Pub Date : 2021-08-01DOI: 10.1017/S0940739122000029
Bianca Gaudenzi, Lisa M. Niemeyer
In April 1942, former carpet manufacturer Felix Ganz wrote to his daughter Annemarie with a sketch of their new home. After their business had been forcibly Aryanized and they were evicted from their family home in the spring of 1941, Felix and his wife Erna were coerced into moving to smaller and smaller quarters three times, until their deportation to Theresienstadt in the late summer of 1942. Both would be murdered at Auschwitz the following year. In his letter, Felix illustrated how they had furnished the one-room apartment with what was left of their furniture and artworks. Stripped of most of their cultural belongings – including Felix’s gramophone and record collection – the couple had attempted to keep the pieces of material culture most significant to them, such as a Persian lamp and a few family portraits. Theirs was not a prominent art collection but, rather, a brilliant exemplification of Wohnzimmerkunst – that “living room art” of more modest artistic quality that fulfilled a central social function for the upper middle-class milieus of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as illustrated by Emily Löffler in this issue.1 It was a visual and material marker of their social status, of their level of education, and also of their family as well as individual identities. Besides the evident economic intent of fascist plundering, it was precisely this sense of self and of belonging that the Nazis (and the Fascists) set out to annihilate.2 Ever since news of the “discovery” of the Gurlitt trove first broke in 2012, the restitution of cultural property has been on the crest of an apparently unstoppable wave. Besides the well-established provenance research into Jewish-owned cultural property, postcolonial restitution has increasingly become the epicenter of fierce disputes, as in the case of the contested Benin Bronzes or the repatriation of the Cape cross stone to Namibia. The public and scholarly disputes that have ensued reveal just how contested the field of looted art still is and how much art as a unique form of property engages the fantasy and interest of the public and academics alike. As a result, the restoration of material culture has now risen to one of the central facets of post-authoritarian justice, which historians have yet to analyze in more comprehensive terms. This collection of articles results from one central question that underpins our work as historians dealing with restitution matters: what role does research into fascist-looted art play in the bigger picture? How, if at all, does it enhance our knowledge of twentiethcentury history, and how does it contribute to our understanding of broader historical
{"title":"Between material culture and “living room art”: Historicizing the restitution of fascist-looted art","authors":"Bianca Gaudenzi, Lisa M. Niemeyer","doi":"10.1017/S0940739122000029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0940739122000029","url":null,"abstract":"In April 1942, former carpet manufacturer Felix Ganz wrote to his daughter Annemarie with a sketch of their new home. After their business had been forcibly Aryanized and they were evicted from their family home in the spring of 1941, Felix and his wife Erna were coerced into moving to smaller and smaller quarters three times, until their deportation to Theresienstadt in the late summer of 1942. Both would be murdered at Auschwitz the following year. In his letter, Felix illustrated how they had furnished the one-room apartment with what was left of their furniture and artworks. Stripped of most of their cultural belongings – including Felix’s gramophone and record collection – the couple had attempted to keep the pieces of material culture most significant to them, such as a Persian lamp and a few family portraits. Theirs was not a prominent art collection but, rather, a brilliant exemplification of Wohnzimmerkunst – that “living room art” of more modest artistic quality that fulfilled a central social function for the upper middle-class milieus of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as illustrated by Emily Löffler in this issue.1 It was a visual and material marker of their social status, of their level of education, and also of their family as well as individual identities. Besides the evident economic intent of fascist plundering, it was precisely this sense of self and of belonging that the Nazis (and the Fascists) set out to annihilate.2 Ever since news of the “discovery” of the Gurlitt trove first broke in 2012, the restitution of cultural property has been on the crest of an apparently unstoppable wave. Besides the well-established provenance research into Jewish-owned cultural property, postcolonial restitution has increasingly become the epicenter of fierce disputes, as in the case of the contested Benin Bronzes or the repatriation of the Cape cross stone to Namibia. The public and scholarly disputes that have ensued reveal just how contested the field of looted art still is and how much art as a unique form of property engages the fantasy and interest of the public and academics alike. As a result, the restoration of material culture has now risen to one of the central facets of post-authoritarian justice, which historians have yet to analyze in more comprehensive terms. This collection of articles results from one central question that underpins our work as historians dealing with restitution matters: what role does research into fascist-looted art play in the bigger picture? How, if at all, does it enhance our knowledge of twentiethcentury history, and how does it contribute to our understanding of broader historical","PeriodicalId":54155,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Property","volume":"28 1","pages":"333 - 341"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43764715","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-01DOI: 10.1017/S094073912100031X
Jennifer Gramer
Abstract Under the postwar American occupation of Germany, art produced by the Staffel der bildenden Künstler (German Combat Artist Unit) of Nazi Germany was sent to US military sites for storage under the direction of Captain Gordon Gilkey. Gilkey was head of the German War Art Project, the arm of the Historical Division of the US army tasked with confiscating German “propaganda and war art.” This art, considered a dangerous instrument of Nazi revival, was not protected by laws prohibiting art looting. Yet American officers were sympathetic to many of the paintings created by combat artists, and the German combat artists themselves were torn about their roles in Nazism, perceiving themselves as either victims or survivors merely attempting to make a living. This article traces the history of this artwork from its seizure in postwar Germany through its internment in the United States up to later attempts in the 1950s and 1980s to restitute the works to their creators.
