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Uncovering what the Nazis stole: Expert describes efforts to find artwork taken during war
By BRIAN BURNES - The Kansas City Star Date: 02/22/99 22:37
If Hitler was a failed artist, he was a success at stealing fine art. From France alone, Nazi Germany stole about 100,000 works of art during World War II, most of them from Jews and political opponents.
Many remain unaccounted for.
On Monday night, Ori Soltes, national chairman of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project, was to detail the vast effort involved in tracking down the artworks. He was scheduled to speak at Congregation Beth Torah in Overland Park. "There are still 25,000 works of art that are lost," Soltes said earlier Monday. Finding them will be "an enormous task that will be labor-intensive." The restitution project, established in 1997, seeks to document the extent of Jewish cultural losses suffered in Europe between 1933 and 1945 and to centralize all data about the dispersal of individual works of art after World War II. The story of the stolen art echoes recent disclosures of how the Nazis used Swiss banks to launder gold reserves they looted from Europe's central banks during the war. "Gold is gold and its value rises and falls, but a magnificent work of art, a Degas or a Matisse, has a means of capturing the imagination," Soltes said. "The first glitter of the gold is interesting, but the drama of a painting that has changed hands five or six times since the war raises a whole range of issues. Among them is how a person can buy a $2 million painting without the same kind of due diligence done when buying a house." Details of the systematic seizure of art by the Nazis have emerged slowly. Pertinent documents from the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency, were declassified in the early 1990s. Subsequent books brought the story forward. Nazis operating in France deployed a squad of 60 trained experts who took stolen art to a small museum in Paris and processed it with catalog numbers, photographs and precise descriptions. Hitler wanted to see work by artists that he considered degenerate -- such as Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin -- discredited or destroyed, Soltes said. "But his henchmen were smart enough to know that these paintings could be traded," said Soltes. So the Nazis often smuggled the works into Switzerland. There, art dealers sometimes traded them for canvasses rendered by painters favored by the Nazis, such as Frederic Rembrandt or Jan van Eyck. In this fashion, some of the finest examples of modern art were scattered across the world. After the war, collections were found almost intact. Others were not. In recent years prominent institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago have been caught in disputes, with visitors claiming that exhibits included stolen works. Soltes, also director of the National Jewish Museum in Washington, stressed that he was not in the Kansas City area to pursue any particular local investigation but simply to raise awareness. "But I'm also speaking here as a museum director, and on this, I find a number of my colleagues non-forthcoming," he said. "If there is enough of a public outcry on this, perhaps certain museums will be more forthcoming." Soltes' research is another reminder of how the Holocaust lingers yet with its victims, said Jean Zeldin, executive director of the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education in Overland Park. "(Soltes') quest to return stolen art to the rightful owners is another form of seeking justice," she said.
To reach Brian Burnes, history writer, call (816) 234-7804 or send e-mail to bburnes@kcstar.com

Kosovo talks site houses looted art
08:55 p.m Feb 18, 1999 Eastern
LOS ANGELES, Feb 18 (Reuters) - The French palace at Rambouillet where the Kosovo peace talks are taking place houses works of art looted by the Nazis that France never returned to their owners or the owners' heirs, a Jewish group said on Thursday.
The World Jewish Congress, which has been leading a campaign to have the looted artworks returned by France, said those at the palace included a Louis XV sofa, an antique Persian carpet and a painting from the school of the 18th-century French painter Francois Boucher. ``Did Secretary of State Madeleine Albright sit on the ... Louis XV grand sofa that was looted during the war and never returned -- the one sculpted with daisies and leaves? If so, I am sure she would have been appalled,'' WJC Executive Director Elan Steinberg said. Steinberg said his group had discovered that the antiques and painting were in the palace by matching up various French government reports on about 2,000 artworks placed in French care after the war and never returned. The group previously charged that looted art could be found in the French presidential palace, the prime minister's residence and French embassies around the world, as well as on display in French museums. The 2,000 pieces are what is left of about 60,000 looted by the Nazis and returned by the Allies to France. About 45,000 have been returned and about 13,000 sold at auction. The others remain under French government custodianship. Of these works, a recent French government report said 181 had been earmarked by the Germans for a planned Hitler museum of art that was to have been built in Linz, Austria, another 175 had been acquired for leading Nazi officials, including Hermann Goering and Joachim von Ribbenthrop, and 212 had been ``bought'' by German museums.
Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited.

