Posted on 02/18/2003 7:29:56 AM PST by vannrox
Stolen Art : French Government Under Fire
By Andrew Jack PARIS, 19 February 1997 - A writer who has been researching the fate of works of art taken from Jews in France during the second world war has criticized the lack of effort from the government in attempting to find their rightful owners. Speaking at a seminar on the expropriation of property organised by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Paris at the end of January, Mr Hector Feliciano said the initiative by the state to make available on the Internet a list of paintings not returned to their owners was both incomplete and pointless. In spite of claims by the Ministry of Culture at the end of last year that a list of 2,000 works of art held by the National Museum Service was now available on-line, Mr Feliciano said only 200-300 could currently be consulted. More importantly, he argued that the Service did little more than serve as a "smokescreen" and potentially stimulate the art market rather than help identify the rightful owners of the works. He said that anyone who knew that they or their family had lost a well-known work of art during the war would have made enquiries directly and did not need the Internet to help them. Others whose relatives had been killed and records destroyed during the war might not be aware of what had been lost. To identify them required active and intensive research by the Museum Service directly, he said. His own researches demonstrated how difficult gaining access to the official archives could be. He stressed the importance of Paris during the war as a centre both for art sales and collectors. He cited a German report dating from 1944 listing 25,000 paintings which had been officially confiscated, and argued that many more had been stolen or forcibly bought at low prices from Jews by individual soldiers. Some of the criticisms, first made in a book written by Mr Feliciano in 1995, have been picked up in a recent report by the Cour des Comptes, the public sector watchdog, which has not yet been made public, but which reproached the Museum Service for failing to publish a comprehensive catalogue and last exhibiting publicly all the confiscated works in 1954. A letter on the subject from Ms Françoise Cachin, Director of the Museum Service, to the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, argued that the Service had never attempted to integrate the art works into its own collection, and stressed that some 45,000 it held had been returned to their owners in 1949. It argued that of the remaining 2,000 "probably a large number were sold, perfectly legitimately, by their owners to the Nazi occupiers", and there was no proof that many were originally owned by and stolen from Jews. Mr Feliciano's comments come at a time of growing pressure for research into the question of confiscated property during the war-time Vichy government in France, triggered in part by revelations in a book last year that a number of the apartments which the City of Paris is putting up for sale had been confiscated from Jewish owners during the war. Mr Alain Juppé, the French Prime Minister, at the start of February nominated Mr Jean Matteoli, head of the Economic and Social Council, to chair a Commission set up to identify and consider legal questions surrounding confiscated Jewish property. The French government also gave its approval at the end of last month for a change in the distribution terms of the tripartite Commission on Monetary Gold set up after the war in cooperation with the UK and the US. The modification would hand the remaining 5.5 tonnes controlled by the Commission to uncompensated victims of the holocaust rather than national governments. |
NAZI WAR PILLAGES : A U.S MUSEUM TARGETED
The heirs of Jewish art collector Alphonse Kann have stepped up their offensive against several French and foreign museums to recover some 100 paintings missing from his collection, which was pillaged by the Nazis during World War Two.
Francis Warin, their representative, told Artcult, that a legal action was under way for the restitution of Georges Braque?s «Guitar Player» stolen from Alphonse Kann?s collection in 1940 and sold in 1981 by the Berggruen Gallery to the Georges Pompidou Museum of Modern art.
The Braque painting, considered as one of his most important Cubist works came in the possession of French dealer André Lefevre who kept it until 1964. Lefèvre, whose role during the war remains to be clarified, also gave three paintings by Juan Gris, believed to have belonged to Kann, to the Paris Museum of Modern Art and sold two other paintings by the same artist at auction in 1964.
Warin added that a major 1911 work by Fernand Léger titled «Chimney fumes on roofs», now in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, had also belonged to Kann who signalled its disappearance after his return to Paris in 1945.
Apparently, this Léger painting was sold at auction in Paris in October 1942 with works by Picasso, Miro and Francisco Bores, which were believed to have been in his collection.
«Chimney fumes on roofs» was purportedly purchased during the war by the Paris Louise Leyris Gallery, which sold it back to the Buchholz Gallery of New York before it was acquired by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
Francis Warin said he was about to call for the return of that painting and added that he was certain that several other paintings from the Kann collection were in the possession of some U.S and foreign museums. He indicated that he recently discovered a 1921 painting by Picasso, ?Head of Woman? in the Museum of Fine Arts of Rennes, Brittany.
Many works of art and paintings belonging to Jewish collectors were seized by the Nazis or the Vichy regime during the Second World War and so far the owners of some 2000 works recovered after 1945 have not been traced back.
The daily «Le Monde» reported on March 15th 1999 that a 1914 Fernand Léger painting, titled «Woman in red and green», had not yet been claimed by the heirs of French collector and dealer Leonce Rosenberg whose collection was seized by the Nazis in 1942 and sold to the German dealer Gustav Rochlitz in exchange against a painting by the Master of Frankfurt representing the Adoration of the Magi.
This Léger painting was recovered by French authorities but neither Léonce, who died in 1947, nor his brother Paul claimed its restitution. The heirs of the Rosenberg family have been unable so far to find a document that it effectively was in Leonce?s collection while ?Le Monde? suggested it might have been left in his care by another collector.
Referring to the World Jewish Congress? proposal to auction all unclaimed works of art which have remained under the custody of French museums, Henri Hadjenberg, Chairman of the Council of France?s Jewish Institutions (CRIF) told ?Le Monde? that such settlement was simply not a financial matter.
?The Crif is against the WJC proposal because there not many masterpieces among the 2000 paintings or so which have been left in the care of French museums. Most of these works belonged to Jewish families and the State should set up a fund to perpetuate the memory of the Holocaust and inform people about this tragedy. A special center, financed by the State in exchange of these paintings and with the equivalent of Jewish assets seized in French banks during the war and unclaimed so far, would be suitable.?
He added that the WJC was making a mistake in carrying out an action similar to that launched against Swiss banking institutions. ?The problem is quite different as what happened in France was far more serious. French authorities were the accomplices of a crime perpetrated against the Jewish people and were not only responsible for the assets they seized. In France, the question cannot be limited to financial indemnities as there are also moral responsibilities in the balance,? Mr Hadjenberg stressed.
Sure.
Sort of like gold fillings. After all, of what use were they to the original owners?
As to the Vichy government's loot: screw that. The greatest art heist in history was carried out by Napoleon. I think its time we set things right and return that stuff.
Let's have a fair accounting of this at the UN.
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