[MSN] 55 years later, restitution is an art

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55 years later, restitution is an art


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marilyn henry , THE JERUSALEM POST  Sep. 8, 2007 

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Fifty-five years ago, West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer, foreign
minister Moshe Sharett and Nahum Goldmann of the Claims Conference met in a
somber ceremony at Luxembourg's City Hall and signed unprecedented
agreements regarding Nazi-era injuries and losses. Although Jewish material
losses were staggering, under the Luxembourg Agreements of September 10,
1952, German payments to individual victims were significant. 

Germany has paid more than DM 100 billion to Nazi victims in the last 55
years. Victims also were entitled to restitution for seized properties; if
the properties - such as artworks - were no longer accessible, West Germany
agreed to pay compensation. 

The German compensation records are the single largest source of
documentation of victims' losses during the Nazi era. They are not only of
historical value. If Germany opened the records, these could facilitate or
revive claims for artworks that were confiscated or displaced in Europe
during World War II. 

Because the artworks are moveable properties that originally were seized,
stolen, sold or shipped some six decades ago, survivors and heirs face
enormous hurdles in trying to locate and claim them. Although the Nazis kept
detailed records of seizures, and the post-war Allies documented the
treasures they found in Occupied Germany, the sheer mass of publicly
available material means any claimant must search for a needle in a
haystack. 

For instance, the US National Archives has the records of the Office of the
US Military Governor, Germany. That office generated more than a million
pages of documentation on cultural properties. "To give you a sense of
size," said Greg Bradsher of the archives, "if you spent one minute looking
at every page, not taking notes or copying pages, it would take almost
17,000 hours." 

Many potential claimants do not have the resources to search for artworks
that, by now, may be anywhere in the world. The history and ownership of
many artworks are identified only when they come to market. 

REPUTABLE AUCTION houses and dealers, fearing the liability of selling any
stolen art, rely - in part - on databases to determine if there are theft
reports or claims for given works. The most prominent database is run by a
private international company based in London, the Art Loss Register (ALR).
The ALR collects information on stolen or missing works from insurers and
police agencies, as well as from Nazi victims and heirs. In general, if an
object is not listed with the ALR, it can be sold with a fair amount of
confidence that no one has reported it stolen. 

However, with Nazi-era losses, the onus is on the potential claimant to post
the loss on a database. This is unlikely if the original owner has died; the
heirs often do not know of the artworks' existence, or lack the
documentation either to confirm pre-war ownership or prove that the object
was lost because of Nazi persecution and was not recovered after the war. 

This is why the German compensation records are vital to complement the ALR
database. While the ALR posts Nazi-era objects reported missing, the German
government could provide records of artworks for which it had paid
compensation. The post-war German authorities were rigorous - some would say
draconian - in confirming a claim before compensating a Nazi victim for a
loss. This makes German records nearly perfect proof that an individual
owned an object before the war and lost it due to persecution. 

FOR INSTANCE, WHEN a European buyer was interested in a Picasso, Femme en
blanc, owned by a Chicago collector, the ALR was hired to check for claims
as well as the painting's provenance. No claim was registered. Five years
ago, however, the ALR learned that the painting had been looted in Paris.
After a thorough, and time-consuming, exercise in detection, it determined
that the pre-war owner was Carlota Landsberg of Berlin. 

The provenance research would have been easier and less expensive if Germany
had made its restitution records available. These would have revealed that
the German government paid Landsberg compensation of DM 100,000 for the
Picasso. That payment did not remove the taint of theft from the painting.
Instead, the German government paid on condition that if she recovered the
artwork, she would have to repay the compensation. 

The Chicago collector reached a settlement with Landsberg's heir, who had
been unaware of the painting until the ALR contacted him. 

A GERMAN database would not be complete. It would be an inventory of
successful claims, not of all losses. Some legitimate claimants did not
receive payments because they could not meet the German eligibility criteria
or claims deadlines. Other victims did not file claims. Some who survived
the war did not live long enough to see the German federal restitution law
enacted, or were unaware that they qualified to file claims. Others declined
to file claims, believing that German payments were "blood money." 


Nonetheless, the German records are extensive and authoritative. There are,
of course, privacy concerns that Germany must address. However, these are
not insurmountable. The German government need not make public a list of
claimants from the 1950s and 1960s. Instead, it could function much in the
same way the ALR does: When an object is on the market, the art trade asks
the ALR if it has been registered as stolen; at the same time, the trade
could ask the German government if it paid compensation for the object. If
so, the original owner or heir could be identified, and could attempt to
reach an agreement to recover the object, part of which would entail
returning the German compensation. 

When Adenauer signed the Luxembourg Agreements 55 years ago, it was
understood that this was West Germany's first step in making moral and
material amends to Nazi victims. Its responsibility has not ended with
payments to victims, however substantial those amounts may be. The next step
should be facilitating claims for Nazi-looted artworks, using records that
Germany is in a unique position to provide. 

The writer is the author of Confronting the Perpetrators: A History of the
Claims Conference, with a foreword by Sir Martin Gilbert, published by
Vallentine Mitchell in London.

http://www.jpost.com/