Looted Art In French Presidential Palace
12:37 a.m. Feb 12, 1999 Eastern
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Artworks looted by the Nazis and returned to France after the Second World War are on display in Paris in the presidential palace, the prime minister's home and the Turkish Embassy, a Jewish group said Thursday.
The World Jewish Congress said a French inventory of some 2,000 works of looted art still not returned to their rightful owners or their heirs showed some unusual locations for the works. ``There are two paintings by the school of Joseph Vernet, the 18th-century painter, hanging in the Turkish Embassy, placed there on loan by the French government,'' the congress's executive director, Elan Steinberg, said. He added that antiques from the 2,000 pieces were in the French prime minister's residence and the Elysee presidential palace. The World Jewish Congress has been leading a campaign to have looted works of art returned to their owners or, when there are no heirs, sold at auction to benefit Holocaust survivors. Steinberg said that while the French had placed on the Internet an inventory of works still under the care of the French government, their locations had not been known until a report of the official Matteoli commission, which is investigating the issue, came out within the last two weeks. He said the group's interim report showed that two Louis XIV chairs and other pieces, including Oriental rugs, were in the prime minister's residence and a leather-covered medallion box was in the presidential palace. He added: ``Clearly, the Turkish ambassador has no idea that French authorities had placed works that did not belong to them in the Turkish Embassy. The Turkish Embassy is not to blame.'' The 2,000 works of art are what remains of some 15,000 works looted by the Nazis and returned to France after the war. About 13,000 items were sold at auction, and the rest were placed in French museums while the French acted as temporary custodians. Among the 2,000 artworks are 18 paintings by Renoir, 12 by Monet, nine by Degas, one by Picasso and one by Rembrandt. Steinberg said his group had determined that a Cezanne hanging in the Louvre, ``The Bathers,'' was probably stolen from the collection of Josse Hessel by Nazi collaborators in Paris.
Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited.

Paris museum has proof cubist painting looted by Nazis from Jewish collector
Copyright c 1999 Nando Media Copyright c 1999 Reuters News Service
By LEE YANOWITCH
PARIS (February 10, 1999 8:05 p.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - French museum authorities, criticized for holding more than 2,000 artworks looted by the Nazis from Jews, announced on Wednesday they had proof a cubist masterpiece by Fernand Leger belonged to a leading pre-war Jewish collector or his brother. They said a newly found document showed Leger's 1914 work "Woman in Red and Green," valued at 10 million to 15 million francs ($1.8 million to $2.7 million), was seized in 1941 from the gallery of Paul Rosenberg, one of France's biggest collectors of modern art in the 1930s. "It shows without a doubt that it was looted and can now be returned to its rightful owners," said Francoise Cachin, head of France's state museum network. But Cachin said museum officials still did not know whether Rosenberg or his brother Leonce owned the painting when Nazis seized it. French museums have come under criticism for holding 2,058 artworks looted by the Nazis whose ownership Paris says is not clear. Jewish groups say they were looted from Jews and should be sold off to compensate Holocaust victims. Nobody has ever claimed the Leger painting, either in the years immediately following the war or after a spate of exhibits in Paris museums in 1997 of works that came back from Germany. The Georges Pompidou Center, where the painting was hanging, had traced the work until 1935 when it belonged to Leonce Rosenberg, who had a much smaller collection of cubist art. But there was no record of it between then and 1942, when it was photographed in the Jeu de Paume museum, where the Nazis stored art to be sent to Germany for the private collections of Hitler and Hermann Goering or to hang in museums of the Reich. Leonce Rosenberg's only heir is his elderly and disabled daughter Odile. Museum officials are trying to establish why the painting was at Paul's gallery and which of the brothers owned it when it was confiscated so they can return it to the family. Pompidou Center curator Didier Schulman said it wasn't clear how the Leger painting had got to the Jeu de Paume. "We wondered if Leonce had sold it when he liquidated his collection," he said. Determined to find out whether the work had been looted or sold by Leonce sometime before 1942, Schulman sent a researcher to scour Germany's war-time archives in Koblenz. "About three weeks ago, a list was found of 111 paintings seized from Paul Rosenberg's building on the rue de la Boetie. The Leger was on the list. That was the missing link that confirmed it had been plundered," Schulman said. Paul Rosenberg fled to New York when France fell to the Nazis in 1940s while his brother stayed on and mingled with artist friends like Picasso. The Leger was returned to France from Germany in 1948, a year after Leonce Rosenberg's death, among 61,000 works stolen by the Nazis. Of those, 15,816 were unclaimed and French museums kept 2,058 valuable works for safekeeping and sold the rest.

