Despite the efficacy of the German pillages, the French Domaines agency succeeded in sequestering works from a few prestigious art collections. As a detailed analysis of the sequesters is beyond the scope of this brief paper, [17] I will focus on works from two collections in particular: These works were masterpieces that the museum administration could not afford to buy on the open market.
Kim Kardashian victime d'un vol à main armée à Paris, plusieurs millions d'euros de bijoux dérobés
In their postwar memoirs, former museum officials such as Lucie Mazauric describe the sequesters as "simulated acquisitions" designed to keep the works out of German hands, similar to the "donations" offered by Jewish collectors just prior to the German invasion. French authorities, according to these authors, intended to house the works in public museums only until the end of the war, and eventually to return them to their rightful owners. Wartime correspondence among museum and finance officials, however, reveals that this was not a "simulated acquisition.
Huyghe summarized his argument as follows: Huyghe then analyzed the inventory of the Robert de Rothschild collection, noting the works that would best complement the Louvre's permanent collection. Of particular interest were two portraits by Rembrandt.
François Nicoullaud évoque Philippe Gras, photographe au coeur de mai 68
The Rothschild collection, moreover, contained three high-quality Renoirs that were "completely different from what we have already shown to the public. In all, Huyghe estimated that nearly thirteen million francs would be necessary to acquire the desired works for the Robert de Rothschild collections alone, plus a similar amount for those of Maurice de Rothschild and Edouard Jonas. In concluding, Huyghe stressed the difficulty of giving accurate price estimates since currency values had shifted dramatically since the beginning of the war. Thus, he deliberately gave high estimates so that "no one would suspect the state of exploiting the situation to benefit from favorable conditions.
In the end, the museum administration held the works until the Liberation, when they were returned to the Rothschild family.
Of these recuperated works of art, around forty-five thousand were returned to Jewish victims and their heirs who were able to provide proof of ownership. Other Jewish families, however, were either not aware the museum administration was holding works that were rightfully theirs, or did not have the required documentation.
- Abidjan: Des millions de francs CFA dérobés chez le fils de Jean Ping.
- Abidjan: Des millions de francs CFA dérobés chez le fils de Jean Ping.
- Kim Kardashian victime d'un vol à main armée à Paris, plusieurs millions d'euros de bijoux dérobés;
- Les richissimes marchands d'art sont soupçonnés de "recel".;
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By the fall of around fifteen thousand works were still unclaimed. According to a decree instituted on 30 September, [23] all unclaimed works were to be overseen by the Domaines agency, which would eventually sell them through public auctions. Yet many of the unclaimed works were valuable pieces worthy of the national museum collections. As a result, a special commission was created to select works that would remain under the guardianship of the museum administration.
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In all, about two thousand works were chosen for public museums, and the rest were auctioned off discreetly between and Surprisingly, no research was conducted to try to locate the rightful owners of the unclaimed works, despite the government's access to extensive provenance archives. Moreover, there was no significant challenge to the museum administration's guardianship over the unclaimed works.
Several memoirs of former museum officials were published after the war, focusing on the extraordinary evacuation effort of and the challenges faced by museum officials who managed the storage depots. Nicholas, a journalist by trade, examined the impact of the Nazi pillages across Europe based on public archives in Washington, D. In the case of France, Nicholas did not have access to key archives that have only recently been declassified. Thus, she relied heavily on postwar memoirs by former museum officials such as Lucie Mazauric, [27] who presents an impeccable image of French administrators during and after the war.
Using copies of recuperation archives held in Washington, D. The publication of Nicholas and Feliciano's books in the mids coincided with demands by the World Jewish Congress and other organizations for the compensation of Jewish victims and their heirs to redress their material and emotional hardships. In a major setback to the museum administration's public relations effort, on 28 January the French daily Le Monde ran a damaging front-page headline: The report declared that since the end of the war, the museum administration had "failed to meet its obligation to publicize" the status of the unclaimed works and had not sufficiently pursued research to find the rightful owners.
This important research finally began at the end of and has greatly increased the restitution rate. For example, between and an average of less than one work was restituted each year. Once the provenance research was underway, nineteen works were restituted in alone.
The staying power of this skewed perspective in postwar memoirs and even more recent works, such as Lynn Nicholas' book, is due in part to a lack of access to key documents. While carrying out my research, I applied for and received authorization to use archives that had been declassified in the late s.
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In the case of the sequestered collections, the perspective of Jaujard and Huyghe in July of - before the war had turned decisively against the Germans - is significant. Even though the works were eventually returned to the Rothschild family after the Liberation, Jaujard and Huyghe intended to incorporate them into French public collections permanently at a time when valuable pieces were streaming to other countries through the art market. In this Manichaean view of French leadership, resistance figures by definition eschewed opportunism, particularly when it came at the expense of Jews.
However, a distinction must be made between the objectives of Jaujard and Huyghe during the Occupation, and those of Nazi ideologues such as Alfred Rosenberg, who sought the elimination of Jews from public life and personal profit from their assets. Once the works had no legal owner, the museum administration sought to prevent them from flowing abroad and to benefit from the unforeseen acquisitions. What mattered most to Jaujard and Huyghe was maintaining the nation's cultural heritage, regardless of the previous owners' ethnic or religious background.
While the agency is taking belated steps to return the MNRs to their rightful owners, it appears unwilling to recognize that its former leaders succumbed to a kind of institutional opportunism, in which unclaimed works were held for public use. To scrutinize the actions of Resistance heroes would mean revising a carefully constructed memory of the Occupation, in which the Germans pillaged, and the French as opposed to "Vichy" resisted and unfailingly defended the interests of Jewish collectors. It constitutes the exploitation of people who held neither the power nor influence to challenge the agency's expropriation of assets that were rightfully theirs.
I would like to thank conference participants for their insightful comments and a lively discussion during our session. I have incorporated some of their suggestions in this version of my paper. History and Memory in France since , trans. Harvard University Press, Sarah Farmer, Martyred Village: Commemorating the Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane Berkeley: University of California Press, Isabelle le Masne de Chermont and Didier Schulmann, eds. Recueil de Documents Paris: Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, , Stanford University Press, , ; Valland, In accordance with the armistice agreements, France was forced to pay million francs per day in occupation costs.
By the fall of , fifty to sixty percent of French agricultural and industrial production served the Germans. For occupation costs, see Robert Paxton , Vichy France: Learn more about Amazon Prime. Get fast, free shipping with Amazon Prime. Get to Know Us. English Choose a language for shopping. Explore the Home Gift Guide. Amazon Music Stream millions of songs. Amazon Advertising Find, attract, and engage customers. Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon. Alexa Actionable Analytics for the Web. AmazonGlobal Ship Orders Internationally. Amazon Inspire Digital Educational Resources.
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