averilburystedmunds: Stolen Nazi Art

Jardin de Monet a Giverny
Claude Monet

Very interested to read of the revelation this week that the Kunsthaus Museum in Zurich intends to remove five paintings from public view on June 20 as it collaborates with the owner of the five artworks to investigate whether they might have been looted by the Nazis during WW2. One of the reasons that this caught my eye was that one of the five suspect works of art is Jardin de Monet a Giverny by Claude Monet! My grand-daughter, Niamh, and I visited Giverny for a delightful couple of days last September, her first visit with which she seemed enchanted. As was I! And we seem to have developed a certain personal possessiveness about the famous garden!

Portrait of the Sculptor, Louis-Joseph
Gustave Courbet

The remaining four paintings removed from public view are pictured below, plus one under review.

La Route Montante
Paul Gauguin

All five paintings are part of the Buhrle Foundation collection focussed chiefly on French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works and are a core part of the Kunsthaus display on long-term loan from the Foundation E.G.Buhrle which has requested the removal of the five while it assesses their provenance. This move has been prompted by the March 2024 publication of the U.S. State Dept’s latest ‘Best practices for handling Nazi-looted art.’ These expand the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art set out in 1998 which focussed on providing restitution to the families of the original owners for treasures that were either stolen or forcibly sold by the Nazis.

The Kunsthaus

The Kunsthaus has published an apology for the current removals, acknowledging its regret but also supporting the decision of the Buhrle Foundation ‘in acting correctly and comprehensively’ in its decision. Meanwhile, the Buhrle Foundation published the following: “The Foundation strives to find a fair and equitable solution with the legal successors of the former owners of these works, following best practices.” It is also conducting a separate investigation of a sixth work currently on display at Kunsthaus Zurich, Edouard Manet’s La Sultaine.

Emil Buhrle during WW2

Emil Buhrle was a German-born Swiss industrialist and arms manufacturer whose passion was collecting art. During the war, despite the fact that he used child labour and forced labour, he was permitted by the Swiss government to sell arms to both the Allies and to the Nazis and by the end of the war, had become Switzerland’s wealthiest man. Both during the war and after, Buhrle continued to buy art on a massive scale and suspicions have long endured about the provenance of some of the works in his possession.

In 2021 an extension to the Kunsthaus in Zürich, Switzerland's largest art museum, opened, with almost an entire floor dedicated to paintings and sculptures on 20-year loan from the Bührle Foundation. This drew criticism due to Bührle's Nazi-era weapons dealings, and his use of forced labour and child labour in his factories at the time. Up to 90 of the works loaned to the Kunsthaus are thought possibly to have been acquired illegitimately from Jews; historian Erich Keller said "We need independent research into the art's provenances, and then to consider which of these paintings really belong in the Kunsthaus and which need to be given back." The Bührle Foundation's director responded that "The approximately 90 works are works for which no complete provenance is known, but for which there is also no reason to assume a problematic provenance".

Hundreds of thousands of paintings and millions of books as well as cultural and religious artefacts were stolen from Jewish owners by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Many have not been returned to

The Old Tower
Vincent van Gogh

their original, rightful owners. During WW2, though Switzerland remained neutral, it also retained strong economic ties to Nazi Germany and its allies. An article about Nazi-looted art from the National Archives’ Holocaust Records Preservation Project states that:

“Confiscated artworks were often saved for private Nazi and German collections, while some pieces were sold through neutral countries like Switzerland to raise capital for purchasing additional art pieces and to purchase materials for the Nazi war machine. Additionally, Switzerland offered a large market for ‘degenerate art.’

During the Thirties, the Nazis declared that a variety of modern art and artists were sick and immoral. The regime called this Degenerate Art and in 1937 they confiscated thousands of examples of this so-called degenerate art, displaying many in the Degenerate Art Exhibition of 1937. Many thousands of examples were simply destroyed.