Provenance Research And Guidelines Set In Place For Restitution

NS Confiscated Property: 1933-1945

It has become somewhat common in this day and age to open up a page of a newspaper and find the words "museum," "looted" and "restitution" spread across the pages, but what exactly do these words mean, and where do we begin to look to understand the narrative? At the core, when looking at unidentified or flagged objects of art, one begins by identifying gaps in the ownership of the object from the day it was created to the present through art historical scholarship. This is also known as an object's provenance. The term "changing hands" is used to describe the different transactions in relation to an art object's provenance, and it also happens to be the term that is hardest to give justice to. Each transaction—whether it was one of monetary exchange, gift giving, consignment, auction or inheritance, just to name a few—is a transfer that has to, in an ideal scenario, be traced through the history of ownership to identify the current owner of the object. Narrowing down the different individuals, groups and institutions who once owned or transferred an art object can be time consuming and frustrating, as it requires the detective-like ability to trace primary and secondary sources dating back to an object's year of creation and the object's first owner. This maneuvering backwards, this rewinding of time and events is what is necessitated before restitution can be properly carried out.

Restitution Defined

In the context of works of art, restitution is the return of objects of art, stolen or lost, to their rightful owner, also known as the claimant. This act is often carried out in the realm of the law to determine compensation, whether through the return of the work itself or through a monetary payment reflective of the financial worth of the object of art. Matters of restitution and provenance pertain significantly to art transfers that occurred in the time period around World War II in Germany when Hitler was in power, due to the large amount of looted art that was exchanged during the Nazi regime. There are countless works that remain undocumented, lost or missing. In part due to the lack of organizations that were actively looking for looted art after the war, much of the cultural property was deemed as lost because there seemed to be no trace to follow. In museums and auction houses, two of the primary kinds of repositories and institutions of art exchange, the departments and financial budgets available to them and set aside by them for provenance research differ greatly. Multiple factors must be considered in relation to such institutions including, but not limited to, the inventory of the collection, whether it is private or public, the country it is based in, and the financial resources available. These are only some of the logistical barriers faced when working towards the advancement of provenance research, and this list does not consider the methodological or the epistemological factors involved.

The American Association of Museums Guide to Provenance Research

The American Association of Museums (AAM) Guide to Provenance Research¹ is used globally by museums and private individuals who are interested in learning about the databases in place and processes involved in independent provenance research by country. The guide targets the United States and Europe as two separate entities with a third major subject being Holocaust-Era provenance research. The AAM guide serves and is referenced frequently by museums as an essential tool in their repertoire for approaching provenance research. However, the AAM guide is what its title suggests, a guide. As the field of provenance research is an ever-expanding and changing terrain, the AAM guide should be used at the outset of an inquiry by a department or individual researcher, followed by an in-depth study of each independent country's historical context, restitution laws or guidelines to help further guide the search for an artwork's origin.

The research methods used and the sources required to conduct in-depth provenance research are extremely interdisciplinary and the expertise needed to conduct thorough investigations varies greatly. As the AAM guide states, "Provenance research is not unlike detective work, and must be approached with the same creativity, doggedness, and attention to detail."² When looking at the different sources to investigate, a researcher should consider archival collections, auction sale records, personal collection inventories, exhibition catalogues, scholarly publications, ephemera, photographic evidence and oral transcriptions. It bears mentioning that each restitution case is individual, and research should be done on a case-by-case basis based on what information is available for each work.

The AAM guide goes into detail on where to start and how to proceed once one has begun conducting provenance research for an object. To begin with, the AAM guide stipulates that the object itself must be the first carefully recoded observation. When looking at a painting, one should examine the medium of the painting; the support; the back of the painting and any indications of restoration, framing, or relining of the canvas. What is of particular importance when looking at an art object's provenance, especially paintings from the time period of 1933 to 1945, is the potential documentation that can be found on the back of the objects. Among these identifying documents are custom stamps that reveal when works crossed borders, exhibition stickers that gives details of the institution that have borrowed the works, wax seals that can be indicative of family crests, dealer stamps or labels that often contained an inventory number, and transport labels that name shipping companies. The above-mentioned list is that which is provided and emphasized by the AAM guide regarding document found on the object itself. Often this documentation is only partial—with some stamps having been erased, some lacking legibility due to age and ware, and some simply being missing. An additional hurdle in identifying partial stamps, stickers or seals is the fact that not all can be systematically checked or referenced against a comprehensive study or database. Instead, a great deal of historical background research, contextualization and investigative pattern-tracking is required. When looking at suitable documents to help with provenance research, one of the major obstacles a researcher encounters remains the barriers institutions, such as libraries and archives, impose on unpublished documents. Frequently, expensive travel and prior permission are required to look at primary sources that have not been made public.

