HEIRS - Observations on Provenance

PRIVATE ART DEALERS

A hearing on efforts toward restitution of art stolen from Jews during the Holocaust was held by the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Financial Services, Domestic and International Monetary Policy Subcommittee on July 27, 2006.

The Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) was represented by Gilbert S. Edelson, Administrative Vice President and Counsel.
But what is so strange is the teeming numbers of dealers in the trade who appear in Art in America’s database (see  my earlier US ART DEALERS post ) while Edelson states his membership hovers around 165.

Even subtracting those dealers that trade in antique furniture, decorative arts, rare books, porcelain, rugs, Asian and Tribal Art, there are still many more than 165 names left on the list I posted.

Seems to me that this is a largely unregulated business and, other than 165, U.S. dealers do not  have to conform to the ADAA Guidelines Regarding Art Looted During the Nazi Era.( P. 7 of Edelson's Testimony).

There are only very few years left for existing claimants victimized during the Holocaust to rediscover their lost artworks. During the war and especially in those years following, knowingly or not, private art dealers in North America were often directly responsible for the dispersal of looted possessions.

They know to be prepared for years and years of difficult claims that will continue to unravel their art market  as HEIRS, rightfully pursue what was once their families’ legacy.

U.S. ART DEALERS

Private Dealers
FROM Art in America,  August, 2001 

DESTRUCTION of the TEMPLE

Tisha B’Av- In Memoriam

Tonight we remembered the destruction of the First and Second Temple in Jerusalem. In prayer, Prophet Jeremiah is read, including brutal descriptions of the desecration, spoliation and suffering.

Lamentation 1.

verse 7
…Jerusalem remembers all the treasures that were hers in days of old.

verse 10   
The enemy laid hands on all her treasures;

verse 11
All her people groan as they search for bread; they  barter their treasures for food to keep themselves alive.

ROMMEL'S TREASURE?

I wrote the following comment to The Daily Mail about the story Peter Allen filed today about "Rommel's Treasure":

I think this article's main point is more misdirected and hidden than Rommel’s so called Treasure. Let's face it, this is NOT Rommel's Treasure, although that sounds so romantic. It's the precious artifacts of those whose homes, livelihoods, and very lives were taken from them during the Holocaust. To me, what Mr. Allen has completely lost in this article is the sordid, horrific story about what happened to the community of Jews in Tunisia. That's the real story. And the French should find the real ‘treasure’ here by discovering ways to change this totally inequitable law by putting the rightful heirs first before the state and those who find these possessions.

Fern Smiley, Toronto

NOLDE and SWEDEN

Actually, the last post reminded me of yet another Nolde story. He was one of the foremost artists of the 20th century but the more I read about Emil Nolde, the less I liked. His paintings command master prices now but 60 to 75 years ago, he was collectable and very attractive to avant garde collectors in Europe. So successful that by 1937, his graphics and oils were displayed in every German museum with a modern curatorial focus. Even lesser museums would own many graphic works  if not several oils.

When the Nazis determined that Emil Nolde was not producing paintings in the style keeping with National Socialist ideals, they labeled them degenerate and collected his works (and 15,000 or so other “degenerate” works) from every one of those museums.

What happened to ALL those Noldes?

Some would say that the Nazi’s weren’t stupid. They did not destroy the Noldes in bonfires. They knew they were tradeable for hard currency in the international market.  And the pending war plans required hard specie. So, after the Nazi elite  (like Goerring and Von Ribbentrop whose tastes ignored the Nazi art ideology when it came to their own personal collections) skimmed their choices, and after the art toured the country in an exhibition of derision produced for Germany’s Ministry of Propaganda, the bulk were sent Switzerland for auction on June 30, 1939. International buyers from US, Denmark, and Britain brought international cash: Norwegian kronin, British pounds sterling, French francs and US dollars.

The results of the Fischer auction in Lucerne are included in “Enterte Kunst,” primary documents held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, a copy of which I have in my possession.

Noldes were sold off to dealers in bulk sometimes by dozens. The prices paid for graphics were often hardly more than several dollars .

Even then, many hundreds of items went unsold in Switzerland. It was the crest of war.
What became of those items?

They still traded. And this is NEW! Nolde himself was involved this time.

In a 1999 report, Sweden and Jewish Assets, the Commission’s art historians combed archives and found correspondence that implicates Nolde in the distribution of the unsold bounty of the German museums. “In August 1939 a Dane invited the museum to purchase paintings and graphic art by the German Expressionist painter Emil Nolde, one of the foremost artists of the 20th century. The works on offer had been acquired by the German Ministry of Propaganda and the seller, whose sister was married to Emil Nolde, was now offering them for sale to Scandinavian museums.” P.25

Although Goteborg’s Art Museum Director, Axel Romdahl refused to buy, my guess is that every other Swedish Museum was offered the same deal. And most would take the opportunity. Not all directors were as anti-Nazi as Axel Romdahl who turned the Dane down cold. Why shouldn’t the Swede’s buy the Lucerne art auction remnants anyway? One month earlier, German dealer Karl Buccholz was eagerly buying the best of the Lucerne auction on behalf his US clients, who were knowingly fuelling the Nazi war machine with their precious US dollars.

