“Unclaimed” Artworks Entrusted to French Museums after World War II

The Case of Near Eastern Art and Antiquities

Anne Dunn-Vaturi, François Bridey, and Gwenaëlle Fellinger

Abstract
Between 1949 and 1953, about 2,100 “unclaimed” artworks returned to France from Germany after World War II were selected by museum professionals and labeled MNR (Musées nationaux récupération). About half of the works are paintings, while thirty percent are decorative arts, and the remaining pieces are drawings, sculptures, folk art, Asian art, and antiquities. This paper presents the so-called AOR (Antiquités orientales récupération), 31 objects entrusted to the care of the Département des Antiquités orientales, Musée du Louvre, which at the time included both pre-Islamic and Islamic objects. Research carried out by the Mission Mattéoli (1997–2000) determined that only two, maybe three, artworks are proven to have been looted by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg during the Nazi occupation of France. The rest of the AOR items were purchases made by German individuals and museums, confirming that the MNR corpus does not equate in its entirety to art plundered from Jewish collections. The study of this portion of the works is an opportunity to shed light on the Near Eastern art and antiquities market in Paris during the war.

Introduction

[1] All transfers of ownership of cultural property that occurred in France during the German occupation were considered null and void after World War II in accordance with the Inter-Allied “Declaration against Acts of Dispossession Committed in Territories under Enemy Occupation or Control”, issued in London on 5 January 1943¹. It is thought that some 100,000 paintings, drawings, sculptures, and antiquities were either looted by the German or Vichy services or sold under duress in France between 1940 and 1945². The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), in charge of the seizure of Jewish art collections, processed them through the Jeu de Paume in the Tuileries Gardens in Paris. In November 1944, the Commission de récupération artistique (CRA) was created to carry out research on these artworks. Between 1945 and 1949, some 61,000 items discovered mainly in Germany and Austria, but also in Czechoslovakia and Poland, were repatriated to France. Recoveries were also made in France in buildings occupied by the ERR, at the Germany Embassy, and in a freight train stopped in Aulnay. During the summer of 1946, an exhibition of some of the masterpieces was held at the Orangerie in the Tuileries³.

[2] The claims filed by the rightful owners or their heirs with the Office des biens et intérêt privés (Department for Private Goods and Interests, abbreviated OBIP in French), which concerned cultural property, were transmitted to the CRA. A “List of Property Looted in France” during the war, known as the Répertoire des biens spoliés, was published in 1947 by the Central Office for Restitutions in eight volumes and supplements⁴. In order to disseminate information about “orphaned” objects, copies were sent to museums and galleries, located mostly in France, Germany, and Austria but also in the United States. Between 1945 and 1950, 45,441 objects were reclaimed by their rightful owners. Most of the remaining works were sold at auctions by the Domaines (the Administration of the Estates), whereas a portion was entrusted to the care of the French Musées nationaux while they awaited ownership claims.

[3] About 2,100 artworks were selected between 1949 and 1953 by museum professionals within the framework of the Commissions de choix des œuvres d’art (Selection Committees for Works of Art)⁵ because of their artistic quality; they constitute what is called the MNR, the French acronym for Musées nationaux récupération (National Museums Recuperation)⁶. About half of the works are paintings, about thirty percent are works of decorative arts, and the remaining pieces are drawings, sculptures, folk art, Asian art, Islamic art, and Near Eastern, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquities.

[4] The MNR items are listed in an online database named after Rose Valland (1898–1980) to pay tribute to the curatorial assistant assigned to the Jeu de Paume during the Occupation⁷. Valland secretly took notes about the artworks looted by the Nazis before their shipment to Germany and contributed to many restitutions after 1945 by providing information to the Allies on the possible hiding places used by the Nazis (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Edith Standen and Rose Valland (right) with art to be restituted to France, May 1946. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Archives of American Art, James J. Rorimer papers, 1921–1982, bulk 1943–1950 (photo: Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Archives of American Art)

According to the research carried out by the Mission Mattéoli (1997–2000), the composition of the MNR is the following: 10 percent of the artworks were looted, 65 percent were purchased on the art market, and 25 percent have an incomplete or unknown provenance. Despite the list’s publication, the erroneous idea that the MNR included only works of looted art still prevails⁸.