Nazi-looted art returned to heirs
Copyright c 1999 Nando Media
Copyright c 1999 Associated Press
By MARILYN AUGUST
PARIS (February 10, 1999 1:15 p.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) -
A well-known Cubist painting by Fernand Leger was looted by the Nazis from a Jewish art dealer and will be returned to his rightful heirs, national museum authorities said Wednesday. But officials can't yet determine which of two brothers the painting belonged to. Leger's 1914 "Woman in Red and Green" was listed on a Nazi document recently unearthed in German archives as having been looted from the Paris gallery of Paul Rosenberg in 1941. But other documents show that until 1935, the Leger belonged to Paul's brother, Leonce. Both brothers survived the war and died later. Museum officials say they don't know how the Leger came to be in Paul's gallery where the Nazis found it. "The Nazi document is definite proof of looting, which means the painting will be returned to its rightful heirs," said Francoise Cachin. "The question is: who are they?" Paul and Leonce Rosenberg were both art dealers, but ran totally separate businesses. Leonce specialized in Cubist art. Cachin said the Rosenberg heirs have been informed of the discovery, and that a joint settlement is expected. Paul Rosenberg fled Paris in May 1940, leaving behind 111 works in his Paris gallery and a vast collection of Impressionist and modern works hidden at his estate in Floirac. Leonce, less successful than his brother, remained in Paris where he declared himself to authorities as Jewish. He died in 1947. Allied forces found the painting among a cache of works in Germany belonging to a German dealer. It was returned to France in 1948. The painting currently is on loan from the Georges Pompidou Center to the newly opened Jewish Museum of Art and Culture.

Jewish group attacks France over disputed art
07:23 p.m Jan 19, 1999 Eastern
LOS ANGELES, Jan 19 (Reuters) - A Jewish group called on Tuesday for France to remove more than 2,000 works of art from display at leading museums, where they have been exhibited for the last half-century, saying their ownership was in dispute and the French were not trying to find their rightful owners.
The 2,058 artworks -- half of them paintings by such masters as Picasso and Matisse and the rest sculptures and ceramics -- were taken from France during its Nazi occupation and returned by the Allies after the Second World War. Many were from Jewish-owned collections. Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress, called on the French government to order the paintings removed from such museums as the Louvre and the Pompidou Centre. ``For 50 years, French museums have failed to return these works of art to their rightful owners. It is time to terminate their temporary custodianship over these works and transfer the research files on their ownership to people willing to return stolen goods,'' Steinberg said in a statement. The works of art in question include paintings and drawings by Picasso, Renoir, Rembrandt, Matisse, Monet, Manet, Cezanne, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Braque, Degas, Goya, Rubens, Velazquez and Leger. Many came from Jewish collections that were targeted by the Nazi art looting unit known as the Rosenberg Task Force, named after Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler's ideologist. The World Jewish Congress last month charged that a famous Picasso at the Pompidou Centre, ``Head of a Woman,'' belonged to noted Jewish collector Paul Rosenberg. A Cezanne, ``The Bathers,'' on display at the Louvre, came from the collection of the Jewish collector Josse Hessel, the group said. ``In one sense, there is no controversy, because the French admit that these 2,000 works of art do not belong to the museums and are only held in trust,'' Steinberg said. After the war, the Allies returned 61,257 works of art that had been taken by the Nazis, of which 45,441 were returned to their rightful owners and some 13,000 sold at auction, with the money going to the French state. The remaining 2,058 works of art were selected to hang in French museums, where they remain. ``We want (the French) to release the research files on these works of art so that those with identifiable owners can be returned and ... heirless property can be sold off at auction to benefit Holocaust survivors,'' Steinberg said.
Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited.