(Noldes painting, Christ Among the Children is  listed on MoMa's provenance  website, indicating it changed hands in Continental Europe during the Nazi era.)

NOLDE IN THE NEWS

Ironic that the most recent restitution cases surround this painter so famous for style, albeit infamous for his connection to Nazi ideals.
Emil Nolde was a Nazi.
Nolde was a supporter of the Nazi party from the early 1920s, having become a member of its Danish section. He expressed negative opinions about Jewish artists, and considered Expressionism to be a distinctively Germanic style.

Confoundingly, Emil Nolde’s avant garde modern work was coveted by many Jewish art collectors during the early twentieth century in Europe. Dr. Fred Julius of Hamburg was one. His two British- based heirs have lodged a claim against the city of Linz which holds 1915 painting (above) called "May Meadow" 

Linz, Austria is where Adolph Hitler planned to open a mega cultural museum.  Maybe it is fitting that the nice, new civic modern art museum would get tarnished by the afterglow of Hitler's art policy.   The Lentos Art Museum knowingly bought it in 1953 from another collector known to trade in artworks seized by the Nazis.
 

UPDATED SILENT PICTURE CONSPIRACY

Apologies for the premise of my first screen treatment. I had it wrong according to ARTnews' Stefan Koldehoff. (Summer 2007. International News p. 76-80). BUT THIS GETS EVEN BETTER..

Mysterious bank vault of looted found art in Switzerland is still so fraught with drama that it deserves to be a script.  So here is my REVISED pitch. And take a deep breath...

PREMISE LINE: A Swiss- based, 79 yr old, US female searching for her WWII looted Pissarro painting considers but then declines an offer to have it returned from two art professionals knowledgeable about its secret location in Switzerland and instead protests to the authorities who, during the investigation, opens the Swiss bank vault to finds her Pissarro plus two more Impressionist masterpieces likely looted  since the vault turns out to have been a secret depot (controlled by one of the said art professionals) connected to Bruno Lohse, recently deceased but the  Nazi art historian involved in confiscating the art collections of French Jews during the Holocaust.

SCENE ONE
THE SETTING:

Gisela Bermann-Fischer met with art dealer Peter Griebert and US historian Jonathan  Petropoulos on Jan. 25, 2007 in the Zurich Hotel Sankt Gotthard. She lives in Zurich and was educated at Sarah Lawrence in the US. Her family was able to escape Vienna before the Anschluss began but her legacy was lost and the Pissaro that her grandfather, Samuel Fischer, once owned was never recovered.

She was shown photos of her late grandfather’s Pissarro (similar to the one at right) and entertained an offer that included a typical 18% finders fee but felt threatened and had her lawyer, Norbert Kuckelmann file a complaint with Munich prosecutors after the meeting. Extortion was claimed and Griebert investigated. Petropoulos was not charged and has consulted with lawyers who assured him that he was following accepted practices.

 
THE CHARACTERS:

  Peter Griebert: Munich art dealer. Seems that he has a lot of explaining to do. Since 1988, documents suggest that he was likely the "front" for Bruno Lohse's tainted stash of WWII leftovers, looted paintings that would be put on  the market from time to time from the vault that Lohse operated in the Swiss Bank. Griebert was in and out of the vault 20 times since 2003!  Documents were found that itemize the paintings that were removed over the twenty years that the vault has been controlled. Heads will roll as the story is fully investigated and galleries who sold the paintings on the market become publicized. Likely, he likely duped Petropoulos, who, states that he  genuinely did not know that his colleague was connected to these ugly activities or even to Lohse.

MORE ON MoMA

Embedded in David D’arcy’s recent review (//daily.greencine.com/archives/004048.html) of Austrian documentary by Elisabeth Scharang, My Dear Republic, is his take on the problem of big powers controlling the version of history that will be remembered instead of the truth. The tag line of the film about Fritz Zawrel’s lifelong mission to expose the Nazi atrocities he witnessed as a child at Am Spiegelgrund, is that the truth cannot be denied. But in the process, those powers that be try to resist and lie to serve their own needs. (Am Spiegelgrund was the "children's clinic" in Vienna where young Zawrel sadly became a ward. Although called a clinic, it, in fact, was a centre for the euthanasia of children.)

However, I bristle when D’arcy chides a Jewish city like New York for not forcing the issue at the MoMA.

D’Arcy writes:

Consider the behavior of the Museum of Modern Art when it was found in late 1997 to have borrowed a painting by Egon Schiele from an Austrian foundation and it was later shown that the picture was looted (aryanized) from a Jewish art dealer in Vienna in 1939. (For years, Austria contended that everything looted from Austria Jews under the Nazis was returned, provided there were living heirs to whom the art could be returned. That's proven to be as true as the myth of Austrian victim-hood under the Nazis.)

