Nazi loot back in right hands

NETHERLANDS - More than 65 years after falling into the hands of German occupiers, including Hitler's ally Hermann Goering, a remarkable art collection is being returned to the descendants of its Jewish wartime owner.

In the largest art restitution case seen in the Netherlands, the Dutch Government has agreed to hand back 202 paintings, including works by Anthony van Dyck, Filippino Lippi and Jan Steen.

The decision concludes decades of controversy that culminated in an eight-year legal battle between the descendants of a prominent Jewish art dealer, Jacques Goudstikker, and the Dutch state.

Celebrating the return of a collection said to be worth up to £150 million ($385 million), Goudstikker's American-born, 61-year-old daughter-in-law Marei von Saher said her family "fought long and hard to see justice being seen to be done ...

"It wasn't about money, it was about right being honoured. I only wish that my husband was still alive to celebrate this victory." Von Saher described the verdict as "a dream come true for me and my daughters".

But the news has sent shock waves through the Dutch art world and represents a nightmare for smaller museums whose collections may be devastated.

Though the Netherlands says it has no similar outstanding cases, it acknowledged that the decision may encourage legal actions from the descendants of those who lost art treasures in other countries that saw wartime occupation.

The extraordinary story of the Goudstikker collection began in the summer of 1940, when Amsterdam was overrun by the Nazis.

By the age of 42, Jacques Goudstikker had established himself as one of the most affluent and prominent art dealers in Europe.

His pre-war collection comprised an estimated 1400 works, including paintings by Rembrandt, Velazquez, Goya, Rubens, Titian and Tintoretto. The whereabouts of many of the works is unknown.

On May 14, as German forces advanced, Goudstikker was forced to flee Amsterdam, taking the last boat for England and leaving behind more than 1000 works. In a tragic twist of fate, Goudstikker's last-minute flight was not to save his life: just two days later he died after falling through a hatch into the ship's hold.

The legal and moral morass flowing from his death has taken more than six decades to resolve. After his departure in 1940, a German businessman, Alois Miedl, took over the running of Goudstikker's dealership and kept some of the works but sold others to Goering.

The ally of Hitler and architect of the Gestapo prided himself on his lavish lifestyle and built up an extensive collection of looted art. Goering paid Miedl 2 million guilders for around 770 paintings, while a further 550,000 guilders was said to have been paid by a Dutch banker associate of Goering's for a palatial residence in Amsterdam and other art treasures.

Goudstikker's mother remained in the Netherlands after the German invasion and, under pressure from Miedl, agreed to the sale.

Her acquiescence meant that, until this week, the property was never fully restored to the family.

After the war, a large number of the paintings - including 227 of those bought by Goering - were returned from Germany to the Netherlands and declared property of the state.

Goudstikker's widow, Desi, demanded the return of all the artworks and real estate, but her claim was dismissed. Finally, she was given the opportunity to buy back 165 paintings and other property, including Nijenrode Castle, and reluctantly reached a settlement with the Dutch state in 1952.

Nevertheless, the family remained dissatisfied. In 1998 it lost a case in the Dutch appeals court after engaging a team of top international lawyers to try to overturn the ruling.

Ultimately, a restitution committee established in 2001 in the Netherlands concluded that Goudstikker's mother had been pressured to agree to the sale in exchange for protection from the Nazis, and ruled that the property should be returned to the family.

The government has now agreed to restore 202 paintings, though it rejected calls for a further 40 to be given back on the grounds that, by May 1940, Goudstikker had sold them.

Bob van 't Klooster, spokesman for the Dutch secretary of state for culture, said although the Netherlands had agreed to 19 earlier restitutions of looted artwork, this decision is unique.

"There is no other case which could compete with this situation."

Describing the loss to the national art heritage as "tragic" and "a bombshell", provincial museums called on the Dutch Culture Ministry to come up with a rescue package so that works of a similar calibre could be acquired. Their demands for compensation have so far been greeted by silence.

Even if money were forthcoming, art experts doubt that it would be sufficient to acquire works to equal the outstanding quality of many of those in the Goudstikker collection.

One of the greatest losses to the Dutch is a 1649 Salomon van Ruysdael river landscape, long regarded as one of the greatest works in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, second only to Rembrandt's Nightwatch. Museum spokesman Boris de Munnick said the work would be surrendered together with a priceless Jan Steen painting and more than two dozen other works "because the law must be obeyed".

The Rijksmuseum has 15 paintings, three tapestries and 12 drawings from the Goudstikker collection.

Worst hit will be the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht, which would lose between 30 and 40 paintings. Klooster said.

The museum spent six years working on a restoration project of its early Italian Renaissance, which included 16 "Goudstikkers", notably Filippino Lippi's panel of Maria and child described by experts as "a rare gem".

But Klooster added: "This is a loss for these museums but, at the same time, that cannot be a reason not to reach this conclusion. The loss is evident, but it has not been a consideration.

"We need to consider this affair as something you look at from a moral and ethical point of view."

What happens now to the collection remains unclear. Having now won an epic battle with the Dutch Government to win back its property, the family is yet to decide what to do with it.

The prospect has been raised of a new Goudstikker museum in the United States, or of establishing a travelling exhibition.

Marei von Saher said that, having taken no decisions on the future of the paintings, she is simply looking forward to admiring them.

Unless key works are left in the Netherlands on loan, some Dutch art lovers face disappointment.

A spokesman for the Rijksmuseum in Twenthe was quoted as saying: "We are losing some of our finest works. It represents a huge gap in our oeuvre and we have nothing of that calibre to put back up on bare walls."

- INDEPENDENT