摘要在战后美国占领德国期间，纳粹德国的Staffel der bildenden Künstler（德国战斗艺术家部队）制作的艺术品在Gordon Gilkey上尉的指导下被送往美国军事基地存放。吉尔基是德国战争艺术项目的负责人，该项目是美国陆军历史部的一个部门，负责没收德国的“宣传和战争艺术”。这种艺术被认为是纳粹复兴的危险工具，不受禁止掠夺艺术的法律保护。然而，美国军官对战斗艺术家创作的许多画作表示同情，而德国战斗艺术家自己也对自己在纳粹主义中的角色感到困惑，认为自己要么是受害者，要么是幸存者，只是为了谋生。本文追溯了这件艺术品的历史，从战后德国被扣押到美国被拘留，再到20世纪50年代和80年代试图将作品归还给创作者。
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Pub Date : 2021-08-01DOI: 10.1017/s0940739122000066
Ines Schlenker
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Pub Date : 2021-08-01DOI: 10.1017/S094073912100028X
Ines Schlenker
Abstract When, the day after the Anschluss, the Viennese aristocrat Henriette von Motesiczky and her daughter, the painter Marie-Louise von Motesiczky, fled Vienna, they left behind an “old German” painting known as Knight and Devil. In 2016, by now identified as part of an early sixteenth-century altarpiece by the Master of St Christopher with the Devil and entitled St Christopher Meeting the Devil, the painting entered the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. It was donated by the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust in memory of its former owner Karl von Motesiczky, Marie-Louise’s brother, who had perished in Auschwitz. This article, based on detailed archival research, traces the history of St Christopher Meeting the Devil after 1938. The painting, forcefully taken from its owner, made its way through the National Socialist art-looting operation, encountering some of its main protagonists in the process. Sold at auction in 1943, it ended up at the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen in Munich from where, in 1950, it was restituted to the surviving members of the Motesiczky family, now living in England. In an exemplary way, the fate of St Christopher Meeting the Devil throws a light on the workings of the National Socialist looting system and the steps that the Allied Forces undertook after the war to rectify the crimes they uncovered. It also highlights the problems that gaps in the knowledge of an artwork’s provenance can cause in the attempt to reconstruct cases of expropriation and emphasizes the role goodwill plays in reaching fair solutions.
