Summary of recommendation

The Restitutions Committee has assessed the application submitted by the joint beneficiaries of Emma Budge (1852-1937) for restitution of two salts made by the artist Johannes Lutma (1584-1669). It emerged from research conducted by the Expert Centre Restitution (ECR) that the salts came from the private collection of the Jewish Emma Budge. It has also become sufficiently plausible that her beneficiaries lost possession of the salts involuntarily in Germany after 1933.

It is known that, at some unknown moment, the salts became part of the art collection of the Budges, who lived in Hamburg. After the Nazis came to power, Emma Budge had a number of wills drawn up relating to the disposition and sale of her art collection, but her executors were unable to implement her wishes after her death in 1937. Contrary to her instructions, the salts, together with another pair of salts that are the same, went under the hammer in Berlin at the Paul Graupe auction house, which had meanwhile been Aryanized. The two pairs of salts were purchased by a person called ‘Graetzer’, about whom no details are known.

The salts were subsequently held successively by the antiques dealer A. Vecht of Amsterdam, the art collector H.P. Doodeheefver of Hilversum and the art and antiques gallery Firma D. Katz of Dieren. Thereafter they came into the possession of W.J.R. Dreesmann. This businessman and collector built up a large collection of Amsterdam-related cultural material. In March 1960 Amsterdam City Council bought the two pairs of salts in a sale at auctioneers Frederik Muller in Amsterdam. It sold one pair of salts to the Dutch State for the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, where the objects are currently present. The Amsterdam Museum received the other pair on loan from the City Council.

Emma Budge and her beneficiaries, because of their Jewish descent, belonged to a persecuted population group and the loss of possession happened during the Nazi regime. On the grounds of criterion 3.1 of the applicable assessment framework, the Committee must assume that the loss of possession was involuntary, unless the facts expressly show otherwise. The changes that Emma Budge made to the provisions in her will cannot be considered in isolation from the political developments in Germany and rise to power of the Nazi regime. In view of the pressure exerted on the executors, which resulted in them acting in a way that was very different from what Emma Budge’s will intended, having the salts sold at auction was not a free choice. It is furthermore plausible that the Budge beneficiaries did not have free disposal of the proceeds of the sale as a result of the severe anti-Jewish measures. The loss of possession was therefore not voluntary.

The Restitutions Committee has advised the State Secretary for Culture and Media to restitute the pair of salts made by Johannes Lutma, which are currently in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, to the joint beneficiaries of Emma Budge.

1. The Application

In a letter of 25 October 2018 the Minister asked the Committee for advice about restitution of the Lutma salts that are currently in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. This was prompted by a letter of 29 June 2018 to the Minister from the lawyer (Rechtsanwalt) Lothar Fremy of Berlin on behalf of the joint beneficiaries of Emma Budge.

The Committee previously issued a binding ruling on 16 April 2018 (RC 3.163) concerning the claim by the Applicants to restitution of the sculpture Moses attributed to the artist Alessandro Vittoria. In this binding ruling the Committee ruled that this work should be restituted to the executor for the benefit of the estate of Emma Budge.

On 10 May 2022 the Applicants consented to application of the assessment framework accompanying the Decree Establishing the Restitutions Committee of 15 April 2021 (hereinafter referred to as the assessment framework). The assessment framework is in the Appendix to the Decree Establishing the Restitutions Committee.

At the request of the Netherlands Cultural Heritage Agency (hereinafter referred to as the RCE) the Protection Worthiness Assessment Committee (hereinafter referred to as the TCB) was asked to advise about the protection worthiness of the two salts in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

Chronological overview of the committee’s actions and the responses to them

• In a letter of 29 June 2018 the Applicants asked the Minister to restitute the Lutma salts, which are currently in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. In response to this request, on 25 October 2018 the RCE, on behalf of the Minister, asked the Committee to advise about this request. At the same time the RCE reported that, in the context of the Heritage Act, it had asked for advice about the salts from the TCB. The TCB issued advice on 23 August 2019, and the RCE sent it to the Committee in an e-mail of 6 December 2019.
• On 13 March 2019 the Committee asked the ECR to launch an investigation into the facts. The results were recorded in a draft overview of the facts, which was sent with a letter dated 22 November 2021 to the RCE and the Applicants for additional information and/or comments. The comments in the letters from the Applicants (31 January 2022) and from the RCE (24 December 2021 and 10 February 2022) were incorporated in the overview of the facts by the ECR. The responses to the draft overview and a selection of the relevant correspondence were appended to the overview as appendix 2.
• The final overview of the facts was adopted on 24 March 2022. The Applicants responded to it in an e-mail of 10 May 2022 and the RCE in an e-mail of 12 May 2022.
• On 30 May 2022 the Committee asked whether the Applicants needed a hearing. On 7 June 2022 the Applicants answered stating that they wanted a hearing. At the same time, they stated they did not object to a simultaneous meeting relating to all the Budge cases currently being dealt with by the Committee (registered at the Committee as RC 1.175, RC 3.179 and RC 3.181). In an e-mail of 30 March 2022 the RCE stated it had no objection to a joint hearing.
• The joint hearing took place on 22 August 2022 at the offices of the CAOP in The Hague.
• An English transcript of the hearing was sent to the Applicants and the RCE on 16 September 2022.
• The Committee sent its draft recommendation to the Applicants and the RCE on 3 October 2022.
• The RCE commented on the draft recommendation in an e-mail of 29 October 2022. The applicants indicated in an e-mail of 3 November 2022 that they will not comment on the draft recommendation.