[5] The general public is especially conscious of the investigations related to the fate of paintings during the Nazi era but is less aware of the destiny of ancient and non-Western art. This paper presents what little we know to date about what happened during World War II to the objects later picked by the Selection Committee for the Département des Antiquités orientales⁹ at the Musée du Louvre and labeled AOR (Antiquités orientales récupération) (see the appendix to this article for a catalog of the 31 objects referred to as AOR)¹⁰.

What are the Antiquités orientales récupération (AOR)?

[6] In 1945, the collection of the Département des Antiquités orientales of the Louvre included both pre-Islamic and Islamic objects; the latter group was transferred to the Département des Arts de l’Islam, formed in 2003. Therefore, the Antiquités orientales récupération (AOR)¹¹ allocations—corresponding to 31 items from an area that reaches as far west as Spain and as far east as India—include works beyond the time of the Arab conquest in the seventh century AD. Even if part of the corpus exceeds the scope of this publication, it seems important to deal with all the objects because their dealers handled both antiquities and later objects.

[7] The curator who acted as a representative of the Département des Antiquités orientales for the Selection Committee was Jean David-Weill (1878–1972). At that time, he was still a fairly new member of this department. Before the war, he worked as an assistant curator in the Département des Arts asiatiques, which was in charge of the Islamic collection at that time. In 1939, because of his Jewish origin, he endured the laws of the régime de Vichy and had to hide in the south of France, with the help of Jacques Jaujard¹², director of the Musées nationaux. After the war, in 1945, the Département des Arts asiatiques was dissolved; the objects from China, Japan, and Korea were moved to the Musée Guimet, whereas the Islamic collection was established as a section of the Département des Antiquités orientales. David-Weill’s nomination to the Selection Committee is perhaps linked to his personal history, but he was also keen on helping museums outside of Paris. He chose mostly Islamic items to send on long-term loan to regional museums, such as the Musée des Beaux-Arts – Bernard d’Agesci de Niort, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Limoges, and even the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Algiers, under French rule until 1962. This transfer to other museums could be explained by two facts: there was hardly any room in the Musée du Louvre to exhibit these artworks, and exhibiting the MNR items was statutory. Lending them to regional museums thus addressed two questions: how to enhance the regional museums and how to comply with the MNR rules.

[8] During the 1990s, international awareness of the need to progress in the search for looted assets led to the drafting of the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, which included the development of provenance research and the harmonization of national restitution procedures. Most of the data published here are the results of research initiated by the French task force called the Mission Mattéoli (1997–2000)¹³ and pursued in particular within the working group on the MNR¹⁴. Research carried out by the Mission Mattéoli determined that only two, maybe three, AOR objects are proved to have been looted by the ERR during the Nazi occupation of France. This number corresponds to the same percentage of looted works of art mentioned above for the MNR in general (10 percent). The rest of the objects were purchases by German individuals and museums, confirming that the entire MNR corpus does not equate to art plundered from Jewish collections—although we don’t know how the dealers obtained them; these questions are still under study.

Unclaimed looted Near Eastern art

[9] Antiquities represent only a small portion of the Nazi cultural plunder of European Jewish collections and have received less attention than other categories of art. Near Eastern art and antiquities made up only a low percentage of the looted collections in the Paris area during the German occupation¹⁵. Our knowledge of the scope of the antiquities looted by the ERR is hampered by the use of imprecise terminology in naming objects and the lack of attention to this corpus¹⁶. It seems that none of the art historians working for the ERR were specialists in ancient art, which they cataloged with the means at hand in occupied Paris.

[10] Most of the artworks from the well-known collections were restituted after the war. On the other hand, items seized by the Dienststelle Westen in the context of the Möbel-Aktion (literally, “furniture operation”), which were transferred to the ERR and inventoried as “MA”, lost the identity of their owners, complicating their restitution¹⁷. Due to the extent of the recoveries and the complexity of the research, a large quantity of items remained orphaned when the CRA ended. Three “unclaimed” items were entrusted to the care of the Département des Antiquités orientales. One case was solved in 2008; the owner(s) of the other two have not yet been identified.

