A state museum in Munich returned Nazi-looted paintings to Nazi officials rather than the rightful owners after World War II, according to charges from a British NGO. Researchers with the Commission for Looted Art in Europe found that after the war, the Bavarian State Painting Collections sold art stolen from Jewish families to prominent Nazis at deflated costs; sold Nazi-looted art to other German buyers for profit; and kept many stolen paintings in the museum.
Americans passed on the paintings to Munich in 1949. The Monuments Men, officers of the Roberts Commission whose mission was to rescue culture treasures, left it to the Bavarians to make sure every artwork found its way home. Their subsequent failure to do so was revealed when the suspicious provenance of a painting owned by the Xanten cathedral recently caught the eye of investigators. Its previous owner was the daughter of Hitler’s official photographer, they learned. He had purchased it in a sale to benefit the Nazi regime and his children bought it back from the Bavarian Painting Collections after the war—at a generous discount. The painting, researchers found, belonged to the collection of the Krause family until their departure from Vienna in 1938 under Nazi persecution, at which time all their possessions were seized.
The Times of Israel reported the findings of the investigation on June 27—
These revelations remind us of the nearness and reality of evil, and of the immense challenges facing attempts to reclaim Nazi-looted inheritance seventy years after the Holocaust. Advocates for restitution work with museums to return stolen art to its rightful heirs. And making an enemy of the museums, they would say, only hinders the difficult work of claiming heirs’ ownership, which requires that the art world come willingly into the light. But when the museums make themselves the enemies of restitution?
According to a report from The Art Newspaper, a June 28 statement from the Bavarian State Paintings Collection rejected allegations that it had resisted restituting stolen art and pledged a commitment to “fair and just solutions.” We can only hope that shedding light on the museum’s dark history will inspire enhanced cooperation.
