May 12, 1999

CONTENTS:

course about manager museums

security, types of training

May Update

english version of the Study of Public's Behavior at Museums

THYSSEN-BORNEMISZA COLLECTION FOUNDATION STUDY OF PUBLIC'S BEHAVIOR AT MUSEUMS

FRANCISCO DE LA FUENTE SECURITY DEPARTMENT CHIEF

Sevso treasure dispute settled

Stolen books

Subj: Bookwatch - please cross post as much as possible

RE: Y2K Problems - Gay Bidocci

News for the Museum Security Network 5/10/99

Wealthy Austrian family claims Albright's father stole paintings

LONDON, May 4 (JTA) -- A wealthy Austrian family has demanded that U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her family return millions of dollars worth of ``war booty" allegedly taken from their apartment in Prague after World War II. Philip Harmer, head of a family of former Austrian industrialists and landowners, alleges that Albright's father, Josef Korbel, took 20 17th-century Dutch paintings, antique furniture and silver from his family's apartment in Prague. ``I cannot believe that the secretary of state of the U.S. and her brother and sister enjoy eating with my family's silver, while surrounded by my family's paintings and furniture," said Harmer, now a management consultant in Vienna. ``I find it impossible to believe that they are not prepared to make amends for this injustice." During the war years, the Korbel family found refuge in London, where they learned that many Jewish members of their family had perished in the Holocaust. Albright, who was raised as a Roman Catholic and later became an Episcopalian, said she first learned she had Jewish ancestors when it was reported by The Washington Post in February 1997. Immediately after the war, Josef Korbel was appointed a diplomat in the postwar Czech Foreign Ministry and the family, including daughter Madeleine, returned to the Czech capital in late 1945. Meanwhile, the new communist government in Prague had expelled more than 3 million Germans, and while Harmer insists that ``not one member of my family ever had anything to do with the Nazis," he says, ``The climate in Prague at the time was so anti-German that my family had no option but to leave." Before leaving, however, they took the precaution of moving their collection of paintings to another apartment where Harmer's great-aunt, a Swiss national, was living. When the Korbels returned to Prague, they took up residence in the Harmer family's vacated apartment, where Josef Korbel immediately noticed patches on the wall where the paintings had hung. According to Harmer, he ``demanded that the housekeepers tell him where they were. He then went round to my great-aunt's flat and removed them." These allegations are supported by a letter written to Albright by Harmer's 89-year-old great-grandmother, Ruth Harmer-Nebrich. ``Your father did not care," she wrote. ``He threatened my sister in a very nasty way and, as she was a rather weak and sick person, she did not resist, and so the paintings had to be brought back to the place where he had moved in." When Korbel was posted to the Czech Embassy in Belgrade, the letter continues, ``Mr. Korbel took every single item with him. ``He also took valuable silver and bed linen that Jewish families had asked us to keep for them during the Nazi occupation." While in Belgrade, Korbel decided to move to the United States with his family. Harmer believes Korbel sold some of the paintings, but he is convinced that several artworks are in the homes of Albright's younger brother, John Korbel, in Arlington, Va., and her sister, Kathy. Harmer's initially cordial correspondence with the family, however, met with a rebuff from John Korbel's lawyer. ``Given the lack of evidence of ownership by Mrs. Nebrich of the items in question and the strong evidence they were expropriated by the Czech authorities, we can only conclude that your family does not have any claim against our clients," wrote Michael Jaffe. Harmer, however, contends that the Czech authorities have no evidence that the paintings were confiscated. Moreover, American journalist Michael Dobbs, whose biography of Albright will be published later this month, says he identified two of the paintings while interviewing John Korbel at his home. The paintings, said to be hanging in Korbel's living room, are by 17th- century Dutch artists Ludolf Backhuysen and Hendrik Van Steenwyck. Korbel is said to have told Dobbs that his sister, Kathy, had another painting that formerly belonged to their father, but he insisted that Albright herself had none at her home in Washington. Korbel rejected suggestions that the paintings had been looted, insisting that his father would have paid for them or would have been given them by the Czech government. Harmer, however, has a different version. ``Josef Korbel just told my great-aunt, 'These are hard times,' when he took away the family paintings. ``It was understandable, considering what the Nazis did to his family," said Harmer, ``but it was not necessarily right." Despite the brushoffs he has received so far from lawyers representing Albright's family, Harmer is determined to press his family's claims and has set a May 15 deadline for restitution to be made. ``We are assuming that the Albrights are honest people," he added, ``and that they will want to clear up this matter as soon as possible.''
c Jewish Telegraphic Agency Inc.