[11] Thanks to the research conducted at the time by the Mission Mattéoli, a bookbinding from a Hadith compendium was restituted in 2008 to the heirs of the previous owner, Frederich Unger (formerly Friedrich or Fritz)¹⁸. A typo in the ERR number, “V 45” instead of “U [for Unger] 45”, on the postwar list had prevented the identification of the Hadith cover’s owner. Unger, born in 1891, owned several textile firms in Austria before the war. In 1938, he tried to find refuge in Paris with his family and sent his collection of paintings there. After a short stay in Switzerland, he settled first in Chantilly, then in Aurillac with his wife and their two daughters. He requested French citizenship in 1938, while offering two paintings to the Musée du Louvre¹⁹. After the rejection of his request, he and his family emigrated to the United States. His collection was seized by Möbel-Aktion agents and entered the ERR in 1942. The binding was inventoried in August 1942 with the number 45 and the letter U²⁰. At the end of the same year, it found its way to Germany, then into the mines of Altaussee, with other paintings from the same collection. It arrived at the Munich Central Collecting Point on 26 June 1945 and was repatriated to France in June 1946²¹. When Unger came to the Jeu de Paume to identify items from his collection for restitution, the cover hadn’t yet arrived from Munich, and he had forgotten to list it in his claims, so it fell through the cracks.

[12] The second “unclaimed” AOR is a marble sculpture of a male head, accessioned as “ancien fonds” in 1987 under the number AO 29407 and identified as the artwork AOR 10²² as a result of archival research conducted in the late 1990s. It is a fragment of a sculpture representing a draped female(?) figure, reused on the opposite side as a male bearded bust in high relief (Figs. 2a, 2b)^23. Intended to decorate a funerary niche, this portrait is characteristic of a type of sculpture attested in Cyrenaica (present Libya) during the Roman period, between the first century BC and the third century AD²⁴. The hair with large curls and the short beard, however, date this portrait more precisely to the first half of the second century AD. Although this portrait shows a certain individualization of the features, the almond-shaped eyes, the prominent cheekbones, and the thick nose are frequently observed in this type of monuments. Carved in marble, this bust was not polished, like all the portraits related to this production, and would have been enhanced with pigments. The figure is wearing a tunic, visible on the shoulders²⁵.

Figs. 2a, 2b. Funerary bust of a man, Cyrenaica (present Libya), first half of the second century AD, marble; on the back is a sculpture of a draped female figure (fragment), reused for the execution of the bust. Musée du Louvre, Paris, AOR 10 (photographs © Musée du Louvre, dist. RMN-GP / Philippe Fuzeau)

[13] The sculpture was seen in Derna (Libya) in 1909, but the provenance of this object between the early 20th century and its confiscation by the ERR is still under investigation.²⁶ The artwork is mentioned under the name “Marmor-Büste” in a list of crates containing objects from France inventoried as “Unbekannt” (unknown), a category used when the ERR did not identify the owner²⁷ or did not wish to display the name of the owner²⁸. It belongs to a lot with the number UNB 25, including two other stone heads, a bronze head, and a pedestal for a statue. According to Rose Valland, these items were packed and crated for Kurt von Behr, head of the ERR²⁹. The head appears again on an undated list of objects packed at the Louvre by the Pusey-Beaumont-Crassier Company for their shipment to Germany³⁰. After the war, the head was repatriated to France by train from Buxheim, via Munich. It reached Paris on 4 March 1946, in a box numbered 44bis, which also contained ceramic objects from the Sèvres Manufactory³¹. Proposed and accepted at the Fifth Selection Committee on 25 October 1950³², the head arrived at the Louvre on 21 November 1950³³. It was assigned to the Département des Antiquités orientales by order of the Minister of Education on 13 August 1951³⁴.

[14] Only one carpet is part of the AOR³⁵, while a number of carpets labeled Oriental were consigned to the custodianship of the Département des Objets d’art, following decisions of the Selection Committees. It is not clear why this one was chosen by Jean David-Weill, especially since this carpet cannot be considered very relevant given the museum’s scope of historical objects. Indeed, this silk carpet (AOR 19934/2), once labeled as Panderma and considered to be of Turkish origin, was probably made in Kirman less than a decade before World War II. Even if made of silk, it is not an artwork of historical importance, such as those chosen by the other curators of the museum. Nevertheless, it is the third AOR item, most probably resulting from a spoliation, whose previous owner was unknown after the war. It was found in the monastery at Buxheim, one of the largest art caches set up by the ERR in Bavaria, where most of the carpets and tapestries confiscated in France were sent. As noted above, carpets are the largest category of Islamic art plundered by the Möbel-Aktion, complicating the chances of finding their rightful owners.

