In France, the unanimous Parliament definitively adopted this Tuesday evening a bill allowing the restitution of 15 works of art, including a painting by Gustav Klimt and another by Marc Chagall, to the heirs of Jewish families despoiled by the Nazis.
Three paintings, eleven drawings and a waxwork will be returned to the heirs of Jewish families who were robbed during the Second World War by the German and French regimes of the Occupation. Among these fifteen works is a large painting, Rosebushes under the trees, signed by the painter Gustave Klimt. It is the only painting by the Austrian painter present in French public collections.
It took an exceptional law carried by the Minister of Culture Roselyne Bachelot for two and a half years to achieve this restitution. Because these works, which entered legally into French public collections, were inalienable and imprescriptible. The State had acquired them on the art market after 1945 without knowing their history and provenance.
After the National Assembly unanimously on January 25, the Senate dominated by the right validated this text by a show of hands. ” It’s a first step ” because ” looted works of art and books are still kept in public collections. Objects that shouldn’t, never should have been there “, repeated the minister, while research on the provenance of the collections has accelerated.
After the war, 13,000 works or objects were thus sold by the administration of the Estates, including many works stolen or looted from owners who were victims of anti-Semitic persecution. A “framework law” still in draft form could facilitate restitutions in the years to come, without the need for case-by-case authorization from the legislator.