Boston museum wants to return Holocaust painting

June 9, 2000
Web posted at: 9:35 AM EDT (1335 GMT)

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Boston's Museum of Fine Arts says it wants to return a painting stolen by Nazi Marshal Hermann Goering, but has been blocked from doing so because both a Dutch heir and the Dutch government claim the work.

Christine Koenigs of Amsterdam told Reuters that her grandmother asked the Dutch government on September 22, 1945, to return 47 works looted by the Nazis -- including the 16th century Flemish painting by Herri Met de Bles in question.

"The claim was never answered by the Dutch government," she said.

A spokesman for the Dutch government, which also let lapse a 1948 inquiry from the Boston museum about the painting's ownership, was not immediately available.

After World War II, the Allies gathered all the works of art that the Nazis had plundered -- an estimated 600,000 items -- and returned them to the countries from which they were taken. It was left to each nation to then give the art works back to the individual Holocaust heirs, but that step did not always take place.

Kelly Gifford, a spokeswoman for the MFA, which in 1946 in New York bought the painting, called "Landscape with Burning City," said on Thursday that the museum would keep the work until it was clear who owned it.

"It's not up to the MFA to decide the ownership of the painting, and therefore the MFA would keep it at the museum until the ownership is decided," said Gifford.

Christine Koenigs in 1998 told the museum the painting belonged to her family, but the Dutch government later put in a claim. Though she agreed to submit the matter to arbitration, the Dutch government declined to do so.

In 1948, Gifford said an MFA curator first learned from Max Friedlaender that the painting had been part of Franz Koenigs's prewar collection. Friedlaender was a Jewish art historian who was rescued from a concentration camp by the director of Goering's art collection because of his expertise, according to a post-war, declassified report by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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