Posted on 12/01/2009 10:40:47 AM PST by NYer
A medieval book is to become the first item from a British national museum to be returned to its rightful owners under a new law governing looted artefacts.
The Benevento Missal, which was stolen from a cathedral in southern Italy soon after the Allies bombed the city during the Second World War, has been in the collection of the British Library (formerly the British Museum Library) since 1947. After a change in the law, it could be back in Italy within months, according to The Art Newspaper.
The missal’s return could also focus attention on other, more high-profile cases, such as the campaign to return the Elgin Marbles and the Benin Bronzes from the British Museum to Athens and Nigeria.
However, the new law would not affect the legal status of such items because the new Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Act applies only to claims dating from the Nazi era.
At present, the British Library and other national museums are legally barred from disposing of items in their collections. Faced with similar claims, the Tate, the British Museum and the Courtauld Institute of Art have all paid financial compensation instead.
The new law, which comes into force in January, creates an exception for objects stolen during the period from 1933 to 1945. The Spoliation Advisory Panel, a body set up by the Government in 2000 to deal with complaints relating to the ownership of items in British museums, recommended four years ago that the missal should be returned to the Metropolitan Chapter of the cathedral city of Benevento, northeast of Naples.
The panel found that the missal had been looted and that the moral claim of the Italians held good. The decision triggered the process that culminated in the new legislation.
(Excerpt) Read more at entertainment.timesonline.co.uk ...
The missal is a 12th-century liturgical book in the unique Beneventan script, which flourished in the region from the 8th to the 13th centuries. It was written in the early 12th century at the scriptorium of the monastery of Santa Sofia for the nuns of the Benedictine monastery of St Peter Intra Muros.
The 12th-century missal was brought to Britain by an intelligence officer who had bought it in Naples in 1944
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Last week's Time cover story on Madeleine Notsobright included many personal details except for the most embarrassing: A wealthy Austrian family has issued an ultimatum to Madeleine Albright and her relatives demanding they return "millions of dollars' worth of war booty allegedly taken from their apartment in Prague after World War II," according to the May 6 Jewish Forward. Now before I go on, I have to declare an interest. The Austrian family that is about to sue our Madeleine is known to me, and one of their brothers-in-law is a very good friend. Also, my wife happens to be an Austrian, one of those Austrians who owned large parts of Czechoslovakia, as it happens. I am talking about the kind of Austrians Hitler was not very keen on, those with ancient titles and castles in romantic settings. To a man they were all sent to the Russian front where most of them perished.
http://www.nypress.com/article-26-madeleine-albrights-family-of-war-profiteers.html
If the Elgin Marbles hadn’t been ‘looted’ and shipped off to England, they would have ended up as powdered marble.
I’m glad that they are returning it but they should be commended for their part in preserving it.
Under certain circumstances, these various antiquities were preserved for the future by their removal.
In some cases, they were acquired legitimately, in other cases their acquistion was by quesitonable means.
In this case and the case of the Elgin Marbles, as well as in the case of many Egyptian antiquities, these artifacts should be returned to the nation of origin as the governments involved are relatively stable and have a real interest in preserving their herotage.
Returning the Peacock Throne to Iran or any Afghan or Iraqi antiquities, on the other hand, would certainly place their survival in danger. The governments involved are either criminal or unstable.
— Pissarro’s Le Quai Malaquais et l’Institut, taken by the Nazis, was returned last year to the family of Brigitte and Gottfried Fischer, who fled Vienna in 1938. The family sold it for $2.2 million at Christie’s in New York
— In 2004 The Liberation of Saint Peter from Prison, attributed to Rembrandt, was returned to the family of Arthur Feldmann, a Czech lawyer killed by the Nazis. The drawing was given voluntarily by an American woman after she realised it had been looted
— Pieter de Grebber’s Study of a Reading Man was withdrawn at Christie’s in 2008 after the Polish authorities said that the Nazis had murdered its owner, Abe Gutnajer, in the Warsaw Ghetto. It was sold for £46,100 for Mr Gutnajer’s family
Thank you for posting that story and on the history of your wife’s family. I had no idea.
You have a screw lose are an inability to read one.
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Thanks NYer.A medieval book... The Benevento Missal, which was stolen from a cathedral in southern Italy soon after the Allies bombed the city during the Second World War, has been in the collection of the British Library (formerly the British Museum Library) since 1947... could also focus attention on... the campaign to return the Elgin Marbles and the Benin Bronzes from the British Museum to Athens and Nigeria. However, the new law would not affect the legal status of such items because the new Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Act applies only to claims dating from the Nazi era.To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. |
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How about extending the Holocaust Act to include the looting of objects during the worst Holocaust of them all: the Ottoman Muslim era.
But like Muslims, Brits tend t be blind to their own crimes done by their own in this case the criminal Elgin.
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