The deputies voted unanimously for a bill to return 15 works of art to the heirs of Jewish families looted by the Nazis.
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 robbed 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 memories”, underlined the minister, in unison with speakers from all political groups.
Klimt, Chagall or Utrillo
Among the 15 works is “Rosiers under the Trees” by Gustav Klimt, preserved in the Orsay Museum, and 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.
Eleven drawings and a waxwork kept at the Louvre Museum, the Orsay Museum and the Museum of the Château de Compiègne as well as a painting by Utrillo kept at the Utrillo-Valadon Museum (“Carrefour à Sannois”) are also part of the planned restitutions. . 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.
“Look our history in the face”
For 13 of the 15 works, the beneficiaries have been identified by the Commission for the Compensation of Victims of Spoliation (CIVS), created in 1999. Roselyne Bachelot mentioned a “historic” bill: “this is the first time since the post-war period that the government has initiated a text allowing the restitution of works from public collections “which were” looted during the Second World War or acquired in troubled conditions during the Occupation due to anti-Semitic persecution”.
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 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 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.
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.