[15] The three other textiles chosen by David-Weill are more important from historic and artistic points of view. They include a so-called Persian sash, or silk belt, of the 18th century (AOR 819/2) and two fragments of Medieval textiles from the western Islamic world, one probably dating to the 15th century from Sicily or Spain (AOR 1941/104, Fig. 3), the other originating from the Nasrid kingdom of the 14th century (AOR 1941/102, Fig. 4). The latter was stolen from the museum in 1973 while being displayed in a frame on the landing of one of the stairways. Purchased in Paris in 1941 by the city of Düsseldorf for the Kunstgewerbemuseum, the two textiles have a common history, which is discussed below.

Fig. 3. Fragment of textile with lions, Spain or Sicily, 14th or 15th century, silk damask. Musée du Louvre, Paris, AOR 1941/104 (photograph © Musée du Louvre, dist. RMN-GP / Raphaël Chipault / Benjamin Soligny)

Fig. 4. Fragment of textile with geometrical design, Spain, mid-14th century, silk lampas. Musée du Louvre, Paris, AOR 1941/102 (until 1973, since then missing) (photograph © Musée du Louvre / Department of Islamic Arts archives / unknown photographer)

Purchases by German museums and dealers in Paris

[16] Several German museums were regular clients on the Paris art market before the war and during the occupation, taking advantage of the overvalued exchange rate of the Reichsmark³⁶. After the war, research was undertaken regarding acquisitions from the occupied countries made by German museums and elites. A list of these transactions was compiled by the Allied countries’ Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program on the basis of files and interrogations of employees of the Schenker company, which was in charge of transporting works of art³⁷. Simultaneously, German museums and individuals had to declare the works they had purchased on the French market and restitute them. AOR items came back from two museums, in Düsseldorf and Hamburg, and from one dealer in Munich.

[17] Museums in the Rhineland are strongly represented in the MNR corpus³⁸. After the war, the city of Düsseldorf, located in the British occupation zone, followed the usual procedure of declaring objects from France. About a hundred artworks are listed in French claim no. 740 to the British authorities, dated 19 February 1947³⁹. The artworks were inventoried in Schloss Adolfsburg, Oberhundem, and then in the repository of Schloss Dyck, and were repatriated later by two convoys from Düsseldorf on 22 September 1948⁴⁰. Nineteen AORs correspond to purchases by the city of Düsseldorf for its Kunstgewerbemuseum⁴¹.

[18] Yervant, known as Edouard, Hindamian⁴² (1871 or 1877–1958), a Parisian art dealer active from the first decades of the 20th century, is one of the Düsseldorf sources. He opened his first shop at 34 rue Richer, before moving to 14 rue des Pyramides, where he was still settled in the 1940s. In 1924 he asked for and obtained French nationality⁴³. From 1912, he had regularly sold items to museums, including the Musée du Louvre and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs; in that year he offered to lend some textiles for display alongside Persian miniatures at the great exhibition organized in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs⁴⁴. During World War II, he had some German clients; he is cited in the reports of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)’ Art Looting Intelligence Unit (ALIU), but he does not seem to have appeared before the Commission d’Épuration (Purge Commission), the French authority that investigated the behavior of the business elite and judged the impact and importance of their collaboration with German authorities.

[19] Three pieces of metalwork sold by Hindamian in Paris in 1941 to Düsseldorf are now in the Louvre: two Iranian basins from the 14th century (AOR 1941/92-94, AOR 1941/93), having respectively cost 4,000 and 5,000 francs, and a Mamluk candlestick (AOR 1941/96; Fig. 5), having cost 40,000 francs. They were sent to Düsseldorf at the request of Adolf Wüster, the cultural attaché at the German Embassy in Paris during the war who played a key role in plundering operations. Their provenance could be as diverse as the sources of any Parisian dealer between the two World Wars; beyond the fact that they transited through dubious wartime channels, nothing is yet known of their former history.

