Czech News Agency-
The Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague has issued the book "Returns of Memory," mapping the history of Jewish items in its depositories that come from the property of Jews deported to concentration camps during WW2, museum director Helena Koenigsmarkova said at the book's presentation today.
The museum has revived its collections in cooperation with other researchers and has identified a part of the Jewish items' original owners. Some of the works are part of the museum's permanent display.
The project was prepared by the Documentation Centre of Property Transfers of Cultural Assets of WWII Victims and the Contemporary History Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
The centre, established in 2001, is trying to clarify historical and economic questions around the "Aryanisation," that is the expropriation of Jewish property on racial grounds in the Nazi era. The centre also studies archive sources and depositories of museums and galleries.
Last year, the government extended the centre's work until the end of 2011.
Pavel Jirasek from the centre said the new book is important as it summarises a comprehensive research of one of the largest museums in the Czech Republic and it focuses on decorative art items the identification of which is more complicated than in the case of works of art that are usually registered more thoroughly.
Helena Krejcova, one of the book's authors, noted that similar research is being carried out in the National Gallery and the National Museum plans it, too.
Jirasek pointed out that the steps by Czech culture institutions and the Contemporary History Institute to redress property wrongs from the past set up trend that other countries have also adopted.
Konigsmarkova, however, recalled that over 60 years after the war there are still a number of "unclear acquisitions" in Czech state museums that may originate from the confiscated Jewish property.
Jirasek said Czech state institutions to date possess a lot of of artifacts that could be theoretically returned to the descendants of the Holocaust victims.
The website, prepared by the Culture Ministry along with the Moravian Land Museum, registers almost 7,000 items from state collections in the Czech Republic that originate or may come from the property of the Holocaust victims and whose original owners were mostly killed by the Nazis.
The Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague collects and preserves for future generations — in both national and international contexts — examples of historical and contemporary crafts, as well as applied arts and design.
Allegorical Figure with a Nautilus cup representing Industrial Arts
Designed by Josef Schulz, executed by J. Škarda
Stained glass window on the landing above the first floor
The English version of the Art Database of the National Fund of the
Republic of Austria has been available on the internet since 3 July
2007. The Art Database provides information
in English concerning “heirless” objects of art and objects of cultural
value which are likely to have been expropriated in Austria during
National Socialism and which then became public property. Link
© 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
In the hunt for the lost books of the Rome Synagogue Library, I notice that the lead Italian investigator is following the trail into Russia. The report uses the euphemism “sort of trophy art” when it introduces the concept of Trophy Brigades which were actual units of Soviet troops. The US (and Allies) has its Monuments Men, now receiving pleasant attention from the movie The Rape of Europa and Robert Edsel’s passionate support for them: http://www.robertedselblog.com/index.php/2006/06/21/finding-the-monuments-men-a-progress-report. Now the Russsians introduced their own artistic-types who had a singular mission as well. This was to retrieve precious spoils of war from the European Theatre as revenge and replenishment for the utter spoliation of cultural treasures destroyed by the Nazis.
Seems that the Monuments Men and the Trophy Brigades were in direct competition, but God knows there was enough buried treasure in the region to go around. But it is troubling to learn that the highest ranking Monument Man (see Monument Man Gone Wrong in this blog) in Germany was found to have given the Soviets advance coordinates of two Berlin Towers where a huge stash of paintings were located. But maybe he thought the Soviets would hand it over to the MMFA’s Collection Point. Or maybe he was working for them.
Although the MMFA was originally set up to be a shared program between the US and British, records show that there was tremendous friction between the Allies in this division. Indeed, there were two controlling MMFA headquarters on the continent in 1944; that of the Communications Zone in Paris, usually called "Com Z", and that of the Supreme Headquarters Allies Expeditionary Force, 18 miles away in Versailles, customarily shorted to SHAEF. As Stratton Hammond, then US ranking operations officer for the MMF&A in France would later query, “who was running the show?".
RESOLUTIONS:
1. The Washington Principles of 1998 and the mutual declaration of the Federal government, states, and municipal umbrella organizations of 1999 are endorsed.
2. There is unanimity that provenance research must be strengthened in Germany. Museums and cultural institutions are asked to carry out systematic, comprehensive provenance research, something to which their supporting agencies have committed themselves. The agencies supporting museums must provide sufficient funds to allow provenance research to be carried out. Existing deficits are to be worked off as quickly as possible. The results must be publicized promptly and are to be published in the freely accessible Lost Art Internet Database.
3. The Federal Republic of Germany’s commitment under the Washington Principles and the mutual declaration of 1999 must now be realized in practice. In an individual case, that means that the prerequisites for fair and just solutions must be created in on-going restitution proceedings. However, this also means that the proceedings must be transparent.
4. In contested cases, the Advisory Commission chaired by Professor Limbach should be able to issue recommendations, even where requested by only one party. The Commission’s recommendations and the detailed grounds on which they are based are to be published.
5. Participants in the conference recommend, almost 10 years after the Washington Declaration, that a follow-up conference be organized at which the participating states present their experience and at which, if necessary, proposals for improved procedures in implementing the Washington Declaration be adopted.
Potsdam, den 24. April 2007
Friday May 4, 2007
by Jesse Hamlin. San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
Bernard Taper dreamed about Raphael's "Portrait of a Young Man'', the most
prized painting looted by the Nazis that has never been found. He spent two
years searching for the Raphael in ravaged post-World War II Germany and
for many other works he did recover as an art-intelligence officer with
the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives section of the U.S. military.
"It's the most valuable single thing that's still missing,'' says Taper, a longtime writer for the New Yorker, one-time Chronicle reporter and retired UC Berkeley journalism professor. He tracked down many artworks in 1946 and '47, including objects German peasants had looted from an abandoned train carrying booty pilfered by Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring. A connoisseur of luxury, Göring had amassed thousands of paintings, sculptures and others works during his tenure as the second-most powerful man in Nazi Germany.
Taper is sitting in the sunny living room of the Berkeley home he shares with his wife, poet Gwen Head,
recalling the slippery art advisers, black marketeers and such top Nazis as Albert Speer he interrogated 60 years ago. On the table is a book published by the Polish government, in English titled "Wartime Losses, Foreign Paintings, Volume I", with Raphael's curly-haired young man on the cover (the portrait belonged to the Czartoryski Museum in Krakow). He's become the poster child for the countless artworks stolen by Hitler and his Nazi henchmen from Jewish homes and art galleries, civic museums, private collections and churches across Europe; tens of thousands of them still missing during the reign of the Third Reich.
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