Hiroshima survivor fights to protect N.Korea tombs

TOKYO, May 10 (Reuters) - Ikuo Hirayama's devotion to saving the world's cultural treasures was born in the shattering white light that destroyed his native Hiroshima more than 50 years ago. He has spent more than a decade as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Educational and Scientific Organisation (UNESCO) and was heavily involved in restoring Cambodia's Angkor Wat temple and cave sculptures in Afghanistan. His latest campaign is to preserve ancient tombs in isolated and impoverished North Korea. A schoolboy of 15 when the first atom bomb was dropped, he overcame the ravages of radiation sickness to become one of Japan's most famous painters and an ardent advocate of conserving international cultural sites. ``Even if a country is poor -- and poverty is often the root of conflict -- repairing its cultural treasures can give a people back their pride,'' Hirayama said. ``This is not only about restoring things but, through them, restoring people's hearts.'' Hirayama's current UNESCO project involves preserving some 80 tombs around Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. The walls of the tombs, which date from around the late first century BC to AD 668, are covered with brilliant paintings of kings and queens, natural scenes and animals that bear a striking resemblance to paintings on the walls of a tomb found near the central Japanese city of Nara. Hirayama and UNESCO hope to get the tombs, considered possible key evidence regarding links between the cultures of Korea and Japan, registered as World Historic sites. Hirayama also has a more personal tie: One of his paintings depicting a legendary Japanese empress resembles pictures on the walls of the Nara tomb, although his work was done several years before the Nara discovery. Calling on both Koreas to cooperate in the effort, he hopes to help ease the tension that has hung over the Korean peninsula for the last five decades. Hirayama visited North Korea late last month to deliver instruments to monitor conditions within the tombs and said he found officials eager to do whatever is needed to get the sites registered. They even appeared willing, he said, to move military facilities away from the site of the tombs to abide by UNESCO regulations requiring a buffer zone around such heritage sites. But Hirayama was quick to add that, despite signs of cooperation, the country's autocratic structure under the all-powerful leadership of Kim Jong-il posed potential difficulties. ``If things were carried out logically, everyone would quickly realise these tombs are an incredible treasure,'' he said. ``But talk changes when politics enters the picture and everyone said that it all depends on the top.'' Although the actual registration of the tombs with UNESCO will cost little for the reclusive Stalinist nation, enfeebled by food shortages and economic contraction, preparations for a formal application are likely to be a heavy burden. Hirayama hopes to help relieve that burden. The artist visited Seoul last month and met with South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, who expressed interest in helping with the project. As an artist, Hirayama said he feels free to go where diplomats and politicians may fear to tread, including the Korean peninsula, where North Korea chilled relations with its neighbours last August by launching a rocket that flew over Japan. ``Japan actually wants to see relations improve, but as things are, the politicians can't really extend their hands for peace,'' he said. ``But if I go in there as a goodwill ambassador they'll do whatever they can to help. Dealing with things through cultural means allows both sides to save face.'' It is a mission he feels compelled to undertake because of his own experience in Hiroshima. On August 6, 1945, he darted into a shed to tell his friends about the plane he had seen overhead. In the blinding flash that followed, 188 of his classmates died instantly. ``I was allowed to live,'' he now says. ``I became an artist to pray for peace.'' A graduate of Japan's top arts college, he made a name for himself in 1959 with ``The Propagation of Buddhism,'' the first of a series of paintings showing scenes from the life of Buddha and the spread of Buddhism that he credits with restoring his health. Since the early 1960s he has travelled tirelessly along the ``Silk Road'' that linked Europe and Asia 2000 years ago. Sketches from those trips became the basis for much of his work. ``When you travel like that within history, you can understand humanity -- that whatever road you walk, there are some things all men share,'' he said.
Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited.

K. Rouge leader's loot trucked to safety

Art Dealer Sues Writer (Hector Feliciano) for Slander

PARIS (AP) - An American writer accused of slandering a prominent French-Jewish art dealer appears in court Wednesday in a case expected to shed light on the fate of Nazi-looted art in occupied France. Hector Feliciano, author of a book about the systematic confiscation of Jewish-owned art during World War II, has been accused of suggesting that the late Georges Wildenstein collaborated with the Nazis. Wildenstein's son, Daniel, along with grandsons Alec and Guy, have sued Feliciano, an art historian, for $1 million in damages, saying his 1997 book ``The Lost Museum'' has scared away major Jewish-American clients and caused ``considerable commercial damage.'' A decision from the three-person panel of judges is not expected until next month and can be appealed. Wildenstein ran the family business from 1910 until his death in 1963. He fled France in January 1941, and settled in New York. Under the anti-Jewish measures passed by the pro-Nazi Vichy regime, the gallery was handed over to Roger Dequoy, a non-Jewish employee who appears to have done business with the Nazis. Court documents show that Wildenstein remained in contact with Dequoy, who conducted business with Karl Haberstock, a Berlin-based Nazi dealer who had close contacts with Wildenstein before the war. ``Finally, after more than 50 years, a corner of the veil will lifted on the wartime art market, which flourished under the Occupation,'' Antoine Comte, Feliciano's lawyer, told The Associated Press. Comte said Feliciano's book, which mentions Georges Wildenstein only in passing - focusing mainly on the fate of major Jewish-owned art collections - is based on wartime documents stored at the National Archives in Washington. The Wildensteins say Dequoy, who continued to work at the gallery for nine years after the war, was acting on his own, not on instructions from Wildenstein. The Wildensteins say the book constitutes a ``careless falsification, a serious and flagrant disregard for the search for the truth.'' Feliciano has counter sued, seeking $180,000 in damages, for launching ``an abusive action'' he says is intended to discredit him.