The will and the sale of Emma Budge’s art collection

The will of Emma Budge, supplemented by five codicils

Initially Emma Budge intended to leave her art collection to the city of Hamburg. That changed after the Nazi regime came to power in January 1933. Emma Budge had her last wishes recorded in a will dated 5 October 1933, which was supplemented over the years by five codicils, the last of which was registered in 1936. It can be deduced from the documentation that in her will and testament Budge took into account the rise of the Nazi regime and the possible consequences. She included stipulations concerning her art collection in the will of 5 October 1933. She changed the section relating to her art collection in a codicil of 11 June 1934. In it she stipulated that the executors were authorized to donate individual objects to museums or other institutions as they saw fit. The artworks that remained after this then had to be sold. At the same time she stipulated, among other things, that a public sale in Hamburg was ruled out.

Emma Budge’s freedom to stipulate what was to happen to her art collection after her death was significantly constrained by anti-Jewish measures, including Reich Capital Flight Tax (Reichsfluchtsteuer), which was intended to combat capital leaving the country. Budge made substantial changes to her will shortly after the promulgation of the Nuremberg Race Laws on 15 September 1935 in the form of a fourth codicil, dated 21 November 1935. In view of the measures taken against German Jews, in it she stipulated that all executors had to be Jewish. She stated with regard to her art collection that a sale in the German Reich was not expected to be advisable.

The sale at Graupe auction house in Berlin in 1937

Despite the fact that Emma Budge had stated in 1935 in a codicil to her will that it would probably not be prudent to sell her art collection inside Germany, after her death in 1937 her art collection went under the hammer at Berlin auctioneers Paul Graupe. The sale of Emma Budge’s art collection took place on the instructions of the executors on 4, 5 and 6 October and 6 and 7 December 1937 under the supervision of Hans W. Lange, who had Aryanized the Graupe auction house. Among the 812 lots that went under the hammer, there were over 300 lots containing objects from Emma Budge’s collection.

The Emma Budge estate 1938-1945

The lion’s share of the Budge estate consisted of securities and currency that were beyond the reach of the Nazi regime in an account with the Schweizerische Kreditanstalt. There was a fierce struggle for these assets in 1938 and 1939. The German authorities pushed for the transfer of foreign assets to Germany, where the Nazis could easily appropriate the assets under the applicable foreign currency legislation. This involved exerting pressure on the beneficiaries and executors remaining in Germany by means of arrest, seizure of the personal assets of the individual beneficiaries and withdrawal of their passports. After the Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht) on 9 and 10 November 1938 the position of the beneficiaries remaining in Germany became even more perilous. One of the beneficiaries and the spouse of another beneficiary were detained in Buchenwald concentration camp. Their release was linked to willingness to cooperate with the authorities. Furthermore, the domestic assets of the beneficiaries were seized.

Pressure was also exerted on the Jewish executors. The Chief Finance Administrator (Oberfinanzpräsident) of the Hamburg local court (Amtsgericht Hamburg) issued instructions to have two executors who remained outside Germany replaced by two other Jewish executors who were in Germany and therefore under the Nazis’ influence. In the end they were to be replaced in turn by the lawyer Dr Ernst Blum of Lucerne and Gottfried Francke of Hamburg, accountant and former tax advisor to Emma Budge. Neither was Jewish. In the end the Nazis were to succeed in getting two-thirds of the assets transferred from Switzerland to Germany with Francke’s help. In 1939 he had the securities transferred by the Schweizerische Kreditanstalt to the Aryanized banking house of Warburg and deposited in an account that was accessible only to him. Allegedly none of the assets were transferred to Emma Budge’s beneficiaries.

