A slightly different approach this morning. This story raises all sorts of questions about property and the state.
The painting, looted by Nazis from a wealthy Jewish family in 1933, is recovered by the heirs.
There's a lot to unwrap here, my gift to you this morning!
Hi there, I'm a member of the Mosse family. I want to thank everyone involved and the broader public for their unending support in recovering this artefact of my family's history. The scars of fascism endure to this day and recovering the stolen goods of their cultural genocide is essential if we are to preserve our identities. To raise money for holocaust awareness, we auctioned off this painting and received $38.
If you visit the Jüdisches Museum Berlin, which I highly recommend, look at the plaque on the receptionist's chair. What have you given to holocaust awareness?
No one knows what I've given to holocaust awareness, and I'd like to keep it that way, thank you.
Well I have lived the final scene of Schindler's List. I have stared at an office chair and a small pot of succulents and cried while yelling "I could have done more".
Not knocking you. The story raises many big issues, and I'm not even a very good thinker. I'm just an artist, and I look for patterns. The really interesting thing here, to me, is how property comes to stand for human value, the value of human lives and labor. How states enforce the rules of property. How fluid those rules are, morally. There's an awful lot going on outside the moral purpose you espouse, it ain't no black and white thing. Just my opinion.
Value is a tricky thing to establish. What the article doesn't mention is that we actually had 300 valuable family heirlooms returned to us. This one painting for example was valued at $3.8m. We had intended to auction each artefact off individually but did not understand ebay and sold them all as a batch for $38. There was supposed to be a period and you have to type the zeroes.
We had intended to auction each artefact off individually but did not understand ebay and sold them all as a batch for $38.
lmao really? I guess this is a troll, but why wouldn't you just not ship the painting?
all loot is good loot. "Federal authorities were contacted as Mosse Art Restitution Project manager J. Eric Bartko was working to get the painting returned from the museum. FBI agents recovered the painting in September 2019." In other words, what was legally looted by the German government in 1933 was legally looted by the US government in 2019.
hmmm...
by: MICHAEL HILL, Associated Press Posted: Oct 15, 2020 / 03:43 PM EDT / Updated: Oct 15, 2020 / 06:57 PM EDT Antoinette T. Bacon
Acting U.S Attorney for the Northern District of New York, Antoinette T. Bacon, speaks at a repatriation ceremony for the painting “Winter” Thursday, Oct. 15, 2020, in Albany, N.Y. The painting, discovered in an upstate New York museum, was part of a cache of art seized by the Nazis from the Mosse family in Berlin in 1933. (AP Photo/Michael Hill) AddThis Sharing Buttons Share to Facebook Share to TwitterShare to WhatsAppShare to SMSShare to EmailShare to More
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A painting of two young, 19th-century skaters that was looted by Nazis from a Jewish family in 1933 and recently discovered at a small museum in upstate New York was returned Thursday after 87 years.
The painting “Winter” by American artist Gari Melchers was part of a cache of more than 1,000 pieces of art and artifacts seized from the Mosse family, prominent and well-off Jewish residents of Berlin who became early targets of the Nazi Party. Heirs have been tenaciously seeking to recover the lost pieces for the past decade.
“The Mosse family lost nearly everything because they were Jews. But they did not lose hope,” acting U.S Attorney for the Northern District of New York Antoinette Bacon said at a repatriation ceremony at the Albany FBI office. “While this certainly does not take away the pain the that the Mosses endured, I hope it provides the family with some measure of justice.”
The Mosse Art Restitution Project was started in 2011 to locate and restitute the stolen artworks on behalf of the Mosse heirs. They have completed three dozen restitutions covering more than 50 items from public and private museums as well as private individuals in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Israel and the United States.
The road to this restitution started after the Arkell Museum in Canajoharie, New York, noted its seasonal closing in January 2017 with a friendly Facebook post urging readers to “Enjoy Winter!” It was illustrated with a picture of “Winter.”
The post was noticed by a student working with Dr. Meike Hoffmann of the Free University of Berlin. Hoffmann heads the Mosse Art Research Initiative, a university-based collaboration involving Mosse heirs and German public cultural institutions.