Fig. 5. Candlestick bearing the name of the Mamluk Sultan Hajj II, Egypt or Syria, 1389, copper alloy inlaid with silver. Musée du Louvre, Paris, AOR 1941/96 (photograph © Musée du Louvre, dist. RMN–GP / Hughes Dubois)

[20] Another Paris art dealer involved in the trade of antiquities was Kalebjian Frères⁴⁵. The Kalebjian brothers, like several other Armenian art dealers⁴⁶, were well established and active in Paris and in Cairo decades before the war⁴⁷. They opened their antique shop at 12 rue de la Paix in 1905. From then on, they regularly sold to museums, including the Louvre, where they were also listed among its donors⁴⁸. Their life and the history of the firm in the first decades of the century are known from a 1926 anthropological survey on Armenians in France that one of the three brothers answered⁴⁹. We only know the names of two of them, Hagop and Garbis, perhaps because of the early death of the third⁵⁰. Their grandfather was a money changer in Kayseri, Anatolia, a city their father had left to settle in Istanbul, where he married the daughter of a painter. The brothers were raised in the Ottoman capital and worked in the Ottoman Posts before leaving for Paris at the very beginning of the 20th century, where they asked for French nationality. They began to sell medals before turning to Egyptian antiquities and gradually diversified their sources of income by including furniture, jewels, and other categories of objects. Neither of them had a male child, so they planned to include in their business their nephew, probably named Nichan⁵¹.

[21] In 1941, the city of Düsseldorf purchased for its Kunstgewerbemuseum from Kalebjian Frères the three textiles mentioned above (Figs. 3, 4), along with a number of metalworks, such as a Mamluk basin bearing the name of an amir of the sultan al-Malik al-Nasir (Egypt or Syria, first half of the 14th century), now on long-term loan to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Niort (AOR 1941/106), and a Mamluk box decorated with figures of the zodiac, now on long-term loan to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Limoges (AOR 1941/107).

[22] During World War II, it seems that only Garbis was active. Or at least, only he was suspected after 1945 of collaborating with German authorities. When summoned to appear before the Purge Commission⁵², he related that his family had been suspected by the Gestapo of being of foreign origin and that he had to go to the police office every day. He also used as a defense the fact that he only sold “oriental” art and nothing of French culture to German museums and collectors. He said that he was called to explain to German officers in Paris the Egyptian political situation. He explained that he hid the contents of several Jewish estates, whose owners were killed while in deportation⁵³. The question whether Kalebjian acted as an intermediary to sell objects on behalf of these families or just stored them is still unanswered.

[23] The most important part of the AOR kept in the Département des Arts de l’Islam is a group of paintings on paper. Out of the ten that are now in the Musée du Louvre, nine are detached folios of illustrated manuscripts, and among them, six come from the same manuscript, a Book of the Wonders of Creation by Qazwini (AOR 4239 to AOR 4244; Fig. 6). These six pages were part of the Octave Homberg collection before the war. Homberg (1876–1941), a diplomat and financial administrator, was the son of another great collector and former curator of the French National Library, also named Octave (1844–1907). After the son’s death, his estate was sold at an auction in Paris in March 1942. Among the lots are listed six miniatures from the same manuscript, which the art dealer Charles Ratton acquired for 6,500 francs and then sold to the city of Düsseldorf⁵⁴.

Fig. 6. A giant fish of the Caspian Sea (page from Book of the Wonders of Creation by Qazwini), Iran, probably Shiraz, 16th century, ink, colors and gold on paper. Musée du Louvre, Paris, AOR 4243 (photograph © Musée du Louvre, dist. RMN-GP / Mathieu Rabeau)

[24] Homberg seems not to have been considered Jewish, although the family was of Jewish origin. They lived in Le Havre in the 18th century and converted to Catholicism in 1785, as they were the only Jewish family in the city. But Octave did not know that fact and considered himself a Catholic⁵⁵. There is, therefore, no reason to think that the sale of his estate after his death had anything to do with a forced sale. The presence of artworks from his collection among the AOR is only due to the fact that they were sold in France during the Occupation by a merchant, Charles Ratton, whose close relationship with the German antique chasers was notorious.

[25] Ratton, indeed, was cited by the Purge Commission for collaboration. Even though researchers have studied his case in detail, a part of his business during the war remains in darkness⁵⁶. Alongside the six manuscript pages, Ratton sold some miniatures: two of them are pages from a 16th-century manuscript, probably from Qazwin, of the famous Iranian epic Shahnameh. The first one represents an episode of the life of Kay Khosrow (AOR 4235); the second shows Sindukht peeping at Zal and Rudabeh (AOR 4245). A third painting comes from an Indian album and shows the portrait of a lady signed by the painter Balchand (AOR 4236). The last one is a calligraphic page from a Qur’an from Egypt or Syria dated to the 14th century (AOR 4237)⁵⁷. The whole lot was chosen by Jean David-Weill in 1949 to be sent as a long-term loan to Algiers. Nine of them (one painting seems to have been forgotten) were kept there from 1951 to 1962, when they were returned to the Musée du Louvre.

