MOSCOW. (Writer Anatoly Korolev for RIA Novosti.). The debate around Franz Koenings' drawings collection, which some time ago belonged to Dutch collector Van Beuningen, has become an apple of discord between the Netherlands and Russia.
At first glance, the position of the former seems impeccable, while that of the latter raises doubts.
The crux of the case is as follows: after embarking on the path of a free democratic state and giving up Soviet practices, Russia revealed that the closed vaults of its museums contained masterpieces of world art that it had received as trophies after the victory over Nazi Germany. Claims followed immediately: everyone wanted it to return them as soon as possible and down to the tiniest item. Eight countries have now made such claims.
The German Academy of Arts has finished compiling a list of masterpieces lost during the Second World War. It includes 2,188 artworks, and much of what has survived is now in Russia.
This list came into being only owing to Moscow's openness. Russia even issued a special magazine, Trofei (Trophies), where virtually everything it had was named and shown.
The main aspect in the case of the Koenings collection is ethic and moral, not formal or judicial. Generally, the issue of restitution, which many countries face, is first of all a moral issue. The position of the Netherlands is clear: it views the collection as part "of the Dutch cultural legacy" and has stressed "the collection's importance for the nation's culture." No one contests this formal definition.
But it is taken out of the real modern context where the Koenings collection exists.
First of all, somehow the Netherlands has shown no concern about the part of the Koenings collection that is now kept in the United States.
No one has demanded that the Cezannes and Van Goghs sold by the collection's other owner be returned home.
Yet the only difference between the two parts of the collection is that the Russian part belonged to Van Beuningen for a period of time, and the American one did not.
Van Beuningen sold the collection to Hitler, who opened his personal grand museum of fine arts in Linz. From the Russian point of view, the fuehrer's ownership of the paintings finally moved the issue from the sphere of private property rights to the sphere of supreme justice, when his collection became part of the Soviet Army's trophies.
The Soviet Union/Russia did not take the collection away from the Netherlands and Van Beuningen, but from Germany and Hitler. It took it as the victor in the war of the Allies against the Nazis, a war which liberated Europe (including the Dutch) from Nazism and which cost the USSR 27 million lives and a ruined economy in the western part of the country.
After the war the Soviet Union received reparations in the form of German equipment, the labor of German prisoners of war who restored what German planes had destroyed, and so on. This was moral, and just. This is what Russian Culture Minister Alexander Sokolov meant when he underlined that when discussing any issues of restitution "we should enter the level of ethic dialogue."
Besides, there are other circumstances, which seriously change the abstract, purely formal approach of the Dutch.
Koenings did not own the Koenings collection.
In 1935, the collection was purchased by banker Siegfried Kramarsky, who soon sold it to Van Beuningen (and the latter to Hitler). At that time it included 2,671 drawings by old masters and 47 paintings. Among the authors were great artists, such as Rembrandt, Durer and Holbein.
So Kramarsky was the collection's second owner.
It was he who kept the collection in the Boijmans Museum in Amsterdam.
It was he who decided to sell paintings by Cezanne and Van Gogh to the USA.
And he was a Jew.
Here it is necessary to touch upon a very sensitive subject. I mean the circumstances under which Kramarsky sold the collection. Van Beuningen is one of the most respected figures in the Netherlands, someone like the Russian collector Tretyakov.
Yet at that troubled time it was difficult to remain a knight. The sale and purchase of the Koenings collection took place in an atmosphere of concealed fear and civilized blackmail. After Germany adopted laws on confiscation of all assets owned by Jews, Kramarsky - a German citizen temporarily residing in the Netherlands - understood that sooner or later he would have to part with the collection. The Jews were awaiting German intervention.
Dutch collectors understood as much, and the deals they offered Jews were all but coordinated. They, in fact, played to bring prices down, and Kramarsky had to sell his collection to Van Beuningen for 1 million guldens (the figure is confirmed by the Van Beuningens), which was two or three times lower than the real price. Van Beuningen himself valued the collection at 5.5 million. Having bought the collection cheap, Van Beuningen sold it on to Hitler at a profit.
Perhaps, he also was under the pressure of circumstances, although his position cannot be compared to that of Kramarsky. The Dutch, for example, are inclined to see Van Beuningen's action as a display of altruism: he helped Kramarsky. The commonly accepted view is that he saved the collection.
There are, however, facts that raise doubts about it.
Formally, the collection was bought six months after Kramarsky had fled from the Netherlands to Canada in November 1939. The mass suicides of Jews ahead of the invasion, when at least 200 people killed themselves, served as the backdrop for the deal.
Knowing this, it is strange to read in the official Dutch catalogue of 1989 that says, "thanks to Van Beuningen's decisive cooperation, the collection was not taken abroad and sold."
Before the German occupation 113,000 Jews lived in the Netherlands. As many as 104,000 of them died.
These terrible details allow us to view the deal between Kramarsky and Van Beuningen as a forced one. International law has long qualified such deals as null and void. The Netherlands cannot fail to understand that such a transaction can be found invalid on the request of any interested party or court.
In other words, to play the Jewish card and present Van Beuningen as a Nazi victim is unethical. To say nothing of the fact that no one forced him to sell the collection to Hitler.
Nevertheless, Russia is ready to consider thoroughly any situation with restitution separately. By now it has adopted the following delicate tactics: in any case a commission of experts from both parties of a conflict is set up. And the ethical aspect is the crucial one.
Here is the latest example.
The Hermitage in St. Petersburg has a collection of 18 silver objects from Prince Anhalt's collection. For counteracting the Nazi regime the prince was repressed, deprived of his posts and sent to forced labor. After the war he fell victim to Stalin's repression and died in a Soviet camp. Later he was rehabilitated, and his children recognized as victims of political repressions.
This situation is clear: it is necessary to redress the injustice to the dead. It should also be remembered that the family of the Anhalt-Zerbst had given Russia Yekaterina the Great.
Now Russia is completing talks on returning the prince's collection to Germany.
Another act of redressing an injustice will be returning to Hungary of some ancient books from the unique library of the Sarospatak Reformed College. The corresponding bill will soon be discussed by the Russian parliament.
This is an act of good will Russia has not been forced to.
The Constitutional Court of Russia underlined the same ethical aspect, when it recently ruled that "values can be returned either within mutually beneficial exchange or as a friendly act, a display of good will and humanism."
In this respect, the Koenings collection may have some prospects, but I for one believe that they are too vague.
Last year, Ukraine returned its part of that collection to the Netherlands - well, it is up to the young state that searches support in Europe. But it was Russia, not Ukraine, which recognized itself as the successor to the Soviet Union. Consequently, Russia inherited the advantages and disadvantages of this decision.
Unfortunately, the dubious fate of the Koenings-Kramarsky collection, which Van Beuningen sold to Hitler, casts a shadow on the Dutch desire to return what for a few years belonged to a collector, but never belonged to the Netherlands.
