Asset Spoliation Inventory (RBS)
Publication History
Description of the printed work
Introduction to digitization
Instructions for use
Annotated volumes
Accessing the Directory
Publication History
The Directory of Stolen Property in France during the War 1939-1945 is published between 1947 and 1949 by the Central Bureau of Restitutions (BCR).
The BCR, located in Berlin, centralised for the French part the declarations of dispossession made to the Office for Private Property and Interests (OBIP) and processed the files.
Where the application concerned a property not located, the BCR was intended to collect all relevant information about it, whether from persons who were dispossessed-documents created by the German administration during the spoliation or any other source of information, for example the notes collected by Rose Valland during the passage of the works Palm game.
In the autumn of 1947, the BCR decided to publish this directory consisting of the information collected. This monumental work includes eight volumes, six supplements (including five independent) and an index of painters. Several translations, in German, English and Russian, are planned, but finally only the introductions and the presentation of the chapters are translated into these different languages.
The purpose of the work is twofold. On the one hand, to disseminate information on objects and works still in demand, for which a photograph is sometimes reproduced; on the other hand, to establish a repertoire of objects or works that cannot be traded because of the illegal possession of their holder. To this end, the RBS has been widely distributed in many European countries and in the United States, especially among the major merchants.
The RBS is not a complete catalogue of works stolen in France by the Occupation army, but a directory of objects claimed and not yet returned at the time of publication. For this reason, the works of some of the large, stolen collections are not included, such as those of the David-Weill family, as they had already been returned.
Description of the printed work
Descriptive Statements:
Each cited object has the following entries on the same line:
- publication order number (sometimes preceded by an asterisk (*) indicating the works considered important);
- OBIP file number (this number may correspond to several lines, if the request for restitution includes several works);
- name of the artist;
- description of the object with sometimes the indication of the technique and the presence of a photo in the publication;
- dimensions;
- owner’s name.
Special mention:
In some cases, “C.R.A. ” appears in the “owner” column. The property could be known by the research of the Artistic Recovery Commission (CRA) as exported to Germany or more widely to the territory of the Reich (but not necessarily in connection with a spoliation)This includes export licences that have been copied to the CRA (for example, a sale by a merchant or an intermediary who usually works with the Germans). The property could also be known because it was identified in the Goering collection as coming from France. The mention does not therefore start from a complaint of an individual but from the knowledge that the CRA has, by all means at its disposal, of the transfer of a work from France to Germany. Therefore, there is no PBIT number for these entries.
Example :
Volume IV, 1st Supplement to Volumes II, III, IV
Sometimes the merchant’s name is even written in plain text in place of «C.R.A. », for example «Cailleux» or «Jansen», although the purpose was not to return the works to these well-spotted merchants for their trade with the enemy.
Reliability of mentions
The RBS is a monumental publication of more than 6,000 pages which, because of the necessary speed of the work of the BCR and the way in which the cards were compiled, could not be free from mistakes, typos and imperfections. In addition, for the sake of precision, supplements were constantly added, either at the end of the volume itself, or as an additional volume relating to one or more previous volumes. The result is a rather complex mode of use which requires a search at several points in the publication.
It is not a question here of identifying all the imperfections or errors of the Directory; schematically, these are of several orders:
1 - errors in the identification, dating or attribution of works due to the information provided (or at least errors recognized as such according to contemporary scholarship); these are the most numerous.
Examples:
— Volume II, p. 110, No. 1974, Painting, Virgin to the sitting child in an architectural setting. According to the statement received from Mr. Gutmann, the painting was published as a work of Fra Bartolomeo. The present photograph makes it possible to discard this attribution and to bring the panel closer to the work of Gérard David, notably by comparison with the Rest during the flight to Egypt, a work of which we know two versions with variants (Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado; New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art) where the group of the Virgin and the Child is no longer in front of an architectural background, but in a landscape.