Hoffmann said in an email that provenance researchers at MARI were able to link the painting to the Mosse family with the help of Arkell Museum executive director Suzan Friedlander.
“Winter,” sometimes known as “Skaters” or “Snow,” was purchased in 1900 by publishing magnate Rudolf Mosse, who displayed it in a grand Berlin residence loaded with fine art.
Mosse died in 1920 and his daughter Felicia Lachmann-Mosse was his heir. She and her husband Hans Lachmann-Mosse ran the newspaper Berliner Tageblatt, a critical voice during the Nazi Party’s rise to power. As high-profile symbols of the “Jewish press,” the couple was persecuted and fled Germany in 1933. The Nazis seized the family’s assets, including the artwork.
“It was one of the first large expropriations undertaken by the Nazis, a template for what became, unfortunately, a well-oiled machine,” said Roger Strauch, president of the Mosse Foundation and the step-great-grandson of Rudolf Mosse. He participated in the ceremony by video link.
“Winter” was sold at auction in May 1934 to an unknown buyer. Five months later, it was in a New York City gallery, where it caught the eye of Bartlett Arkell, a wealthy collector and president of the company that became Beech-Nut Packing Co. in Canajoharie.
Arkell shipped the painting to upstate New York, where it became part of the collection of the museum near the Mohawk River that bears his name.
There’s no evidence Arkell was aware of the painting’s dark history, Bacon said.
Friedlander said at the ceremony that the museum takes it responsibility to make things right seriously.
Federal authorities were contacted as Mosse Art Restitution Project manager J. Eric Bartko was working to get the painting returned from the museum. FBI agents recovered the painting in September 2019. The formal handover to the family was delayed by the pandemic.
Strauch said the painting is expected to be auctioned through Sotheby’s, where it could attract bids in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Most recovered artworks have been sold back to the previous holders or sold at auction, he said.
Strauch said they have eight ongoing restitution claims pending in Poland, Sweden, Germany, Israel and the United States.
“This battle will never be over,” Bartko said recently. “This is a highly visible way to remind people that these crimes took place in the past and they are still being redressed now.”
I wonder how many of these were outright collaboration with and providing funds to Nazis. Sure in 1934 you can reasonably say that you didn't know that it could be confiscated property. But if some of the claimed artworks were sold after the Kristallnacht, then excuses would be harder.
NYC was filled with Nazi collaborators between 1933-1938.
John Spivak has some great contemporary research into their networks. Secret Armies is a great read. Chapter VI literally talks about Nazi smuggling in NYC.
When Orgell needed trusted men to deliver messages to and from the boats as well as to smuggle off material, he usually called upon the American branch of the Stahlhelm, or Steel Helmets, which used to drill secretly in anticipation of Der Tag in this country. Only when he felt that he was not being watched, or only in the event of the most important messages, did he go aboard the ships personally. Orgell's liaison man in the smuggling activities was Frank Mutschinski, a painting contractor who used to live at 116 Garland Court, Garritsen Beach, N.Y.
Mutschinski came to the United States from Germany on the S.S. "George Washington," June 16, 1920. He was commander of one of the American branches of the Stahlhelm which had offices at 174 East 85th Street, New York. While he was in command, he received his orders direct from Franz Seldte, subsequently Minister of Labor under Hitler. Seldte at that time was in Magdeburg, Germany. Branches of the Stahlhelm were established by him and Orgell in Rochester, Chicago, Philadelphia, Newark, Detroit, Los Angeles and Toronto (the first step in the Fifth Column's invasion of Canada).
To help Orgell in his smuggling activities, Mutschinski supplied him with a chief assistant, Carl Brunkhorst. It was Brunkhorst's job to deliver the secret letters. Nazi uniforms for American Storm Troopers were smuggled into this country off German ships by Paul Bante who lived at 186 East 93rd Street, New [81]York City. Bante, at the time he was engaged in the smuggling activities, was a member of the 244th Coast Guard as well as the New York National Guard. [1]
This was absolutely the result of collaboration.
