A tragic fate : law and ethics in the battle over Nazi-looted art
Nicholas M. O'Donnell (Author)
"The organized theft of fine art by Nazi Germany has captivated worldwide attention in the last 20 years. As much as any other topic arising out of World War II, stolen art has proven to be an issue that simply will not go away. Newly found works of art pit survivors and their heirs against museums, foreign nations, and even their own family members. These stories are enduring because they speak to one of the core tragedies of the Nazi era: how a nation at the pinnacle of fine art and culture spawned a legalized culture of theft and plunder. A Tragic Fate is the first book to seriously address the legal and ethical rules that have dictated the results of restitution claims between competing claimants to the same works of art. It provides a history of art and culture in German-occupied Europe, an introduction to the most significant collections in Europe to be targeted by the Nazis, and a narrative of the efforts to reclaim looted artwork--including Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, Camille Pissarro's Rue Saint-Honoré, après-midi, effet de pluit [sic], and Egon Schiele's Portrait of Wally--in the decades following the Holocaust through profiles of some of the art world's most famous and influential restitution cases"--Jacket
Print Book,English, 2017
American Bar Association : Ankerwycke, Chicago, Illinois, 2017
Claims
xii, 418 pages, 8 pages of plates : color illustrations ; 24 cm
9781634257336, 9781634257343, 1634257332, 1634257340
961009560
Part one. Art and culture in occupied Europe
From there to here : legislated plunder in the Third Reich and the Allied response
Part two. The new era
The Washington Conference and its ethical parallels
Portrait of Wally and the politics of seizure
A new door opens : Maria Altmann and the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer
Landscape with smokestacks and early trends
The Max Stern estate
Part three. Out of time?
Bakalar and the defense of laches
California legislative amendments and the legacy of Jacques Goudstikker
The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Oskar Reichel, and provenance research
Prescriptive law in Louisiana
The Nathan heirs, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the Toledo Museum of Art
The knives come out
Part four. Back and forth
Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
Léone Meyer and the University of Oklahoma
Legally present : a jurisdictional hook
The Pissarro of Lily Cassirer
Hungary and the Herzog Collection
Commercial activity or sovereign act?
Part five. The worst system in the world but all the rest
Progress or broken promises? : restitution claims procedures among the signatories to the Washington Conference principles
A tragic fate : conclusions and possibilities
Glossary of names, terms and concepts