Posted on 05/31/2005 12:22:05 AM PDT by nickcarraway
IT WOULD be illegal for the British Museum to return art- works looted by the Nazis to a Jewish family, despite its "moral obligation" to do so, a High Court judge ruled yesterday.
Vice-Chancellor Sir Andrew Morritt ruled that the British Museum Act - which protects the collections for posterity - cannot be overridden by the ethical merit of a claim involving plundered art.
The heirs of the art's original owners, Dr Arthur Feldmann, a Czech lawyer, and his wife Gisela, who died at the hands of the Nazis, said they were "very upset" at the ruling.
They called on the government to introduce legislation that would allow the pieces - four Old Master drawings stolen from the family home in Brno by the Gestapo in 1939 - to be returned to them swiftly.
Lawyers for the British Museum, which had agreed in principle three years ago to the restitution of the drawings to the family, also said they were "disappointed" by the outcome of the test case.
Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, had asked for clarification of the law after warning that if a moral obligation to restore such objects could override the act, it might allow Greece to reclaim the Elgin Marbles.
However, the judge said this case would have no implication for other claims.
Anne Webber, the co-chair of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, which is representing Dr Feldmann's heirs, said the ruling had "prolonged the agony of a family who have already suffered".
She said: "The looting of these drawings was over 60 years ago, the claim was three years ago and the British Museum acted with alacrity. They never expected it would take so long.
"The family are very upset by the outcome but nevertheless they have confidence in the British Museum's commitment to restitution. The government needs to move swiftly."
The museum's trustees had asked the Attorney General if they had permission to return the artworks under the terms of the Snowdon principle - a legal test that permits charities to give back items judged wrong to keep.
Ms Webber said the ruling was significant for all claimants of looted art from the Nazi era, as it set aside any possibility of restitution being achieved without further legislation.
Sir Andrew said in his judgment that neither the Crown nor the Attorney General had any power to dispense with "due observance" of acts of parliament.
A spokesman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport said: "We welcome clarification in this important area, which will contribute to our consideration of a Spoliation Advisory Panel recommendation that the Secretary of State consider legislation to return the spoliated items.
"The case confirms that legislation is necessary. We will now look urgently at this issue."
Dr Feldmann was tortured and murdered by the Nazis and died in prison.
Mrs Feldmann died at Auschwitz, but their children survived.
The drawings, for which the museum paid a total of nine guineas in 1946 at auction, are now estimated to be worth £150,000.
Ahh, citing a cartoon for precident. You sure are taking these claims seriously.
After four decades of struggle, heirs of Czech collector win back some art
By Pavla Kozakova
PRAGUE, March 30 (JTA) — The Israeli heirs of a Czech Jewish art lover, whose works were looted by the Nazis in 1939, have won a 40-year battle to win back a large portion of his unique collection of drawings. Legal representatives for the descendants of Brno-based lawyer Arthur Feldmann recently signed a restitution agreement that will return 135 drawings by Dutch, Italian and German masters from the 16th to the 18th centuries, which currently are held in the Moravian Gallery.
“We are very moved that thanks to the Czech authorities the drawings have now been returned to our ownership after so many years,” the family said in a statement released by Anne Webber, co-chair of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, which has negotiated for the past two years for the return of the works on behalf of the family.
The heirs, who said they had pursued the return of the works in memory of their art-loving grandfather, have asked to remain anonymous.
“The Feldmann restitution is a measure of the commitment of the Czech government and the Moravian Gallery to right the wrongs of the Nazi era, which are still so vividly felt,” Webber said.
Feldmann was a passionate collector who started collecting drawings in the early 1900s, including works attributed to Titian, Rubens and Rembrandt.
In 1934 Feldmann sold a small number of drawings, one of which is now in the Pierpoint Morgan Library in New York.
He began rebuilding his collection immediately after the sale. However, the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939 and Feldmann’s collection, by now numbering some 750 drawings, was confiscated.
In March 1941 Feldmann was arrested and sentenced to death. He later died as a result of torture, according to his family.
In January 1942 his wife was deported to Theresienstadt and later to Auschwitz. She never returned.
Feldmann’s two sons survived the war, and their children now live in Israel.
After the war Feldmann’s descendants launched a search for the remnants of the collection, and in the 1960s discovered a number of his works in the Moravian Gallery in Brno.
