During the twelve years the Nazis were in power between 1933 and 1945, art was looted on an unprecedented scale. After the war only a small proportion of the works were returned to the owners – most of whom were Jewish – or their descendants. The following timeline tells the story of this looted art and how it was dealt with in the Netherlands after the war. The timeline covers both the ‘Big Picture’ and individual fates.
LOOTED ART AND RESTITUTION TIMELINE FROM 1933 TO TODAY
Adolf Hitler became head of the German government on 30 January 1933. By employing strategic political manoeuvres, and using the Reichstag fire of 27 February 1933 as a means to exert pressure, he disabled democratic processes and became absolute ruler over Germany. During the Night of the Long Knives (30 June -2 July 1934) he had Nazi leaders purged. Dozens of opponents were murdered. This gave him free rein to do what he had been planning for years, and had spelled out in his 1925 book Mein Kampf: to create a Greater German Reich in which there was no place for non-Aryan people.
Hitler Salutes A Marchpast Of The Sturmabteilung (SA), Braunschweig 1932 (image German Federal Archives Wikimedia Commons) On 7 April 1933 the Nazis purged the civil service by implementing the law for the restoration of the professional civil service, which came into force on that date. Jewish civil servants, including judges, lawyers, notaries, university professors and schoolteachers, lost their jobs. Non-Jewish opponents of the regime also lost their positions on the basis of this legislation.
One of the individuals affected by this measure was Curt Glaser (1879-1943). He was a Jewish art historian and collector, and he became director of the Berlin Art Library in 1924. During the Weimar Republic he was a prominent figure in Berlin art circles. His official residence in Prinz Albrechtstrasse was a meeting place for artists and intellectuals. He and his wife Elsa Kolker amassed a substantial art collection. Glaser was dismissed in April 1933 as a result of the law for the restoration of the professional civil service. He therefore also lost his home. Not long afterwards he sold his art collection. He fled to the United States in July 1933 and died there in 1943.
One of Curt Glaser’s artworks, a winter landscape by Jan van de Velde II, was purchased by the Rijksmuseum in 1935. In 2010 the Dutch State restituted the winter landscape to Curt Glaser’s heirs. The Restitutions Committee advised to that end because Glaser was a victim of severe persecution at a very early stage of the Nazi regime. When it assesses cases, the Committee assumes that sales by Jewish families during the Nazi era were involuntary, unless there is express evidence to the contrary. There was no such evidence in Curt Glaser’s case.
The Name Plate Of The Lawyer And Notary Werner Liebenthal Of Berlin Defaced By The Nazis (image Hanna Liebenthal Wikimedia Commons) On 1 April 1933 Hitler proclaimed a boycott of Jewish enterprises. On that day members of the Sturmabteilung (SA) gathered outside Jewish shops and companies. They carried boards bearing anti-Semitic slogans and defaced doors and shop windows. The campaign only lasted for one day, but the threat that it represented was substantial.
During the early years of the Nazi regime there was no legislation aimed at the Aryanization of Jewish businesses. Initially the Aryanization of enterprises was a side-effect of fiscal measures intended to encourage Jews to leave the country. Over the years, the majority of Jewish enterprises were liquidated by the owners themselves under direct or indirect duress. An ‘Aryanization industry’ developed in which institutions and intermediaries (businessmen, lawyers, bankers, estate agents and brokers) profited from the pressure that Jewish entrepreneurs and private individuals found themselves under. The Aryanization of small and medium-sized Jewish businesses took place faster than in big companies. Entrepreneurs were put out of business in villages and small towns as a result of intimidation and boycotts. Local departments of the Nazi Party (NSDAP; National Socialist German Workers’ Party) played a major role in this. A systematic bureaucratic process for the Aryanization of companies was introduced in 1938, and activity peaked in 1938 and 1939.
In 1937 the German-Jewish Max Stern was forced to give up his art gallery ‘Julius Stern’ under duress from the Nazis. He sold a part of his trading stock at rock-bottom prices in a ‘Judenauktion’, and afterwards fled to the United Kingdom at the end of 1937. Possessions that remained behind in Germany were seized by the Nazi authorities. In January 1938 the Nazis issued instructions to block Stern’s domestic assets, in particular his bank accounts. In July of the same year, he was deprived of his German citizenship. At the same time this meant that his entire estate was confiscated.
One of the paintings that Stern had to sell during this dire period was An Allegory of Water and Earth by Jan Brueghel the Elder. For some time, it was in a Dutch art gallery and around 1943 it was sold on to the Hamburger Kunsthalle.
After the war, Brueghel’s painting was returned to the Netherlands but was not claimed by Max Stern. By then he was living in Canada and he probably did not know that the canvas was in the Netherlands. In 2007 Stern’s heirs contacted the Dutch State, which was still holding the work. After an investigation, the Restitutions Committee concluded that restitution of the painting was appropriate because Max Stern sold it involuntarily and was not able to dispose of the proceeds freely.
Outside The Jewish Department Store Tietz In Berlin, 1933 (image National Archives And Records Administration Wikimedia Commons) Initially the anti-Jewish policy in Germany was focussed on expelling the Jewish population through emigration. Different government departments were involved in this process. Exclusion and intimidation were used to try to make Jews’ lives impossible. After Hitler seized power, there was a constant flow of Jewish refugees who left Germany. Many communists, socialists and other political opponents of the regime also left the country.
The Flersheims were one of the many Jewish families to flee Germany. The parents – Ernst and Gertrud – and their three children – Hans, Edith and Margarete – came from Frankfurt am Main, where Ernst ran the international family firm. They also collected art. Under the Nazi regime, the members of the Flersheim family lost confidence in their ability to survive and a substantial part of their wealth. In 1936 and 1937 both Flersheim daughters left. Edith went to London and Margarete to Brussels. In 1935 and 1936 Ernst Flersheim conducted negotiations with the German authorities about relocating his company to a foreign country. In March 1937 he fled to the Netherlands. His wife followed a year later. The Flersheims had part of their art collection sold at auction in Frankfurt am Main in 1937. Another part was later confiscated. Assets that were still in Germany were seized. In 1943 Ernst and Gertrud Flersheim were deported via Westerbork transit camp to Bergen-Belsen. Edith was the only member of the Flersheim family to survive the Holocaust.
After the war, one of the seized paintings, A Prayer Before Supper by Jan Toorop, was purchased by the Zeeuws Museum in Middelburg. In 2008 the Restitutions Committee ruled that the painting should be restituted to the heirs of Ernst and Gertrud Flersheim. The Committee concluded that the museum had acquired the painting in 1981 in good faith and it considered it reasonable and fair for the applicants to pay the museum a sum equal to the then purchase price.
Dormitory Of The Lloyd Hotel Jewish Refugee Camp In Amsterdam C. 1940 (image Amsterdam City Archives) The Reich capital flight tax (Reichsfluchtsteuer) was introduced during the Weimar Republic (1918-1933). This was done to combat the economic crisis, which resulted in the flight of capital from Germany and a serious shortage of foreign exchange. The Brüning government responded by introducing the Reich capital flight tax on 8 December 1931. Under this legislation, everyone who left Germany between 31 March 1931 and 1 January 1933, or who had plans to leave, had to pay the government a quarter of their taxable assets. These rules did not apply to individuals with assets of less than 200,000 Reichsmarks or an annual income of less than 20,000 Reichsmarks. Failure to fulfil this taxation obligation could incur a prison sentence of at least three months, seizure of assets and unlimited fines. In such a case a Steuersteckbrief (warrant for apprehension due to unpaid tax) was issued giving the name, address and debt concerned, together with the order to arrest the person in question immediately. Payment of Reich capital flight tax was obligatory from the moment of emigration. People who had already emigrated before the regulations came into force still had to pay the tax within a month.
After the Nazis came to power on 30 January 1933, to begin with nothing changed as regards Reich capital flight tax. On the one hand the regulations conflicted with the goal of encouraging Jews to migrate, but on the other hand it was possible to seize part of the wealth of rich refugees. The Nazis extended the Reich capital flight tax regulations for a set period a number of times, and in 1942 until further notice. The fact that this tax was levied and paid did not mean, incidentally, that Jews could take the remaining assets out of the country.
From 1934 foreign exchange controls were tightened on a regular basis. Starting in 1934, emigrants were only permitted to take 10 Reichsmarks in foreign exchange with them. At the beginning of 1934 money transfers were limited to 10,000 Reichsmarks. This was reduced to 2,000 Reichsmarks from June 1934. Larger sums had to be deposited in a blocked account, such that ultimately the emigrant only benefitted from a small part of it. In fact, this was a process of expropriation.
Initially, those affected by these regulations were still able to get around them. Banks, for example, permitted Jewish directors with interests in other countries to leave Germany ‘in the interests of the national economy’. That was a reason for not having to pay Reich capital flight tax. In response, the Nazis tried to close the loopholes in law. On 18 May 1934 the options for evading the tax were limited and the sum exempt from taxation was reduced from 200,000 to 50,000 Reichsmarks. The entire German tax system was Nazified with effect from 16 October 1934 through the stipulation that all regulations were to be interpreted in national socialist terms.
