Germany has decided to create a kind of Nazi Spoliation Office. From the AP:
BERLIN (AP) — A new office within Germany’s Institute for Museum Research is opening in January to help identify and research art stolen by the Nazis, Germany’s culture minister said Wednesday.
The office, which comes under the State Museums of Berlin, will help museums, libraries and archives identify items that were taken from their rightful owners during the Nazi period, Culture Minister Bernd Neumann said.
“I expect from this an important push in Germany in the clarifying of restitution questions,” he said.
Neumann founded a working group to look into how to deal with restitution issues, after Berlin sparked controversy with a decision last year to return Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s “Berlin Street Scene” to the heirs of a Jewish collector who said the Nazis forced the family to sell it in the 1930s.
Some art experts questioned whether the expressionist work was sold under duress and whether its return was legal.
With the new office, which has a $1.47 million annual budget, Neumann said he hoped the restitution process would be better coordinated and more transparent.
This appears to be a good idea, and perhaps will preclude the need for private legal disputes when, for example, these works are displayed abroad as is the case with Schiele’s Portrait of Wally. Will this commission help to return works to claimants? Offer settlements? Or, will it instead merely warn German institutions that certain objects are suspect and should not be loaned abroad?
