRECTOR, ARCHIVES AND RECORDS, MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS

FRANCE

Break-out Session on Nazi-Confiscated Art Issues: Principles to

Address Nazi-Confiscated Art

Ladies and Gentlemen,

As Mrs. Cachin just reminded you, the Ministry of Foreign

Affairs is in charge of recovering the cultural assets that were despoiled

by the Nazis.

Restitution requests should thus be made to the Foreign Ministry.

Petitioners should provide supporting evidence of their filiation with the

persons that were despoiled, or the bases for their entitlement. Once

proof is established, they will receive a complimentary copy of all the

documents that apply to them, from the archives of the Ministry of

Foreign Affairs.

If necessary, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs can submit a

petition to a French-German working group that was established in 1992,

for the restoration of cultural assets. Two requirements must be met.

First, the petition must be a reopening of a restitution petition already

filed before 1956, because the German delegation will only consider

petitions filed prior to this date. However, we have not renounced to

submit cases that did not meet this requirement. Second, a minimum

amount of pertinent information must support the petition.

There are currently around 80 families despoiled during World

War II that have sent requests for information or petitions to the Quai

d’Orsay.

To handle these matters, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

possesses in its own right two archival collections: one contains about

750 files, most of which came from the Art Retrieval Commission’s

archives given by the Management of the Museums of France at the end

of 1991. The other belongs to the Office of Private Assets and Interests,

an organization that was put under the authority of the Foreign Ministry,

and which took over the Art Retrieval Commission in 1950.

In accordance with French law, these archives are confidential

for a period of 60 years, meaning that they cannot be disclosed, because

they contain private information that may affect people’s lives. I will add
566 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

that, if necessary, it is always possible to have access to other archives

collections.

It goes without saying, however it should be reminded, that all

this activity occurs in consultation with other ministries and in narrow

cooperation with the Museums of France. Among these institutions, and I

insist on this point, there is no divergence on the essential. By that, I

mean that the despoiled artwork that has been kept since the war or that

was recently recovered has the vocation of being returned to those

legitimately entitled to a restitution. However, differences of opinion

may arise about the assessment that should be made on certain elements

of the case.

This is usual, and there are established procedures to reach a

decision. However, let me point out that ever since I began working on

these cases, I have never encountered this type of situation.

This restitution work is facing several difficulties today. These

difficulties essentially pertain to:

• The time elapsed since the occurrence of events makes the

research very chancy, even impossible;-The lack of

information or the vagueness of the information provided on

the assets under petition, for instance, description of the

artwork, circumstances of the looting (place, date), the lack

of a claim after the war, etc.

• The journey of the artwork: did it travel commercially, and

under what conditions? Right after the war, a series of

official texts addressed the issue of returning despoiled

assets. The issue of trading with the enemy was also

addressed, allowing for the artwork bought by the Nazis to

be returned. A Commission was put in charge of ruling, on a

case by case basis, on the conditions under which the sales

had occurred and whether they should be annulled or not.

• The absence of information on the owners of the retrieved

artwork;

• The uncertainty of knowing whether a piece of art that

belonged to someone before the war was still under this

person’s possession at the time of despoiling;

• In determining who are the heirs or eligible recipients;

• On the considerations associated with other State legislation

on this issue, and the position of other States on this

problem. It is not because laws and international agreements

exist that a solution to the cases presented will be found.
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 567

What conclusions can we draw from our experience?

I have four main conclusions:

The necessity of rigor. It must be applied to both the research

work and the decision that will be made, and that largely relies on the

results of the research. A restitution can only occur if it is based on

elements of proof, not on mere assumptions. A litigation opposing two

families is underway, one family is disputing the ownership of artwork

that was returned to the other family after the war. This example can only

strengthen our resolve.

Observance of the law. Our work is done within the framework

of domestic and international laws, from which we cannot depart.

The necessity of cooperation between all parties involved. Up

until now, emphasis was put on the responsibility of the public powers. It

is evident that this responsibility is real. However, I must underline that

private institutions, dealers, auctioneers, and even individuals must

equally demonstrate responsibility, even if, up until now, this is

something that was not as widely discussed. It is very important to be

able to have access to those records. Although this is not something

required by the law in France, we are calling for voluntary cooperation.

