Stolen cultural property
Between 1933 and 1945, many cultural properties suffered looting, theft, forced sale, confiscation. These goods can be found nowadays in private persons or in public institutions. When identified in public museums and libraries, stolen property must be returned to its rightful owners.
The notion of plunder
The modes of spoliation
Cultural property that has been stolen
The books and the libraries
Musical instruments and sheet music
Works of art in public museums
Restitution of stolen works preserved in public institutions
The notion of «plunder»
In the strict sense, the term «spoliation» refers to transactions of legal appearance implemented under the legislation established by the Nazi regime or, in France, the Vichy regime.
In current use, the term “plunder” is generally used to refer to different processes: looting, theft, confiscation and sale by the Vichy authorities as part of the policies of “aryanisation” and provisional administration measures, forced sale, etc.; the term “plunder” includes all the terms of flights, confiscations, sales, etc.
Moreover, if the term «spoliation» initially applies to the dispossessed owner, a victim of spoliation, it now qualifies, in current use, the property itself, of which the victim of spoliation has been dispossessed.
The modes of spoliation
In common parlance, plunder means both:
- looting, theft: it can be committed by the German services from the first days of the Occupation (German embassy) or from September 1940 by the ERR (Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg - Staff of Reich Leader Alfred Rosenberg), then by the Dienststelle Westen (Western Service), administration responsible for looting in the occupied countries of Western Europe;
- the theft of legal appearance: these are procedures obeying the legislation and regulations put in place by the Germans or the Vichy regime; they are above all measures of provisional administration, called «aryanisation», which allowed the Vichy regime, through the Commissariat général aux questions juives, to deprive the Jews of their property;
- forced or constrained sales: these are sales that owners are forced to finance their survival, flight, exile, etc. Sales are often made at low prices.
Cultural property that has been stolen
Definition of cultural property
Cultural property may refer to various objects, beyond works of art: books, musical instruments, furniture, etc. (see definition of movable cultural property in this note from the CIVS).
Number of cultural property stolen
It is usually estimated that 100,000 works were stolen in France during the Occupation and at least 5 million books were stolen.
These numbers are based on the statements of the plundered after the war. Not all spoliated persons have reported the disappearance or forced sale of their property, and these figures should therefore be taken with caution; they are most certainly underestimated.
Location
Looted cultural property can now be found in various locations:
- in private individuals, since the time of spoliation or following a purchase on the market between spoliation and today;
- among professionals in the art market, generally as a result of a purchase on the market between plunder and today;
- in museums:
- following an acquisition, gift or bequest,
- following a deposit as a MNR work (National museums recovery); - in libraries:
- following an acquisition, gift or bequest,
- following an award in the early 1950s.
Many of the looted cultural property was also destroyed.
Status
Today, a cultural asset that has been looted may, before its complete provenance is discovered:
- be owned by a private person;
- be part of the public collections of a museum or library;
- be, in France, kept in a public museum under the status of MNR work (National museums recovery) or in a public library, after being selected in the early 1950s among the property found in Germany.
When identified in public museums and libraries, stolen property must be returned to its rightful owners: the rightful owners of the rightful owner.
The books and the libraries
The spoliation of books has long been forgotten. Since the publication in 2008 of Martine Poulain’s major book, Books looted, readings monitored, and the colloquium "Where are the libraries robbed by the Nazis? Tentative identification and restitution, a work in progress” in March 2017 on the subject, the question is again topical.
Dispossession of private libraries, associations or places of worship
The Nazi spoliations during the Second World War led to the seizure of libraries, modest or important, belonging in their vast majority to Jews, but also to German political emigrants, resistance fighters or political opponents (union members such as CGT, political leaders, PCF members, etc.). They also targeted libraries of religious institutions, such as the Universal Israelite Alliance or the Rabbinic School, Masonic lodges and Slavic libraries, such as the Turgenev Library. Works of French institutions (Ministries of Finance, Interior, Foreign Affairs, Armies) were also seized.
The looting has therefore hit both private libraries and those of associations, institutions or places of worship. Millions of documents were seized, sometimes also by the administrations of the Vichy regime.
Recovery of books and documents
The books and documents seized by the Germans were collected in sorting centres, then grouped by theme or preciousness and sent to various places in Germany, for the purpose of creating or enriching libraries of Nazi organizations. From the end of 1942, Allied bombing led the Nazis to evacuate many of these works to the East. The Red Army systematically seized them during its victorious advance and sent them to Moscow. After the war, these dismembered libraries were sometimes dispersed again in the new Soviet empire. These dispersions have greatly complicated research and restitution.