On 21 July 1939 the management of the estate passed essentially completely into the hands of the two non-Jewish executors Francke and Blum. This consequently completely sidelined the Jewish beneficiaries and the Jewish executors. Payments were only made into blocked accounts, which the beneficiaries could not access. As a result of foreign currency legislation, the shares in the estate were decimated, so that nothing remained of the sums concerned. Permission for the beneficiaries to leave Germany was linked to their willingness to relinquish the remaining share of the estate. In a case brought by a few of the beneficiaries after the war they stated that of these amounts, ‘they had not and have not received anything’ [‘hatten und haben die Antragsteller nichts erhalten’],

Provenance until 1960

The Dutch website ‘Museum Acquisitions since 1933’ (‘Museale verwervingen vanaf 1933’) states the following about the salts: ‘The salts are most likely from the confiscated collection of Emma Budge’s beneficiaries.’ [‘De zoutvaten behoorden hoogstwaarschijnlijk tot de geconfisqueerde collectie van de van Emma Budge.’] Meanwhile, research has revealed that the salts were not confiscated but were sold at auction in 1937.

It emerged from the investigation that until 1960 the two salts in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam in all probability had the same provenance as the two salts that are currently in the Amsterdam Museum.

The four salts were sold in 1906 at the Frederik Muller auction house in Amsterdam. At some unknown point thereafter they became part of the Budges’ art collection in Hamburg. The dates and sources relating to this are unknown because there is no overview of the Budges’ acquisitions.

After Emma Budge’s death in 1937 her art collection, as part of the undivided estate, was sold at auction at the Graupe auction house on the instructions of the executors appointed in her will. Research has revealed that the two pairs of salts, with lot numbers 254 and 255, dating from 1643 and 1639 respectively, were listed in the sale catalogue and actually went under the hammer. The two pairs of salts were purchased at the sale in 1937 by ‘Graetzer’. Given the absence of initials or other distinguishing information, the identity of this person remains unknown to this day. It is not clear whether this person bought the salts for themselves or as a bidder on behalf of a third party. The nature of the annotation in the sale catalogue makes it plausible that both lots went under the hammer together for a total of 12,900 Reichsmarks.

The claimed artworks in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

The two salts, together with a second pair of salts, with lot numbers 95 and 96 were purchased by Amsterdam City Council at a sale at the Frederik Muller auction house between 22 and 25 March 1960 for NLG 110,000 and NLG 122,000. One pair was sold by Amsterdam City Council to the Dutch State for the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, where it is currently present, under inventory numbers BK 1960-13a and BK 1960-13b. The other pair is currently in the Amsterdam Museum.

4. Substantive Assessment of the Application

The Committee has established that the requirements in section 1 a to e of the assessment framework have been met and that the application is therefore eligible for substantive handling.

Pursuant to section 2 of the assessment framework, the Committee must assess whether it is highly plausible that the artworks were the property of Emma Budge’s estate, and on the grounds of section 3 whether it is sufficiently plausible that after the death of Emma Budge in 1937 possession of the works was lost involuntarily as a result of circumstances directly related to the Nazi regime. To this end the Committee finds as follows:

Involuntary loss of possession (section 3 of the assessment framework)

In keeping with the considerations in its binding ruling of 16 April 2018 (RC 3.163), the Committee finds the following about the loss of possession of the two objects:

In the Committee’s opinion, the changes in the provisions in the will about Budge’s art collection cannot be considered in isolation from the political developments in Germany and rise to power of the Nazi regime. Neither can the loss of possession of the salts in the sale at the Aryanized Graupe auction house in 1937 be considered as voluntary. In view of the pressure that the executors were put under, which resulted in them acting in a way that was very different from what Emma Budge’s will intended, it is not possible to say that there was freedom of choice. The Committee furthermore agrees with the Applicants that it is plausible that the Budge beneficiaries did not have free disposal of the proceeds of the sale as a result of the severe anti-Jewish measures.

It has been established that Emma Budge and her beneficiaries were of Jewish descent and these beneficiaries lost possession of the two artworks after 1933 in Germany, and therefore on the grounds of section 3 of the assessment framework it has to be assumed that this loss of possession was involuntary, unless the facts expressly show otherwise. In the Committee’s opinion, the facts established in chapter 3 above have not shown that the loss of possession was voluntary. The Committee therefore concludes that the loss of possession by the Budge estate has to be designated as involuntary, caused by circumstances directly related to the Nazi regime.

5. Recommendation

The Restitutions Committee advises the State Secretary for Culture and Media to restitute the two parcel gilt salts made by Johannes Lutma (1584-1669), which are in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, to the joint beneficiaries of Emma Ranette Budge-Lazarus.

Adopted on 14 November 2022 by E.H. Swaab (Deputy Chair), J.F. Cohen, S.G. Cohen-Willner, J.H. van Kreveld, D. Oostinga and C.C. Wesselink, and signed by the Deputy Chair and the Secretary.

(E.H. Swaab, Deputy Chair)                 (E.M. van Sterkenburg, Secretary)