Despite the restrictions, some refugees were still able to divert large sums to safe havens. Measures to counter this were made even tougher in 1937 and 1938. A striking amendment was made on 19 December 1937, when it was decided that all gifts above 10,000 Reichsmarks that had been made since 1 January 1931 would be added retrospectively to a person’s wealth. The government was trying to nullify gifts made by Jewish families in order to avoid their wealth ending up in the hands of the Nazis.
Berlin, Reichsfinanzministerium During the course of the nineteen-thirties the anti-Jewish mood in Germany became more and more intense, fuelled by the government. This was particularly true inside the NSDAP. The reasons included the slow economic recovery and the aftermath of the Night of the Long Knives (30 June -2 July 1934). In March 1935 this resulted in an atmosphere ripe for pogroms and a wave of anti-Jewish violence. Jews were harassed, abused and assaulted, and their businesses were boycotted or destroyed. These attacks were so bad for Germany’s international reputation that in August 1935 Hitler felt it necessary to issue an order to stop actions against Jewish individuals. The Nuremberg Race Laws were subsequently promulgated on 15 September 1935. The laws defined who was Jewish on the grounds of their descent. On the grounds of these laws, it was decided which rights someone had and to what extent they were permitted to participate in society.
Diagram Showing Whether A Marriage Is Permitted Under The Nuremberg Race Laws (image Www.tracesofwar.com Wikimedia Commons) On 12 March 1938, after weeks of political pressure on Austria, Hitler ordered the invasion of the country. There was no resistance to German troops anywhere. Large crowds of Austrians stood cheering in the streets as the tanks drove past. That same day the Führer travelled to Linz, near where he was born in Braunau, and gave a speech to the Austrians from the balcony of the town hall. It was his mission, he declared, to include his Heimat (homeland) once again in the German Reich. On 13 March 1938 the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria was a fact.
During the days that followed, the new rulers of Austria arrested some 70,000 ‘enemies’, primarily Jews, socialists and communists. Jewish shops and homes were plundered, and many Jews fled or committed suicide. In his book The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance, Edmund de Waal describes that chaotic situation in Vienna during the days round 13 March 1938:
‘It is as if a switch has been thrown. There are runnels of noise down the street, the Schottengasse echoing with voices. They are shouting: “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, ein Führer” and “Heil Hitler, Sieg Heil”. And they are screaming “Jude Vereke” – perish Judah! Death to the Jews! It is a flood of brown shirts. There are taxi horns blaring and there are men with weapons on the streets, and somehow the police have swastika armbands.’
Even before the official Annexation, during the night of 11 to 12 March 1938, Austrian Nazis came to the grand home of De Waal’s Jewish great-grandparents Viktor and Emmy von Ephrussi.
‘And it is on that first night that the sounds of the street become shouting in the Ephrussi courtyard, echoing around the walls and off the roof. Then there are feet pounding up the stairs, the thirty-three shallow steps to the apartment on the second floor. There are fists on the door, someone leaning on the bell, and there are eight or ten, a knot of them in some sort of uniform – some with swastika armbands, some familiar. Some are still boys. It is one o’clock in the morning and no one is asleep, everyone is dressed. Viktor and Emmy and [their youngest son] Rudolf are pushed into the library. This first night they swarm through the apartment. There are shouts from across the courtyard, as a couple of them have found the salon with its French ensembles of furniture and porcelain. There is laughter from someone as Emmy’s closet is ransacked. Someone bangs out a tune on the piano keys. Some men are in the study pulling out drawers, roughing up the desks, pushing the folios off the stand in the corner. They come into the library and tip the globes from their stands. … They push Emmy and Viktor and Rudolf against the wall and three of them heave the desk and send it crashing over the handrail until, with a sound of splintering wood and gilt and marquetry, it hits the stone flags of the courtyard below. This desk – the wedding present from Fanny and Jules, from Paris – takes a long time to fall. The sounds ricochet off the glass roof. The broken drawers scatter letters across the courtyard. You think you own us, you fucking foreign shit. You’ll be fucking next, you shit, you fucking Jews.’
Within just a few weeks the Von Ephrussis lost all of their possessions. On 27 April 1938 the authorities recorded that Palais Ephrussi on the Wiener Ring was completely Aryanized. The significance of the Nazi looting process is described tellingly by great-grandson Edmund de Waal:
‘The house wasn’t theirs any more. It was full of people, some in uniforms and some in suits. People counting rooms, making lists of objects and pictures, taking things away. Anna [the maid] is in there somewhere. She has been ordered to help with this packing-up into boxes and crates, told that she should be ashamed of working for the Jews.
And it is not just their art, not just the bibelots, all the gilded stuff from tables and mantelpieces, but their clothes, Emmy’s winter coats, a crate of domestic china, a lamp, a bundle of umbrellas and walking-sticks. Everything that has taken decades to come into this house, settling in drawers and chests and vitrines and trunks, wedding-presents and birthday-presents and souvenirs, is now being carried out again. This is the strange undoing of a collection, of a house and of a family. It is the moment of fissure when grand things are taken and when family objects, known and handled and loved, become stuff.’
Other Jewish families were also rapidly robbed of their possessions after the Annexation. The businessman and art collector Franz Oppenheimer and his wife Margarethe moved to Vienna only shortly before Hitler occupied the country. At the end of 1936 they had fled Berlin and taken part of their porcelain collection with them. On 11 March 1938 they once again fled from the Nazis. They were able to escape to the United States via Budapest and Stockholm. As had been the case earlier in Germany, they had to pay substantial amounts in Reich capital flight tax. Their possessions in Austria, including the artworks that were still present, were confiscated.
At some point between 1936 and 1938 the Amsterdam banker Fritz Mannheimer bought a part of the Oppenheimers’ porcelain collection. When Mannheimer died suddenly in 1939, his business was declared bankrupt because of its substantial debts. After the German invasion of the Netherlands, Kajetan Mühlmann, a dealer who worked for the Nazis, succeeded in getting his hands on the Mannheimer Collection and transporting it to Germany.
After the liberation, the Mannheimer Collection was recovered and returned to the Netherlands. The objects became part of the Dutch National Art Collection. In 2019 the Restitutions Committee concluded, after the heirs of Franz and Margarethe Oppenheimer had submitted a restitution application, that the porcelain collection should be returned to them. The sale to Fritz Mannheimer was not, after all, a normal transaction but a result of Nazi persecution.
Anschluss Österreich Starting in 1938, anti-Jewish measures were introduced in Germany faster and faster. The total assets of German Jews in 1933 amounted to 10 to 12 billion Reichsmarks, and by 1938 this had dropped to about half. On 26 April 1938 Jews were ordered to have their possessions registered. The terror on the streets also continued. During the summer of 1938, the Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels organized a campaign of intimidation in Berlin. Shop windows were smashed in and shop owners were assaulted. In November of that year the Nazis found a new justification for widespread violence against Jews. The German diplomat Ernst vom Rath was murdered on 7 November in Paris. The perpetrator was the seventeen-year-old Polish-Jewish Herschel Grynszpan, who had just heard that his parents, brothers and sisters – together with tens of thousands of other Jews of Polish descent– had been deported from Germany in cattle trucks. In response to Vom Rath’s murder, during the night of 9 to 10 November 1938, the authorities orchestrated widespread violence against the Jewish population: Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). Nazi supporters throughout Germany and the annexed Austria vandalized Jewish shops, homes and cemeteries. Synagogues were burned down. Hundreds of Jews were murdered or committed suicide. Approximately 30,000 Jews were taken away to the concentration camps of Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen.
On 12 November Minister Göring announced that Jews had to pay a billion Reichsmarks in damages for ‘the hostile attitude of Jewry to the German people’. The Nazis introduced a range of measures to implement this Judenvermögensabgabe (tax on registered Jewish assets), including the Verordnung zur Ausschaltung der Juden aus dem deutschen Wirtschaftsleben (regulation concerning the removal of Jews from German economic life) and the Verordnung über den Einsatz des jüdischen Vermögens (regulation concerning the use of Jewish assets). New constraints were introduced on 12 December 1938: Jews were no longer allowed to take valuables, such as gold, silver, precious stones and art, out of the country.
The upshot of the Night of Broken Glass was that German and Austrian Jews were even more willing to leave their assets behind in order to be able to leave the country. As before, permission to leave was not given until the Reich capital flight tax and other taxes had been paid. An exit visa could only be obtained if someone had the right declaration from the tax authorities. Failure to fulfil tax obligations was used to justify removal of citizenship, which was followed by complete expropriation. In 1939 a senior civil servant proudly wrote that the tax authorities were in the front line in the battle against Jewry.
That same year Minister Hermann Göring decided that the emigration of Jews should be encouraged using all available means. To this end the Reichszentrale für Jüdische Auswanderung (Reich central office for Jewish emigration) was set up under the responsibility of senior SS officer Reinhard Heydrich. In that context the Reichsfinanzministerium (Reich Ministry of Finance) was prepared to make more concessions from 1939 onwards. Jews who were not able to meet the payment schedule in their visas were still able to leave the country if they left behind goods, such as land or shares, as security. The exit requirements were so complicated, however, that Jews had to hand over between thirteen and fifteen pieces of evidence and had to cancel the journey two or three times, or were even completely unable to flee. If they did succeed, though, they were only able to leave with the limited part of their assets and possessions that had not been stolen by the Nazis.