The AAM guide specifies other institutional files, such as curatorial files, registrar files, donor files and conservation files that should, ideally, all to be found in museums or other commercial establishments, such as galleries. These files can contain technical condition reports on an object, details of an object's acquisition, records of potential loans of the object, and documents related to past exhibitions of the object. If the provenance appears to have gaps based on questionable dates or if red flags appear because of the inclusion of family and collector names that have often been associated with art theft throughout history—especially names related to the Holocaust-era in Germany—then further steps must be taken, including contacting potential heirs in order to pursue the next lead. A large portion of the AAM guide, and much provenance research in today's world, focuses on online files and databases that in the past did not exist and so were not available to researchers. What remain issues, which are slowly being addressed in Germany, are the distribution of information across different digital platforms and the supposed accessibility of archives and documents that, in fact, are often difficult for researchers or claimants to view due to governmental or other privacy restrictions.

The Separation and Prioritization within Germany after World War II

Part of the reason why the AAM guide is used in Europe is that the United States has been involved during and since World War II in restituting works of art looted by the Nazis. The American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas, also known as the Roberts Commission, was established by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1943. The commission works with the U.S. military and both European- and American-based museum officials or art historians to protect European art and records from being damaged or lost.³ Today the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) and the AAM still follow the guidelines set in place in the late 1990s that pertain to works of art that were in circulation during World War II. In 1998, the AAMD established the Report of the AAMD Task Force on the Spoliation of Art during the Nazi/World War II Era (1933-1945), which stresses American museums' commitment to publishing databases of museum collections, among other sources, to make them more widely available for the continued research and restitution of unlawfully confiscated works of art from the WWII time period.⁴ AAM issued similar guidelines in 1999 titled Guidelines Concerning the Unlawful Appropriation of Objects during the Nazi Era.⁵ As is the situation with rules related to the matter of restitution in many countries, including Germany, these guidelines are not legally binding.

Provenance research often requires an order of prioritization. In regards to WWII-era art looting involving Germany, some of the key dates that must be looked at with particular attention are 1935 (when the Nuremberg Laws were enacted), 1939 (the year in which the auction of so-called "degenerate art" took place at the auction house Fischer in Lucerne, Switzerland), and 1945 (when Central Collecting Points were established). This list is far from being absolute, but serves merely to identify foundational governmental and social events that greatly influenced the transfers of works of art between 1933 and 1945.

Art played a crucial role in Germany around WWII as members of the Nazi party took active roles in art-related matters. Art has often been used in history as a tool for spreading propaganda, and this was the case in Germany. Replacing museum directors with NS Party members, curating art shows focused on the Third Reich esthetic, and creating agencies dedicated to looting both private and public art collections were all ways in which the NS Party took charge of the German art market. In order to spread "Aryan" ideals, art was scrupulously curated by the Nazi Regime to eliminate any and all modern or foreign art that did not portray the German archetype. This philosophy was powerfully transmitted to all members of society through different cultural channels, affecting many aspects of life. To promote the Nazi ideology and the Aryan race, numerous laws were passed, bureaucratic agencies were instructed to collect art objects from German museums and occupied countries, and private collections were built by leaders of the Third Reich—including Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels and Hitler himself. Known as connoisseurs at the time, members of the NS-Party like Göring were looked at as experts of art and were advised by art historians like Hans Posse and Herman Voss (who later played crucial roles in Nazi commissions for looted art). The NS-Party art collecting habits stressed the importance of the Germanic qualities in the works of art that ranged from antique pieces to 19^th-century academic realist paintings. The NS kunstpolitik, which began to be fully active around 1936, began making radicalized proclamations, such as Goebbels's banning of art criticism. Along with this ban, Goebbels also restricted the number of individuals who were allowed to write about art and also created sprachregelungen, or language restrictions, that gave Goebbels a monopoly on the creation and publication of creative ideas.⁶

The AAM guide offers a list of seven art styles most important for provenance researchers to focus on today when looking at art collected by the Nazis:

German medieval and Renaissance Art;
19^th-century German Art;
German Expressionism;
Flemish and Dutch Art;
Italian medieval, Renaissance and Baroque art;
French medieval, Renaissance, Baroque and 18^th-century art;
French impressionism, post-impressionism and early-20^th-century art.