The acknowledgment that each case is unique. No case is like

another. Naturally, there can be some general rules, and I just recalled

some of them. However, experience proves that there is no formula that

will generally rule favorably on these restitution requests.

If you wish, I am ready to illustrate my words with a few

examples.

I thank you for your attention.

Ms. Sharon Page

TATE GALLERY

CHAIR OF WORKING GROUP ON NAZI SPOLIATION OF ART,

NATIONAL MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES’ DIRECTORS CONFERENCE

UNITED KINGDOM

UK National Museums and Galleries Statement

Break-out Session on Nazi-Confiscated Art Issues: Principles to

Address Nazi-Confiscated Art

I am speaking today as a representative of the United Kingdom’s

National Museum Directors’ Conference. I am particularly privileged to

be representing some of the UK’s major cultural institutions and to be

here among so many influential figures in the international cultural

world.

I ought to start by telling you something about the Conference,

which is a voluntary association of 26 national institutions who receive

funding from central government. Its members include 20 museums and

3 national libraries and it is these institutions which I represent today.

In June this year, the Conference set up a working party to

develop a statement of principles and consider what we in the UK should

do about works of art that may have been confiscated from their owners

during the Holocaust and the Second World War. I must stress that no

UK national institutions have received any claims from owners

dispossessed of works of art during this period. However, following

discussions with Chris Smith, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media

and Sport, Lord Janner, Chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust

and colleagues in the USA, France and the Netherlands, it was agreed

that confiscated art was a subject which deserved serious attention.

As a lawyer in a major art gallery with a keen interest in cultural

history, I was delighted to be asked by my director, Nicholas Serota, to

chair the working party, which included representatives from the Victoria

and Albert Museum, the British Museum, the National Gallery and the
570 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

Imperial War Museum. The statement which I am introducing today

results from the working party’s efforts and has been endorsed by all the

directors represented by the Conference.

Before I give you an outline of the key points in our statement, I

would like to give those of you who are not familiar with UK national

institutions some idea of the diverse size and content of the collections

they hold. It might also help if I painted a brief picture of the

environment in which these institutions operate, as I believe it is

pertinent to the way the principles and actions contained in our statement

will be implemented.

To give you two examples – I work at the Tate Gallery in

London which holds the national collection of British art and 20th century

international art. Our collection currently totals about 60,000 works as

well as related archive material. The Victoria and Albert Museum, on

the other hand, has collections which illustrate and document the history

of art, craft and design. With numbers in the millions rather than

thousands, their collections include not just paintings, prints and

sculpture, but also ceramics, furniture and costume.

However, although our collections vary enormously in size and

scope, we have a number of important characteristics in common. We

are all governed by act of parliament or Royal Charter which set out our

various aims, objectives and powers, including – and this is particularly

important to the topic under review today – our powers to dispose of

works in our collections.

Most of our institutions are governed by Boards of Trustees who

must act in line with their founding statute or charter as well as their

fiduciary duties as trustees. The nature of our aims, objectives and

powers reflects the fact that our collections were created and have been

largely maintained as a result of significant public funding and are held

in trust for the British people. Of particular relevance I believe to our

debate today, is the fact that a central objective of the majority of our

institutions is to provide access to our collections, to increase public

enjoyment and understanding and promote education and scholarship.

Finally, as with many publicly funded cultural institutions,

resources are tight. This is particularly significant as many of us are in

the midst of major millennium related building projects. The Tate, for

example, is in the midst of two capital building projects costing in the

region of £160 million, half of which we have to raise through private

donations.

This is a complex environment in which the principles and

actions I am introducing today will be implemented. But I must
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 571

emphasize that the Conference is committed to carrying them through

and I hope that by taking part in this conference, I will learn much that

will help us in realizing this commitment.

So to the statement itself. Essentially it outlines the broad

principles and proposed actions agreed by the Conference. However,

more importantly, it also calls for the production of more detailed

practical guidance on specific issues such as surveying and researching

collections and handling claims.

The next big challenge for my working party is to roll up its

sleeves and address these practical issues. Our aim is to produce

guidelines which we hope can be used, not just by the major national

institutions, but also by the many other museums and galleries

throughout the UK.