The German-Jewish banker and art collector Martin Israel Aufhäuser was able to flee to the Netherlands in 1939 with his wife Auguste. He was apprehended during the Night of Broken Glass on 9 to 10 November 1938 and incarcerated in Dachau concentration camp. That night the Gestapo plundered the family home. The bank that Aufhäuser was director of was Aryanized. After he was released, in March 1939 he and his wife obtained permission to leave Germany. They were allowed to take a few artworks with them.
In the Netherlands the couple had to sell artworks so they could pay for their living expenses. Afterwards Auguste Aufhäuser said the following about this period: ‘Den Lebensunterhalt waehrend des zweiten Jahres unseres hollaendischen Aufenthaltes bestritten wir wiederum meistens aus den Verkaeufen unseres Umzugsgutes.’ [‘During the second year of our stay in the Netherlands, we kept body and soul together mostly by selling possessions.’] In 1941 the Aufhäusers succeeded in reaching the United States. Martin Israel died there in 1944, and Auguste in 1961.
In 2006 two paintings were restituted to the son, grandson and daughter-in-law of Martin Israel and Auguste Aufhäuser that their parents/grandparents had been forced to sell in the spring of 1941. After the liberation, these works were brought back from Germany to the Netherlands and were subsequently stored in a Dutch government depot. A restitution attempt failed. Decades later the Origins Unknown Agency – the organization that between 1998 and 2004 researched looted art held by the Dutch State – succeeded in tracing the descendants of Martin Israel and Auguste to the United States, after which the family and the works could be reunited.
Kristallnacht (Night Of Broken Glass), 10 November 1938 (image National Archives And Records Administration Wikimedia Commons) The situation for Jews in Nazi Germany began to get even worse in 1939. The policy to compel them to emigrate was replaced by one to murder them. This coincided with a huge increase in the size of the Nazi Reich from that same year. The Nazis conquered Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway and parts of Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Russia and North Africa. During the invasion of Poland (1939) and Russia (1941), Einsatzgruppen (SS death squads) followed behind the German army in order to brutally murder Jews, Roma, Sinti and political opponents. Between one and a half and two million Jews were shot by firing squads or gassed in lorries converted into gas chambers.
From 1941 the German Central Agency for Jewish Emigration focussed completely on the Endlösung der Judenfrage (Final Solution to the Jewish Question). Meanwhile, senior Nazis agreed that destruction of the Jews was the best solution rather than emigration. Mass deportations of Jews from German towns and cities started in October 1941. They were confined to ghettos and labour camps in Poland, Latvia and Lithuania. At the same time a ban on Jews leaving the country was announced. Deportation did not mean that people were released from paying Reich capital flight tax. Under the (Elfte Verordnung zum Reichsbürgergesetz) (eleventh Reich citizenship regulation) of 25 November 1941, Jews in foreign countries lost their citizenship, and possessions still in Germany reverted to the state. This also applied to Jews deported to foreign countries. The operational side of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was discussed at the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942. This was when the Nazis decided to systematically kill all Jews inside the borders of Hitler’s Third Reich by using poison gas.
Jewish Children From The Orphanage In Marysin, Poland, Are Deported To The Chelmno Death Camp, 1942 (image Stanisław Poznański Wikimedia Commons) German armoured trains and patrols entered the Netherlands during the night of 9 to 10 May 1940. Hundreds of Luftwaffe aircraft flew across the Dutch eastern border towards the west. Early in the morning of 10 May, the German ambassador announced the arrival of a ‘huge number of German troops’. The Dutch army resisted for a few days, but after the bombing of Rotterdam – which completely devastated the city centre – the Netherlands capitulated on 15 May. A few days before, Queen Wilhelmina and her ministers had fled to London, where they formed a government in exile. The administration of the Netherlands was taken over by the Nazis, with the Austrian Arthur Seyss-Inquart at its head.
The German invasion resulted in widespread panic among the Jewish population. Some fled to the coast in the hope that they could leave the Netherlands by sea. Among them was the Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, who with his wife Dési and young son Edo, found berths on the freighter Bodegraven. They sailed from IJmuiden to the United Kingdom on 14 May. Fate struck them a cruel blow. During the night of 15 to 16 May, Goudstikker fell into a hold and died. Contrary to the wishes of his widow, agents sold the art gallery to the German Alois Miedl. The Nazi minister Hermann Goering demanded the finest works in the collection.
The Amsterdam pharmacist Emanuel Vita Israël was one of the hundreds of Jews who committed suicide after the German invasion. Art and culture played a major role in his life. He was one of the founders of the Jewish Historical Museum, which opened in 1932. He also collected art and antiques. He gave members of the public access to period rooms in his home above the pharmacy. As a result of his suicide, the Vita Israël Collection was sold in May 1940.
In the early nineteen-fifties Jacques Goudstikker’s widow negotiated a settlement with the Dutch State, under which she received only some of Goudstikker’s works that after the war ended up in the custody of the Dutch State. Starting in the nineteen-nineties, her daughter-in-law Marei von Saher made efforts to get back the other artworks that were still in the Dutch National Art Collection. In 2006 the Netherlands restituted over two hundred works to Goudstikker’s heirs. Other restitution applications were also granted in the Netherlands and other countries.
In 2015 Vita Israël’s heirs were given back the painting The Riddle of Nijmegen by Christiaen Coeuershof, which had been in the collection of Museum Het Valkhof since 1971. In 2019 the City of Rotterdam restituted a situla and a candelabrum to the heirs.
Rotterdam Maas Railway Station After The Bombing Of Rotterdam, May 1940 (image The Utrecht Archives Wikimedia Commons) The first anti-Jewish measures were introduced virtually immediately after the Germans seized power. After 1 July 1940 Jews were no longer permitted to be in the air raid protection service. A ban on ritual slaughter came into effect on 5 August. That same month the Board of Secretaries-General issued an informal instruction not to take on any more Jews as civil servants. At the end of October 1940 all Dutch civil servants had to sign an ‘Aryan declaration’ and Jewish civil servants were dismissed. Slowly but surely the Jewish population lost its rights and freedom.
As was the case in Germany, in some places local initiatives anticipated measures taken by central government. On 14 September 1940 Jews were banned from markets in Amsterdam. By the end of the year pro-German café owners and shopkeepers had put up signs saying ‘voor Joden verboden’ [‘No Jews’]. Members of the defence section (WA) – the military wing of the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (NSB) – harassed Jews in the streets.
The Nazi authorities under Arthur Seyss-Inquart took care when implementing measures to prevent unrest and protests. That explains why measures were introduced gradually. In the first instance the persecution of the Jewish population in the Netherlands and the looting of their possessions was a bureaucratic process involving regulations, decrees, rules and forms. To quote the historian Gerard Aalders: ‘Regulations were therefore the vehicle the Nazis used to legitimize their plundering plans. The sword was replaced by the bureaucrat’s pen, so to speak, and that was at times even more effective.’
In some cases, the regulations affected Jews indirectly. On the grounds of regulation 26/1940 of 24 June 1940, for instance, ‘enemy assets’ (both money and tangible goods) had to be registered within a week at the German Auditing and Trust Company (Deutsche Revisions- und Treuhand Aktiengesellschaft – DRT). According to this regulation, ‘enemies’ were people, businesses and institutions established in allied countries. Regulation 33/1940 came into force in August 1940. It stipulated that the occupying forces were entitled to declare money and goods forfeited.
These regulations affected Jews who had fled the country and had stored goods and given them to an entity for safekeeping. The Austrian couple Alfred and Fanny Mautner were an example. Alfred, Fanny and their daughter Ariane lived in Vienna and fled in 1938. They travelled via Prague and Amsterdam to Paris and later to Uruguay. They stored their possessions temporarily in Amsterdam. Occupying forces seized them in 1942. Before that, in 1941, the Mautners had a painting (part of their household effects) sold in order to pay the storage costs.
After the liberation, the painting that Alfred and Fanny Mautner had sold in 1941 to pay for the storage of their household effects, The Marriage Feast at Cana by J.G. Platzer, was found in a museum in Silesia. It was returned to the Netherlands and stored in a Dutch government depot. The heirs of Alfred and Fanny Mautner submitted a restitution application, and the work was returned at the end of 2020.
Official Announcement By The General Commissioner For Public Safety, 31 May 1941 (image Www.geschiedenislokaalwaterland.nl) As early as May 1940, Reichs Commissioner Arthur Seyss-Inquart asked the Austrian art expert Kajetan Mühlmann to come to the Netherlands. Mühlmann’s task in the Netherlands was to acquire valuable art for the Nazis. He had already conducted such activities in Poland, and now he was given his own organization in The Hague, the Dienststelle Mühlmann (Mühlmann Agency), to track down the best Dutch art. He was assisted in this task by six subordinates. Mühlmann and his staff had a free hand in the Netherlands because they enjoyed the protection of Seyss-Inquart. A competing looting organization, the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce (Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR)), led by Alfred Rosenberg, got less of a foothold in the Netherlands. The ERR’s activities were primarily in France, which contained art collections that were even more important than those in the Netherlands. It was there that the ERR seized world-famous collections such as that of the Jewish Rothschild banking family so that it could be channelled through to Nazi leaders.
