New York Governor Kathy Hochul has signed into law a new requirement requiring museums to indicate publicly any object in their collection that was displaced by the Nazis as part of what Congress has rightly called the largest organized theft of art in human history. The significance of this new rule is clear: New York is the center of the art world, and its museums hold a unique place of prominence. As readers of this blog or of my book A Tragic Fate-Law and Ethics in the Battle Over Nazi-Looted Art know, my view has long been that American museums vary widely in their candor and proactive approach to the issue of Nazi-looted art in their collections. Many have shown admirable initiative in probing their collections, while others have shown a regrettable passivity in waiting to receive and then deflect claims. Whether this bill will move the needle on that balance is the question. Transparency and disclosure have been the defining goals of the modern restitution era. This new law serves many of those ideals, but some unintended consequences may follow.
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Topics:
Metropolitan Museum of Art,
American Alliance of Museums,
Nazi-looted art,
Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act,
Washington Conference on Holocaust Era Assets,
Supreme Court,
Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art,
AAM,
Museum of Modern Art,
Nuremberg race laws,
Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Stolen Ar,
Association of Art Museum Directors,
Washington Department of Labor and Industries,
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
Museum of Fine Arts Boston,
AAMD,
Military Government Law 59,
State Department,
Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act,
HEAR Act,
A Tragic Fate,
Law and Ethics in the Battle Over Nazi-Looted Art,
Governor Kathy Hochul,
Reich Citizenship Law,
Animal House,
Kevin Bacon
(WASHINGTON-October 22, 2020) The heirs to the Jewish art dealers who were forced to sell the medieval devotional art collection known as the Welfenschatz (in English, the Guelph Treasure) to agents of Hermann Goering in 1935 filed their brief today in the Supreme Court of the United States. It can be viewed at this link. The Supreme Court is set to hear argument on December 7, 2020, on whether the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) and its “takings clause” create jurisdiction over the heirs’ claims for restitution of the Welfenschatz—as all reviewing courts so far have held. The Welfenschatz is held by the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (in English, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation).
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Topics:
Third Reich,
Guelph Treasure,
Gestapo,
Z.M. Hackenbroch,
Prussia,
Germany,
Nazi-looted art,
Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act,
Markus Stoetzel,
Supreme Court,
Mel Urbach,
SPK,
Nuremberg race laws,
Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz,
Hermann Goering,
FSIA,
NS Raubkunst,
Sullivan & Worcester LLP,
J.S. Goldschmidt,
Gerald Stiebel,
Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation,
Adolf Hitler,
Nicholas M. O'Donnell,
Alan Philipp,
Welfenschatz,
I. Rosenbaum,
Paul Körner,
Wannsee Conference,
Jed Leiber,
House of Brunswick (Braunschweig)-Lüneberg,
Emily Haber,
Wilhelm Stuckart,
Final Solution
Germany Runs Counter to 20 Years of International Commitments
As readers know, my clients Alan Philipp and Gerald Stiebel sued the Federal Republic of Germany and the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (SPK) in February for restitution of the Guelph Treasure (or Welfenschatz as it is known in Germany), assisted by my co-counsel Mel Urbach, Esq. and Markus Stötzel of Marburg, Germany. As my co-counsel speak to an event tonight hosted by Congresswoman Grace Meng on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, an event inextricable to the persecution of Jews in Europe, Germany’s response to the Complaint advances a stunning revisionism about the Holocaust and the international commitments that Germany has made. While paying lip service to the seriousness of Jewish suffering, the papers filed in court are nothing less than an attempt to move the goalposts to exempt a historical period from responsibility about which there can be no serious debate. Independent condemnation was not far behind the filing.
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Topics:
Guelph Treasure,
Grace Meng,
Simon Wiesenthal Center,
Shoah,
Adolph von Menzel,
Hans Sachs,
Washington Principles on Nazi-Looted Art,
1943 London Inter-Allied Declaration,
Dachau,
Holocaust,
Mel Urbach,
SPK,
George Eduard Behrens,
Nuremberg race laws,
Holocaust revisionism,
Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz,
Marburg,
Restitution,
Los Angeles,
Gerald Stiebel,
World War II,
Markus Stötzel,
Saemy Rosenberg,
Deutsches Historisches Museum,
Reichskristallnacht,
Isaac Rosenbaum,
Lucie Ruth Hackenbroch,
Federal Republic of Germany,
Zacharias Hackenbroch,
Pariser Wochentag,
Rabbi Abraham Cooper,
Paris Weekday,
Alan Philipp,
Welfenschatz,
Military Government Law 59,
Frankfurt
