Unanimity of the Senate to facilitate the restitution of works looted by the Nazis

May 23, 2023

“Historical”, “memorial” text: the Senate unanimously adopted on Tuesday a draft framework law intended to facilitate the restitution by public collections of cultural property whose Jews were looted by Nazi Germany.

“This bill is the first since the Liberation to recognize the specific spoliation suffered by Jews, in France and everywhere, as a result of Nazi Germany and the various authorities linked to it”, underlined the Minister of Culture Rima Abdul Malak.

The objective is to establish a general framework for removing works from museums in order to return them to their legitimate owners or assigns, without having to resort to legislative texts on a case-by-case basis.

The property concerned — works of art, paintings, books … — were stolen by the Nazis between Adolf Hitler’s accession to power on January 30, 1933 and the German surrender on May 8, 1945.

“Behind each work there is a family history, behind each spoliation there is a human drama. With each restitution, it is an act of justice which is rendered”, declared the minister.

One hundred thousand works of art were seized in France during the Second World War, according to the Ministry of Culture. 60,000 goods were found in Germany at the Liberation and returned to France. Among them, 45,000 were quickly returned to their owners.

About 2,200 were selected and entrusted to the custody of national museums, so-called MNR works (National Museums Recovery).

The rest (about 13,000 objects) were sold by the Estates administration in the early 1950s. Many of these works of art thus returned to the market.

In 2019, the Ministry of Culture created the Mission for the search and restitution of cultural property whose owners were looted between 1933 and 1945.

Preserved by the Musée d’Orsay, the painting “Rosiers under the trees” by Gustav Klimt has thus been returned to the heirs of its owners. It was one of the 15 works concerned by a law of February 21, 2022 allowing them to be removed from public collections.

Contrary to MNR works, the State can so far only initiate the restitution of works that have entered public collections by adopting a specific law making it possible to derogate from the principle of the inalienability of these collections.

The framework law creates a derogation from this principle in the heritage code. The decision to leave the national collections can only be made after consulting a specialized commission.

The victims will be able, if they wish, to negotiate an amicable agreement on the terms of reparation other than restitution.

The bill also concerns the owners of private museums that have received the designation “Musée de France”.

“If the role of the legislator is not to rewrite history, it may be his responsibility to ensure that certain wounds of the past are healed,” said the rapporteur for the text in the Senate, Béatrice Gosselin (related LR).

“Returning a painting is not repair, it’s justice”, for his part affirmed Roger Karoutchi (LR). “The Holocaust cannot be repaired, cannot be reconciled,” he said.

In the hemicycle, the debate focused on historical responsibility.

With the consent of the Minister, the Senate initially adopted an amendment by the Communist Pierre Ouzoulias to clarify the wording and thereby make “clearly appear the specific responsibility of the Vichy regime”.

The last restitution of property looted by the Nazis took place on April 18. These were three works that were part of the so-called MNR assets. A total of 184 MNR and similar works and objects have been returned since 1950.

Two other texts are to come. Emmanuel Macron has thus promised another framework law to proceed with the restitution of African cultural property, sometimes acquired under questionable conditions.

And the Senate will examine in June a cross-partisan bill dedicated to the return of “human remains”, such as the Maori heads returned in 2010 to New Zealand.