- Moderator's message (please read)
- KORBEL/ALBRIGHT/HARMER
- [Fire Safe Heritage]: Discovery Channel
- Russian Art Theft - Perov Posting (Jonathan Sazonoff)
- Martin Bucer: whereabouts of lost MS?
- Farmer Gets Death Sentence For Stealing Buddha Statue
- A Surreal Deal
- CULTURAL PROTECTION IN WAR - WAS: Kosovo's historic sites (Patrick Boylan)
Moderator's message:
two new developments:
1: we have installed a search option on our website at the indexpage. This will enable you to do a keyword search. Do try this (Now you can search the MSN site without my help: just try and browse the 250 chapters on the site....)
2: The Dutch Museums Association offered financial help maintaining the site. This is of utmost importance! At the great L.A. conference I told you that sponsorship is a ball and chain, but the help offered by Annemarie Vels Heijn, chairperson of the Dutch Museum Assoc., is no ball and chain at all, but just the support by a very active and friendly organization. Do let Annemarie know that you appreciate her guarantee to keep MSN going. A link to the Dutch Museum Assoc. has been set up at our index page: http://museum-security.org/
Ton Cremers
Date sent: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 12:03:20 -0400
From: Linda Nebrich Beilein lbeilein@buffnet.net
Subject:
KORBEL/ALBRIGHT/HARMER
I am interested in further articles regarding the Philipp Harmer Madeleine Albright lawsuit. Currently, I am researching my Nebrich family worldwide and would like to stay abreast of this for inclusion in my book.
Please advise me as to where I can search out further documentation on this matter. Thank you.
Linda Nebrich Beilein
lbeilein@buffnet.net
http://www.buffnet.net/~lbeilein lbeilein@localnet.com
From: "Nacheman, Scott" sNacheman@LZAgroup.com
Subject: [Fire Safe Heritage]: Discovery Channel
The "Discovery Channel" is airing a tv-special that may be of interest. See below or www.discovery.com for details. -Scott
Series: Inferno
Episode: Irreplaceable Treasures
When fire devastates precious artifacts -- from treasures in Windsor
Castle to the Shroud of Turin -- modern technology offers the only hope for reversing the damage.
Air Time(s) Eastern/Pacific Time:
DSC - 30 Apr 1999 - 09:30 PM
DSC - 30 Apr 1999 - 12:30 AM
From: Jonathan Sazonoff saz@kwom.com
Subject: Russian Art Theft - Perov Posting
Dear Subscribers,
The Russian State Museum (St. Petersburg) has posted pictures of their recently stolen paintings by Vasily Perov (Russian 1832-1884). For info - scroll down to Attention Stolen
http://www.rusmuseum.ru/eng/index.htm
We visited this Museum in the late 1980's and it really has a fine collection of national treasures. The April 6th crime is of particular interest because of the robbers use of guns. Such a trend in Museum theft is most unwelcome. As such, we hope those responsible will be brought to justice. For a fuller description of the crime see the St. Petersburg Times http://www.times.spb.ru/current/theft.htm
Hope this information is helpful.
Saz Prod., Inc.
www.saztv.com
http://museum-security.org/saz.html
From: Alexandra Mason amason@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU
Subject: Martin Bucer: whereabouts of lost MS?
I am sending this to Exlibris and Archives&Archivists on behalf of someone who is not a member of either list. Please respond directly to him, not to me. He is Stephen E. Buckwalter and his e-mail address is stephen.buckwalter@urz.uni-heidelberg.de
On behalf of the Bucer-Forschungsstelle, he is seeking the present whereabouts of a 16th century theological opinion ("Gutachten") written by Martin Bucer (frequently known as Martin Butzer) in December 1539 for the Protestant landgrave Philipp of Hessen. The document was known in 1878 to one von Loewenstein who published a faulty edition of it in Kassell as "Argumenta Buceri pro et contra." At a later time the MS was in the Landesbibliothek Kassel, with the shelfmark "Ms. Hass. 4o". (The "4o" stands for quarto.) During World War II this MS, with other Landesbibliothek Kassel holdings, was stored in a mine in Thurgingia called "Grube Merkers." This storage area was apparently plundered by U.S. soldiers and some items removed, possibly included the Bucer MS, possibly to Connecticut. The 50-60 page MS had the title "Argumenta Buceri pro et contra" on it, and the text began "Ob auch bei den christen ieman mit Gtt mege nachgegeben werden mer dan in weyb zu haben. Damit, was uff dise frage, vermoege goetlicher schrist zu antworten sei, desto ..." The Bucer-Forschungsstelle is very anxious to discover this MS so that a critical edition of this text may be included in the official edition of Martin Bucer's works. Any information about its present (or even recent) whereabouts or confirmation of its destruction would be greatly appreciated.
Alexandra Mason
Kenneth Spencer Research Library
University of Kansas
Lawrence, KS 66045-2800
Tel: 785/864-4334
FAX: 785/864-5803
E-mail: amason@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
It Was A Surreal Deal -
(ORLANDO) -- An Orlando art dealer has been arrested on charges of swindling an Englishwoman... who paid 200- thousand dollars to obtain a painting by surrealist Rene Magritte. Forty-year-old James Holmes appeared in Orlando federal court after he was indicted by a New York grand jury on wire-fraud charges. He's being held without bail pending a hearing. Prosecutors say Holmes contacted a New York art dealer... claiming he had the opportunity to buy a Magritte from a private Swiss collection. All he needed was 200- thousand dollars... a bargain compared to the usual auction house price, which runs into the Millions. An English woman came up with the cash, but prosecutors say the whole deal was just a scam.