— Volume IV, p. 205, No. 2767, England, Dish of the Royal Manufacture, […with … ] the inscription Copeland late Spode. Earthenware at the end of the 16th century. Despite the indicated date, it cannot be earlier than the 19th century (more precisely after 1847). The mention of this object is repeated in the supplement of volume IV, n° 3281, with his photograph.
2 - confusion of files between persons of the same surname, carried out by the restitution services; they are quite rare.
Example :
Volume II, p. 34, no. *225, Nicolas Maes, Portrait of the Prince of Orange. This painting is declared to belong to Mr. Gilbert Kahn, whose claim bears no. OBIP 30.350, whereas it was in fact a statement made by a homonym, one of the two successors of the Fernand Andrémont estate, whose claim should therefore have been referred to as OBIP 30.959.
3 - typographical typos or imperfections of the work itself.
Example:
Volume IV, p. 226, No. 3281, England, Dish of the Royal Manufacture, […with … ] the inscription Copeland late Spode. Earthenware late 16th century. This object, already mentioned in Volume IV, p. 205, No. 2767, is added in Chapter “Additional information to Volumes II, III, IV” for the reproduction of the photograph, with a new number. But this photograph bears number 1365, which corresponds to a record describing a silver planter.
Introduction to digitization
The digitization, carried out according to one of the copies kept in the National Archives, was double, one photographic and the other by optical character recognition. Thus, the layout of the original work has been preserved, but it is now possible to make interrogations by fields.
Despite the care taken in the quality of the source images, the success rate of the automatic recognition oscillates between 95% and 99.5%. It could not be perfect, because of the material nature of the work itself, punctuation errors, weaknesses or printing errors, paper imperfection…
The 14 volumes of the Directory have been digitized, including those not related to works of art, such as industrial machinery, transport equipment or securities. For these volumes, the description is organized differently, but contains the elements allowing the identification of the reference and the legitimate owner.
Instructions for use
The RBS volumes are downloadable in pdf format on this page (see below, Accessing the Directory).
When the document is opened, a menu offers direct access to the various chapters by bookmarks (text) or by displaying pages (thumbnails). In the taskbar, the magnifying glass icon opens the search window.
Search results are shown in bold. Information that follows the word interviewed, in thin, may have nothing to do with it.
Due to the fairly frequent use of quotation marks “ ” or the phrase “idem” for a heading identical to the previous line (same artist; same owner), the field of the second line cannot be recognized and is absent from the list of results.
It is therefore necessary to perform the search with each of the criteria of the same answer (artist’s name, owner’s surname, order number in the heading, OBIP number, etc.) to be sure to obtain all the possible answers.
Example:
Volume II, p. 25, the first applicant mentioned is Ms N. Bentley. The search function with the criterion «Bentley» refers to thirteen occurrences (it is preferable not to include first names, which can either be developed or reduced to the initial). All these occurrences contain OBIP 44.878. However, the search function with the criterion "44.878" refers to fourteen occurrences. The difference in result comes from Instruction Note 1020 on page 66, where the owner’s name is replaced by ditto ».
The difference may be much greater in some cases: one hundred and thirty-six occurrences «Wildenstein» in volume II but one hundred and sixty-seven occurrences of the OBIP number corresponding to the claim of Georges Wildenstein, number 32.129 (thus thirty-one recourse to « ditto ").
NB: For the query by OBIP number, it is important to respect the point separating the thousands: «43.423» and not «43423».
Annotated volumes
The RBS provides a directory of the works or objects to be restored, obviously on the date of publication of the work. Fortunately, this important restitution work continued after publication. This is why 3 annotated volumes containing the procedure status information are scanned. These are Volume II, Paintings, Sculpture Tapestries, Volume II, III & IV, Volume IV First Supplement and Volume II, III, IV, VII Third Supplement. It is thus possible to follow the evolution of procedures and refunds until 1965-1970.
For these three volumes, due to manuscript overload, the fidelity rate of character recognition is much less satisfactory and it is necessary to cross-check the searches with the corresponding blank copy.