NS-Party collections also, on occasion, included fakes, as the party members' desire for building collections with the right works was often greater than their interest in making sure the works were legitimate.⁷ In addition to the style of a work of art, another primary factor when tracing the provenance of Holocaust-era objects is the location of the object. Certain countries, like the United Kingdom and the U.S., are less likely than formerly occupied countries, like France or Austria, to house works with gaps in provenance after World War II. This is partly due to the fact that Jewish families often had to sell cultural object in Germany and occupied countries in order to escape to non-Nazi-controlled areas. This is not to say that works in non-occupied nations never have a gap in provenance. For example, while Switzerland was never occupied by Germany, it played a major role in the market for looted art, as many works were deposited in Switzerland for safekeeping or later sale during World War II. However, paying special attention to works from Germany and the occupied areas is simply part of a method of prioritization recommended by the AAM guide.

NS-Party Operations to Gather Control and Raid Art

When following the above-mentioned path for historical provenance investigation involving Nazi-era art, a researcher will often look out for the year 1935. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were enacted to officially exclude Jewish members of society, limiting their rights and German citizenship. These laws and other prior decrees beginning in 1933 forbade marriages between Jewish and national German citizens, denied Jewish university students the right to sit for their doctoral exams, banned Jewish officers from the army, and eliminated Jewish citizens' right to vote or hold public office—with many more to follow in the late 1930s. If Jewish individuals did not follow the Nuremberg Laws, they would face potential imprisonment, fines or hard labor. Multiple decrees were added to the Nuremberg Laws, which formed a foundation for future anti-Semitic laws.⁸

The year 1938 marked an important moment when anti-Semitism was involved in the overall campaign against modern art. In an effort to remove any and all wealth from Jewish families, the NS-Party issued a decree for the Reporting of Jewish Owned Property In 1938.⁹ It required that all Jews had to submit to the Third Reich an inventory of all their property that had a value that exceeded 5000 Reichsmark. This decree occurred at the time just before tax laws were passed that applied only to Jewish families, and ownership decrees were issued, such as the Surrender of Precious Metals and Stones, which required Jewish families to turn in valuables like gold, silver and diamonds. That same year, 1938, Jewish doctors were banned from treating non-Jewish patients, and Jewish lawyers lost the right to practice, all in an attempt to prevent Jews from earning a living. Nearing the end of 1938, Aryan zones were established in different German towns, where Jews were forbidden to enter. By 1939, if a Jewish man had a first name of "non-Jewish" origin, he had to add "Israel" to his name, and if a woman had a "non-Jewish" first name, she had to add "Sara" to her given names. Each Jewish passport was also stamped with the letter "J" for further identification and segregation of Jews. More than 400 laws were imposed upon Jews within the first six years of the Nazi regime—many of which related to the property of Jewish families.

Prior to the infamous Fischer auction in 1939, multiple laws were signed by the NS Party that permitted them to control the fate of art as they saw fit, including removing the so-called degenerate art from German museums and showcasing regional exhibitions with NS-approved artists as exemplars of the Third Reich. Among the different bureaucratic agencies put in place for collecting art, the Commission for the Exploitation of Degenerate Art—created by Goebbels just one year after the infamous Degenerate Art Exhibition in 1937—was in charge of selling the degenerate art abroad in exchange for old masters. Many of the records created by the NS-Party regarding these bureaucratic agencies and commissions serve today, perhaps ironically, as important documents for tracing provenance—including of art connected to the Fischer auction.

Fischer, one of the oldest Swiss fine art auction houses, engaged in one of the most notorious auctions of degenerate art. In 1939, the founder of the auction house, Theodor Fischer, spoke to Karl Haberstock, former art dealer for the NS-Party known for disposing of degenerate art, and Martin Bormann, former head of chancellery of the NS-Party known for controlling many of the legislative and domestic policies of the Nazis, about a public auction to be held at the Grand Hotel National in Lucerne, Switzerland, after receiving the approval of Hitler. In total, 125 works from German museums were sold at the auction, with participation from directors of international galleries, art dealers and private purchasers, encompassing approximately 350 people. Some works, such as a self-portrait by Vincent Van Gogh and a painting by Pablo Picasso from his Rose Period, sold for higher than expected; however, most others did not produce the bids the Nazis had hoped for, including some that remained unsold, which included other works by Picasso. While this auction was one of many more to come, it was a pivotal moment in the cascading events that caused thousands of works of art from Germany to be sold in the art market outside of the Third Reich. The art works confiscated by the Nazis included pieces of all styles, even those that did not reflect the NS-Party ideology, as they were later sold in exchange for old masters, a transaction that frequently occurred in the Swiss art market.¹⁰

