Imagine having a friend who is an art afi­cionado come over to admire an heirloom left by distant relatives, a previously unknown Utrillo. The provenance may be a bit sketchy but that can happen, and maybe it’s a for­gery but if it is, it’s a good one and practically a steal and it’s beautiful and goes with every­thing in the room. Only, the friend sees it and goes into shock and some horror because the painting, an original, has been missing for 82 years, thought to be destroyed by the Nazis after they swiped it from a family they sent to Dachau. The true heirs—as yet unknown—will no doubt want the painting back.

What can be worse than that? Possibly, it is being the curator of the 4,000 works of art in the collection of the Bundestag (the Ger­man parliament) and being told by art histori­ans that two of the paintings on exhibition— “Chancellor Buelow Speaking in the Reichstag,” by Georg Waltenberger and a chalk lithogra­phy entitled “Street in Koenigsberg” by Lovis Corinth—had once belonged to Hildebrand Gurlitt. Gurlitt who was killed in a car accident in 1954, was tasked by Goebbels’ and Hitler’s to sell “degenerate art” (created by Jews and com­munists, abstract pioneers and Expressionists) to non-Aryans, to fund the Third Reich war ef­fort.

That such a find was made is not surprising since at least 108 pieces in the Gurlitt collection have unknown provenance. The search for the true owners gets only more complicated be­cause German government tax agents found 1,406 objects of art in his son’s apartment (his son is Cornelius) when they investigated him for tax fraud. The collection was valued at more than $1.38 billion and included works by Marc Chagall, Paul Klee, Henri Matisse and Pablo Pi­casso. Another 238 pieces of art were found in March at Cornelius Gurlitt’s other apartment in Saltzburg. Of all of these pieces, 590 piec­es are currently being examined to determine whether they were taken from Jewish owners. The New York Times reported last month that they also found small sculptures by Auguste Rodin and Edgar Degas. Though Gurlitt, who died last May, left the art to the Bern Art Mu­seum, its directors stated in May that the mu­seum would return all the Nazi-looted works.

But the ultimate mortification may fall on the head of the director of the Israel Muse­um, who discovered that there is Nazi-stolen art upon its walls, and the heirs of the original owners want it back.

In an interview with JLBC, Wesley Fisher, Di­rector of Research for Claims at the Conference for Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (aka the Claims Conference or CC) said that this past June there was a major meeting concern­ing looted art found in the collection of Israe­li museums. Asked why it has taken so long to check the provenances and return the art when heirs can be found, Fisher said that “Israel, as the homeland of the Jewish people historically has seen itself as essentially the place where cultur­al items, certainly heirless cultural items of the Jewish people, were to be saved.”

A lot of the lost artwork, about 400 pieces, was brought to Israel directly after World War II, but most was recovered by the Allies and was subject to the distribu­tion policies of the Western Allies, “In par­ticular the United States government and the United States military.”

That policy was to return the objects of art to the governments from which they came with the thought that those govern­ments would handle the distribution to the original owners or heirs. However, said Fisher, Jews from around the world disa­greed with this plan—they didn’t want the very governments that looted the works of art to have control of them instead of hav­ing them returned to the Jewish people.

Because of this, the Jewish Restitu­tion Successor Organization was formed, known as the JRSO. It received the items and handled their distribution to Jew­ish communities and individuals. Heirless property was given over to Jewish Cultur­al Reconstruction (JCR). In many cases, the owners and heirs were dead, the communi­ties they lived in no longer existed, or the countries were annexed by the Soviet Un­ion and as such, were not recognized as val­id by the United States.

At the same time, Mordecai Marcus was making trips to Europe on behalf of the Isra­el Museum and the Hebrew University Library, now the National Library of Israel. His mission was to bring back other art and historical ma­terial, books, manuscripts, ritual items, archives and the like. Since the items were considered to be heirless, it was considered a legitimate en­deavor, said Fisher.

It was the policy of the JCR to keep 40 per­cent of the items in Israel, send 40 percent of the items to the United States and distribute the remainder to Jewish communities in the United Kingdom, South America and other places. Some of these collections of materi­als made it back to museums in the United States and more went to museums in Israel. Most or the “best” items went to the Israel Museum and the Hebrew University Library. The rest goes to the other museums in Israel and to religious communities.

Fisher said the items’ destinations were determined by the Ministry of Culture, the Israel Museum and the Hebrew University Library. “There is a certain amount written about the subject but it is not history that has been well researched.” He said what has been done was for the books but not for the artwork or the ritual items.

“What you’re asking is part of the prob­lem,” he said “It’s not clear what is where in Israel because with the exception of the Israel Museum many institutions in Isra­el haven’t done any provenance research.” It would seem unusual that any museum receiving artwork would check the prov­enance but Fisher said it is only unusual since 1998 when the Washington Confer­ence of Holocaust-Era Assets was held.

A series of principles on what should be done concerning the “assets” was agreed to by 44 countries—including Israel—which called for institutions to do research on their collec­tions. Despite that, said Fischer, most coun­tries have not done much except for the Unit­ed States National Gallery of Art in Washington which identified more than 400 European painting with gaps in their provenance. How­ever New York City’s Museum of Modern Art told Congress that they were “not aware of a single Nazi-tainted work of art in our collection of more than 100,000 pieces.” Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have done some work.

“It is unusual but it is understandable that Israel did not see itself as similar to Austria, Germany or for that matter France, Russia and so on. It saw itself as the home­land of these items.”

Fisher said many people in Israel still think this way. “One of the reasons for the forum held at the end of June on Holocaust Era Cultural Assets in Israel was precisely to try to overcome that.”

While some of the holders of looted art had not looked past their collections, the Knesset had passed a law several years ago which made all items which belonged to people murdered between 1935 and 1945 in the Shoah the property of Hashava (The Company for Location and Restitution of Holocaust Victims’ Assets in Israel.) He said that company has been mostly responsible for disposing of the items.

Fisher said they’ve mostly been in­volved in real estate and bank accounts but recently have started to be interested in finding owners of cultural property. Fisher said some of the paintings in the museums have been restituted.

In answer to the first question asked, finding a lost object of art in the possession of someone who does not know what they own, what happens? Fisher said it depends on the country of the owner of the private collection. In Israel it would be a voluntary act on the part of the possessor to take it to Hashava to attempt to locate the original owner. In the United States, it still would be voluntary but can be taken to the Holo­caust Claims Processing Office of the New York State Department of Finance.

It is estimated that about 100,000 artworks stolen by the Nazis are still missing. However databases have been constructed in several countries, especially in Germany which estab­lished the Lost Art Database to serve as a cen­tral office for the documentation of lost cul­tural property relocated, moved or seized by the Nazis, especially from Jewish owners.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which deals with stolen artworks, would not answer any questions as to investigations concerning the location of or own­ership of lost art of the Nazi era.

By Anne Phyllis Pinzow