The date was not chosen by chance. It corresponds to Yom HaShoah, the memorial day for the victims of the Shoah and the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto. In France, nearly 76,000 Jews were deported between 1942 and 1944. It is therefore a very symbolic date, that of April 18, which was chosen to restore three works of the fifteenth century plundered during the Nazi period: two paintings of the school of Padua and the school of Florence and a sculpture attributed to the entourage of Gil de Siloé.
They are part of the 60,000 works known as MNR (National Museums Recovery) recovered in Germany or in the territories controlled by the Third Reich at the end of the Second World War and returned to France. A majority (45,000) were returned to their owners at the end of the conflict. Of the remaining 15,000, 2,200 were placed in the custody of the national museums, particularly for their artistic interest, but not all of them are necessarily looted.
These two restitution of three works were made possible thanks to the Mission of search and restitution of plundered cultural property between 1933 and 1945 created in 2019 within the Ministry of Culture. It is responsible for coordinating public policy on the research and restitution of stolen cultural property related to museums and libraries, and for raising awareness among cultural professionals and the public on this subject. Behind these paintings and this sculpture, it is also the history of collectors of the time that is highlighted: that of the Saulmann couple and Harry Fuld Junior.
Ernst and Agathe Saulmann, a couple of dispossessed collectors
On one side, a painting representing the siege of Carthage by the Roman troops of Scipion Émilien with very singular rectangular dimensions that allowed to identify this painting to a cassone Italian, a panel adorning a large chest that it was customary to offer at weddings during the Renaissance. On the other, an iconography of the Paduan school that presents the scene of the Virgin’s breastfeeding to her child. These two works have been identified as coming from the collection of Ernst and Agathe Saulmann, a couple of Jewish collectors living in the German state of Baden-Württemberg.
Ernst Saulmann was the managing partner of a family cotton mechanical weaving plant. Little by little, the couple formed an important collection of antiques, sculptures, paintings, tapestries, paintings of the nineteenth century as well as furniture and art objects intended to decorate their German residence and their villa in Florence. In 1935, the couple decided to flee Germany in the face of anti-Semitic persecution and went into exile in Florence. Their art collection was then confiscated by the German authorities and sold at five auctions. The Saulmanns receive nothing of the proceeds of these sales. After the war, the couple moved to Paris where Ernst died in 1946, then Agathe in 1951 in Baden-Baden.
However, the two works returned were not sold during these five sales in 1936. They were part of a group of 44 works exported to Florence, then to Nice where the couple took refuge during the war. « Only four of these works have been recovered including these two MNR returned to the heirs of my half-sister », explains Felix de Marez Oyens, the legal successor to Nina’s half-brother, the daughter Agathe had with her first husband. This corpus was documented between 1928 and 1939 through photographs and lists describing the objects in detail. The research made it possible to go back in time and find traces of works in the early 1940s at Parisian and German art dealers before landing at the Berchtesgaden depot. They were sent back to France in October 1946, where they became “Musées nationaux récupération”. Before they were returned, they were deposited with the museum of Picardie in Amiens and at Angers Museum of Fine Arts.
It was following the request for restitution submitted by the rights holders of Ernst and Agathe Saulmann that research was carried out to arrive at this rendering. « I feel a sincere gratitude to the Mission for Research and Restitution for all its valuable research », stresses Felix de Marez Oyens.
Harry Fuld Junior, deceased heir to his collection
The sculpture Virgin of mercy – or Pietà -, close to the entourage of Gil De Siloé because of the concordance of physical types, the arrangement of drapes and the treatment of polychromy, was entrusted to the Louvre Museum. It was previously owned by Harry Fuld Senior, a Frankfurt am Main-based phone rental contractor. Passionate about art and collector, he possessed oriental objects, medieval sculptures as well as works by Matisse, Derain and Chagall. He died in 1932 and bequeathed this vast collection to his son Harry Fuld Junior.
When the Nazis came to power, the Fuld group was «Aryanised» and Harry Fuld Junior lost his shares in the family business. He decided to emigrate to England in 1937 but was unable to bring his works of art, which he had cashed to be sent to London. They were confiscated and auctioned off in January 1943 by an unknown buyer. It was not until 2021 and the publication of a thesis by Nadine Bauer to identify him: it was Maria Almas-Dietrich had acquired the sculpture and put it in two crates which she then had transported to Bavaria together with two other crates of the merchant Gustav Rochlitz. In 1944, the latter had his cases taken back, but at the same time removed those of Maria Almas-Dietrich. All were seized by the Allies at the end of the war and wrongly repatriated to France in June 1947.
Maria Almas-Dietrich’s daughter tried in 1950 to recover these works, but had no proof of ownership and could not prove the German origin of the work before the war. The Pietà is thus selected from the last 15,000 works returned from Germany and not returned and becomes a MNR work. Today it is presented to Magen David Adom – the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross – heiress of collector Harry Fuld Junior. This is the second work that is returned to him after the Pink wall of Matisse in 2008. “ It is a great honour and a real privilege to be here. I first saw this work last year and I found it fascinating. It is a light emerging from one of the darkest periods in our history », says David Burger, president of the Magen David Adom’s London branch.
A bill to facilitate the restitution of stolen cultural property
With the two restitutions made on April 18, 184 MNR (National Museums Recuperation) works have been recovered. Over the past ten years, the pace of restitution has intensified, with 73 works being returned, 50 of which were commissioned by museums. The research of provenance also concerns works entered into public collections in ignorance of a spoliation.
But, unlike MNR works, stolen works entered into public collections can only be restored by the adoption of a specific law, that of 21 February 2022, It is by this means that 15 works have been released from the public domain.
That is why a framework bill was presented to the Council of Ministers on April 19 by the Minister of Culture to facilitate the restitution of these works in the future. “ This mechanism will be a decisive step to facilitate and accelerate the acts of justice that represent the restitution of stolen property. And keep alive the humanity of those who have been denied the right to live ” said Rima Abdul Malak, Minister of Culture.
This bill provides for a derogation in the heritage code from the principle of inalienability limited to the various forms of spoliation linked to anti-Semitic persecution perpetrated during the Nazi period. The State or the local authority shall declare the release from the public domain of any cultural property which has been found to have been stolen between the accession to power of Adolf Hitler on 30 January 1933 and the German surrender on 8 May 1945, to return it to its rightful owners. The exit decision will be taken after the opinion of a specialized administrative committee, which will be entrusted to the Commission pour l'indemnisation des victimes de spoliations (CIVS).
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