In the Netherlands, the Mühlmann Agency operated on the open art market, but it also put pressure on Jews to sell their collections. It furthermore worked closely with such organizations as the Enemy Property Office (Feindvermögensverwaltung), which confiscated and managed ‘enemy assets’, and the Gestapo.
The Mühlmann Agency was therefore involved in the looting of artworks belonging to the Jewish banker Gustaaf Hamburger. In 1940 Hamburger and his wife were able to escape to the United States, but they had to leave a large part of their possessions in the Netherlands. The Wehrmacht then conficated his home in Laren, which contained some of his art collection. Artworks being kept elsewhere were also confiscated and sold. One of the works that the Mühlmann Agency got its hand on was the painting Landscape with Beggars and Two Horsemen by a Ruin by Jan van Goyen. It was sold on to an Austrian auction house.
In 1951 Landscape with Beggars and Two Horsemen by a Ruin was brought back from Vienna to the Netherlands. Hamburger had a number of objects from his collection returned to him immediately after the war, but not this work, probably because the Dutch authorities took it to be a different painting. In 2013 the Dutch State finally returned the painting to Gustaaf Hamburger’s daughter.
Jan Van Goyen, Landscape With Beggars And Two Horsemen Near A Ruin (image Wo2.collectienederland.nl) Regulation 189/1940 of 22 October 1940 was aimed at removing Jews from the economic life of the country. Jewish entrepreneurs had to register their businesses before 30 November 1940 to the Companies Inspectorate (Wirtschaftsprüfstelle). This deadline was later extended to 31 December 1940. This registration was a prelude to regulation 48/1941 of 12 March 1941 concerning the removal of Jews from the business community. As a consequence of this regulation, smaller Jewish businesses were wound up and larger ones were Aryanized.
In October 1941 the brothers Salomon and Bernhard Stodel of Amsterdam were confronted by these rules. As a result of regulation 48/1941, they had to hand over the Stodel art gallery they owned to a non-Jewish Verwalter (administrator), Johan Peter Joseph Kalb. The brothers lost all control over the business. On 5 August 1942 the administrator, Kalb, bought the art gallery for 46,765 guilders, a sum far lower than the real value of the business. He deposited the purchase price with Handelmaatschappij H. Albert de Bary & Co N.V. in Amsterdam in the names of Salomon and Bernhard Stodel. However, the Stodel brothers did not get their money. They both survived the war and after the liberation they returned to their gallery, to find it had been completely stripped.
In 2006 the Stodel heirs submitted a restitution application concerning 26 works of art. They had supposedly been part of the Stodel brothers’ old trading stock and had been traded by the administrator Kalb. The works were brought back from Germany after the war and were incorporated in the Dutch National Art Collection. The Restitutions Committee established that it was sufficiently certain that administrator Kalb had taken seven of the claimed works from the old trading stock and had then sold them. Two of these seven works – a vase and a mirror – proved to be missing. They were no longer to be found in any of the Dutch government art depots. The five works that were still present were restituted to the heirs and they received compensation for the missing pieces.
Two Of The Works The Stodel Heirs Received (image RCE) Early in 1941 the occupying forces introduced measures that placed further limitations on Jews’ freedom of movement. For example, Jews could no longer go to university or have a radio at home. Regulation 6/1941 of 10 January 1941 stipulated that all people with at least one Jewish grandparent had to register. It was one of the most fateful regulations issued during the occupation. This order was obeyed almost without exception because of the severe punishment for failing to do so.
Meanwhile Jews continued to be subjected to provocations in public spaces. In January 1941 Jewish businesses in Arnhem were plundered by WA members and Germans. There were acts of vandalism in Amsterdam, with entertainment venues run by Jews taking the brunt of them. Jews in Amsterdam formed gangs in response. Supported by communists and other opponents of the Nazis, they defended themselves against Jew-haters. In mid-February 1941 the occupying forces set up a Jewish Council in Amsterdam. The Jewish neighbourhood was sealed off with barbed wire and renamed the Jewish District.
On 22 and 23 February 1941 the Nazi authorities assaulted and arrested some four hundred Jewish men in Amsterdam. The detainees were taken to Schoorl transit camp and then to Mauthausen. It was not long before the first death notifications reached the Netherlands. Only two men survived the horrors. From that moment Mauthausen was a nightmare.
Tuesday 25 February 1941 saw the start of a major strike in Amsterdam in response to the violent treatment of the Jewish population. The occupying forces declared a state of emergency and put an end to the strike violently. Having been surprised by the strike, they reacted by employing a more systematic approach to persecution. Between February 1941 and July 1942, the Jewish population was completely cut off from the rest of society. Violent acts and arbitrary measures against Jews occurred more and more frequently. On 11 June 1941 there was once again a major raid in Amsterdam.
On 15 September 1941, the senior Nazi Hanns Albin Rauter, General Commissioner for Security, issued the Order concerning the position of Jews in public life (Anordnung über das Auftreten von Juden in der Öffentlichkeit). As a result of this order, Jews were no longer allowed in parks, zoos, cafés, restaurants, museums, libraries and sports facilities. They were also banned from public markets, sales and commodity exchanges. They were furthermore no longer allowed to change their address.
The creation of exceptions to the rule was an important element in the persecution system. By leading Jews to believe that they could obtain exemptions and so avoid (to an extent) persecution, the occupying forces ensured they cooperated in implementing measures. The rights obtained were almost always temporary in nature, except for leaving the country for a non-occupied area. After valuable goods had been handed over, certain information had been provided or otherwise, the exceptional position (‘Sperre’) lapsed.
Raid In Jonas Daniël Meijerplein In Amsterdam, 22 February 1941 (image Www.beeldbankwo2.nl Wikimedia Commons) On 8 August 1941 the occupying forces promulgated regulation 148/1941 ‘concerning the treatment of Jewish financial assets’. Under this regulation, also known as the First Liro regulation, Jews had to surrender their assets above a certain exempt sum (usually 1,000 guilders) to the robber bank Lippmann, Rosenthal & Co., commonly called ‘Liro’, in Amsterdam. The occupying forces took the name Lippmann, Rosenthal & Co. from a Jewish bank of the same name in Nieuwe Spiegelstraat. This was done to create a sense of confidence among the Jewish population.
The receipts that Jews received as evidence were designed to give the looting process the appearance of legality and limit unrest. The historian Gerard Aalders described how the occupying forces came up with euphemisms for looting. They ‘transferred’ and ‘remitted’, they ‘managed’, ‘monitored’ and ‘administrated’, and at all times they anxiously took care not to demonstrably record their victims were being robbed. Words such as looting, plundering or booty were never used and were taboo. At most, something was seized or confiscated, but only when there was good reason. This type of Tarnung, concealment of the actual motives – the plundering and mass murder of the Jewish people – reached a high degree of perfection during the Hitler era.
The Building Housing The Lippmann, Rosenthal & Co (Liro) Bank, Sarphatistraat 47 55, Amsterdam (image Amsterdam City Archives) Just under a year after Jews had to surrender their money to the Liro bank in 1941, regulation 58/1942, known as the Second Liro regulation, was issued. This was aimed at obtaining all other valuable items in Jewish ownership, including works of art, gold, silver and jewellery. The Foreign Exchange Protection Commando (Devisenschutzkommando), which was notorious for its rough and ready tactics, enforced compliance with the Liro regulations.
Around January 1943 the Foreign Exchange Protection Commando seized a number of paintings and silver objects that the Jewish Isaac Goudeket had given to non-Jewish acquaintances for safekeeping These objects, including a mythological scene by the painter J.A. Uytewael, were taken to the Liro bank’s depot. In September 1943 Liro sold the painting to the firm of Lempertz in Cologne. By then Isaac Goudeket was no longer alive. He died in a gas chamber in Sobibor, as did his wife, two daughters and youngest grandson. A third daughter and his oldest grandson were among the few members of his immediate family to survive the war.
After the war the mythological depiction was brought back to the Netherlands and put into storage by the Dutch State. At that time no one claimed the work because the descendants did not know that it was in the Netherlands. In 2004 the family was tipped off by the Origins Unknown Agency, which was investigating looted art in the Dutch National Art Collection. This tip resulted a year later in restitution of the work to the descendants.
J.A. Uytewael, Venus And Adonis With Amor (A Mythological Depiction) During the Wannsee Conference in Potsdam on 20 January 1942, the Nazis decided on the Endlösung der Judenfrage (Final Solution to the Jewish Question). The Jewish population in Hitler’s Nazi Reich was to be killed systematically with the help of industrial methods.