The statement makes clear from the outset that the Conference

deplores the confiscation of works of art which constituted one of the

many horrors of the Holocaust and the Second World War. It also

emphasizes our commitment to existing UK guidance issued by the

Museums Association, which stresses the need for rigorous procedures to

ensure that works of art which may have been stolen or illegally exported

are not acquired or exhibited.

This statement also makes clear the Conference’s commitment to

working with other institutions and organizations, both nationally and

internationally, in order to increase awareness and understanding of the

facts surrounding the fate of works of art during this period.

The Conference, together with the UK government through the

Department of Culture, Media and Sport and other cultural agencies, is

committed to promoting access to its public collections. In addition to

physical access, this includes promoting research and scholarship and

providing wide access to collections information.

The statement, therefore, urges a practical approach to reviewing

and making accessible information about its collections – including

information about provenance. It accepts that the level and scope of that

research and publication must take into account the size and nature of the

collections concerned and the resources available. However, the

statement encourages institutions to develop and publicize their own

plans outlining what they hope to achieve.

Information sharing is, of course, key, and one of the major

impediments to research into art confiscated during this period is lack of

access to information. One practical initiative already underway in a

number of institutions is to make collections information available using

information technology. The Tate, for example, has set up a web site
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with the primary aim of making accessible information about all works

in our collection to the widest possible audience. To date, 35,000 works

from our collection are on the web site, 8.000 of them illustrated. Use of

information technology could easily be broadened to include the results

of research in this area and to keep records of claims and inquiries.

A very practical step recommended by the statement is that all

institutions should nominate a person as the main point of contact for

inquiries on confiscated art and potential claims. This person could also

keep a central record of research being undertaken. Most of our

institutions have already nominated their own contacts and a list is kept

centrally by the Conference’s administration. In this way, it is hoped that

potential claims can be handled quickly and sensitively.

This statement sets outline steps for checking provenance for

new acquisitions and appropriate procedures for loans. We are confident

that our institutions already have rigorous procedures in these areas, but I

hope that my working party will be able to call on new research and

checking procedures so that practical guidance can be developed that

focuses in particular on the problem of confiscated art.

Finally, this statement anticipates the development of detailed

guidance on how our institutions should handle claims. The challenge

for the Conference will be to guide institutions in understanding the

complexity of the issues involved on a case by case basis and how to

reconcile the interests of individuals with their responsibilities as

national public institutions.

Fundamental to the success of these initiatives is the

involvement of all those in the art world. I hope that participation in the

Conference this week will take us some steps further in our

understanding of this most complex of issues.
Prof. Dr. Carla Schulz-Hoffmann

DEPUTY GENERAL DIRECTOR,

BAVARIAN STATE PAINTINGS COLLECTION

GERMANY

Break-out Session on Nazi-Confiscated Art Issues: Principles to

Address Nazi-Confiscated Art

Ladies and Gentlemen:

May I express my gratitude to the American Government and the

organizers of the Washington Conference to be able to take part in this

important and valuable conference. Let me begin with a statement that,

even though it should be clear without saying, needs underlining and

stressing again and again: Remembrance of what has been done in the

name of my country is the first and everlasting basis, has to be the

self-evident moral issue with utmost priority, This surely can not remain

a theoretical topos favored in privacy. Instead everything possible should

be done to at least parallel this with practical work - meaning in my

special field as an art historian and deputy general director of the

Bavarian States Collections in Munich - meaning in my field with

practical work regarding sorrow research on the issues involved,

openness to questioning and awareness of the responsibility to put into

open light whatever seems to be held doubtful, And to keep in mind that

there is no justified “statute of limitation” for an eternal injustice that

didn't have any limits.

Working in Munich for one of the major European museum

institutions surely has a special meaning in this historical context. In

Munich as the capital of the Nazi movement Hitler opened, as you all

know, on July 18th 1937 the "House of German Art" and on the

following day in the direct neighborhood of this monumental building

the so called "degenerate art" exhibition, a show that was not only

disastrous for all modem Art in Germany bur more so was used as a

diabolical alibi and a murderous tool for all the Nazi terror that reaches

far beyond words.

