[CPProt.net] British Museum: Attorney asks for ruling in Nazi art case

[Museum Security Network / Cultural Property Protection Net (Ton Cremers)]

Attorney asks for ruling in Nazi art case 

Sandra Laville
Wednesday May 25, 2005
The Guardian 

The fate of four Old Master drawings in the British Museum which were stolen
by the Nazis from a Jewish collector 66 years ago could provide a route for
the Greeks finally to reclaim the Parthenon marbles, a court heard
yesterday. 
In a complex legal case, a high court judge is considering whether the
museum should return the works to the descendants of Arthur Feldmann, a Jew
who was jailed and tortured by the Nazis when Germany invaded
Czechoslovakia.

The museum feels it has a moral duty to hand back the drawings, worth
several hundred thousand pounds, to the heirs of Dr Feldmann, who died in a
concentration camp with his wife. 
But under the 1963 Museums Act it is barred from doing anyhting that could
break up collections without the attorney general's permission. 

Lord Goldsmith yesterday asked a high court judge to rule whether he should
grant permission, knowing it could set a precedent and prompt a flood of
applications for the return of other works. 

If the court decides the art works should be returned, it could open the way
for Athens to make another case for the return of the marbles. 

Will Henderson, counsel for the attorney, said: "There are plainly other
objects to which a moral claim might be made, of which the Elgin marbles may
be the prime example." 

He told the judge, Vice-Chancellor Sir Andrew Morritt, that the decision
could affect other works, whether they were looted during the Holocaust or
whether they were acquired in "unseemly circumstances at any other time". 

"What if the moral claim were very different. If it was a cultural claim,
rather than a proprietorial claim ... the door would be open," he said. 

Dr Feldmann's collection of 750 drawings was seized from his home in Brno by
the gestapo on March 15 1939 when the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia. The
four Old Master drawings at the British Museum were bought in good faith in
the late 1940s. 

They are: St Dorothy with the Christ Child (1508), by a follower of Martin
Schongauer; Virgin and Child Adored by St Elizabeth and the Infant St John,
by Martin Johann Schmidt; An Allegory on Poetic Inspiration with Mercury and
Apollo by the 18th-century English artist Nicholas Blakey; and The Holy
Family by the 16th-century Bolognese artist Niccolo dell'Abbate. 

Three of the drawings were bought at Sotheby's in 1946. The fourth was
bequeathed to the museum three years later. 

Documents located by the London-based Commission for Looted Art in Europe
revealed conclusive evidence that the drawings, worth some £150,000, were
stolen. 

Dr Feldmann's descendants, including his grandson, Uri Peled, worked with
the commission to compile documents that proved the art was looted. Their
claim is the first against a British collection to demand the return of art
works. 

The British Museum has previously stated that the descendants of Dr Feldmann
had a "thoroughly compelling case" for reclaiming the art. Judgment has been
reserved.