In February 1942 all Dutch Jews had ‘J’ or ‘B’ stamped in their identity cards. From May 1942 they were obliged to wear a yellow star when outside. Two months later the first deportation trains left Amsterdam for Westerbork transit camp, and from there to the German death camps. The peak in the number of deportations was just over a year later. The last train left Westerbork on 13 September 1944 with Bergen-Belsen as its final destination.
Some 107,000 of the 140,000 Jews in the Netherlands were transported to Nazi camps. Around 28,000 Jews went into hiding, many of whom were later betrayed and taken into custody. With approximately 104,000 Jewish victims, the Netherlands had one of the highest victim percentages in Europa.
A number of looting organizations pounced on the possessions of the deported Jews. After the empty homes had been inventoried, the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce (ERR) was responsible for removing the contents. Altogether over 29,000 dwellings were stripped or ‘pulsed’ (this word refers to the removals company Abraham Puls, which carried out this task). The ERR sent 666 Rhine barges and a hundred railway goods wagons full of household contents to Germany, but not before other looting organizations had seized the most valuable items, such as paintings.
One of the dwellings that was stripped was that of the Zwaaf family in Joden Houttuinen in Amsterdam. The parents, Israël Zwaaf and Matje Zwaaf-Verdooner, were transported to Westerbork and later to Auschwitz, where they died in the gas chambers. That was also the fate of two of their nine children and three grandchildren.
In 2007 one of the surviving Zwaaf children – an elderly man – visited the exhibition Looted, But From Whom? in de Hollandsche Schouwburg in Amsterdam. There he recognized the Maccabee lamp he had been given as a child for his bar mitzvah and that had been looted from his parents’ home along with the rest of the contents. After an investigation by the Restitutions Committee the lamp was returned to its original owner.
Covert Photograph Of Jews Being Taken Away, Jonas Daniël Meijerplein Amsterdam, Date Unknown (image Amsterdam City Archives) It was known at an early stage of the Second World War that the Nazis were transporting valuable objects to Germany on a big scale. The Dutch government in exile in London tried to combat this economic plundering. It promulgated emergency legislation that prohibited all transactions with the enemy and that automatically declared them null and void. As early as June 1940 it promulgated statutory order A6, which prohibited trade with the enemy, and on 5 January 1943 it signed the Inter-Allied Declaration Against Acts of Dispossession Committed in Territories under Enemy Occupation or Control, or Joint Declaration for short. In this Joint Declaration the allies declared that: ‘… the Governments making this Declaration … reserve all their rights to declare invalid any transfers of, or dealings with, property, rights and interests of any description whatsoever which are, or have been, situated in the territories which have come under the occupation or control, direct or indirect, of the Governments with which they are at war, or which belong, or have belonged, to persons (including juridical persons) resident in such territories.’ In it, no distinction was made between direct looting and transactions that had been given an ostensibly legal veneer.
Queen Wilhelmina During A Broadcast From Radio Oranje In London (image National Archives Of The Netherlands) In 1942 the Dutch government in exile set up the Restitution of Legal Rights Committee, which considered the issue of how restoration of rights should take place after the defeat of Nazi Germany. This was followed in 1944 by the Restitution of Legal Rights Decree (E100) and the Enemy Assets Expropriation Decree (E133). These decrees were aimed at the restoration of rights for victims of the Nazis and the seizure of enemy possessions in the Netherlands respectively. The latter included the possessions of collaborators and Germans resident in the Netherlands.
Members Of The Dutch Government In Exile Prime Minister Gerbrandy (left) And Ministers Bolkestein (centre) And Kerstens, London 1943 (image Rijksmuseum) The Second World War in Europe officially ended on 8 May 1945 (fighting continued in the Far East until 15 August 1945). The Netherlands celebrated, but grief gripped the Jewish, Roma and Sinti communities. The Nazi regime killed some six million Jewish victims. The number of murdered Roma and Sinti is estimated at 500,000. Most of those who survived the horrors no longer had homes or possessions. They had to wait for restoration of rights, which proved to be a lengthy and laborious process.
Immediately after the liberation, special teams of art experts – referred to as Monuments Men – started searching for artworks looted by the Nazis. They tracked some of them down, transported them back to the countries of origin and handed them over to the national governments. The restoration of rights with regard to the robbed owners was then arranged at a national level. ‘Normal’ transactions between non-Jewish Dutch nationals and Germans had been declared null and void on the grounds of statutory order A6, and so the art hunters also sought to bring back artworks that had changed hands in such transactions.
American Soldiers Display Looted Art At Neuschwanstein Castle In Germany, 1945 The Netherlands Art Property Foundation (SNK) was established on 11 June 1945. It was tasked with the repatriation of Nazi looted and purchased art to the Netherlands and the restitution of the works to the original owners or their descendants.
Mindful of the huge losses that the Netherlands also sustained in its cultural heritage, during the immediate post-war years the SNK focussed primarily on the former task – bringing back Dutch-owned art. A memorandum written in 1944 described it thus: ‘… there is no finer task that can be found for the government than to bring back to some extent to the people who created it the beauty that our country gave the world so generously.’ Many hundreds of artworks found their way back to the Netherlands thanks to the Foundation’s efforts.
The internal guidelines applied by the Foundation to restitution applications were based on proven forced loss of possession during the war. The return of former possessions was possible upon handing over any money received as a result of selling them during the war and making a contribution to paying the recovery costs and the costs incurred in managing and storing the art.
It was difficult for the destitute individual victims to get a work back, if only because of the payment requirements that were specified, the red tape and, in some cases, the unsympathetic attitude of civil servants. The burden of proof was also an obstacle: many survivors had barely any possessions and therefore no evidence in the form of photographs or receipts. As regards evidence, the SNK came up with a solution by saying it would also accept a witness statement as proof. A number of survivors abandoned their claims because after the war the art market slumped and, in the case of loss of possession through selling, the SNK demanded a significantly higher sum than was received for a work during the occupation. The authorities also failed to take into account that while owners who sold a work did receive money, they needed it to go into hiding or to flee the country. An official 1947 guideline states that there is no reason ‘to make the robbed owner, whose rights have been returned to him, richer than he was before being robbed’.
At the end of 1948 there were changes in the SNK’s senior management as a result of maladministration. After that, the Foundation researched the original owners of the repatriated artworks more actively. The Foundation organized three claim exhibitions in 1949 and 1950. These exhibitions gave people the opportunity to track down their artworks. In 1950 the Bureau for Restoration Payments and the Restoration of Property (Bureau Hergo) took over the SNK’s tasks.
‘Claim Exhibition’ Of Paintings, Drawings And Tapestries In The Rijksmuseum, 1950 The period for submitting restitution applications expired at the end of 1952. Bureau Hergo was closed down and the government considered the ‘art restitution’ issue as settled. This view was in step with the times. The focus was on national post-war reconstruction and society as a whole. Priority was given to the future. During this period little attention was paid to the suffering inflicted on Jews, Roma and Sinti. The Ministry of Finance furthermore repeatedly stressed that the restoration of rights may not be too great a burden on government expenditure.
During the course of the nineteen-fifties some of the items of cultural value that were not restituted after the war were auctioned off. The proceeds went to the state coffers. The remaining works were brought together in the Netherlands Art Property Collection (NK Collection), as part of the Dutch National Art Collection. These works ended up in museums, government buildings and elsewhere. To quote the historians Eelke Muller and Helen Schretlen: ‘The circle around the SNK stoutly defended the severely compromised Dutch cultural interests. According to this view, the need for returning art lay in the massive psychological value that items of cultural value represented for the Dutch people. … After sustaining all the wrongs done during the war, the state was able to give the population a degree of happiness when the returned artworks were generously spread across the country.’ This vision largely defined post-war attitudes to restoration of rights in the field of art and led to the interests of individual victims of looting being put on the back burner.
Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce (ERR) Files In A Room In Neuschwanstein Castle, Bavaria 1945 (image National Archives And Records Administration Wikimedia Commons) After the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, a number of different countries and parties engaged in discussions about the repatriation of looted art that had been in Eastern Bloc countries for decades. It was in this atmosphere of openness that the symposium The Spoils of War – World War II and Its Aftermath: The Loss, Reappearance, and Recovery of Cultural Property was held New York in 1995. It did not just address art stolen from Jews. It covered all forms of art looted during the Second World War, including the hundreds of thousands of artworks the Red Army took back to Russia after the downfall of the Third Reich.
This first symposium about Second World War looted art resulted in initiatives relating to provenance research. Art institutions became more aware of the possible suspect provenance of works of art. A possible criticism of the symposium is that the subject of Jewish looted art was given little attention. This criticism contributed to the organization of a subsequent conference that was devoted exclusively to Jewish looted art: the Washington Conference on Holocaust Era Assets in 1998.
The Proceedings Of The Symposium The Spoils Of War, Complied By Elizabeth Simpson (1997) In 1995 the World Jewish Congress started negotiations with Swiss banks about dormant accounts. These are accounts that were opened by Jews before or during the Nazi era, but have been inactive for decades because the account holders were murdered. During all those years Swiss banks provided little or no access to descendants and did not take any action themselves to trace descendants. In 1998 the parties reached a settlement in court. Since then, over a billion dollars has been paid to some 457,000 claimants.
