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Terezín Declaration – Ten Years Later The documentation, identification and restitution of the cultural assets of WWII victims Proceedingsheld of anin Pragueinternational on 18 –academic 19 June, conference 2019 Documentation Centre for Property Transfers of Cultural Assets of WWII Victims, p.b.o. Documentation Centre for Property Transfers of Cultural Assets of WWII Victims, p.b.o. Terezín Declaration – Ten Years Later 7th International Conference The documentation, identification and restitution of the cultural assets of WWII victims Proceedings of an international academic conference held in Prague on 18 – 19 June, 2019 Documentation Centre for Property Transfers of Cultural Assets of WWII Victims, p.b.o. Čs. armády 34/828, 160 00 Prague 6 Czech Republic +420 603 787 100 [email protected] www.cdmp.cz/en This conference was held with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic. This book was published with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic. Copyright © Documentation Centre for Property Transfers of Cultural Assets of WWII Victims, p.b.o., Prague, 2019 Graphic design © František Krejča, 2019 Translation and text revision © Christopher Hopkinson, 2019 Printed by Point4Me ISBN 978-80-907507-1-5 (print) ISBN 978-80-907507-2-2 (online; pdf) All rights reserved. Contents Foreword ................................................................................................. 10 Conference Opening Jaroslav Kubera Welcoming remarks .................................................................................. 13 François Croquette Holocaust property restitution in France: assessment and prospects .........................................................................15 Jan Roubínek Welcoming remarks ..................................................................................18 Stuart E. Eizenstat and Tom Yazdgerdi Welcoming remarks at the conference on looted art in Prague ...................................................................................................21 Session 1 The Terezín Declaration – Ten Years Later Kamil Zeidler and Agnieszka Plata The argumentative aspects of the Terezín Declaration and its place in public international law .................................................. 25 Uwe Hartmann Ten Years After: Ten Years of Funding of Provenance Research in Germany ....................................................... 32 Hannah M. Lessing The Terezín Declaration – ten years on: developments in Austria .......................................................................... 33 Anne Webber and Wesley A. Fisher Restitution: the difficulties and the realities ............................................ 39 Agnes Peresztegi The Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project ...........................................50 Session 2 Problems Connected with Research and Restitutions Ondřej Vlk The Einsatzstab Rinnebach and the Einsatzstab Jurk – thefts of artworks in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ..............................................................................................57 Alena Bányaiová Experience with the restitution of cultural assets in the Czech Republic ............................................................................... 62 Thierry Bajou French law and the Washington Declaration ........................................... 68 Shlomit Steinberg The Mystery of 4 Paintings and One Nazi Art Dealer: Schiele, Heckel and a Man Called Wilhelm Schumann ............................ 74 Sara Angel Restitution About-Face: Max Stern, the return of Nazi-Looted art and Düsseldorf’s double game ...................................88 Session 3 Provenance Research as an University Discipline Nawojka Cieślińska-Lobkowicz Provenance khurbn forshung: provenance research as an essential part of Holocaust studies in Poland .................................. 99 MaryKate Cleary Research-Led Teaching: Provenance Research in Pedagogy and Practice ..................................... 108 Meike Hoffmann Learning by doing – the Mosse Art Research Initiative (MARI) as a model for future project-based teaching on provenance research at universities ................................... 109 Christian Fuhrmeister Why? How? Experiences and conclusions from teaching and supervising ........................................................................ 121 Session 4 The Wartime and Post-war Fates of Spoliated Library Stocks and Methods of Identification Michal Bušek “Whose are they and where did they come from?” Methods of identifying the original owners of books held by the Jewish Museum in Prague .................................................... 131 Sebastian Finsterwalder If you want to go far, go together. Experiences from cooperation in provenance research and restitution ..............................142 Ivana Yael Nepalová Transfers of Selected Jewish Library Items from Czechoslovakia to Mandatory Palestine and the State of Israel after the Second World War (1945 – 1949) ......................... 147 Sibylle von Tiedemann “He will never be forgotten in Munich” – The Cossmann Werner Library of the former Jewish Community in Munich ................................................................................................148 Michel Vermote Prospects for further research on the fate of Nazi-looted book collections: a report from Belgium .................................................156 Session 5 International Collaboration in Issues of Provenance Research Ljerka Dulibić Transnational Joint Research Approach to the Provenance: New Expectations and Old Challenges ....................................................169 Christel H. Force The German/American Provenance Research Exchange Program for Museum Professionals, 2017–2019 .......................................171 Patricia Kennedy Grimsted “Tracing Pan-European Nazi Cultural Loot on the Eastern Front: Transcending the ‘Continental Divide’ on Restitution?” ............. 180 Authors .................................................................................................208 Auspices ................................................................................................ 228 Foreword This conference – the seventh international conference organized by the Documentation Centre for Property Transfers of the Cultural Assets of WWII Victims – focused on a range of questions connected with the spolia- tion of cultural assets belonging to Europe’s Jews during the Second World War. The patrons of the conference were Jaroslav Kubera, the President of the Senate of the Czech Parliament; Radek Vondráček, the President of the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Parliament; Tomáš Petříček, the Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs; and Antonín Staněk, the Czech Minister of Culture. The conference organizers wanted to commemorate ten years since the signing of the Terezín Declaration, which draws on the principles ar- ticulated in the Washington Declaration. This occasion represented an op- portunity to evaluate new knowledge related to the identification of spo- liated cultural assets, to investigate the different approaches to issues of restitution taken by various countries, and to explore the possibilities for engaging in close international cooperation on matters of provenance re- search. These goals are reflected in the title of the conference held on 18–19 June: The Terezín Declaration – Ten Years Later. The conference presentations were organized in five separate panels. Besides summarizing and evaluating the situation ten years after the sig- nature of the Terezín Declaration, the presentations also focused on issues of provenance research and restitution processes, the wartime and post- war fates of confiscated library collections, and experience with running 10 university courses on provenance research. There were also presentations of specific restitution cases involving several original owners. These conference proceedings contain some presentations that were provided by their authors in full-text form, as well as brief summaries in cases when the authors were unable to send their complete papers by the deadline. The Second World War is a chapter in contemporary history that re- mains very much alive even today, as many wounds – whether personal or from family histories – still remain open. Historical and political approach- es to the war have to take this fact into account. When conducting research into property transfers of cultural assets during the Second World War, we must remember that many of the affected artefacts were intimately famil- iar to their owners, as household items which played an integral part in their everyday lives – so researchers not only need to accurately describe and understand the specific societal processes which enabled acts of loot- ing to take place on such an unprecedented scale; their efforts also need to focus on alleviating some of the injustices of the past by restituting the items to their original owners or their descendants – or if this is not possi- ble, they need to help find another honest and fair solution. The organizers of the conference hope that the knowledge shared by the participants will make at least some contribution towards achieving these goals. 11 Conference Opening Jaroslav Kubera (the President of the Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic) Your Excellency, ladies and gentlemen, dear international guests, I am greatly honoured by your invitation to take part in the opening ceremony of this conference, which