One month ago, the Holocaust Art Restitution Project circulated a letter to members of the US House of Representatives and of the US Senate expressing serious concern over a resolution sponsored by the Monuments Men Foundation seeking to award the Congressional Medal of Honor en bloc to all members of the so-called Monuments Men formation. Since then, the House of Representatives, in a cynical and undemocratic move, passed the resolution by voice vote when there were only 15 Congresspersons in attendance. Interesting how democracy works! Obviously, someone got nervous that, if the full House were in session, it might not have passed. Here is the letter: April 23, 2014 VIA TELEFAX TRANSMISSION All U.S. Senators United States Senate Washington, D.C. 20510 RE: S. 1862 Monuments Men Recognition Act of 2013 Dear U.S. Representatives: Please be advised that the Ciric Law Firm, PLLC represents Ori Z. Soltes, Director and Co-Founder of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project (“HARP”), in connection with the matter described below. HARP is a not-for-profit organization that disseminates information to the public and to claimants about cultural property stolen, confiscated, and misappropriated during the Nazi-era. Professor Ori Z. Soltes teaches at Georgetown University across a range of disciplines, from theology and art history to philosophy and political history. He is the former Director of the B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, where he curated exhibitions on a variety of subjects such as archaeology, ethnography, and contemporary art. Professor Soltes has taught, lectured and curated exhibitions across the country and internationally. He is the author of over 230 articles, exhibition catalogues, essays and books on a range of topics. Recent books include The Ashen Rainbow: The Arts and the Holocaust; Our Sacred Signs: How Jewish, Christian and Muslim Art Draw from the Same Source; Searching for Oneness: Mysticism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam; and Untangling the Web: A Thinking Person’s Guide to Why the Middle East is a Mess and Always Has Been. Professor Soltes was also involved in providing the historical research and background in regard to Egon Schiele’s “Portrait of Wally” case, as well as the restitution of an Odalisque painting by Henri Matisse to the Rosenberg family. Please accept this letter conveying our strong opposition to the passing of S. 1862 in its current form. The passing of this bill will: “grant the Congressional Gold Medal, collectively, to the Monuments Men, in recognition of their heroic role in the preservation, protection, and restitution of monuments, works of art, and artifacts of cultural importance during and following World War II.” Since 1776, the Congressional Gold Medal has symbolized the United States highest expression of national appreciation for distinguished achievements and contributions by individuals or institutions. It is considered to be the highest civilian award that can be bestowed by the United States. According to the May 30, 2013 Congressional Research Service Report on Congressional Gold Medals, Rule 3(f)(1)(C) required the following standards be applied in considering legislation authorizing Congressional Gold Medals: - the recipient shall be a natural person; - the recipient shall have performed an achievement that has had an impact on American history and culture that is likely to be recognized as a major achievement in the recipient field long after the achievement; - the recipient shall not have received a medal previously for the same or substantially the same achievement; - the recipient shall be living, or, if deceased, shall have been deceased for not less than five years and not more than 25 years; and - the achievements were performed in the recipients field of endeavor, and represent either a lifetime of continuous superior achievements or single achievement so significant that the recipient is recognized and acclaimed by others in the same field as evidenced by the recipient having received the highest honors in the field. The award of such a high honor as the Congressional Gold Medal to a group rather than individuals has already been a significant issue recognized by Congress. In 2005, Representative Michael Castle proposed that certain restrictions be made on the awarding of this highest of civilian honors. During House debate on H.R. 54, Representative Castle reasoned that by limiting the number of Congressional Gold Medals awarded each year and by restricting the award to individuals and not groups would serve to ensure the future integrity and true honor of the award. The Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Program (MFAA) was authorized by President Roosevelt and established in 1943 under the Civil Affairs and Military Sections of the Allied armies. Its members, known as the “Monuments Men,” were a group of enlisted and volunteer service members of all ranks and titles. Mostly made up of art historians, curators and museum personnel, their role was to work alongside military forces to shelter art, cultural works, and monuments from damage during the war, and after the war, to return works and objects of art to those from whom they had been stolen by the Nazis. Our research reveals that while many of these service members served honorably, a number of the Monuments Men not only undermined the purpose of their service to the Allied armies and the victims of the war, , including Jewish émigrés and victims of the Holocaust, but, in a number of cases, they prevented the return of looted cultural and artistic treasures to their rightful owners by either misappropriating them, purchasing them on the black market at cut rates, or by returning them to the wrong owners or countries of origin. 1. Lt. Theodore Allen Heinrich Lt. Theodore Allen Heinrich’s service as one of the Monuments Men raises a number of significant issues as one of the most sought out cultural affairs officer in the US zone of occupation in Germany. Indeed, in the summer of 1945, Lt. Heinrich served as the MFAA Officer for the Province of Kurhessen. In February 1946, he became the Acting Director of the Marburg Collecting Point and took over as Director of the Wiesbaden Collecting Point where he served in that capacity until 1950. He also became the Chief, Fine Arts, Monuments and Archives Branch for the US zone of occupation of Germany until 1948. Lt. Heinrich had his hands full as a senior American official responsible for overseeing the repatriation of looted cultural property to countries of origin. Meanwhile, his true passion was to organize exhibits at the Wiesbaden Collection Point and help curate other cultural events in local German museums during his tenure as a top restitution officer for the US forces in Germany. At the Wiesbaden Collecting Point alone, Lt. Heinrich organized over a dozen exhibitions featuring many looted works of art placed under his custody either