An interdepartmental working group
A Collections Reporting Working Group, bringing together representatives from Higher Education and Culture ministries and libraries, was created in 2019 in order to have common guidelines for the description and identification of documents in catalogues. Some libraries have in their collections books of looted owners, whose entry circumstances are not identified: documents deposited directly after the war; acquired directly by the library, particularly in the antiquariat market; filed by their owners to escape seizure. Trademarks of spoliated owners may have been retained on the documents.
On the basis of the common services managed by the BnF, libraries are required to describe their holdings in the Catalogue collectif de France (CCFr) and to include in the title "documents spoliated during the Second World War".
Refunds to French institutions
The “Moscow Fund” refers to seven kilometers of archives seized in France during the Second World War by Nazi Germany, then by the Soviet armies, and kept in the USSR for nearly forty years. Their return and repatriation to France took place over several years, between 1991 and 1998.
For several years, the German libraries have been carrying out an important analysis of their collections, in which they have found and described many stolen documents. A online database lists over 31,000 brands of origin.
The Berlin Regional Central Library (Zentral- und Landesbibliothek, ZLB) has identified many books stolen in France from private individuals or from government libraries. A first restitution of books stolen in France in several ministries took place in 2017 ; other books were returned by the ZLB to French ministries in 2022, including the Ministry of Economy and Finance in May 2022. Germany has returned the July 15, 2022 five works that belonged to former minister Georges Mandel. They were kept by the Berlin State Library and the Dresden University Library.
Two works spoliated were also returned to the priory of Pontlevoy by the Technical Museum of Berlin in December 2021.
Musical instruments and sheet music
Like art objects and books, musical instruments were looted between 1933 and 1945.
During the Occupation in France, these disposals were carried out by theEinsatztab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, the Rosenberg organization (ERR). Within the ERR, the cell Sonderstab Musik (Music Commando) led by musicologist Herbert Gerigk and active in Paris between August 1940 and August 1944, is specifically dedicated to the looting of instruments, books on music and musical scores. The historian Willem de Vries devotes a detailed study to the functioning of Sonderstab Musik in Europe in his book Commando Musik. How the Nazis robbed musical Europe, published in 1996 (see Bibliography).
Between May 1942 and August 1944, the Möbel Aktion (the movable action) also intervenes to loot in Paris about 40,000 homes of Jewish families who fled or were deported. Once seized in these homes, the musical instruments are put in boxes and stored in France, and/ or transferred to Germany, in storage sites. The valuable instruments were intended for the Hohe Schule (University of Applied Sciences) in Berlin and Leipzig and ordinary instruments for German families affected by the Allied bombing.
During the Liberation, American soldiers discovered storage sites. They centralize and list the objects recovered in Collecting Points in Germany before repatriating them to France, where restitution to the victims begins from 1945, by various restitution services.
The spoliation of individuals and restitution
It is difficult to quantify all the musical instruments and other music-related objects seized by the Nazis. Some figures:
- Instruments of all types: 689 instruments from French territory are listed on their return to France by the restitution services. These are securities and ordinary instruments.
- Pianos: Archivist Caroline Piketty estimates that 8,000 pianos were reported missing by the Restitution Service in 1948. According to his estimates, one out of two spoliated people gets restitution of his piano after the war. These refunds are facilitated by the serial numbers associated with the pianos.
- String instruments: the files of the archives of the Department of Restitution of Stolen Property (AJ/38 in the National Archives) indicate that 161 stolen violins that have not left the territory and waiting to be found by their owner are appraised by a luthier in 1945. Most of these violins are then considered ordinary and unidentifiable. Only a handful of applicants have their violin returned.
Two cases of spoliation and restitution to individuals can be cited.
Some of the instruments stolen from the Polish harpsichordist Wanda Landowska (1879-1959) were returned to him in 1946.
Art collectors such as the Rothschild family are also among the spoliators. Part of the instrumental collection of the Viennese branch of the family was seized and transferred to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna until 1999, when they were restored.
The «aryanisation» of businesses
According to the current state of research, few shops of manufacturers and sellers of instruments, that is to say the factors and luthiers, have been victims of spoliation. Only 9 businesses of musical instruments, mainly piano makers, were «aryanised», out of at least 211 active businesses and registered in the trade directory in 1939, or 4.2% of the instrument businesses.
The work carried out by the Museum of Music on the spoliations and the research of provenance on its collections
In recent years, the Musée de la musique, within the Philharmonie de Paris, has contributed to research on the dispossession of musical instruments, notably through the following actions:
- treatment and a uploading of the archives from the instrumental invoice kept at the Museum, which gave rise to a case study (Shapreau, Laloue, Echard, 2019);
- the provenance research mission, which aims to document the ownership chains of instruments and bows in the museum’s instrumental collection acquired from 1933 and manufactured before 1945 (since October 2021). This mission set up a method of collecting information from the source adapted to the museum’s instrumental collection. Classified information of origin allows to exclude from a presumption of spoliation during the Nazi period part of the instruments of the collection;
- Integration into a network of researchers and the international symposium The spoliation of musical instruments in Europe during the period 1933-1945 » (7, 8 and 9 April 2022), which brought together a wide network of professionals related to musical life and scientific research.