French court tells museum to surrender Klimt
10:54 a.m. Jan 12, 1999 Eastern
STRASBOURG, France, Jan 12 (Reuters) - A French court has ordered Strasbourg's modern art museum to return a painting by Austrian master Gustav Klimt to a Jewish family that claims it was stolen from them by the Nazis. The city promptly filed an appeal and has declined to hand over ``Die Erfuellung'' (Fulfillment), an ornate 1909 portrait of a woman in blissful embrace with her lover. The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art bought the work, which measures 120 by 193 centimetres (47 by 76 inches), in 1959 and it has since become one of its best-known pieces. But the court on Monday sided with children of Austrian emigre Karl Grunwald, who said the Nazis stole the picture from him in 1940 after annexing Strasbourg and the Alsace region. Grunwald had moved to France in 1938, the year Hitler annexed Austria, and brought about 50 paintings with him. They were all confiscated and auctioned off in 1942 and 1943. The court ruled there was enough evidence to prove that ``Die Erfuellung'' had belonged to Grunwald, citing the fact that he had known leading figures of the Vienna Secession group, including Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka. It also noted that the stamp of the firm Grunwald hired to transport the artworks was on the back of the painting. An association acting on behalf of the Strasbourg museum bought the work in 1959 from the heirs of a local painter for just 500 francs ($90 at the present day exchange rate). The court said the association, which included the then director of Strasbourg's museums, had paid 30 times below the market value for the work. ``The defendant (Strasbourg city)...was happy to buy the disputed painting for a derisory price without seeking further information on the origin or history of this work,'' the court said in a written ruling.
Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited.

Jan. 3, 1999
Monet taken by Nazis is barred from exhibition
(Electronic Telegraph)
By Victoria Combe
A MONET painting has been barred from appearing at next month's Royal Academy exhibition after it was identified as having been stolen from a Jewish family by Nazis. Waterlilies 1904 had been due to arrive in London this Sunday together with 84 other Monets which have been on display in the Boston Museum of Fine Art in America. But relatives of the French-Jewish art collector Paul Rosenberg have claimed ownership of the �6 million painting, which was stolen in 1941 by Hitler's foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, to decorate his home. The painting was traced to the Boston exhibition Monet in the 20th Century but was allowed to remain on display until it closed on Dec 27 with a notice explaining its history. Tomorrow's Jewish Chronicle says that the French authorities have refused to allow the painting to travel to London after long negotiations with the Royal Academy, in west London. The Royal Academy said the exhibition would open on Jan 23 without the work because the French were concerned that there was no legislation in Britain to prevent the painting being confiscated and never returning to France. The French authorities are still investigating the painting's ownership and are anxious that any legal battle with the Rosenberg family be fought in France, not Britain. The Museum of Fine Art in Boston had taken out a federal legal immunity from seizure, which protects paintings loaned to American museums after the register of Nazi stolen art. The painting is one of 48 of the pond in Monet's garden at Giverny, west of Paris, and was placed on the Art Loss Register by Paul Rosenberg's daughter, Micheline, and his son's widow, Elaine. Mr Rosenberg, one of Paris's greatest art dealers, hid some 240 paintings in a bank and a chateau near Bordeaux when he fled the country in 1940. He is understood to have recovered most of them, but not the Monet. The painting was reclaimed by the French Government after the war and has been stored in the Mus�e des Beaux-Arts in Caen. David Gordon, of the Royal Academy, told the Chronicle he "deeply regretted" the situation. He said: "We are, of course, very much in favour of restitution to legal owners, but this has the effect of creating a climate of paranoia among lenders."