References to works may be deleted in red or in blue.
— Redlines generally indicate that the work has been rendered; they are often completed with a capital “R” or “Rest.” or, more rarely, the whole word “Returned”. The precise date of the restitution is in principle mentioned; sometimes also the mention of the country where the work was found.
— Blue deletions refer to works not rendered on the date the annotation stops, indicated at the beginning of the volume. The vast majority of them concern works that have been spoliated within the framework of the"Action Meuble", for which there is in principle no information in the archives generated by the German administration. This does not mean that the plunder was in question, but that the French administration took note of the fruitless nature of the research. The closure of proceedings was pronounced by the Bundesamt für aüssere Restitutionen ” (Federal Office for Refunds), created on June 8, 1955, within the Federal Ministry of Finance, and not by the French services, which merely took note of it. This formality allowed the applicants to make a claim for compensation. Some indications may refer to such compensation, but this information has not been systematically reported.
Access to the Directory
NB: Due to the high computer weight of some volumes, it is normal that the download time is quite long, in proportion to the size of the files.
Blank volumes
- Volume I Industrial equipment, with a table of contents and an alphabetical index, as well as a supplement and a list of the main Establishments under the Ministry of Armaments and Tables of distinctive marks of machines stolen from these establishments
- 1st supplement to Volume I, Industrial equipment, with a table of contents and an alphabetical directory of machine types
- 2nd supplement to Volume I, Industrial equipment, with a table of contents and an alphabetical directory of machine types
- Volume II Paintings, tapestries, sculptures, with a table of contents, an alphabetical index of artists and an appendix; this volume includes watercolours and drawings
- Volume III Furniture, with a table of contents
- Volume IV Silverware, ceramics, precious objects, with a table of contents and an errata, as well as a [1st] supplement to Volumes II, III, IV, additional information to Volumes II, III, IV and an additive to the supplement to Volumes II, III, IV
- 2nd Supplement to Volumes II, III and IV, with a table of contents; despite its title, this volume also concerns paintings, drawings, tapestries, sculptures and furniture
- Volume V Transport equipment, with a table of contents and an alphabetical index, an annex and an errata
- Supplement to Volume V, Transport Equipment, with a table of contents
- Volume VI Securities, with a table of contents and a supplement
- volume VII Archives, manuscripts and rare books, with a table of contents
- 3rd Supplement to Volumes II, III, IV, VII, with a table of contents; this volume also includes paintings, drawings, tapestries, sculptures and furniture
- Volume VIII Jewellery, with a supplement
- general index painters whose works appear in the directories of the spoliated tables; the columns refer to Volume II (and the Annex in the same volume), Volume IV ([1st] Supplement and Addendum – but not to the “Additional Information” section, which relates to only two tables), the 2nd Supplement to Volumes II, III, IV, and the 3rd Supplement to Volumes II, III, IV, VII.
Annotated volumes
- Volume II Paintings, tapestries, sculptures, with a table of contents, an alphabetical index of artists and an appendix; this volume includes watercolours and drawings
- 1st Supplement to Volumes II, III & IV, attached to Volume IV
- 3rd Supplement to Volumes II, III, IV, VII, with a table of contents; this volume also includes paintings, drawings, tapestries, sculptures and furniture
New annotated volume added in 2021
This volume comes from German Federal Archives. This is the Supplement to the RBS described on the site as follows: «The French Government has deposited an additional volume in the «Directory» at the time of the new inscription in accordance with the fifth part of the transitional treaty. Handwritten copy: applications processed by the Federal Office for External Refunds are marked and withdrawn.”
This document Ergänzung des Verzeichnisses "Directory of Assets Dispossessed in France during the War 1939-1945". - Gemälde, Tapisserien und Skulpturen ("Complement")» has abbreviations in German which are explained as follows:
"Z" for "Zurückgezogen" (withdrawn);
"E" for "Eingestellt" (closed procedure);
"A" for "Antrag abgelehnt" (rejection).