Dutch museums discover 139 Nazi-looted artworks in their collections

 

 

Posted on Nov 1 2013 – 11:00am by Randy Gener

In a shocking revelation, Dutch museums say that about 139 major works of art, including dozens of paintings by Henri Matisse, Paul Klee and Vassily Kandinsky, all presently hanging in their buildings may have been Nazi loot, all of it likely having been taken forcibly from Jewish owners.

 

The revelation is the result of a major in-house investigations of Dutch art acquisitions since 1933, a review that focused explicitly on pieces for which there was any gap in their ownership record during the years that Germany’s Nazi regime was appropriating works from Jews, either by forced sale or outright seizure.

 

Critics are wondering why it has taken the museums nearly 70 years to examine their collections in a systematic way after World War II.

 

“These objects are either thought or known to have been looted, confiscated or sold under duress,” said Siebe Weide, director of the Netherlands Museums Association. He said returning them is “both a moral obligation and one that we have taken upon ourselves.”

 

The tainted art involved 69 paintings, including French artist Henri Matisse’s 1921 “Odalisque” painting of a half-nude reclining woman, which hangs at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, one of the country’s top tourist draws.

 

All Dutch museums that hold art from before the war participated in the review. They have identified names of 20 definite looting victims and linked them with 61 of the works. The museums said they are in the process of contacting or seeking the heirs, including those of Jewish art dealer Albert Stern, the deceased owner of the Matisse.

 

The museum had purchased the Matisse painting from Lieuwe Bangma, Stern’s Dutch representative, in 1941. But Stern was its owner before the war and the Bangma family is known to have given aid to his granddaughters during the war.

 

The Dutch are not the first to undertake such a review in the wake of a 1998 international conference on looted art in Washington, D.C. that found previous attempts to return looted art didn’t go far enough. Attendees from 44 nations proclaimed the Washington Principles, declaring that “every effort should be made to publicize art that is found to have been confiscated by the Nazis” and have it returned.

 

Many American and British museums have already conducted thorough investigations that have led to the return of looted art, though nothing has been done on a nationwide basis. In Germany, a government-led, nationwide investigation is underway.

 

The main association of Dutch museums is also launching a website to help explain the existence of art of dubious provenance in their collections and assisting heirs in claims. Visit the website on the Internet here.

Click here for riginal article.

National art collection ordered to return two works to Jewish owners

original DutchNews article found here

Wednesday 20 July 2011

 

A government committee looking into the origins of works of art taken by the Nazis during World War II has recommended two sculptures in the national art collection be returned to the heirs of their original Jewish owners.

 

The national Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has been ordered to return a bronze statue of Hercules to the heirs of the German art trading couple Jakob and Rosa Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer had been forced to sell the statue at auction by the Nazis in 1935 when his business was liquidated.

 

It was donated to the Rijksmuseum three years later.

Train

 

The Catharijne convent museum in Utrecht has also been told to return a 15th century wooden Pieta to its rightful Jewish owners.

 

Banker and art collector Fritz Gutmann gave the carving to an art dealership in Paris for safekeeping in 1939. There, the object was seized by the Germans, after which it became part of Hermann Göring’s art collection.

 

In 1945 it was found on a train along with other works of art by American soldiers and ended up as part of the Dutch national art collection.

 

Culture minister Halbe Zijlstra has accepted the committee’s recommendations.

 

© DutchNews.nl

 

 

 

Why Anne Frank’s tree stood for so much

See the original article: Why Anne Frank’s tree stood for so much – CSMonitor.com

By Danna Harman, Correspondent / August 24, 2010

A day after the 170-year-old chestnut tree that stood outside the Anne Frank House was felled by stormy weather, I called Hans Westra, executive director of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, to talk about how and why a tree falling down can become such front-page news.

Anne Frank, the teenage Jewish girl who chronicled her experiences hiding in an attic in Nazi-occupied Holland, received international acclaim when her diary was discovered and later published after her death in a concentration camp. The chestnut tree outside her Amsterdam hideout was a frequent feature of her bleak picture of World War II in Western Europe.

“It’s a tree with a long history,” he begins. “All the other windows in the house were covered by curtains, and the attic was the only room out of which Anne Frank could properly see without fear of anyone seeing her. So, she would sit there and look out at the sun and the top of the chestnut tree. All her longing for freedom came to be tied up with that tree.”

I wanted to know: Do we need tangible aids to help us comprehend and remember the Holocaust? When Anne Frank’s chestnut tree falls, as has just happened, or, even more to the point, as the survivors pass away, is it then harder for new generations to connect with and understand the Holocaust?

“We are doing everything we can to keep this story alive,” says Mr. Westra. “For example, we have created a website where you can see the original tree and also go through the rooms of the house and into the secret annex. And we have also captured testimony from many of the witnesses to Anne Frank’s story on film.”

Westra marvels at the legacy of Frank’s experience over time. “What is remarkable actually is how much the younger generation remains interested in this history,” he says. “Our visitors are typically six or seven years younger than the visitors of any other museum in the city. And this is not a story that speaks only to Jews or Dutch. People come here from all over the world – from China, Argentina, Russia … everywhere.”

How, in general, does one explain the enduring power of the Anne Frank story? Why do so many people still come to Amsterdam to visit the house, and continue to read her diary?

“Anne Frank’s suffering stands as a symbol of a much larger story, and people want to connect to that,” responds Westra. “Moreover, she was a fantastic writer and her diary is a lovely story that people relate to. It’s a story of a young girl, having trouble with her mother, interested in boys, and wrestling with her future. It’s such a normal story, mixed up with the tragic story going on outside – and it has become a window on the Holocaust that people can identify with.”