Contact: musee@cite-musique.fr
Works of art in public museums
The works MNR are not part of public collections; although museums are only temporary holders, they have obligations mediation and valorisation.
In addition, certain works acquired or received as gifts and bequests, legally, by museums, and therefore integrated into public collections, may then be spoliated. These works are not yet identified and their number is therefore not known.
That is why all public institutions responsible for the conservation of collections must be interested in the origin of their goods and ensure that their origin is not problematic. The course of all cultural property created before 1945 and acquired between 1933 and today must be clarified, so as not to preserve works that, before their entry into public collections, could have been looted and never returned.
This concern, relatively new, animates today more and more museums, eager to shed light on the provenance of their collections. Several museums, national and territorial, have undertaken research to identify possible works of uncertain origin. Depending on the capacity of the institution, the size of the teams and the necessary expertise, museums and libraries conduct themselves or with the help of the Ministry of Culture, research centers or independent researchers, this long-term, indispensable work.
Restitution of stolen works preserved in public institutions
The restitution process depends on the status of the work, depending on whether it is a National Museums Recovery (MNR) work or a work in public collections.
For National Museums Recovery (MNR) works, which are not part of the public collections but are entrusted to the custody of the national museums, the restitution takes the form of an administrative decision.
For works in public collections – which are in the public domain and are therefore protected by the principles of inalienability and imprescriptibility – restitution can only be authorized by law.
For public library books, the methods of restitution depend on the nature of the fund to which they belong. A law is necessary only for books belonging to the heritage funds of public libraries, subject to the principle of inalienability and imprescriptibility.
Restitution of works National Museums Recovery (MNR)
The works MNR may be returned by decision of the Prime Minister on the recommendation of the CIVS or the Ministry of Culture.
On 1 January 2024, the number of MNR assets returned since 1950 was 172. In addition, 14 works brought back from Germany and returned before being inventoried as MNR or entrusted to the custody of the Museum of Art and History of Judaism. A total of 186 MNR and equivalent works restored since 1950.
Restitution of works from public collections
All works, including those of national museums and other public museums benefiting from the designation «Museums of France», included in the public collections by a voluntary act of acquisition, for a fee or free, falls within the public domain protected by the principles of legal status of imprescriptibility and inalienability, defined in Articles L. 451-3 and L. 451-5 of the French Heritage Code.
To be able to derogate from the legislative principle of inalienability, a law is necessary. It allows the removal from the public domain of a work that was found to have been spoliated before it entered the collections. This is a preliminary step to restitution.
Such a law was first adopted by Parliament in February 2022 to allow the removal from the public domain of fifteen paintings, drawings and sculpture, specifically designated in the text, for the purpose of their return or delivery to the beneficiaries of their owners.
This is the Law No. 2022-218 of 21 February 2022 relating to the return or surrender of certain cultural property to the rightsholders of its owners who are victims of anti-Semitic persecution. It authorizes the restitution or delivery of 14 works from the national collections and a work of the city of Sannois.
In order to avoid the multiplication of these specific laws, a framework law, Law no. 2023-650 of 22 July 2023 on property stolen in the context of anti-Semitic persecution perpetrated between 1933 and 1945, was adopted definitively and unanimously by Parliament on 13 July 2023.
This law creates in the heritage code a derogation from the principle of inalienability of public collections; it establishes a framework allowing the removal from the public domain of stolen property belonging to public collections in order to return them to their legitimate owners, without passing new laws.
The decision to remove public collections (national or territorial) will now be taken by the public owner, after consulting the Commission for the compensation of victims of spoliation (CIVS), responsible for establishing the facts of spoliation.
- 22 July 2023, Law No. 2023-650 on the Restitution of Cultural Property Subject to Dispossession in the Context of Anti-Semitic Persecution between 1933 and 1945
- Lawmaking - 13 July 2023, final adoption of the law on the restitution of cultural property looted in the context of anti-Semitic persecution between 1933 and 1945
- Press release - 1er April 2022, restitution of a painting by Chagall, beneficiaries of David Cender
- Press release - 23 March 2022, restitution of a painting by Klimt, rights holders of Nora Stiasny
- Press release - 21 February 2022, adoption of the law on the restitution or surrender of certain cultural property
- Press release - Collection of preparatory parliamentary proceedings Law no. 2022-218 of 21 February 2022 on the restitution or surrender of certain cultural property to the rights holders of their owners who are victims of anti-Semitic persecution
- March 15, 2021, announcement of the launch of the G. Klimt restitution procedure, "Roses under the trees"
- Press release
- Press kit