In a letter dated 23 December 2004, the State Secretary asked the Restitutions Committee for advice about the application for restitution of the etching Landscape with river and windmills by J.M. Graadt van Roggen. This work of art was part of the Dutch National Art Collection under inventory number NK 3537. The restitution application was submitted by a second cousin of Ms S. E., who was possibly the original owner of the etching. The restitution application came about following correspondence with the Origins Unknown Agency, which had approached various relatives of S. E. in an attempt to gather more information about this etching. Research by the Origins Unknown Agency had revealed that the work of art might well have originated from the possessions of S. E. that were surrendered to Amsterdam looting bank Lippmann, Rosenthal & Co during the Second World War.
Facts
The Jewish S. E., who was born on 8 March 1871, owned an art collection, which included an etching with the picture by Graadt van Roggen described above. During the Second World War, she lived in The Hague, where she died on 1 February 1943. After her death, the household effects were seized by the looting organisation Einsatzstab Rosenberg. One of that organisation’s documents that was retrieved showed that S. E.’s effects included some ‘Wandbilder’ about which no further information was given. A number of works that were looted from S. E.’s house were surrendered to the looting bank Lippmann, Rosenthal & Co. (the so-called ‘Liro Bank’) during the war. This is evident from a post-war transcription of lists of data from the records of the Liro Bank, which includes various objects from the possessions of ‘S. E., resident at Ruychrocklaan 54 in The Hague’. The works listed as having belonged to S. E. included the etching ‘Windmills by the water’, with ‘in the style of J. Maris by Gr. v. Roggen’ being named as the artist. In January 1944 the Liro Bank sold the work to a Berlin firm, which also purchased almost all of S. E.’s art collection. These other works have not been found in the Netherlands Art Property Collection.
The following is known about the claimed work, which is known as NK 3537. Shortly after the liberation, the Amsterdam criminal investigation department delivered this etching by Graadt van Roggen to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Although the Stedelijk Museum suspected that the art object originated from a Jewish estate or was an enemy asset, it was completely in the dark about the etching’s precise provenance. More than a decade later, in 1957, the museum registered the etching as a loan from an unknown lender, under the name ‘Landscape with a stream (1909)’. Eighteen years later, in March 1975, the Stedelijk Museum transferred management of the etching to the Dienst voor ’s Rijks Verspreide Kunstvoorwerpen in The Hague. When the object was transferred, Museum Director E. de Wilde stated that ‘should any rightful claim be made on these items by third parties, they will be transferred to the rightful owner’.
Discussion of the advice
In its advice of 27 June 2005, the Restitutions Committee stated, based on this information and on the current restitution policy, that the art collection was lost involuntarily from S. E.’s estate, as a result of circumstances relating directly to the Nazi regime.
The Committee then considered whether the case involved an application for the restoration of rights that had been settled previously, in which case the current application would not be allowed. Since neither S. E.’s family, nor the Dutch post-war authorities entrusted with the restoration of rights were aware of the location of the etching by Graadt van Roggen, the Committee was of the opinion that there was no question of a previously settled application. The Committee then addressed the question of whether it was sufficiently plausible that the etching by Graadt van Roggen, which was known as NK 3537, was the same etching by Graadt van Roggen that was looted from S. E.’s household effects. Although multiple copies may exist of such an etching, the Committee believed that the investigation into the facts had revealed sufficient points to answer this question in the affirmative, referring also to the less stringent burden of proof in the current restitution policy and to the third general consideration of the Restitutions Committee, which places the risk entailed by the absence of further information with the government.
Consequently, the Restitutions Committee recommended that the etching be returned to the heirs. The State Secretary adopted the advice in her decision of 26 July 2005.