摘要当维也纳贵族Henriette von Motesiczky和她的女儿、画家Marie Louise von Motesiczky逃离维也纳的第二天，他们留下了一幅名为《骑士与魔鬼》的“老德国”画作。2016年，这幅画被认定为16世纪初圣克里斯托弗与魔鬼大师的祭坛画的一部分，名为《圣克里斯托弗遇见魔鬼》，被剑桥菲茨威廉博物馆收藏。它是由玛丽·路易丝·冯·莫特西茨基慈善信托基金会捐赠的，以纪念在奥斯威辛遇难的玛丽·路易丝的哥哥、前主人卡尔·冯·莫特西茨基。本文在详细档案研究的基础上，追溯了1938年后圣克里斯托弗与魔鬼相遇的历史。这幅画被强行从主人手中夺走，在国家社会主义艺术掠夺行动中遭遇了一些主要主人公。它于1943年拍卖，最终被存放在慕尼黑的Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen，1950年，它被归还给了现居英国的Motesiczky家族的幸存成员。以一种堪称典范的方式，圣克里斯托弗与魔鬼相遇的命运揭示了国家社会主义抢劫制度的运作，以及盟军在战后为纠正他们揭露的罪行而采取的措施。它还强调了在试图重建征用案件时，对艺术品出处的了解差距可能会造成的问题，并强调了善意在达成公平解决方案方面所起的作用。
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Pub Date : 2021-08-01DOI: 10.1017/S0940739121000333
M. Cleary
Abstract Born in Vienna in 1906 to a wealthy, assimilated Jewish family, the painter Marie-Louise von Motesiczky enjoyed a lively social life among the prominent figures of intellectual and cultural Vienna in the closing years of the Habsburg dynasty. She studied at art schools in Vienna, Paris, and the Netherlands, including with German painter Max Beckmann in Frankfurt. The Nazi rise to power cut short Marie-Louise Motesiczky’s career in Central Europe. She fled Vienna for permanent refuge in England. Like her mentor, Beckmann and her contemporary and fellow émigré artist, Oskar Kokoschka, Motesiczky considered the artistic practice of the self-portrait an occasion for self-questioning, self-affirmation, and self-discovery. Unlike her mentors, from early in her career, Motesiczky’s self-portraits had to negotiate the representation of a female subject. This article will investigate the ways in which Motesiczky’s emigration compelled her to reexamine the gendered parameters of the self-portrait and how that reassessment manifests itself specifically in regard to her engagement with the spectatorial gaze. Her position as an émigré artist will not be analyzed as a burden to be overcome but, rather, as the impetus for reexamining techniques and strategies of female self-portraiture.
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Pub Date : 2021-08-01DOI: 10.1017/s0940739121000369
Ulrike Schmiegelt-Rietig
Abstract The collection of liturgical objects of the Pechory Monastery close to the city of Pskov on Lake Peipus was deployed as a repository in Germany by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg during World War II. After the war, it was not subject to intergovernmental restitution but was stored away in the Wiesbaden Central Collecting Point and subsequently handed over to the newly founded Icon Museum of Recklinghausen before being restituted to the monastery almost two decades later. This article gives a description of the treasure itself and its history. It traces the odyssey of the treasure in Germany until its restitution and examines the different stages of its journey. The handling of this case in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) is symptomatic of the official German attitude toward National Socialist cultural loot and of the changing debates around this subject throughout the decades. These debates form a micro-history that reflects the FRG’s master narratives about World War II and its consequences, the division of Germany, and its changing, but questionable, relationship to the Soviet Union. In addition, it closely follows the political mainstream from the deep anti-Soviet attitudes of the postwar years to Chancellor Willy Brandt’s policy of détente in the 1970s, which made the restitution actually possible. The act in its entity can be seen as a typical example of Nazi Germany’s art looting in the occupied parts of Europe and of the particular conditions in Central and Eastern Europe as well as the after-war restitution policies of the Western allies and the FRG. It is nonetheless typical of the Soviet Union’s policy of denying restitutions later on, including immediate postwar restitutions as well as later acts such as the one involving the Pechory treasure, which has sometimes been repeated up to the present day.
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Pub Date : 2021-05-01DOI: 10.1017/s0940739121000370
E. Colston
2020 was a significant year for heritage issues. In the midst of (and, in some ways, precipitated by) a worldwide pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States laid bare the ongoing problem of systemic racism, which included renewed calls for the removal of monuments celebrating Confederate generals and other racist figures. Similar protests targeting monuments to White supremacy of all kinds soon spread worldwide. A statue of Edward Colston, whomade his fortune in the transatlantic slave trade, was thrown into the harbor of his home town of Bristol, England, and monuments to the Belgian King Leopold II, known for his brutal subjugation of the Congolese, were defaced in cities across Belgium. Following on the heels of the 2018 Sarr-Savoy report regarding the collection of African objects in French museums, these demonstrations increased momentum for the repatriation of such colonial possessions and forced a real reckoning with the colonialist and racist legacies of academic power structures, in general, and of anthropology, in particular, with its long history of collecting human remains for study, often to bolster racist views of human biology and evolution (as in the Morton cranial collection housed at the University of Pennsylvania Museum). In this context, it was thus particularly striking that a new book should be published aimed at introducing readers to the legal and ethical issues of repatriation, and the landmark 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), in particular, advancing the argument that repatriation is anti-science and represents a dangerous capitulation to non-Western religion.1 While this retrograde argument is not new and has been thoroughly refuted in both practice and academic writing over the past 30 years, its restatement in a new book ostensibly for teaching students about NAGPRA and published by what appeared to be a legitimate academic press, demanded a firm rebuttal, not least because in this age of Internet searches and fetishization of the “latest word,” there is a strong likelihood that, without a response, unknowing students might mistake this book for current academic consensus and good scholarship. As a result, I invited a series of established scholars to provide counterargument to the book as well as review current thinking on NAGPRA and repatriation (of human remains, in particular). The following articles are those comments, which are beingmade available through Open Access in the hope that they will be read widely.
