France Steps Up Bid to Return WWII Stolen Art

France vows to step up efforts to return works of art stolen from Jews by the Nazis to the families of their rightful owners.

Published

2 months ago

Categories

Arts & Society, World

Topics

History, Europe

People

Aurelie Filippetti, Thomas Selldorff

Places

France

Transcript

SHOTLIST DATE: MARCH 19, 2013 LOCATION: PARIS SOURCE: AFPTV SOUNDBITE 1 Aurélie Filippetti, French culture minister (French, 17 sec): "By restoring these seven paintings today we also reconstitute a part of our history, a part of the theft targeting central European Jews. Their paintings were stolen, or they were forced to sell them, because they were refugees." "A travers la restitution de ces 7 tableaux aujourd'hui, on reconstitue aussi une partie de notre Histoire, une partie de la spoliation des Juifs d'Europe centrale. On leur a volé leurs tableaux ou bien ils ont été obligés de les vendre, parce qu'ils étaient réfugiés". SOUNDBITE 2 Aurélie Filippetti, French culture minister (French, 10 sec): "It is France's moral duty to restore these works to their rightful owners the offspring of these people who suffered so much, even after 60 years." "Le devoir moral de la France c'est de restituer ces oeuvres même soixante ans après aux ayant-droits et aux descendants de ces personnes qui ont tant souffert pendant la guerre". SOUNDBITE 3 homas Selldorff, Grandson of Richard Neumann, owner of six stolen paintings (English, 19 sec): "Property rights are an important portion of civilized society and this is an example where property rights are being restored and I think it's a great tribute to France, to the ministry, that this is taking place." - Arrival of Filippetti - VAR Filippetti with Selldorff - Cutaway journalists - Plaintiffs and their lawyers - VAR news conference - VAR paintings ----------------------- AFP TEXT STORY France-history-WWII-art-Jews France vows to step up efforts to return WWII stolen art PARIS, March 18, 2013 (AFP) - France on Monday vowed to step up efforts to return works of art stolen from Jews by the Nazis to the families of their rightful owners. The pledge came on the eve of an official ceremony at which six 18th-century paintings will be returned to the descendants of Vienna-based industrialist Richard Neumann and another 17th-century work handed over to the family of Josef Wiener, a Prague banker who perished in the holocaust. An estimated 2,000 works of art are currently held in trust by France's state museums pending identification of their owners. Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti said France would be taking a more active approach to identifying the rightful owners. "Until now we have waited for inheritors or relatives to trigger research procedures," Filippetti said. "I want to introduce a more proactive approach under which France will seek the owners whether or not a formal request has been made." American Thomas Selldorff will on Tuesday reclaim six German and Italian paintings that his grandfather, Neumann, was forced to sell in 1941 to raise the funds he needed to secure safe passage to Spain and then Cuba from Paris, where he had fled to from Vienna. The paintings ended up in the hands of the Nazis, who had planned to transfer them to a museum that Adolf Hitler envisaged opening in his home town of Linz. After the end of the war, they were placed in museums around France, three of them in the Louvre. The seventh painting that will be handed over on Tuesday is a work, "The Stop" by Dutch painter Pieter-Jansz van Asch (1603-1678) which was confiscated by the Nazis from Wiener. At the end of the war, the victorious allied powers generally sent paintings back to their countries of origin: the van Asch work was sent to France, rather than the Netherlands, by mistake. pcm/am/rm