Union Bank Of Switzerland, Zurich (image Ank Kumar Wikimedia Commons) The London Conference on Nazi Gold in 1997 also featured the wrongs done to Jews during the Nazi period, reflecting the much greater focus on the subject since shortly after the Second World War. This conference was about the gold that the Nazis had stolen from European banks and private Jewish individuals. In 1946 this gold was put under the responsibility of the international Tripartite Gold Commission, which only distributed it to countries, however, and not to individual claimants. It was decided at the London conference that gold that had not yet been distributed – 2% of the original quantity, valued at approximately 70 million dollars – would be donated to survivors of the Holocaust.
During this period the theme of Nazi looted art became more and more prominent. Governments and museums were still holding many artworks with a suspect provenance. International pressure to do something about that situation was becoming greater and greater.
Gold Stored By Nazis During The War In A Salt Mine In Merkers, Germany (image A. Savin Wikimedia Commons) In response to the increased international concern about the inadequate restoration of rights after the Second World War, the Dutch government decided to have research conducted into this chapter of the nation’s history. The government set up a number of committees to look into the looting of possessions during the Second World War and the restoration of rights phase that followed it. These were the Van Kemenade Committee (WW II Assets Contact Group), the Scholten Committee (Financial Assets), the Kordes Committee (Liro Records), the Van Galen Committee (Indonesian Assets) and the Ekkart Committee (Art).
The last of these, chaired by the art historian Rudi Ekkart, started in October 1997 with a trial investigation into the Netherlands Art Property Collection (or NK Collection for short).
The Ekkart Committee published its findings in April 1998. It concluded that further research was urgently needed to remove ‘the haze of secrecy’ surrounding the NK Collection and to make it possible to guarantee optimal treatment of previous owners and descendants. The research would have to be a task of the Cultural Heritage Inspectorate.
In a letter to the Lower House of the Dutch Parliament of 20 May 1998, Aad Nuis, State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science (OCW), endorsed the Ekkart Committee’s conclusion that further research into the provenance of the entire NK Collection was necessary. The government concurred.
Dwight Eisenhower, opperbevelhebber van de geallieerde strijdkrachten, inspecteert roofkunst in een Duitse zoutmijn, april 1945 (beeld: National Archives and Records Administration/Wikimedia Commons) The directors of various Dutch museums met on 12 March 1998 in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. That day the Museum Acquisitions 1940-1948 Committee was set up. It was tasked with coordinating a national investigation by museums into their purchases between 1940 and 1948. The Netherlands Museums Association (NMV) was to play a key role by involving as many museums as possible in the project. The historian Eelke Muller was taken on using financing from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) to compile the museums’ results in the form of a national report. This report was published in December 1999. This did not mark the end of museum research. In 2009 a second investigation entitled Museum Acquisitions since 1933 started.
The Rijksmuseum In Amsterdam (image Dguendel Wikimedia Commons) The Origins Unknown Agency (BHG) was established on 1 September 1998 in response to the recommendation of the Ekkart Committee that it was essential to investigate the provenance of the entire Netherlands Art Property Collection (or NK Collection for short). Formally speaking the Agency was part of central government’s Cultural Heritage Inspectorate. Between 1998 and 2004, BHG staff investigated the provenance of the objects, numbering almost five thousand, in the NK Collection. They published their investigation results on the website www.herkomstgezocht.nl/en so that they are easy for everyone to find. In 2002 the book Betwist bezit. De Stichting Nederlands Kunstbezit en de teruggave van roofkunst na 1945 [Disputed Ownership. The SNK and the Restitution of Looted Art after 1945] by BHG researchers Eelke Muller and Helen Schretlen was published. It is a comprehensive and detailed study of the performance of the organization that was tasked immediately after the war with the restitution of looted art. Using many examples, the book makes it clear why the SNK’s original task – returning looted art to the rightful owners – was in fact nowhere near completed.
The Ekkart Committee supervised the work of the BHG staff. In this new role it was also referred to as the Origins Unknown Committee. In addition to a supervisory role during the investigation, the Committee was also instructed by the Minister of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) to give advice about the policy to be implemented with regard to artworks in the NK Collection.
The Origins Unknown Agency Was Housed In The National Archives Of The Netherlands (image Maurits90 Wikimedia Commons) An international conference in Washington at the end of 1998 elaborated on the earlier symposium in New York (1995; about looted art from the Second World War in a general sense) and the conference in London (1997; about Nazi gold). The Washington Conference on Holocaust Era Assets was completely dedicated to items of cultural value stolen from Jewish owners during the Nazi era. Forty-four countries, including the Netherlands, sent representatives to it. The Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art – guidelines intended to accelerate and streamline the international restitution process – were published during the conference. Stuart Eizenstat, who wrote them, explained as follows:
‘Several weeks ago, we prepared a discussion paper of 11 general principles, which was used as the basis of extensive consultations and which all of you have today. These principles are not, in themselves, a solution. They are a means by which nations can fashion their own solutions consistent with their own legal systems. The principles try to capture the spirit of this conference for nations engaging in this task. If these principles are properly applied, the discovery of Nazi-confiscated art will no longer be a matter of chance. Instead, there will be an organized international effort — voluntary in nature but backed by a strong moral commitment — to search provenance and uncover stolen art. This effort will be undertaken by governments, NGOs, museums, auctioneers and dealers.’
The complete text of the Washington Principles is given below:
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum In Washington, Where Part Of The Conference Was Held (image R01k Wikimedia Commons) On 4 November 1999 the Council of Europe adopted a resolution concerning stolen Jewish items of cultural value: the Looted Jewish Cultural Property Resolution. Both the Washington Principles and this European resolution called for a flexible restitution policy for returning art looted during the Nazi era to the original owners or their heirs.
Palais De L’Europe On 21 March 2000 the Dutch government responded to the investigations carried out by the different Second World War Assets committees. In a letter to the Lower House of the Dutch Parliament the government wrote that after the Second World War best efforts had been made to try to restore everyone’s rights as much as possible and that, according to the reports from the different committees, those efforts had been reasonably successful. In the government’s view, however, based on yardsticks current at the time, restoration of rights could and should have been implemented with greater understanding, and some procedures could be described as formalistic, bureaucratic and unfeeling: ‘Victims of persecution have been left too much to bear their grief on their own. In recent years this has come up in every discussion about this subject. Knowing what we know now, looking back at the years after the Second World War, the government concludes that many people in Dutch society, including those bearing responsibility for policy, failed for a long time to give the subject enough attention.’
Although the government maintained its previously established position that restoration of rights would not be repeated, it emphasized ‘that it remains possible for rightful claimants to submit restitution applications. The State will, subject to certain requirements, still address individual claims from rightful claimants (or their heirs) arising from restoration of rights. On the grounds of leniency considerations, in such cases no period of limitation will be invoked.’ The Lower House declared its support for this government position on 18 April 2000.
Op 14 July 2000 Rick van der Ploeg, the State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science (OCW), sent parliament a government memorandum. It was his response to a request from the Standing Committee for Education, Culture and Science on the grounds of Resolution 1205 (1999) of the Council of Europe (concerning looted Jewish cultural property). While awaiting the recommendations of the Ekkart Committee about a Dutch restitution policy, in the government memorandum Van der Ploeg provided information about the status of the restitution of Jewish items of cultural value by the Dutch government. He furthermore formulated provisional policy rules for handling individual restitution applications ‘without wishing to anticipate the conclusions of the Ekkart Committee’. In his memorandum Van der Ploeg wrote that he declared the policy rules for objects from the NK Collection also applicable to works of art from other parts of the Dutch National Art Collection.
The Binnenhof In The Hague, Seat Of The Dutch Government (image Zairon Wikimedia Commons) In order to move forward with Dutch restitution policy, on 26 April 2001 the Ekkart Committee presented a set of interim recommendations to the State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science (OCW).
The nine interim recommendations concerned privately owned art lost during the Nazi period and were very important in regard to what would later become the task of the Restitutions Committee:
The government accepted the broad outlines of the Ekkart Committee’s recommendations and used them to formulate policy. This emerges from the government response of 29 June 2001 in conjunction with an additional government response of 16 November 2001.
A Painting By Rembrandt Found In Munich, May 1945 (image National Archives And Records Administration) On 16 November 2001 the government issued the Decree Establishing the Advisory Committee on the Assessment of Restitution Applications for Items of Cultural Value and the Second World War. In it the government stated it would establish an advisory committee to assess restitution applications. The decree was informed by internationally valid policy, as expressed in the Washington Principles, which included a recommendation to set up ‘alternative dispute resolution mechanisms for resolving ownership issues’. Countries such as France and the United Kingdom had already done so.
Article 2 of the Decree describes this advisory committee’s task as follows:
This Decree of 16 November 2001 came into force on the second day after publication in the Netherlands Government Gazette of 21 December 2001. The Advisory Committee on the Assessment of Restitution Applications for Items of Cultural Value and the Second World War – the Restitutions Committee for short – was therefore established on 23 December 2001. The establishment of this Committee made it possible to tackle restitution issues using a policy-based approach rather than a strictly judicial one.