One of the most extensive art-looting commissions undertaken by the Nazi regime was the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR). It was named after Alfred Rosenberg, former head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, and was in charge of Jewish property confiscated in occupied countries of the Third Reich. Under Göring's authority, the commission grew vastly, to the point where a repository of art had to be made at the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris. From 1940 to 1944, Jeu de Paume was one of the largest clearinghouses of Nazi-looted art.¹¹ While Hitler was in charge of deciding which works to dispose of and which to keep, it was, in fact, Göring who benefitted the most from the collection at the Jeu de Paume, where he selected works for his own art collection or works to be used as currency to trade for other works he wanted. Göring's art collection was one of the largest in Europe by the end of World War II, second only to Hitler's. Göring had the dream of founding his own museum one day, once again like Hitler, who, in 1939, placed the Linz Commission, run by Hans Posse, in charge of acquiring works of art for his museum to be located in his childhood home in Linz, Austria. Neither of their dreams was ever realized. It is ironic to point out once more that the records created by the Nazis at both the ERR and the Linz Commission are today invaluable tools for provenance research often seeking to return works to Jewish families. The ERR catalogued the confiscated art as they entered the Jeu de Paume with extensive inventory cards, which were organized by the name of the family whom the objects were looted from. The cards also included the object's medium, its size, and the name of the artist who created it, among other details. Some inventory cards even included stamps with the letters "AH" or "HG" for Hitler and Göring, respectively, an indication of who took the object.

The above-mentioned process of prioritization described in the AAM guide also refers to "red flag" names.¹² These "red flag" names are the names of some of the individuals most frequently involved in art looting in Europe. The Art Looting Investigation Unit (ALIU), a special unit within the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—an office established in 1942 to gather intelligence in line with the war effort—was itself established in 1944 to investigate individuals suspected of participating in art looting during World War II. Within this list can be found some of these "red flag" names. Due to the extensiveness of the list—as it includes the names of all those interrogated or investigated for the ALIU report—it is important to use it in line with names mentioned by victims and claimants and to consider the names mentioned on the list as points for further investigation and research.

The National Archives and Records Administration

An extensive list of sources for archival research is given by the AAM guide both for the U.S. and Europe. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the U.S.'s primary resource for documentation on World War II art looting.¹³ In 1999, NARA published the Holocaust-Era Assets: A Finding Aid to Records at the National Archives at College Park, which is organized into different "record groups" based on the names of the different original organizations formed in World War II that can help researchers locate appropriate provenance documents more easily. The AAM guide recommends that the above-mentioned guide, in fact, be used in conjunction with the AMM guide due to its importance and relevance. Among some of the most important record groups are the below:

RG260: US Occupation Headquarters World War II, Office of the Military Governor, United States (OMGUS);
RG226: Office of Strategic Services (OSS);
RG239: American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas (Roberts Commission);
RG84: Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State.¹⁴

The record group "Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, RG84" is associated with the program known as "safehaven," which was established in 1944. It attempted to prevent Germany from giving assets such as art objects to neutral nations in order to make such assets unavailable for restitution after World War II. Among these neutral countries is, of course, Switzerland. Multiple investigations were conducted in Switzerland by the ALIU, whose documents of their interviews with Swiss art dealers involved in Nazi confiscated art sales, such as Theodor Fischer, can be found in these "safehaven" reports.

The OMGUS, from record group RG260, was established in 1945 and was responsible for the U.S. zone of what was known as "allied-occupied Germany," which included the U.S. sector of Berlin. The UK, France and the Soviet Union had their own zones. In the zones occupied by the U.S., OMGUS found and identified object of looted art and returned them to the governments from which the objects stemmed. Further ownership research had to be continued by claimants once the items were returned to individual governments, taking into account each country's own laws and restitution agency guidelines.