And it goes without saying that our institution had the

responsibility to work on a first comprehensive reconstruction of this

fatal exhibition. In 1987 Peter-Klaus Schuster, now general director of

the Bavarian States collections, put together, mainly in a sorrowly
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researched catalogue, the history and implications of the "degenerate art

show" - a project which raised controversy as well as it initiated a lot of

scholarly research on the issue. But this only implies one of the several

aspects of "Nazi confiscated art" - an aspect even though that should not

be underestimated - as it meant nothing less than the confiscation of free

expression of creativeness and thus in the end - of humanity.

After World War II Munich again was the center of another issue

linked with Nationalsozialism - the question of confiscated works of art

and their repatriation- The officers of the Monuments, Fine Arts and

Archives Services, shortly the “MFA and A,” were charged with locating

the German repositories of art and archives, protecting them from loss

and deterioration as well as returning looted objects. A number of Allied

collecting points were established of which the largest was the Central

Art Collecting Point in Munich. Craig Hugh Smyth, than a young naval

lieutenant (and later director of the Harvard University Center for Italian

Renaissance Studies), was given the task of administering this vast and

sensitive operation. Round about 700,000 works of art found in Germany

and Austria were collected and usually returned to their owners or their

heirs. In September 1951, the Collecting Points were closed down and

the remaining objects were handed over to the "Trcuhandverwaltung für

Kulturgut" (i.e. "Trustee Administration for Cultural Property") that

continued the restitution work until its closure in December 1962. But

still some 3,000 works remained unidentified and are kept in different

museums and museum related institution till a legitimate owner can be

traced.

Regardless of this since some years now a data collecting office

is established at the German Government as well as at the Coordination

Office of the Federal States for the Return of Cultural Property, now

situated in Magdeburg (Saxony-Anhalt) and financed by all 16 states

together.

This recently intensified effort to clarify the still doubtful art

properties became even more important especially after reunification

with regard to the new States, the former "German Democratic

Republic." There still is an ongoing research with questionnaires and

catalogues of lost art send to German museums. Even though till now the

results for identifying confiscated property mainly had negative results,

the efforts will be continued.

One example showing the complicated situation can be seen in

an important body of works of art having been on deposit since 1972 in

the "Alte Nationalgalerie" of East Berlin and after reunification given to

France in 1991 till the real owner is found. The 28 paintings and works
NAZI-CONFISCATED ART ISSUES 575

on paper by artists as Delacroix, Courbet, Monet, Gauguin, Renoir etc.

since today could not be returned to their legal owners even though an

exhibition with venues in Berlin and Paris was made to trace them. The

story, as far as it could be clarified, was, that a priest (Solbach) had a

soldier in confession who told him that he had been given a suitcase with

valuable art works by a German officer in France who wanted to get it

back after the war. The soldier, evidently stricken by bad conscience,

handed the suitcase over to the priest who gave it to DDR officials in

Halle in 1972, wherefrom it went to the East Berlin collections and could

be restituted to the French authorities after reunification. Hopefully this

unsolved riddle still can be clarified - showing once and again the

importance of world-wide data information.

Yesterday Mr. Rusty Powell quoted the necessity for research

work including provenance checks in each museum. I would dare saying

that this largely has been done in German governmental museums for art

works in question till the end of the 19th century including roughly

impressionism. 20th century art is surely not as sorrowly covered. In

Munich we just finished the catalogue raisonné of the Brücke collection

and in a few months, the Klee collection - till now without any now

results concerning questionable property, But of course every work of art

coming to the collection - regardless if it is an acquisition or a donation -

has been and will be checked for any hint to a doubtful provenance.

Thus I widely share the view emphasized in the Statement of

Principles and Guidelines developed by the American Association of Art

Museum Directors outlined by Philippe de Montebello and discussed as

well in the international "Réunion des Musées Nationaux," the

international meeting of museum directors. Everything helpful and useful

to trace and return art property confiscated by the Nazis should be done

keeping in mind that here a “statute of limitations” never can be a

justified question. And with regard to this conference one result for me

personally is to strengthen our efforts to clarify museum provenances

especially for works which came to the collection after 1937 till today

and thus to contribute as far as possible to a restitution of works of art

confiscated during the Holocaust-Era to their legal owners and heirs.