Between emotion and seriousness, the National Assembly, unanimously, voted on Tuesday a bill for the restitution of 15 works of art, including a painting by Gustav Klimt and another by Marc Chagall, to the beneficiaries of Jewish families. plundered by the Nazis. Faced with these rights holders, present in the gallery, the Minister of Culture Roselyne Bachelot welcomed a “historic” text, validated to applause by 97 votes. It must be definitively adopted by the Senate on February 15.
The spoliation was “the negation of humanity (of these Jewish families), of their memory, of their recollections”, underlined the minister, in unison with speakers from all political groups. Among the 15 works is “Rosiers under the trees” by Gustav Klimt, kept at the Musée d’Orsay, and the only work by the Austrian painter belonging to the French national collections. It was acquired in 1980 by the State from a merchant.
Beneficiaries identified by the Commission for the compensation of victims of spoliation
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. Eleven drawings and wax preserved in the Louvre Museum, the Orsay Museum and the Château de Compiègne Museum as well as a Utrillo painting preserved in the Utrillo-Valadon Museum (“Carrefour à Sannois”) are also part of the planned restitutions. .
A painting by Chagall, entitled “The Father”, 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 violin maker who immigrated to France in 1958. For 13 of the 15 works, the rightsholders were identified by the Commission for the Compensation of Victims of Spoliation (CIVS), created in 1999. Roselyne Bachelot referred to a “historic” bill: “it is the first time since the post-war period that the government has introduced a text allowing the restitution of works from public collections” which were “spoliated during the Second World War or acquired in troubled conditions during the Occupation due to anti-Semitic persecutions”.
Some 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 sent back to France. Among them, 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 that can be returned by simple administrative decision) and the rest (about 13,000 objects ) was sold by the Estates administration in the early 1950s. Many looted works thus returned to the art market.
From left to right, the parliamentarians welcomed a “just action” with these restitutions, which should be “accelerated”. The minister said she was in favor of an upcoming “framework law” to allow it, while pointing out “the complexity of the files”. Communist Elsa Faucillon insisted on the importance of “looking our history in the face”: it is a question of “retelling the past, at a time when some are revising it and trying to rehabilitate Vichy”, she declared. in reference to the far-right presidential candidate Éric Zemmour.