British museums pay ransom to the Jews
John Gilbert
resolved, with the payment of financial compensation to the
descendants of the pre-war owners. The cases involve the Feldmann
drawings at the British Museum and a still-life painting at Glasgow
Art Gallery. These works of art will now remain in the two
collections, on a sound legal basis.
The claim for the British Museum drawings was made in 2002 by Tel
Aviv-based Uri Peled, a descendant of Brno lawyer Dr Arthur Feldmann.
In 1939 Dr Feldmann’s collection was seized by the Gestapo, with four
drawings ending up at the British Museum in 1946-49. These were by a
follower of Martin Schongauer, Niccolò dell’Abate, Nicholas Blakey and
Martin Johann Schmidt (The Art Newspaper, October 2002, p.23).
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/article01.asp?id=163
Regards,
John G
'The Jew is a born destroyer, an enslaver, a parasite, a cancerous
monster.'
Ariadne
genocide.
English law has no basis for this 'nationalist'.
Chris X
AridAsshole and preserve good
netiquette).
"Ariadne" <ariad...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1139313023....@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
John Gilbert wrote:
You've no right to speak of "English law".
Ariadne
The whole thing rather disproves his claim of not
being antisemitic.
Chris X wrote:
'good netiquette' is what this hate-filled antisemitic
spammer calls posting rotted shi'ite
Chris X
winds this mad old cow up, for some reason.)
"Ariadne" <ariad...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1139313760....@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Ariadne wrote:
> John Gilbert wrote:
>
> > LONDON. Two Nazi-era spoliation claims against UK museums are being
> > resolved, with the payment of financial compensation to the
> > descendants of the pre-war owners. The cases involve the Feldmann
> > drawings at the British Museum and a still-life painting at Glasgow
> > Art Gallery. These works of art will now remain in the two
> > collections, on a sound legal basis.
> >
> > The claim for the British Museum drawings was made in 2002 by Tel
> > Aviv-based Uri Peled, a descendant of Brno lawyer Dr Arthur Feldmann.
> > In 1939 Dr Feldmann's collection was seized by the Gestapo, with four
> > drawings ending up at the British Museum in 1946-49. These were by a
> > follower of Martin Schongauer, Niccolò dell'Abate, Nicholas Blakey and
> > Martin Johann Schmidt (The Art Newspaper, October 2002, p.23).
> >
> > http://www.theartnewspaper.com/article01.asp?id=163
> >
> > Regards,
> > John G
> >
> > 'The Jew is a born destroyer, an enslaver, a parasite, a cancerous
> > monster.'
>
> >>And I see that he approves of theft as well as
> >>genocide. English law has no basis for this 'nationalist'.
>
> You've no right to speak of "English law".
>>Note the approval of theft as well as genocide.The whole thing rather
>>disproves his claim of not
>>being antisemitic. 'good netiquette' is what this hate-filled antisemitic
>>spammer calls posting rotted shi'ite
Oh dear. I see she's reached the dizzy heights of her "level" rather early
today.
Ariadne
_
Art As Evidence
By Elana Verbin
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The art works auctioned in the Mauerbach Benefit Sale in Austria last
fall (1996) marked a renewed awareness for the cultural war the Nazis
waged on the Jewish community. Prior to their sale, the 8,000 items
that were auctioned -- just a fraction of all of the art works
confiscated by the Nazis during World War II -- remained in storage for
decades in a monastery in Mauerbach, just outside of Vienna. Beyond
raising $14.6 million for the benefit of victims of the Holocaust and
their families, the auction brought to light the bitter irony of how
the Nazis were as passionate about collecting and preserving these
objects as they were about destroying the lives of their owners.
"This sale did things that pictures of concentration camps and the
war won't do," Robert Liska, vice president of Austrian Jewish
Communities told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Marc Porter, senior vice president for estates and appraisals at
Christie's, which conducted the auction pro-bono, explains that
throughout the event, "the previous owners were never far from the
minds of the people in the room. There was a great recognition that we
were seeing again art work that had graced the walls of a culture that
Hitler had destroyed."
On the eve of Anschluss -- the German annexation of Austria -- there
were 180,000 Jews living in Austria, mostly in Vienna. By the end of
the war, there were only 10,000. While a majority of Jews safely
emigrated from the country, 65,000 lost their lives during the
Holocaust.
Prior to the Nazis' arrival, Viennese Jews enjoyed and contributed to
what was known as one of Europe's most vibrant centers for the arts.
Such an significant role did they play in the local cultural community,
that they inspired Hugo Bettauer's 1920s novel Die Stadt Ohne (City
Without Jews), which painted a future of Vienna as a city where the
modern art world was dead, the press boring, and the universities,
third-rate.