The Restitutions Committee’s recommendations and rulings relate to three types of collections. The first concerns works in the Netherlands Art Property Collection (NK Collection), which is part of the Dutch National Art Collection. This collection contains the ‘orphaned’ artworks that were returned from Germany after the liberation but have not been returned to the original owners or their descendants.
The second category includes the other artworks in the Dutch National Art Collection. The Dutch government decided that this second category has to be treated in the same way as the NK Collection. If it is established with sufficient certainty that the case is about looted art, the work has to be restituted.
The third category relates to artworks that are not held by the Dutch State, but by other owners such as foundations and provincial or local authorities. Applicants can look to the Restitutions Committee in these cases too. The Dutch State is not directly involved and so this third type of case is assessed in accordance with separate regulations. In such cases the Restitutions Committee does not issue ‘advice’ – as it does with regard to the Dutch National Art Collection (NK or not-NK) – but a ‘binding ruling’. This is intended to provide applicants with sufficient certainty that the granting of a restitution application will actually be complied with. The Restitutions Committee assesses such cases on the basis of the yardsticks of reasonableness and fairness. The regulations provide sufficient scope to take into account possible acquisition in good faith by a post-war holder. The value of an artwork for the applicant and the holder could also be included in the considerations. Solutions other than straight restitution are also possible, for instance financial compensation for the applicant or the holder.
The Restitutions Committee’s First Case Concerned The Painting Paschal Lamb By J. Beuckelaer. The Restitution Application Was Granted On 22 March 2002 (image RCE) The recommendations for a Dutch restitution policy issued by the Ekkart Committee in April 2001 were limited to artworks looted from private individuals. At the time the committee announced that recommendations relating to artworks from Jewish art galleries would follow. This was because it was more difficult to formulate clear recommendations for the art trade than for private individuals. The most important complicating factors were:
– that the art trade’s objective is to sell trading stock, so a significant fraction of transactions, even by Jewish art dealers, in principle constituted ordinary sales.
– that in many cases it is not clear whether a transaction was conducted by the Jewish art dealer himself of by a Verwalter (administrator). It is often not even clear whether an artwork had belonged to the trading stock before an administrator was appointed or whether the administrator had purchased it.
– besides regular art dealers, from 1940 there were a growing number of ‘occasional dealers’, who were of Jewish and non-Jewish origin. They had not established a business, such as an art gallery or art dealership, but bought and sold artworks to a greater or lesser extent.
It would therefore be unjust to assess sales in the art trade in the same way as sales by private individuals. The recommendation to consider sales by private individuals from the beginning of the occupation as forced, unless the facts expressly show otherwise, could not be adopted unchanged for the art trade.
On 28 January 2003 the Ekkart Committee published its ‘Recommendations concerning restitution of art dealers’ artworks’. These were as follows:
In a letter to the Lower House of the Dutch Parliament of 5 December 2003, the government stated it was adopting these recommendations virtually completely.
The Jewish Art Gallery Morpurgo In Rokin In Amsterdam, 1955 (image Amsterdam City Archives) On 14 December 2004 the Ekkart Committee submitted its final recommendations about Dutch restitution policy to the Minister of Education, Culture and Science (OCW). In a letter to the Lower House of the Dutch Parliament of 8 March 2005, the government stated it was adopting these recommendations virtually completely. The nine recommendations are as follows:
The Painting In The Winter Garden By Edouard Manet Discovered In A Salt Mine In Merkers, Germany, April 1945 (image National Archives And Records Administration) The exhibition Looted, But From Whom? was staged in the Hollandsche Schouwburg in Amsterdam from 30 November 2006 to 18 March 2007. The exhibition was about the investigation conducted by the Origins Unknown Agency (BHG). BHG staff were able to link hundreds of objects from the Netherlands Art Property (NK) Collection to former owners or their heirs, but despite intensive detective work they were left in the dark in many cases. The exhibition featured a selection of fifty looted artworks with unclear provenances. The organizers hoped that this would prompt owners or their descendants to come forward.
The Exhibition Looted, But From Whom In The Hollandsche Schouwburg In Amsterdam (image Jewish Cultural Quarter) Six years after its first recommendation, the Restitutions Committee issued its first binding opinion. These are cases in which the Dutch State is not involved. The Committee mediates between the applicant or applicants on the one hand and the holder of the claimed work of art on the other (usually a museum or provincial or local authority). It assesses the case on the basis of the yardsticks of reasonableness and fairness and it formulated regulations in which the interests of both parties are taken into account. It goes without saying that the way the original owner lost possession plays a role, but so too does the way the holder acquired the work. To what extent should the current holder have known about the work’s tarnished past when it was purchased? The importance of the work to the applicant and current holder could also be considered in the procedure. The outcome could range from straight restitution or rejection to, for instance, financial compensation or placing a text board with the story of the original owner.
The first binding opinion concerned the painting A Prayer before Supper by Jan Toorop, which was held by the Zeeuws Museum. The Committee concluded that there had been a forced sale as a direct result of the Nazi regime and that the heirs had a significant emotional interest in the work, and it therefore ruled that the painting should be restituted. At the same time the Committee concluded that the canvas had been purchased in 1981 in good faith and that the museum was very attached to it. The Committee therefore deemed it reasonable and fair that the applicants should pay the museum a consideration (they had already offered to do so during the procedure).
The decision in this complex case received plaudits and also generated the inevitable criticism, which focussed on the weighing up of the different interests – in other words the use of the yardsticks of reasonableness and fairness. In a lead story, the daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad wrote as follows: ‘The Committee’s decisions have created radical legal precedents. A remarkable aspect of its reasoning is that even if purchasers acted in good faith, they are no longer safe. In so doing, a globally applicable basic principle of civil law has been abandoned in favour of restitution to the descendants of Jewish victims of the Nazis.’ The paper went on to say that from now on, Dutch museums needed to think twice before voluntarily submitting their disputes to the Restitutions Committee.
Since 2008 the Restitutions Committee has been asked to issue binding opinions more often because art, government, academic and legal institutions are conducting more and more research into looted art. The number of cases involving works from the Netherlands Art Property (NK) Collection is actually declining slightly because the large number of cases dating from the early years of the restitution policy have meanwhile been dealt with.
Jan Toorop, A Prayer Before Supper In 2009 the Netherlands Museums Association (NMV) asked its members to conduct research into the purchases they made from 1933 onwards. There was a positive response from 163 museums, which investigated their collections in order to establish which of the works they hold have a suspect provenance. The museums were responsible for their investigations, which were conducted by museum staff or by provenance researchers taken on for the purpose. It was not necessary to investigate artworks purchased before 1933 or made after 1945. The Museum Acquisitions since 1933 Committee, which was independent, supervised the national study.
The research work was not simple, if only because of the huge number of artworks that had to be investigated. It involved some 13,000 works in the Rijksmuseum, for instance, and just under 4,000 in Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum. In many cases it was furthermore not a simple matter to get a clear picture of an artwork’s provenance.
The preliminary results of the study were presented in October 2013. At that time a few museums, including the Rijksmuseum and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, had not yet completed the provenance project because of the size of their collections. The finishing touches of part two of the study were completed at the end of 2018. The website www.musealeverwervingen.nl/en/10/home/ features which objects held by Dutch museums were possibly or virtually certainly looted during the Nazi period. The total number of objects was 173.
Page From The Website Www.musealeverwervingen.nl The Holocaust Era Assets Conference was held in June 2009 in Terezin, Czech Republic, at the site of the former Theresienstadt ghetto. This conference gave rise to the Terezin Declaration : a non-binding declaration stating that measures should be taken to compensate for the economic wrongs done to Jews and other victims of the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. The Terezin Declaration was signed by 47 countries, including the Netherlands, and it is intended to serve as a lasting reminder.
The Former Theresienstadt Concentration Camp (image Arwin Meijer Wikimedia Commons) Initially, policy makers assumed that the number of restitution applications would drop within a few years, but that was not what happened in practice. Applications continue to be submitted as a result of the significant amount of research being done in the Netherlands and other countries. In 2011 the State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science (OCW), Halbe Zijlstra, asked the Council for Culture to study the restitution policy, which had been implemented since 2001, and to make suggestions for changes where necessary. One of the issues was the substantive procedure used by the Restitutions Committee. The State Secretary described it thus: ‘Under the current policy, irrespective of whether there is a claim to an object in the Netherlands Art Property (NK) Collection or another object in the Dutch National Art Collection, acquired through regular channels, the Restitutions Committee uses the same assessment criteria for both claims. This means that the Committee, if it concludes that the claim should be honoured, can only advise the actual restitution of the work of art concerned. This is different when third parties (including provincial and local authorities) request a binding ruling, which I can lay before the Restitutions Committee on the grounds of article 2, third paragraph, of the Decree Establishing the Restitutions Committee. In such cases the Restitutions Committee has the option, on the basis of the yardsticks of reasonableness and fairness (article 2, fifth paragraph, Decree Establishing the Restitutions Committee), to weigh up multiple interests and to come up with different solutions.’