First MoMA just tried to send the painting out of the country, and almost succeeded. Then the museum skirted the near-certainty that this painting, Portrait of Wally by Schiele, was looted by the Nazis, and argued that it had to comply with its loan contract, or else the international network of art loans that draw crowds to museums would be endangered. The entire museum community in the US agreed (even the Jewish Museum in New York), and still does. Now, in a lawsuit against the US government, MoMA (along with a foundation funded by the Austrian government) is arguing, among other things, that its officials did not know that the painting was stolen, and that the real tragedy here is that the painting hasn't been seen for almost ten years because of all these annoying legal problems created by a Jewish family that MoMA says was never entitled legally to the painting.

The real victims are not the victims of the Nazis, but museum-goers and well-meaning institutions like MoMA that just want to show them art borrowed in good faith from Austria. (MoMA was never prevented from showing Portrait of Wally. To the contrary - the painting was in storage at MoMA during most of the current lawsuit.) There's a point here. If not showing the painting was a loss to world culture, what about the loss of the truth (still not acknowledged by MoMA) about how and why the painting was looted, and why it has never been returned. Remember the work of art as that fusion of beauty and truth? The Austrians have resisted telling that story, as they resisted telling the story of Fritz Zawrel. (Google D'Arcy MoMA NPR Schiele for more on the Schiele case, which could come trial in federal court next year.)

I fear his point here is that he expects some kind of Judaic moral sway should take hold there. D’Arcy asks, “Why has MoMA made common cause with them [The Austrians who (sic) have resisted telling that story], over this picture stolen by the Nazis, in a city like New York where Nazi crimes are deplored as the worst crimes of human history? 

I think D’arcy’s coverage of the 1997 Schiele episode at the MoMA resulted in his termination from NPR. Granted, most articles I have seen read this way. And, as he admits, the truth of THAT story won’t be heard until next year in court. But he also knows that the city of Jerusalem will not force the Israel museum to return stolen art and Judaica. And he is aware that the American Association of Jewish Museum passed a resolution that, in effect, relieves their obligation to identify stolen objects in their collections. This is startling considering the the push from the Washington Principles, The Claims Conference and the American Association of Museums for ALL museums to identify and assist in the return of artwork to eligible heirs. It is all about self interest.

A FRENCH JEW WITH NO HEIRS

Click on A Private Place: the Musée Nissim de Camondo entry to view:

The (TRAGEDY) in the Musée Nissim de Camondo (my bracket).

This is an exquisite Paris museum artfully highlighted in the recent blog of the historian of design and decorative arts, Osborne Grey. Open it and feast. But be sure to read the part about the fate of the collector’s daughter, Beatrice and her two children. And wonder why the historian leaves out the historical fact that the collector was a Jew. 

“The museum maintains the property essentially as Camondo left it when he died in 1935. The house and contents were formally given to Les Arts Décoratifs in 1936, an arrangement he had decided in 1917, upon news of the death of his only son, Nissim, in arial combat. Nissim gave his life to the country; Camondo gave his life's work. His marriage had ended in 1902 and his only other child, Béatrice, had married and begun a family of her own, though they continued to live at the family home. Not much is known of her immediately following her father's death, though she and her husband, and their two children, died at Auschwitz only a few years later. Camondo's brother Isaac, also an avid collector, had no children. It was the end of the family line and Isaac's collection, in turn, was left to the Louvre.

If Camondo would have known that just several years after his death his French daughter and his  two French grandchildren Fanny and Bertrand Reinich would be rounded up, deported to Poland and gassed in Auschwitz, would he have willed his priceless possessions to the French?

 

NICELY DONE, NUREMBERG

© Stadtarchiv Nuernberg

A Gesture Worth Noting… This is BIG because it may be just the catalyst for other German institutions to reach out and involve the Heirs and Holocaust Survivor community in the process of provenance checking. Hopefully, the next step will be to publicize all their “provenance poor” objects in a viewable database so people can search on their own and make their own claims.

The City of Nuremberg has sent a request for information about the provenance of art works that came into their possession under dubious circumstances in the 1930-1940 period. They are seeking information about paintings, graphics, furniture and ceremonial objects that Jews were forced to hand over and were acquired through art dealers by the city. The aim is return of objects to rightful heirs.

Their research is based on documents in the City Archives, the Bavarian State Archives and the German National Museum. The documentation has big gaps and at the moment it is not possible to determine the former owners.

The Director, Dr. Dominik Radlmaier, asks for photos, details of flats(apartments) and personal records relating to stolen cultural assets to be sent to him.
Nuremberg City Archive site
Postanschrift Stadt Nuernberg stadtsarchiv 90317
Nurnberg 412

I like the comments that Jon Benjamin, of the London based Board of Deputies brings to the following story in the Jewish Chronicle. While the main story occurs in Nuremberg, the fallout of Holocaust plunder of cultural objects now reaches every country in the world. With respect to Great Britain- Benjamin is clear- the story of looted art in Britain still being displayed in galleries and museums is not over and will not go away without the assistance of government in helping the legitimate heirs recover their possessions. Jewish Chronicle