for investigation into their true ownership or for safeguarding on behalf of German State museums. During his tenure in liberated Europe (1944-1951), specifically in France and Germany, Lt. Heinrich amassed a significant art collection consisting of several hundred works of art of unknown provenance. The collection included mostly fine specimens produced between the 17th and the 19th centuries by leading European artists, oils, works on paper, and a small group of sculpted items. He acquired them from booksellers and art dealers of unsavory reputation and known to be involved in the wartime recycling of looted art in France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. Lt. Heinrich’s appetite for artwork was so well-known and his methods of collecting so conspicuous that fellow officers routinely solicited him and offered him the right of first refusal on unprovenanced items. Lt. Heinrich further utilized the military APO and obtained customs exemptions granted by fellow MFAA officers to ship his acquisitions to an address in Berkeley, California. After Lt. Heinrich’s death in 1980, his estate attempted to dispose of his collection through sales at two auction houses, Christie’s and Waddington’s. Christie’s refused to sell some of the items in the collection as they were identified as unrestituted war loot in official German publications that had been acquired during Lt. Heinrich’s tenure as Chief of the Wiesbaden Central Collecting Point. One of the most troubling aspects of Lt. Heinrich’s tenure as a senior official of the MFAA was the matter of his exchanges with Alfred Barr, director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Barr consulted with Heinrich in 1949 regarding a famous painting by Georg Grosz, “Portrait of Max Hermann Neisse,” which Barr was eager to acquire for the Museum of Modern Art. Heinrich provided Barr with information regarding this painting and its current disposition at the time of Barr’s request. We know that Heinrich responded both in person and in writing to Barr, while senior staff at the Museum was well aware that this painting could pose some serious ethical and legal problems for the Museum should it be acquired. Decades later, the “Portrait of Max Hermann Neisse” became the subject of a contentious litigation between the heirs of Georg Grosz and the Museum of Modern Art. See Grosz v. Museum of Modern Art, 772 F. Supp. 2d 473, 496 (S.D.N.Y. 2010), affd, 403 F. Appx 575 (2d Cir. 2010). The above-referenced findings involving Lt. Heinrich are the result of historical and archival research performed by HARP researchers, owned by my client, and reviewed by this office. 2. Jacques Jaujard On May 10, 1940, the Nazis invaded France. While Paris fell on June 14, 1940, not all of France was to be occupied. Having entered into an armistice agreement with Germany, a new French government was established in the unoccupied town of Vichy and was led by Premier Philippe Petain. Between 1940 and 1941, a number of “Jewish Statutes” were passed excluding Jews from “positions of influence” in education, the arts, journalism, publishing, and the highest ranks of civil service. Eventually, many Jews were stripped of their citizenship, and all Jews were to be removed from any economic or cultural role in French society, culminating in the implementation of the Final Solution through the extermination of 77,000 Jews from France. In order to prevent the Germans from directly controlling Jewish assets, the Vichy regime established the “Service de Contrôle des Administrateurs Provisoires” (SCAP), an agency made up of non-Jewish trustees, to oversee the liquidation of Jewish assets, including art collections. Jacques Jaujard was the Director of the French National Museums (“Musées Nationaux”) during the Nazi Occupation of France. Under Mr. Jaujard’s leadership, museum officials strategized to permanently acquire certain Jewish-owned works for public museums. These seized collections contained highly valuable artwork from several Jewish families that had been forced to flee, including among several others, the families of Jonas, Bois, Weiller, Bonn, and Rothschild. These masterpieces – the Cezannes, Renoirs, Goyas, Degas’, Picassos, Bouchers, Fragonards, Greuzes – were intended to permanently “fill gaps” in the museums’ current collections, especially the Louvre. See Exhibit A. In 1941, the “Domaines” agency created a committee to oversee the liquidation process, naming Mr. Jaujard as the fine arts representative. This committee sequestered some of the most prestigious collections owned by Jews recently forced to emigrate or by Jewish French nationals. The committee exercised the “right of first refusal” over works it deemed the most valuable and set the remainder aside to be sold at public auction. In a letter to the Secretary General of Fine Arts, Louis Hautecoeur, Mr. Jaujard suggested that a credit of 10 million francs be credited to the Direction des musées “given the importance of works of art in certain collections, particularly those from the Rothschild family.” By 1942, the Ministry of Finance, in fact, approved credits of 66 million francs to acquire this sequestered art, in the interest of “keeping these works in the national patrimony.” This sweeping collection of the art of wealthy Jewish émigrés was condoned under the false pretext that the art was being sequestered for safekeeping with the intent of being returned to the original owners after the war. It never was. Additionally, in the specific case of the looting of the Schloss collection, it is well established that Mr. Jaujard oversaw and directed the selection of 49 works in a right of first refusal agreement directly negotiated with Goering for permanent incorporation into the “Musées Nationaux” collections. See Exhibit A. The actions of Lt. Heinrich and Mr. Jaujard, are unfortunately only two examples of government officials who abused their authority while serving under the banner and power of the French government (Jaujard) and the United States military, specifically the MFAA (Theodore Heinrich). In light of the tainted service of a few, conferring a wholesale award of the Congressional Gold Medal to the Monuments Men as a group would undermine the purpose and symbol of such a prestigious award. This case is a perfect illustration showing why H.R. 54 and Representative Michael Castle’s reasoning were sound and justified, and were endorsed by the House in 2005. By opposing S. 1862, you will in fact be championing the service of individuals who do merit an award that symbolizes the highest expression of national appreciation for distinguished achievements and contributions. Should you wish to consider alternative awards, our client would be happy to discuss them. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me. On behalf of my client, I thank you for your consideration. Truly yours,
Posted on: Wed, 21 May 2014 10:47:33 +0000
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