Farmer Gets Death Sentence For Stealing Buddha Statue
BEIJING, Apr. 16, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) A farmer from China's northern Hebei province was sentenced to death Thursday for stealing and accidentally shattering Beijing's oldest Buddha statue, state media reported.
Chen Mengxing was also found guilty of stealing another rare relic from a temple in Shouyang County in Shanxi Province dating back to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), Xinhua news agency reported. The Beijing No.1 Intermediate People's Court Thursday sentenced Chen's accomplices Liu Xueru and Wang Liqiang to life imprisonment. The 165-cm-high stone Buddha statue, weighing two tons (1.8 tonnes), dates back to 499 A.D. and had been kept safe and intact in a house in the village of Dong'erying in the western part of Beijing for the past 1,500 years.
Because of its rare historical and aesthetic value, the local government has listed the statue as a rare relic since 1957. However, the house was not equipped with any automatic crime-prevention device despite advice to do so by the police. On the night of March 25, 1998, the gang stole the statue but it was badly damaged as they tried to move it. They later hid the remains of the statue in the backyard of Liu Xueru's home. The three were arrested last October.
The shattered Buddha statue was later found and has been carefully repaired by a group of experts organized by Beijing Cultural Relics Administration.
The repaired statue is now safely located in the Beijing Carved Stone Art Museum. ( (c) 1999 Agence France Presse)
From: Boylan P P.Boylan@CITY.AC.UK
Subject: CULTURAL PROTECTION IN WAR - WAS: Kosovo's historic sites
On Fri, 16 Apr 1999, Beltz, Jennifer wrote:
I have noticed several messages in recent days which refer to the destruction of historic buildings and museums as a result of the ongoing conflict in Kosovo. If you haven't already done so, you may want to refer to the April 15th Washington Post editorial by Rep. Rod Blagojevich which calls for a diplomatic agreement that, among other things, would protect as many of Kosovo's sacred Orthodox cathedrals and historic places as possible.
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I despair in the face of such ignorance on the part of law-makers and the press, since there ARE, of course, precisely such agreements!
This principle has been part of US Army General Staff Orders since the Civil War, reinforced by the updating of these by Gen. Eisenhower in 1944 and the US adoption of the Treaty of Washington (Roerich Pact) of 1935. At the international level, the principle of protecting historic and religious monuments, museums, libraries and archives has been part of the general and universal Customary Laws of War since the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions.
There has also been a specific cultural protection treaty provision since 1954 - the Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (which also covers non-international conflicts). Though certain major powers including the USA and UK signed the 1954 Hague Convention but then did not proceed with ratification due to "Cold War" considerations, both have always applied its provisions at the military operations level, and both are now actively seeking formal ratification. (In the US case, the instrument of ratification was sent by the President to the Senate for approval in January 1999 - something I would have expected a member of the House of Representatives specially interested in this area to have been aware of).
A significant strengthening of the 1954 Hague Convention through an additional 2nd Protocol was prepared at a Diplomatic Conference in the The Hague again through the second half of March 1999, and will be formally signed by up to 85 States in The Hague on 17 May (and as one of the high points of a week of special events marking the centenary of the first Hague Peace Conference).
It is well known that in the case of the Gulf War, in order to comply with relevant international law the coalition powers carried out extensive "desk" research, consultations with relevant experts and much special reconnaissance to identify significant cultural monuments and institutions.
These were then placed "off limits" for both air attacks and the ground campaign that followed it. Even when the Iraqi authorities placed MIG aircraft within the walls of the ancient City of Ur, and anti-aircraft batteries on the walls of another, (negating their protection under international law) the Coalition refused to respond to attack these weapons.
Though I have no seen any specific information on this point in relation to the current NATO campaign against Serbia yet, it seems to me virtually certain that parallel procedures and explicit orders will have been in place since long before the start of the air attacks on Yugoslavia.
Incidentally, though Jennifer refers to reports of the "destruction" of monuments and museums in the Kosovo campaign, there do not seem to have been any authenticated evidence of direct attacks on or "destruction" of significant monuments or museums even in the Yugoslavs' own announcements and web site (www.yuheritage.com). The nearest to this seems to be the late 1920s Danube bridge at Novi Sad (which may have been on the national monuments list as an engineering structure?). All the other reports seem to be of blast etc. damage (e.g. the extensive loss of the external glass walls of the Novi Sad Museum close to the bridge referred to above).
This is not to say that there will not be much so-called "collateral" damage to historic monuments and other cultural buildings in the current military activities, but so far there seems to have been nothing in anyway comparable to the massive deliberate targeting, destruction and demolition of hundreds of monuments in e.g. the Eastern Slavonia and Konavle-Dubrovnik regions of Croatia in 1991-2 by the Yugoslav and Montenegran Armies, or in Bosnia in 1992-95 by both official and irregular forces of all three communities.
Patrick Boylan