Within the OMGUS are also records of the Munich Central Collecting Point (MCCP), which are crucial for the research of the provenance of Holocaust-era art objects. After World War II, repositories of Nazi-confiscated art, like the collection previously mentioned at Jeu de Paume in Paris, were moved to four temporary locations around Germany, known as "central collecting points." The centers were used for the identification and cataloging of found works of art to be restituted to their former countries of origin. The MCCP records include property cards and restitution receipts for the recovered artworks. These property cards recorded information about the objects—in addition to an inventory number created by the MCCP—such as the classification of the object, the artist's name, the title of the work, its dimensions, its previous owners and any distinctive markings on the object itself, such as prewar inventory numbers. Each property card stated the date when the object reached the MCCP and the date it was shipped out of Munich, while the restitution receipts documented the transfer of the object from the MCCP to the countries of origin with the date and a signature. Examples of the kind of records that can be found in the MCCP restitution research files are documents related to the Linz Commission complied by ALIU. Inventories, photographs of confiscated collections, correspondences between certain Nazi party leaders and account books detailing costs like transportation can be found within these documents. Many of these documents are primarily in German and, evidently, not all complete. The OMGUS also includes records from allied commissions, such as the U.S. Allied Commission for Austria (USACA), which include details of the restitution of looted art in salt mine repositories in Germany. As a means to avoid bombing raids, the NS-Party in 1943 protected some of its art collections in salt mines, which proved to have temperatures and humidity levels suitable for the proper storage of art objects.

Provenance research does not end with looking through the NARA record groups and other archival records, nor does finding certain documentation that might be helpful fill the provenance gap completely. It is a matter of following the trail by looking at many of the above-mentioned resources to piece together a fragmented image. It is also often the case that some documentation regarding a lost or looted object might not be found in archival records, such as NARA, yet this does not prove that this documentation does not exist or that the object is no longer one of questionable provenance. Individual claims can also be found under specific files in NARA, which contain claims submitted to OMGUS directly after World War II, organized by country. While NARA provides a good example of how recordkeeping of Holocaust-era documents can be made more accessible, there are countless lists of objects of art and cultural property that have not been placed into databases and that remain undocumented or only partially documented.

As previously stated and hinted at, current provenance research guidelines and Holocaust-Era archival databases are still in the process of changing their methods to better accommodate the vast information—and also the lack of information—on individual objects of art. When using NARA and the Holocaust-Era Assets: A Finding Aid to Records at the National Archives at College Park, for example, a provenance researcher realizes that to fully understand the movement of an object that was found by the U.S. and shipped from an allied collecting point to its country of origin, further research must be done in the archives of each country to determine the successive placement of the object. This, as one can imagine, is not always easy. The term "custodianship" is used in reference to these countries of origin where objects of art were perhaps not claimed or identified with an owner and have thus remained under the care of the individual governments. Among these objects under governmental custodianship are, for example, the already mentioned MNR objects held in French national museums. As stated in the AAM guide, privacy laws stricter than those in the U.S. might apply depending on the country of origin in Europe. Among some of the countries that most require comprehensive archives for Holocaust-era art are Austria, Germany and Switzerland. However, by no means do these countries represent the only European nations that should fund and maintain archival research on World War II cultural property assets.

European Nations and their Efforts towards Restitution

In Austria, multiple archives and agencies that deal with restitution have been established. The Bundesdenkmalamt (BDA) archive includes files on the MCCP; the previous locations of Nazi-looted art collections, such as the Alt Aussee mines; collections of Austrian museums and a significant amount of information on Hitler's Linz Commission. Included within the documents on the Linz Commission are lists that contain information on art objects confiscated for the Linz museum from private collections and artworks that had been bought by the Dorotheum auction house. Dorotheum is an auction house in Vienna, Austria that was founded in 1707 and is still of high significance today as one of the leading auction houses in Europe. Not long after Austria was annexed by Germany in 1938—also referred to as Anschluss—the VUGESTA (Verwertungsstelle für jüdisches Umzugsgut der Gestapo), the Gestapo's Office for the Disposal of Property of Jewish Emigrants, was established in 1940.¹⁵ VUGESTA seized and confiscated Jewish assets and property to be sold at a later time, an action that was legalized according to NS-Party legislations such as the Ordinance on the Seizure of Assets of Enemies of the People and the State in Austria of 1938 and discriminatory taxes such as the Reichsfluchsteuer, or Emigration Tax. Dorotheum was originally chosen as the site for all confiscated objects to be sold and auctioned off. These records of sale can be found at the BDA archive in Austria and remain of great value. Additional important and extensive documentation found at the BDA are the files on the Gutmann collection. The Guttmanns were one of the most power German Jewish banking families and collectors of exceptional art. During World War II, their distinguished art collection was taken by the NS-Party. Many of the works went directly to Hitler or Göring, while many more were sold in Switzerland and to individual private collectors. For over twenty years, Simon Goodman, a grandson of the original collector, has been searching and hunting for the collection of his grandparents, successfully securing the return of many works of art.¹⁶