The assault on the Jewish arts community began with measures such as
Goebbels' Ordinance of February 1936, which denied Austrian Jews
entrance into museums and sanctioned their participation in other
cultural organizations. It wasn't long before privately-owned
collections of art became required "donations" to the Nazi authorities
in exchange for exit permits. And once the Nazis were in a position to
outright seize works that interested them, they did not hesitate.
Records indicate that immediately after Anschluss, SS officers began
descending upon Jewish homes and stripping their walls of paintings
earmarked for Nazi collections.
More than three million works of art were plundered by the Nazi
regime during its reign. In his book, Art As Politics in the Third
Reich, Jonathan Petropolous explains that the Nazis' ambitions as "art
collectors" were motivated by two distinctly different purposes. The
first was a show of power as they confiscated all of the art in the
Reich that conflicted with the Party's ideology and concept of art.
But, equally as compelling, he notes, were the SS officers' obsession
with building huge private collections for themselves.
"The means by which they amassed these collections is telling,"
explains Petropolous. "The Jews got it from close knit families passing
it down through generations. The Nazis made a mockery of this idea,
acquiring this art by force and use of terror."
Hitler, who, ironically, had been rejected twice from Vienna's
Academy of Fine Arts, eagerly assumed the role as the ultimate art
critic -- deciding the fate of all art objects that existed in occupied
countries. Foremost regarded were works by German artists and from
German-owned collections, which reinforced Hitler's German-supremacy
ideas. But Hitler also had a predictable fondness for the work of old
master painters dating up to the end of the 18th century as well as for
19th century neoclassical paintings. At the other end of his tolerance
level was modern art or paintings with Jewish themes, both of which
Hitler quickly dismissed as "degenerate," in many cases ordering their
destruction.
Hitler's process of "purification" began with raids on museums and
galleries in which impressionist and abstract paintings, drawings, and
sculptures were removed. The Nazis were as passionate about their
contempt for "unacceptable" art as they were practical. While almost
5,000 pieces were burned, works by renowned artists such as Picasso
that were likely to fetch high bids on the international art market
were auctioned off in Switzerland to raise money for the Nazi party.
After plowing through public collections, the Nazis moved on to the
looting of private ones. In some cases, certain works were identified
by party leaders prior to annexations and became bargaining chips held
out to owners in exchange for immigration papers.
Such was the experience of the Baron Louis de Rothschild, who was
denied exit from Austria at the Aspern airport and arrested the
following day at his palace. He was imprisoned at Gestapo headquarters
where he remained for nine months until he turned over his property in
exchange for freedom.
Petropoulos explains that the Nazis were apparently so desirous of
Rothschild's collection, which was believed to total over a thousand
paintings, including renowned works by Rembrandt, that Himmler,
Kaltenbrunner, and Wolff -- three of the highest ranking members of the
SS -- were brought in to negotiate the deal that led to Rothschild's
release.
"By expropriating the artworks of the Rothschilds, the Seligmans, the
Kanns, and other prosperous Jewish families, the Nazis expressed their
genocidal program in their collecting practices," Petropolous
explained. "They wanted to protect Europeans' artistic legacy, but
wanted to possess it as a symbol of their power and dominance."
To further this goal, four agencies were appointed for the sole
purpose of gathering works of art. As the fanaticism for art escalated,
it became a symbol of status amid the Nazi regime. An office's relative
hierarchy in the party was reflected by the quantities and quality of
his personal collections -- Hitler's, the most impressive and
extensive, was reported to contain almost 7,000 paintings.
The Nazis kept precise records and inventories of the collections
they were swiftly amassing. They had elaborate plans about the fate of
these works. Stolen works were hidden in castles, vaults, mansions, and
even in barns throughout the Reich. The works offered in last fall's
auction were stored in the salt mines of Altaussee, Austria, which also
housed Hitler's personal cache of looted property destined for his
planned museum in Linz.
After the war was over, the Allies succeeded in identifying and
returning over 10,000 objects to their rightful heirs. But as it became
obvious that many of the objects' original owners and their families
were no longer alive to take back their property, the search ended. The
property became the responsibility of the Austrian government, where
they remained guarded from the public until their transfer to The
Federation of Austrian Jewish Communities and the subsequent auction
last October.
With every object securing a new home through the sale, these
orphaned works not only serve as reminders of lost generations, but
they -- and the message they carry -- can once again continue to be
passed down to future ones.
Article copyright 1997, Elana Verbin. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.remember.org/educate/art.html
Chris X
"Ariadne" <ariad...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1139314328.2...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
Jews in Austria
(Drivel and breach of copyright excised).
Ariadne
play in
Chris X wrote:
> (Thread title restored, correct follow-ups set)
>
> Ariadne wrote:
> Jews in Austria
>
Chris X
"Ariadne" <ariad...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1139315043.9...@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> He will find any steaming pile of shi'ite to
> play in
>
> http://tinyurl.com/dgu7h
http://homepage.mac.com/cfj/.Pictures/independent-sharon-toon.jpg