According to the State Secretary the issue was therefore ‘whether it is reasonable for the Restitutions Committee to have such additional scope when making recommendations with regard to objects held by the State that do not belong to the NK Collection.’ According to the State Secretary this might possibly do greater justice to the difference between the way in which the NK Collection came into the possession of the State (after it was returned from Germany) and way in which other works came into the possession of the State (through normal channels). The State Secretary pointed out that the Washington Principles allow for such nuances. According to the Washington Principles, a ‘just and fair solution’ is the objective, ‘recognizing this may vary according to the facts and circumstances surrounding a specific case’.
The State Secretary also raised other questions. For how long should Dutch restitution policy be continued? How and in what way should the so-called more liberal restitution policy be terminated?
The Council for Culture set up an ad hoc committee to consider the State Secretary’s questions and to prepare advice. The ad hoc committee was chaired by Rudi Ekkart and the other members had previously also been members of the Ekkart Committee.
After the ad hoc committee had completed its task, in January 2012 the Council for Culture published its advice for the State Secretary. The advice with regard to the substantive side of restitution policy was ‘to start applying a more differentiated way to handle any claims to items of cultural value in the State collections that are not in the NK Collection’. In other words, if it is established that a work of art in the Dutch National Art Collection, but not in the NK Collection, is looted art, the Restitutions Committee should be able to recommend solutions other than straight restitution, for instance financial compensation for the applicant or the holder. There can be scope to do this, for example, in the case of purchase by a museum in good faith. Alternatively, the applicant and the holder may agree that the artwork in question should stay in the museum. In common with the binding ruling procedure – the procedure that applies if the Dutch State is not the holder – in such cases the Restitutions Committee must reach its conclusions on the basis of the yardsticks of reasonableness and fairness.
The ad hoc committee also recommended ‘letting the current, more liberal government policy concerning restitution cases continue until two years after publication of the complete results of the present museum study’. Thereafter, contended the ad hoc committee, it can be decided for each case whether it will be assessed ‘according to the yardsticks of reasonableness and fairness’ and ‘through the application of aspects of the more liberal restitutions policy’. According to the ad hoc committee, invoking a time limit is still not an option. A definitive deadline for submission can only be considered if international agreements have been made about it that replace the Washington Principles.
The State Secretary responded to the Council for Culture’s advice in a letter of 22 June 2012. He accepted the recommendations and decided that henceforth the Restitutions Committee should advise on the basis of reasonableness and fairness if the claimed work was held by the State but did belong to the NK Collection.
The State Secretary also decided that with effect from 30 June 2015 – being two years after the scheduled publication of the results of the museum study – this basis would also apply to works from the NK Collection. ‘As a result of this there will be one policy for all works of art held by the State, whether they are in the NK collection or another State collection,’ wrote the State Secretary.
In July 2012 the Netherlands Government Gazette published the amending decree implementing the decisions spelled out in the State Secretary’s letter.
The Ice Boat ‘Sperwer’ Restituted In 2015 On The Grounds Of The New Policy (image Zuiderzee Museum) In September 2018 the provenance researchers who had been employees of the Restitutions Committee since 2002 were transferred to the Expert Centre Restitution (ECR). This new expertise centre was established to combine the Restitutions Committee’s research organization with the knowledge and skills of the Origins Unknown Agency and the provenance research of the Netherlands Museums Association. The Expert Centre Restitution is located in the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies ‘This creates a national and recognized focal point for restitution applicants, current holders and owners, museums, media, researchers and other interested parties,’ stated Ministers Ingrid van Engelshoven and Arie Slob in their decree of 20 September 2018.
Archive Boxes In The NIOD Institute For War, Holocaust And Genocide Studies In Amsterdam (image Olaf Janssen Wikimedia Commons) At the end of 2019 the Minister of Education, Culture and Science (OCW), Ingrid van Engelshoven, asked the Council for Culture to investigate and evaluate Dutch restitution policy. To that end the Council for Culture set up a committee chaired by the lawyer and former politician Jacob Kohnstamm. The Kohnstamm Committee assessed the restitution policy using the Washington Principles, formulated in 1998 and endorsed by the Netherlands, as the yardstick. To what extent does Dutch policy comply, or still comply, with them?
The Kohnstamm Committee presented its findings on 7 December 2020 in its report Striving for Justice. The Committee was positive to a degree. It noted that there is widespread appreciation for the Restitutions Committee’s work. At the same time it had significant criticism about a number of aspects of Dutch restitution policy.
One of the Kohnstamm Committee’s recommendations was that the Dutch State should restart the investigation of looted art. That has not been done systematically since 2007. ‘At the time, not all the components of the research by the Origins Unknown Agency were completed,’ reported the committee, ‘and new understanding and working practices justify this research being continued. It is also important to maintain the knowledge acquired in a structured way and to update it based on the latest sources. This is all in line with the Washington Principles and the Terezin Declaration.’
The report Striving for Justice also considered the Restitutions Committee’s policy to be another critical issue. The evaluation committee contended that the weighing up of interests, which the Restitutions Committee has involved in its recommendations more frequently since 2012 (from that moment in all recommendations except in cases concerning objects from the Netherlands Art Property (NK) Collection), ‘detracts in some respects’ from the objective of obtaining restoration of rights. This view is consistent with criticism that arose earlier as a result of a few recent binding rulings issued by the Restitutions Committee. The evaluation committee deemed it ‘fundamentally unjust’ to include the importance of an artwork to the holder in the reasoning behind a recommendation. That applied similarly to the importance of a work to an applicant: ‘Such a criterion does not serve to right the wrongs done to the victims.’
The Kohnstamm Committee also considered it desirable to replace the various documents describing the Restitutions Committee’s policy in the future with one assessment framework that would apply to all types of case (Netherlands Art Property (NK) Collection / non-NK parts of the Dutch National Art Collection / binding ruling). This framework should not include the weighing up of interests. The committee furthermore asserted that central, provincial and local government should, ‘in certain circumstances’, waive invoking acquisition in good faith: ‘This applies where the circumstances surrounding the acquisition and the research done by the holder at the time of the acquisition do not comply with the current yardsticks of good faith.’
The Restitutions Committee was also advised to intensify contacts with applicants: ‘Improve communication between the RC and applicants during the procedure so that the latter are informed about current progress with the investigation. Reinforce the RC’s secretariat so that there are more human resources available for communication.’
Finally, the Kohnstamm Committee recommended that a helpdesk should be set up that is easy for current and potential applicants to contact with questions and requests for information. This helpdesk should actively approach descendants if looted art turns up somewhere.
In response to Striving for Justice, the Restitutions Committee stated that it was positive about the ‘constructive recommendations’ in the report: ‘The RC hopes that the Minister will issue her policy response soon so that it can get to work.’
An American Serviceman Showing Looted Art In A Salt Mine In Merkers, Germany, May 1945 (image National Archives And Records Administration) Minister of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) Ingrid van Engelshoven responded to the Kohnstamm Committee’s evaluation report Striving for Justice on 12 March 2021. She expressed her appreciation for the committee’s work and accepted the recommendations in the report.
As a consequence of the Kohnstamm Committee’s recommendations, in mid-April 2021 the Dutch government adopted a new assessment framework for restitution applications. This new assessment framework applies to all types of applications ((Netherlands Art Property (NK) Collection / non-NK parts of the Dutch National Art Collection / binding ruling) and is part of the new Decree Establishing the Restitutions Committee from the Minister of Education, Culture and Science (OCW).
The basic principle underlying the new assessment framework is that if it is sufficiently plausible that looted art is involved and it is clear who the rightful claimants are, there should always be a meaningful form of redress. In practice this will usually be restitution. The Minister decided that the Dutch State will no longer invoke acquisition in good faith, and consequently a mediated solution will no longer be an option when a restitution application concerns an object from the Dutch National Art Collection. ‘Government has a substantial responsibility to rectify injustice, irrespective of the circumstances in which acquisition took place,’ wrote the Minister in her letter of 12 March 2021. In the case of other holders, such as a foundation, a local authority or a private individual, a mediated solution is one of the options, provided that acquisition was made in good faith.
The new policy is in line with the recommendations made by the Ekkart Committee in 2001 and 2003 and, apart from the point relating to the Dutch State and good faith, also with the recommendations of the 2012 ad hoc Ekkart Committee. The weighing up of interests, as referred to in the earlier binding ruling regulations, is no longer possible.
In addition to applying the new assessment framework, the Restitutions Committee is intensifying contacts with the parties involved. From now on, in addition to the handling in writing, there will in principle be a hearing in each case. Parties will furthermore receive a draft, to which they are entitled to respond, before the Restitutions Committee reaches its final conclusion. The Restitutions Committee has spelled out its new procedure in the form of new regulations.
Object From The Franz Oppenheimer Collection Restituted In 2019 This timeline was compiled by the Restitutions Committee, based in part on texts written by its former employees Evelien Campfens, Floris Kunert, Annemarie Marck and Eelke Muller. The Restitutions Committee is responsible for the content of this timeline.
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