Like Austria, Germany has created a database for unclaimed losses, known as the Lost Art Database, which include objects that were given to Germany by the allied countries after World War II and objects from the MCCP, among others. The government archive, Bundesarchiv Koblenz, contains important documents in relation to provenance research known as the Treuhandlverwaltung für Kulturgut be der Oberfinanzdirection Munchen (B323). B323, which is in the process of being digitized, contains over 500 files, which include documents and photographs from different sources that deal with the ownership status of looted cultural property and restitution after 1945. Included within these files are the previously mentioned inventory cards and restitution receipts. Due to the number of different documents within this record group, five primary sub-categorizations have been created:

Documents on the treatment of art and cultural property 1934-1945;
Activity of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section (MFAA) of the Office of Military Government for Bavaria;
Activity of the Art Collection Points;
Trustee Administration for Cultural Property;
Restitution of Artworks.¹⁷

Other documents of great importance for provenance research at the Bundesarchiv Koblenz are the files on the Linz Commission. These files include details of purchases of art objects in the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, France and Italy. In contrast to NARA, the Bundesarchiv Koblenz has a much more extensive collection of files from the Hermann Göring collection, including extensive photographic records. Throughout Germany, several museums also hold archival materials, such as the Städtische Kuntsammlungen in Augsburg, which has an art collection donated by Karl Haberstock.¹⁸

The Swiss Federal Archives in Bern contain files on important individuals, including Hans Posse and Theodor Fischer, including files on the Luzern Fischer auction. An office for looted art—the Contact Bureau on Looted Art—looks at and forwards inquiries of claimants or researchers on looted art within the Switzerland's jurisdiction. These inquiries include those within the federal scope of Switzerland, which means the bureau conducts further research into its federal art collections and museums. There are also inquiries from other non-federal institutions or private parties, in which case the bureau serves as a first point of contact and then relays the inquiries. Finally, there are inquiries of foreign institutions, with which the bureau maintains contact for the promotion of general information on looted art. The bureau offers information on international online sources and databases, such as the Germany's Lost Art Database, as Switzerland does not have one of its own, and research guidelines on conducting provenance research in Swiss archives, including a checklist of recommendations for Swiss museums to follow in relation to NS-looted art in Switzerland.¹⁹ Also, in 1998, the Swiss Federal Office of Culture, commissioned by the Nationale Informationsstelle für Kulturgüter-Erhaltung (NIKE), issued a publication on the role of Switzerland in the art market from 1933 to 1945.²⁰

The Washington Principles

In 1998, a set of guidelines known as the Washington Principles was signed by 44 different countries, setting a standard that is still used to this day by most member countries as the main reference and model to follow in regard to restitution. The extent to which different countries abide by and enforce the non-legally binding guidelines varies greatly. Organized by the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Washington Principles focus on cases of people who, during World War II, were persecuted in Germany. The guidelines were drafted by Stuart E. Eizenstat, former U.S. Ambassador to the European Union and U.S. Deputy Secretary of Treasury. The guidelines were based on an agreement with the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) and the AAMD and composed of eleven principles on Nazi confiscated art. The importance of the document lies in the fact that it was the first international agreement after World War II and that it paved the way for discussions on the matter of restitution—as art theft had until that point not been on the public radar. The principles are based on trying to find "just and fair solutions" when recognizing the claims of heirs who have identified potential Nazi-confiscated works of art in collections. A common point of contention regarding the Washington Principles is the applicability for private individuals and collectors, as the guidelines focus their language on public institutions, yet do not outright single them out as the only entities advised to follow the guidelines.²¹

The Principles have also proven to be broad enough in scope that certain countries have not felt the need to improve these guidelines with country-based laws, which the guidelines, in fact, recommend. This neglect of engaging in a proactive stance is what has discouraged the creation of a framework for approaching restitution cases in many of the represented countries. The Washington principles encourage countries "to develop national processes to implement these principles, particularly as they relate to alternative dispute resolution mechanisms for resolving ownership issues."²² Only five countries, Germany being one of them, have fulfilled this call for the implementation of national bodies or panels that provide recommendations on disputed art held in public collections. When looking at the different commissions, some of the main differences lie in whether the country chose to enact legally binding frameworks for restitution, like Austria, or whether non-legally binding committees advise both private and state-owned works, like in the Netherlands.

