It is “the first time since the post-war period that the government has committed a text allowing the restitution of works from public collections” stolen during the Second World War, declared the Minister of Culture.
Fifteen works, including paintings by painters Gustav Klimt and Marc Chagall, will be able to be returned to the heirs of Jewish families looted by the Nazis, after Parliament’s vote on Tuesday evening, who authorized this return via a bill that wants to be “historic”. The vote was followed by applause from these heirs or their representatives present in the gallery.
Looted works of art “still kept in public collections”
“This is a first step” because “spoiled works of art and books are still kept in public collections. Objects which should not, which should never have been there”, repeated the Minister of Health. Culture Roselyne Bachelot, while research on the provenance of the collections has accelerated.
It welcomes a “historic” law by which, for the first time in seventy years, “a government is taking steps to allow the restitution of works from public collections looted during the Second World War or acquired in troubled conditions. during the Occupation, because of the anti-Semitic persecutions”.
A bill was needed to derogate to the current principle of inalienability of public collections. This means that works held by the French government cannot be transferred or sold.
“Roses under the Trees” by Gustav Klimt or “The Father” by Chagall
Among the 15 works is “Rosiers under the Trees” by Gustav Klimt, preserved in the Orsay Museum, the only work by the Austrian painter belonging to the French national collections. It was acquired by the state in 1980 from a merchant. Extensive research has established that it belonged to the Austrian Eleanor Stiasny, who sold it during a forced sale in Vienna in 1938, during the Anschluss, before being deported and murdered.
A painting by Chagall, entitled “Le Père”, kept at the Center Pompidou and entered the national collections in 1988, has been added. It was recognized as the property of David Cender, a Polish Jewish musician and luthier, who immigrated to France in 1958. The work had been bought post-war by Chagall himself, who did not know through whose hands it had passed.
Eleven drawings and a waxwork conserved at the Louvre Museum, the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée du Château de Compiègne, as well as a painting by Utrillo conserved at the Musée Utrillo-Valadon (“Carrefour à Sannois”), are also part of the expected refunds. For 13 of the 15 works, the beneficiaries were identified by the Commission for the Compensation of Victims of Spoliation (CIVS), created in 1999.
France has long been accused of lagging behind several European neighbors when it comes to reparations. A research and restitution mission for cultural property looted between 1933 and 1945 was created within the Ministry of Culture two years ago.
100,000 works of art seized in France during the Second World War
100,000 works of art were seized in France during the 1939-1945 war, according to the Ministry of Culture. 60,000 goods were found in Germany at the Liberation and returned to France. Among them, 45,000 were quickly returned to their owners.
About 2,200 were selected and entrusted to the custody of the national museums (“MNR” works that can be returned by simple administrative decision) and the rest (about 13,000 objects) were sold by the administration of the Estates in the early 1950s. many looted works have thus returned to the art market.
A “framework law” could facilitate restitutions in the years to come. According to Roselyne Bachelot, “we will get there”.
Senator Nathalie Goulet (Centrist Union), “daughter and granddaughter of deportees”, brandished in the hemicycle the “spoliation card” dating back to 1942 from her great-aunt who ran a hat store. She called for “not reducing spoliation to those who had works of art” and asked for “recognition”.
