Giving back the loot Nazi-era claims against UK museums: in 2000 the British government set up a panel to examine claims against UK museums by the heirs of collectors whose works of art had been looted during the Nazi era, Martin Bailey explains the background and examines the eight cases currently in process

Apollo, June, 2005 by Martin Bailey

The Rape of Europa, a drawing once attributed to Durer and now given to Hans Baldung, is a telling example of the changing attitudes of UK museums towards Nazi-era loot. In 1997 it formed part of Edmund Schilling's bequest to the British Museum. It was known that the work had until World War u been at the Lubomirski Museum, in what was then the Polish city of Lwow. However, no particular concern was expressed that the Baldung might be subject to a legal claim, since it had been restituted to the Lubomirski family in 1950 and subsequently sold.

Just a year after the Schilling bequest, UK national museums took up the spoliation issue. Had the bequest come in the late 1990s, The Rape of Europa would probably still have been accepted, since the British Museum remains convinced that the earlier restitution was correct. But its provenance would have been very carefully considered by both curators and trustees.

The case of the Lubomirski drawing illustrates the profound change which has taken place since the late 1990s. Until then, UK museums and galleries did not investigate too closely whether works of art might have been looted during World War II or in prewar Nazi Germany. But attitudes have changed enormously, and it is now fully accepted that provenance should be examined and that any claims should be carefully considered and, when appropriate, restitution should be made. (1)

So far no works have actually been returned by UK museums, although compensation has been paid in one case (for a painting in the Tate by Griffier, as will be discussed below) and a decision has been made to return another work (the Benevento Missal in the British Library).

Six other claims are at various stages of consideration. Each one is different, raising complex issues that are inevitably taking considerable time to resolve. Many of the cases have been passed to the government's Spoliation Advisory Panel, which was established in 2000. To mark the fifth anniversary of the panel, APOLLO is presenting the first detailed survey of Nazi-era claims against UK museums.

Wartime legacy

Why is it that claims are being dealt with sixty years after the end of the war? Some historical background is necessary. During World War II, millions of works of art were looted across Europe. After its defeat, Germany gave up its spoils, and in the zones occupied by the United States, Britain and France, works of art were normally returned to their pre-war country of origin. In the main, this process was completed by the late 1940s. The western powers assumed that the task was then finished and the question of spoliation was forgotten for decades.

The Soviet Union, however, saw the retention of looted art as a form of reparations, a view not accepted under international law. Train-loads of works of art were transported from Germany to Russia during the closing months of the war. Although many works belonging to countries in the Soviet bloc were returned in the 1950s, much of the loot was retained in the Soviet Union in secret museum repositories. It was not until the 1980s that information on the full extent of these holdings began to emerge. Subsequent attempts to seek the return of looted art have frequently been blocked by the Russian parliament.

In addition to art seized during the war by the Nazi and Soviet authorities, there was also widespread private looting by individual soldiers and civilians, on all sides of the conflict. Many of these works were later sold on, initially surreptitiously, and have now been dispersed to private and public collections across the world.

In the past decade or so, a number of factors have focussed international attention on the question of looted art. The discovery of secret repositories in the Soviet Union was one. The demise of the Cold War in the late 1980s, the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II in 1995 and the increasing strength of the European Union have all led to a growing feeling that wartime problems should be consigned to the history books. There was also a change in outlook, as spoliation was no longer viewed narrowly as wartime looting, but as also covering losses suffered by Jewish collectors in Germany after the Nazis seized power in 1933.

Together with a change in attitudes, much more information is now available about looted art. Further archival material has been made available. Computerised databases and the internet have made it easier to conduct research. Investigators, from both Jewish groups and commercial concerns, now offer professional assistance to track down lost works of art. By the late 1990s, claims for works looted during the 1933-45 period were surfacing in increasing numbers around the world.

Spoliation claims and UK museums

In the UK, the major initiative to tackle the question of spoliation came from the national museums, which are those funded by central government. In June 1998 the National Museum Directors' Conference (NMDC) set up a Spoliation Working Group, chaired by Sir Nicholas Serota. (2) In November 1998 the working group published a Statement of Principles and Proposed Actions. In practical terms, this programme has two main elements.