Russia reaffirms pledge to return Nazi-looted art
By Lev Krichevsky
MOSCOW, Dec. 29 (JTA) -- Russia has reaffirmed its commitment to return works of art stolen by the Nazis during the Holocaust that are now housed in Russian museums.
But Western hopes that Russia has many of these works are ``exaggerated," the Foreign Ministry said in a recent statement. At an international conference in Washington on Holocaust-era assets earlier this month, Russia agreed to return to Holocaust victims or their heirs art looted by the Nazis. Experts say such restitution would be difficult under a Russian ``trophy art" law issued last year. The law requires that claims should be made by governments rather than individuals. In addition, a work can be returned only if the Russian Parliament approves each restitution by a separate act. The bill has also been criticized for not distinguishing between artworks that belonged to Germany and those that were looted by the Nazis from other countries. Moreover, the April 1998 law set a deadline of November 1999 to make a request for restitution. Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin has been quoted as saying the government would be willing to extend the deadline. At the end of the war, the Soviet Union dispatched special teams to collect thousands of paintings, as well as archival material that included manuscripts and photographs, from the defeated Nazis. Valery Kulishov, director of the restitution department with the Russian Ministry of Culture and head of the Russian delegation at the December conference in Washington, said in an interview that Russian museums contain some objects whose origins are unknown. ``But this does not mean that they necessarily belong to Holocaust victims," Kulishov added. Since the end of World War II, Russia has zealously guarded information about the details of the art taken from Nazi Germany. About 200,000 pieces of this trophy art are now reportedly stored in Russian museums and private collections. In a related development, a Hungarian diplomat stationed in Russia reiterated that her country would claim art confiscated from prominent Hungarian Jewish families during World War II. In an interview published in the daily newspaper Kommersant, Rita Mayer, the counselor for cultural affairs at the Hungarian Embassy, specifically mentioned the names of several Hungarian Jews whose collections, first confiscated by the Nazis, are now kept in state-run museums in Moscow and in Central Russia. ``Their heirs are alive, and even if they are not, the property belongs to Hungarian Jewish community,'' Mayer said. Some art was taken by the Red Army from banks in Budapest where Jews were forced to deposit their valuables in the late 1930s. Other objects came from the collection of top Nazi official Adolf Eichmann, who stole them in 1944. According to Mayer, Hungary has documents proving the origin of these art objects. One of such works is the portrait of a woman by French painter Camille Corot -- allegedly originally from the collection of Hungarian Jew Ferenz Hatvani -- which is now a prized possession of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. Last year, the Hungarian government asked Moscow about the fate of art treasures stolen by the Nazis from Hungarian citizens, including Jews. In its request, Hungary mentioned at least one Hungarian Jew as being the rightful owner of a collection of paintings now in Russia. Russia has yet to return any of the works.
(c Jewish Telegraphic Agency Inc.

Index WW.II pages

Uncovering what the Nazis stole: Expert describes efforts to find artwork taken during war

Kosovo talks site houses looted art

Looted Art In French Presidential Palace

Paris museum has proof cubist painting looted by Nazis from Jewish collector

Nazi-looted art returned to heirs

Jewish group attacks France over disputed art

French court tells museum to surrender Klimt

Monet taken by Nazis is barred from exhibition

Russia reaffirms pledge to return Nazi-looted art