“Removing such an important painting from the national collections is a heavy decision, which honors our collective attachment to the memory of the victims of Nazi barbarism.” So spoke Laurence des Cars, the former president of the Musée d’Orsay, last spring when announcing the restitution to the heirs of an art collector looted of the only painting by Gustav Klimt belonging to the national collections. French, Rosebushes under the trees.
A bill relating to the restitution to the rightful owners of 15 works of art, including the masterpiece by Klimt and another by Marc Chagall, must be examined by the National Assembly on Tuesday. Legally entered into the French national public collections by acquisition, they come under the movable public domain protected by the principle of imprescriptibility and inalienability. Their restitution therefore requires a law, unlike works entrusted to the custody of national museums (“MNR”), which are returned by simple decree.
“Last Witness”
Rosebushes under the trees, kept at the Musée d’Orsay, was acquired in 1980 by the State from a dealer. Extensive research has established that it belonged to the Austrian art collector Eléonore Stiasny. The painting had been purchased in 1911 by his uncle, the Austrian industrial magnate and collector Viktor Zuckerkandl. At his death, his niece Eléonore “Nora” Stiasny, had inherited it. Before having to sell it at a low price during a forced sale in Vienna in 1938, just after the Anschluss. Four years later, she was deported and murdered.
Last March, the Minister of Culture, Roselyne Bachelot, announced France’s intention to return the painting to Eléonore Stiasny’s heirs. “Rosebushes under the trees is a painting. She cannot speak to us, and yet she carries within her, forever, these tragic destinies, these shattered lives. She is the last witness of these women and men, whom a will, criminal and implacable, has stubbornly sought to make disappear.she pointed out in her speech. The upcoming restitution is an act of acknowledgment of the suffering and crimes suffered by the Zuckerkandl and Stiasny families, and the just return of property that belongs to them.”
The rendering of this table “responds to the compelling reason for reparation for the anti-Semitic looting and spoliation perpetrated by the Nazi regime”supported the Council of State in its opinion on the text of the law, delivered in November.
“Important first step”
Eleven drawings and a waxwork preserved at the Louvre Museum, the Orsay Museum and the Compiègne Castle Museum as well as a painting by Utrillo preserved at the Utrillo-Valadon Museum (Crossroads in Sannois) are also part of the refunds envisaged. The town of Sannois, in the Val-d’Oise had bought the work of Utrillo during a public sale at Sotheby’s London in 2004. It had been looted in December 1940 in the Parisian gallery of Georges Bernheim by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, the office in charge of confiscations in territories annexed or occupied by the Nazis.
“The work is identified by the list and the photographs of the goods looted by the ERR and the spoliation is characterized within the meaning of the Declaration of London and the order of April 21, 1945. Its restitution is essential. The Council of State also notes that the municipal council of Sannois decided in this direction by deliberation of May 31, 2018“, underlined the Council of State in November.
An amendment of January 13 added to this list a painting by Chagall, entitled The fatherkept at the Center Pompidou and entered the national collections in 1988. The artist probably painted it in 1911 or 1912, would have disposed of it before the Second World War, then the painting would have circulated as far as Poland during the transfer Jews to the Lodz ghetto in 1940. It was recognized as the property of David Cender, a Polish-Jewish musician and luthier, who immigrated to France in 1958.
The beneficiaries were identified by the Commission for the Compensation of Victims of Spoliation (CIVS), created in 1999. The bill was adopted unanimously by the Cultural Affairs Committee of the Assembly. If passed by Parliament, “this will be an important first step that leads to thinking about future restitutions and the possibility of a framework law”, explains Fabienne Colboc (LREM), its rapporteur. As for the restitution of works of art from Africa, a future framework law is difficult to establish because of the multiplicity of the criteria of spoliation such as their geographical scope and the period concerned (between 1933 and 1945).
100,000 works seized in France
“Many Jewish families, victims of anti-Semitic measures, were forced to sell their property from the end of 1933, in Germany. In France, when the sale was organized by the Vichy regime, a lot of archives remain but when it came to private sales, there are no traces, the works ended up on the art market. art”underlined David Zivie, head of the mission of research and restitution of spoliated cultural property of the Ministry of Culture, during a hearing by the senators.
This mission was created in 2019 to speed up research and identify the provenance of stolen works to facilitate their return. Since 1990, research into these works has developed considerably. Particularly after Jacques Chirac’s speech in 1995, during the commemoration of the Vel’d’Hiv roundup, which recognized France’s participation in the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis, then the Washington agreement in 1998 when 44 countries have committed to reparations and the restitution of property to looted Jewish families.
Some 100,000 works of art were seized in France during the Second World War, according to the Ministry of Culture. Nearly 60,000 goods – including works stolen but also sold in France during the war by people who were not persecuted – were found in Germany at the Liberation and returned to France. Of these, 45,000 were returned to their owners between 1945 and 1950.
About 2,200 were selected and entrusted to the custody of national museums (“MNR” works) and the rest (about 13,000 objects) were sold by the administration of the Estates in the early 1950s. which would belong to the national collections are in progress.