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Historical scoop. The National Assembly, the first chamber of the French Parliament, approved tonight the bill that will allow the heirs of their first owners to be returned to the works that have been, for years, the property of the Louvre Museum and other great institutions of the national patrimony, which will be able to return them to the heirs of their owners. They were looted by the Nazis. fifteen plays, including a Klimt and a Chagall, will be the first to benefit from the bill, following its final approval.
But the bill goes much further and is the fruit of several years of investigations and revelations, which culminated in an institutional awareness of a problem of immense historical significance: the Louvre Museum and other great museums and institutions were able to enrich their national collections by legally buying works that had been stolen by the Nazis from many French Jewish families during the German occupation between 1940 and 1945.
In November 2019, Roselyne Bachelot announced her desire to return several works by Klimt and Chagall to the heirs of their first owners, relying on the work of the commission for compensation of the victims of Nazi looting (CIVEN). Political good will soon ran into an institutional reality: some of these works were and still are state property. And its return required a laborious legal process, which has taken two years to complete definitively.
The concordant works of several independent historians discovered, five years ago, that over 100,000 works of art, among which were approximately a thousand masterpieces by great creators (Monet, Degas, Picasso, among others), were transferred from France to Germany, between 1940 and 1945.
That immense family patrimony of numerous families was stolen at gunpoint. And an exceptional number of works ‘disappeared’ only to ‘reappear’ in finally ‘legal’ sales during the 50s, 60s and 70s of the last century. Within this framework, the Louvre and other French institutions were able to acquire works that, in truth, had belonged to French people persecuted for very different reasons, beginning with anti-Semitism. Purchased legally in the international art market, following labyrinthine processes, poorly studied, these works were integrated into the national heritage years ago and continue to be the property of the State.
Continuing a reflection begun years ago, Emmanuel Macron and his Minister of Culture, Roselyne Bachelot, began the essential legislative process two years ago. Tonight, the National Assembly unanimously approved the bill that will allow an ‘orderly’ restitution of national artistic assets to the heirs of their former owners.
Years ago, the Louvre identified a substantial part of the works that had enriched its collections with stolen works. But the global importance of the works stolen by the Nazis that are now part of the national heritage has yet to be discovered. And the identity of the heirs of the victims of Nazi looting is also unknown. After its final approval, the new Law will allow the initiation of a revision and historical restitution, without precedents.
