Date: Fri 20-Nov-1998

Publication: Ant

Author: LIZAM

Quick Words:

Louvre-Steinberg-Jewish

Full Text:

Jewish Group Challenges French To Return 678 Looted Works In Louvre

NEW YORK CITY (AP) -- A Jewish group challenged the French government on

November 13 to step up efforts to track the ownership of 678 artworks in the

Louvre believed to have been looted by Hitler's friends and agents.

"There is no longer any question of their dubious origin," said Elan

Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress.

The group is leading the restitution issue that is the focus of a 42-nation

conference starting November 30 at the State Department in Washington.

The French government has acknowledged that 2,058 looted paintings, sculptures

and drawings -- valued at hundreds of millions of dollars -- are in French

museums and collections, including the Louvre.

Only a handful have been returned, said Steinberg.

"We've been in touch with the French government, but so far nothing has

happened," he said. "We're challenging France and other European countries

holding art plundered by the Nazis to get the works to their original owners."

In an effort to recover a collection of 333 artworks that originally belonged

to a connoisseur named Adolphe Schloss, the French government recently

published a catalog that includes works by Rembrandt and Ruysdael. At the

moment, 171 of the works are still unaccounted for, the French Foreign

Ministry said.

Among the disputed paintings in the Louvre is Rubens' "Erection of the Cross,"

acquired in 1941 by Munich dealer Maria Dietrich, who bought art for Hitler,

according to a document released last year by the French Ministry of Culture.

A Lucas Cranach painting of St. Paul, also in the Louvre, had been purchased

in 1941 for the private collection of Hitler aide Hermann Goering, according

to Steinberg.

The two works are marked with an "MNR" code number, which stands for Musees

Nationaux Recuperation, a postwar French museum project that confirmed the

works as having been looted.

Of tens of thousands of Nazi-plundered works returned by Allied troops to

France, more than 15,000 never found their way back to their owners and were

sold at a state auction, Steinberg said. The remaining 2,058 were given the

"MNR" code.

The Musee d'Orsay in Paris holds 131 works, including a Monet, a Renoir and a

Degas, said Steinberg, citing Foreign Ministry documents obtained recently by

the World Jewish Congress. He said the Pompidou Center holds 24 works,

including a Matisse and a Picasso. One painting, a Courbet, ended up in an

Algerian museum.

By Verena Dobnik