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Pub Date : 2021-05-01DOI: 10.1017/S0940739121000229
S. Halcrow, A. Aranui, Stephanie Halmhofer, Annalisa Heppner, Norma Johnson, K. Killgrove, G. Schug
Abstract This commentary debunks the poor scholarship in Repatriation and Erasing the Past by Elizabeth Weiss and James Springer. We show that modern bioarchaeological practice with Indigenous remains places ethics, partnership, and collaboration at the fore and that the authors’ misconstructed dichotomous fallacy between “objective science” and Indigenous knowledge and repatriation hinders the very argument they are espousing. We demonstrate that bioarchaeology, when conducted in collaboration with stakeholders, enriches research, with concepts and methodologies brought forward to address common questions, and builds a richer historical and archaeological context. As anthropologists, we need to acknowledge anti-Indigenous (and anti-Black) ideology and the insidious trauma and civil rights violations that have been afflicted and re-afflicted through Indigenous remains being illegally or unethically obtained, curated, transferred, and used for research and teaching in museums and universities. If we could go so far as to say that anything good has come out of this book, it has been the stimulation in countering these beliefs and developing and strengthening ethical approaches and standards in our field.
{"title":"Moving beyond Weiss and Springer’s Repatriation and Erasing the Past: Indigenous values, relationships, and research","authors":"S. Halcrow, A. Aranui, Stephanie Halmhofer, Annalisa Heppner, Norma Johnson, K. Killgrove, G. Schug","doi":"10.1017/S0940739121000229","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0940739121000229","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This commentary debunks the poor scholarship in Repatriation and Erasing the Past by Elizabeth Weiss and James Springer. We show that modern bioarchaeological practice with Indigenous remains places ethics, partnership, and collaboration at the fore and that the authors’ misconstructed dichotomous fallacy between “objective science” and Indigenous knowledge and repatriation hinders the very argument they are espousing. We demonstrate that bioarchaeology, when conducted in collaboration with stakeholders, enriches research, with concepts and methodologies brought forward to address common questions, and builds a richer historical and archaeological context. As anthropologists, we need to acknowledge anti-Indigenous (and anti-Black) ideology and the insidious trauma and civil rights violations that have been afflicted and re-afflicted through Indigenous remains being illegally or unethically obtained, curated, transferred, and used for research and teaching in museums and universities. If we could go so far as to say that anything good has come out of this book, it has been the stimulation in countering these beliefs and developing and strengthening ethical approaches and standards in our field.","PeriodicalId":54155,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Property","volume":"28 1","pages":"211 - 220"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48681347","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-01DOI: 10.1017/S0940739121000242
W. Teeter, D. Martinez, Dorothy T Lippert
Abstract The hope has long been that the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) would finally bring ancestors and their cultural items home to their communities to be reconnected and rest. However, 30 years later, museums and academics still fear losing control of research and access in their intellectual pursuits. Far from true, museums have benefited in working with tribes in telling stories around their cultural history, present and future. This article shares experiences over the authors’ careers and counters the alarmist calls to arms against compliance with NAGPRA.