Among the other five countries that have created committees are France, Austria, the Netherlands and the UK. The National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism was established in 1995, and acts as a separate legal entity and does not have a statute of limitations.²³ One of the most substantial differences between Germany and Austria in regard to restitution claims is the fact that Austria has a restitution law whereas Germany does not. Section two of the above-mentioned federal fund stipulates the fund's alignment with the Federal Law on the Restitution of Art Objects from Austrian Federal Museums and Collections, which was amended in 2009 to expand the scope for restitution of Nazi-looted art to better counter the organizational problems that have arisen recently in the twenty-first century.²⁴ This law does not concern private parties.

France established the Commission pour l'Indemnisation des Victims de Spoliations—the Commission for the Compensation of Victims of Spoliation, also referred to as CIVS—in 1999.²⁵ The commission examines individual claims of heirs or claims on behalf of heirs who incurred damage from spoliations of property during World War II. The commission is not a jurisdiction and has been accused of offering compensation in place of restitution in cases where the work can be traced and found. Additionally, and importantly, for an artwork to be claimed and brought forward to CIVS, it must have been listed in the Musées Nationaux Récupération (MNR), which is a significant cataloguing designation in provenance research given to art objects in the custody of the French national museum system that were recovered after World War II in Germany. These MNR works must have been returned to France and remained unclaimed.

The U.K., in 2000, established the Spoliation Advisory Panel, a group of experts selected by the U.K Secretary of State, to consider claims of heirs or on behalf of heirs who lost possession of cultural objects between 1933 and 1945.²⁶ These objects must be in the ownership of a national collection in the U.K. or in the possession of a museum or gallery in the U.K. The recommendations of the panel are not legally binding and are offered as an alternative to litigation and can also be given to private collections or individuals at the joint request of the current owner and the claimant.²⁷

The commission of the five that is most closely following the Washington Principles is the Restitutions Commission, established in 2001 by the Netherlands. It is an independent advisory committee that assesses claims related to looted cultural objects from World War II for restitution. Cultural objects owned by both the Netherlands, such as works in the National Art Collection, and private parties can be brought forth for review. The main tasks of the recommendations offered by the committee are to advise the Minister of Culture on restitution claims regarding the Dutch State collection and to advise claimants and the current owner of works.²⁸

In 1999, the German Federal Government issued the Statement by the Federal Government, the Länder and the national associations of local authorities on the tracing and return of Nazi-confiscated art, especially Jewish Property of December 1999—also referred to as the Joint Declaration or Common Statement—outlining the continued efforts of Germany to search for Nazi-confiscated art in public institutions, such as museums, and calling for research and restitution where necessary.²⁹ Eizenstat has credited the German State Minister of Culture and the Media, Monika Grütters, for the financial investment she has obtained for German art museums to advance on provenance research and the publication of results. At the same time, he has stated that Germany has not implemented the Washington Principles well enough, due partially to the commission's very slow work and the few permitted claims. Eizenstat has spoken about the fact that the Washington Principles are not legally binding, stating that this was the only way to get countries to sign on. He is often quoted on his description of the Principles as "a glass that is maybe slightly more than half full," which suggest that there are still major gaps to be filled, but also that without the Washington Principles, the progress would not be anywhere near where it is today.³⁰

The digitization of provenance documentation is a topic of relevance to researchers and institutions such as museums and national archives, as making documents more easily accessible is one of the primary ways in which provenance research can grow in the future and the goals of the Washington Principles can better be met. As made clear throughout this chapter, provenance research benefits from a global network that links all the different sources required for tracing the provenance of objects of art. This need to combine online resources with physical archival materials exemplifies the interdisciplinary nature of provenance research. The financial investment and willingness of countries and governments will be needed to aid in the continuing effort to improve Holocaust-Era provenance research and aid in the restitution of cultural property stolen during World War II.

Provenance Research And The Many Chasms:

The Case Of Gurlitt, An Ongoing Search

by Marina Rastorfer

Columbia University MA Thesis 2020