The family tried and failed to retrieve them during the Communist era. Their hopes of successfully claiming the works faded again in 1995, when the Czech courts rejected their restitution claim on the grounds that the works were seized before the legally set time limit of 1948.
The family’s hopes revived in 2000 when a new law was passed allowing some pre-1948 claims. They asked the nonprofit, London-based Commission for Looted Art in Europe to take up their case, and the commission renewed negotiations with the state and the Moravian Gallery.
In late 2002, they were informed that their claim had been accepted.
Tomas Kraus, executive director of the Czech Federation of Jewish Communities, welcomed the successful outcome of the family’s long battle, calling it a case of “moral satisfaction.”
Pointing out that this was only the third successful restitution of art works in the Czech Republic since the law was changed in 2000, Kraus said he appreciated that the law clearly worked in practice.
The significance of Feldmann’s collection has been recognized by the Moravian Gallery, which has offered, with the consent of the Ministry of Culture, to purchase the five most important works for about $160,000. Webber said the family was considering the offer and would “respond in due course.”
The commission has a further five cases of art restitution pending in the Czech Republic, according to Webber, whose organization last year successfully submitted a claim to the British Museum in London relating to four Old Master drawings also once owned by Feldmann and looted in Brno in 1939.
Webber is currently negotiating with Czech officials to obtain an export license for the drawings.
“We very much hope that there will be no problems or delay getting the license,” she said, but Kraus warned that it might turn out to be a complicated bureaucratic process.
“Now we must wait for an export permit, which we hope to receive very soon,” the family said. “Only then can the drawings be truly regarded as restituted, and our grandfather can rest in peace.”
Thievery by any other name...
That's not what the judge said, or even implied..
He merely said that the present laws prohibited their return..
He also noted that the parliament made the laws prohibiting the article's return, and can rescind or change the laws as they see fit..
The judge is only following the law, and leaving it up to the legislature to correct their mistakes..
Would that american judges could do as much..
BTW, the Turks OWNED the place for a long time and the Greeks didn't do anything about it. Then, the Brits got the marbles and saved them from further Turkish depredation.
Then the Greeks had their revolution.
Did you know the Greeks used to purchase tin from the Phoenicians who'd stolen it from the Britons?
's a fact!
re the paintings...one would tend to suspect it is about the $$..and rightfully so..the family is entitled to the value..want to wager that if they got them back..they'd sell them?..there are probably scores of descendents..they'd have to be sold to pay off every one..FWIW, the Quen should step in, and offer the family heirs the $$$..she's got plenty..that would make everyone happy..
How have the Brits defaced them?
"A Venetian General, however, fighting the Turks, had blown them off the walls years before."
Some of them. Others Elgin chisled off the walls, and others are still in place.
You finally agree that the Venetians, and others, were vandalizing the place and the Brits are the ONLY ones who came along with preservation in mind.
Well, apparently the British court feels otherwise. It seems clear from this decision that these items are the property of the British Museum and they are not permitted to return them.
There are lots of ways you can lose property. Adverse Possession comes to mind, for one. The British Museum made no secret of the fact that they possessed these drawings and maintained them openly for a period of sixty years. Perhaps that is the justification for this decision by the British Court. I don't know, but I don't have to know. The thing speaks for itself.
I am sorry if you found my citation of Abe Simpson et al offensive, TheOtherOne. I was just using a fact pattern than may have been familiar to some of us here to show how this case differs from looting. This is a point on which some of us appear to be confused.
As for the moral dimension, I just don't get it. It was wrong for the NAZIs to steal these drawings, but it was absolutely not wrong for the British Museum to buy them. I guess if they had outbid the family, which was trying to recover family property, that would be one thing. But there is no indication that this is the case. They paid a third (...or fifth, or twenty-seventh...) party dealer for the drawings and conserved them. I don't know how one can fault the British Museum for that. If they had wound up in the hands of a private collector, would we even be having this conversation? The private collector would have told the parties to get lost, and rightly so.
"If they had wound up in the hands of a private collector, would we even be having this conversation? The private collector would have told the parties to get lost, and rightly so."
No, because a private collector could not have told them to get lost. A court battle would have found in favor of the original owners provided they could prove the paintings belonged to them. The only reason the British government gets to keep the drawings is because of the preservation law that exempts British museums from ordinary property law.
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