{"title":"Creating a new future: Redeveloping the tribal-museum relationship in the time of NAGPRA","authors":"W. Teeter, D. Martinez, Dorothy T Lippert","doi":"10.1017/S0940739121000242","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0940739121000242","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The hope has long been that the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) would finally bring ancestors and their cultural items home to their communities to be reconnected and rest. However, 30 years later, museums and academics still fear losing control of research and access in their intellectual pursuits. Far from true, museums have benefited in working with tribes in telling stories around their cultural history, present and future. This article shares experiences over the authors’ careers and counters the alarmist calls to arms against compliance with NAGPRA.","PeriodicalId":54155,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Property","volume":"28 1","pages":"201 - 209"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46509694","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-01DOI: 10.1017/s0940739121000114
Adnan Almohamad
Abstract The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) occupied the city of Manbij and its countryside from 23 January 2014 until 12 August 2016. During this period, the region suffered greatly as ISIS monopolized control and brutally imposed its ideology. Fierce battles were fought for the control of oil wells, bakeries, mills, dams, and power stations, all of which were sources of revenue. Antiquities were soon recognized as another potential income source. This article demonstrates the ways in which ISIS began to administer and facilitate the looting of antiquities through the Diwan Al-Rikaz. Within this diwan, ISIS established the Qasmu Al-Athar, which was specifically responsible for looting antiquities. Based on interviews conducted in 2015 and primary documents, this article studies the specific ways in which ISIS facilitated the quarrying and looting of antiquities in Manbij and the rich archaeological sites of its countryside. Further, by examining the damage at a previously undocumented archaeological site, Meshrefet Anz, the looting of antiquities under the direct supervision of the Diwan Al-Rikaz is studied. Using documentary evidence including ISIS’s internal documentation as well as photographs collected by the author between 2014 and 2016, the article demonstrates the methods used by ISIS, reveals its financial motivations, and bears witness to the damage done at specific Syrian heritage sites.
摘要2014年1月23日至2016年8月12日，伊拉克和叙利亚伊斯兰国占领了曼比季市及其乡村。在此期间，由于ISIS垄断控制并残酷地强加其意识形态，该地区遭受了巨大损失。争夺油井、面包店、工厂、水坝和发电站的控制权进行了激烈的战斗，所有这些都是收入来源。文物很快被认为是另一个潜在的收入来源。这篇文章展示了ISIS开始管理和促进通过Diwan Al Rikaz掠夺文物的方式。在这个地区，伊斯兰国成立了Qasmu Al Athar，专门负责掠夺文物。根据2015年进行的采访和主要文件，本文研究了ISIS为曼比季及其乡村丰富的考古遗址的采石和掠夺提供便利的具体方式。此外，通过检查之前未记录的考古遗址Meshrefet Anz的损坏情况，研究了在Diwan Al Rikaz的直接监督下掠夺文物的行为。文章利用包括ISIS内部文件在内的文件证据以及作者在2014年至2016年间收集的照片，展示了ISIS使用的方法，揭示了其财务动机，并见证了叙利亚特定遗产地遭受的破坏。
{"title":"The destruction and looting of cultural heritage sites by ISIS in Syria: The case of Manbij and its countryside","authors":"Adnan Almohamad","doi":"10.1017/s0940739121000114","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0940739121000114","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) occupied the city of Manbij and its countryside from 23 January 2014 until 12 August 2016. During this period, the region suffered greatly as ISIS monopolized control and brutally imposed its ideology. Fierce battles were fought for the control of oil wells, bakeries, mills, dams, and power stations, all of which were sources of revenue. Antiquities were soon recognized as another potential income source. This article demonstrates the ways in which ISIS began to administer and facilitate the looting of antiquities through the Diwan Al-Rikaz. Within this diwan, ISIS established the Qasmu Al-Athar, which was specifically responsible for looting antiquities. Based on interviews conducted in 2015 and primary documents, this article studies the specific ways in which ISIS facilitated the quarrying and looting of antiquities in Manbij and the rich archaeological sites of its countryside. Further, by examining the damage at a previously undocumented archaeological site, Meshrefet Anz, the looting of antiquities under the direct supervision of the Diwan Al-Rikaz is studied. Using documentary evidence including ISIS’s internal documentation as well as photographs collected by the author between 2014 and 2016, the article demonstrates the methods used by ISIS, reveals its financial motivations, and bears witness to the damage done at specific Syrian heritage sites.","PeriodicalId":54155,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Property","volume":"28 1","pages":"221 - 260"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48880229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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