[26] At least two items repatriated from Düsseldorf, chosen by David-Weill and listed in the French official order that assigned them to the Département des Antiquités orientales, probably never reached the Musée du Louvre. The first one is a basin, sold to the city of Düsseldorf by Hindamian. It is described as a Fars basin, similar to the example nowadays on loan in Niort (AOR 1941/92-94). But only the latter, with two accession numbers, joined the Louvre collection. Another item is also quite puzzling: a fragment of a fountain spout sold to the city of Düsseldorf by D. Kellermann, whose address was then 13 square de Port-Royal. The German number ascribed is 1942/58⁵⁸. This small bronze cannot be identified in the collection of the Louvre today, and no photographs of the object seem to exist. According to the German description, it is a hollow bronze, in the shape of the head of a feline, probably a lion⁵⁹. Bronze fountain spouts are generally ascribed to the western Islamic world from the 10th century to the 12th, even if the 1946 list indicates an Anatolian or Iranian origin.

[27] After the war, fragments of ancient lead sarcophagi (AOR 7-9; Figs. 7a-7e) were the subject of a French restitution claim to the British authorities because they were bought from Parisian dealer Joseph Enkiri⁶⁰ by the city of Hamburg, located in the British occupation zone⁶¹. The tradition of burying the deceased in an ornate lead coffin originated in the Levant during the Roman period, from the middle of the first century AD. The production of lead coffins in the workshops of Tyre, Sidon, Beirut, and Jerusalem was maintained until the middle of the fourth century AD⁶². The panels were cast in a single open mold of clay or possibly sand in two plaques about 0.5 cm thick: one for the tank, whose sides were folded and then welded together, and one for the lid. Even though there are enough panels to reconstruct one coffin—a lid, two long panels, and two ends—the AOR fragments, in fact, most probably belong to different coffins from the same production in Tyre between the second and third centuries AD. The lid (AOR 7, Fig. 7a) is decorated on the long sides with laurel bands framing a network of ivy and vines forming diamonds and triangles in which rosettes are inscribed. The two long side panels (AOR 8, Figs. 7b-c) combine, in an architectural framework articulated by small columns with Corinthian capitals, patterns of kantharoi, dolphins, female sphinxes, and Medusa masks. Finally, the two end panels (AOR 9, Figs. 7d-e), respectively, have rosettes forming a cross with eight branches and an aedicula with four columns and a pediment decorated with kantharoi⁶³.

Figs. 7a-7e. Lid, long sides, and end sides of coffins, Phoenicia, Tyre (present Lebanon), AD 2nd–3rd centuries, lead. Musée du Louvre, Paris, AOR 7 (lid), AOR 8A-B (long sides), AOR 9C-D (end sides) (photographs © Musée du Louvre, dist. RMN-GP / Philippe Fuzeau)

These panels, intended for the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, were delivered to Hamburg in March 1943⁶⁴. They were repatriated with the first shipment from Hamburg to the CRA in Paris on 22 October 1948. The fragments, proposed to the First Selection Committee on 27 October 1949 (when the German number 1943/2 appeared for the first time in the documentation) and retained at the Second Selection Committee on 17 November 1949, were assigned to the French Musées nationaux in 1951.

[28] Joseph Enkiri (1881–1948) was a bank employee⁶⁵ who apparently took over the business of his brother Jean-Pierre Enkiri (1879–1935), an expert dealer and collector of antiquities, after the latter’s passing⁶⁶. Jean-Pierre was established as a dealer of ancient art on the same block (197 blvd St Germain) as his brother worked (46 rue de Grenelle) and officiated as an expert for auction sales at the Hôtel Drouot. The wording used on the Application for the Restitution of Property from Germany to the French Government⁶⁷—“Sale [...] forced by the German occupation authorities”—raises the question about the nature of the sale to the Hamburg museum. After the war, this antiquarian didn’t appear in the lists of dealers who traded with the Germans⁶⁸. Research is currently being conducted to find out what happened to the Enkiri collection during the war. Far Eastern items from that collection were sold by Joseph’s widow at the Hôtel Drouot on 27 April 1949. As to the question of the provenance of the lead panels before the war, the Enkiri brothers may have obtained them directly from the Eastern Mediterranean region, as the panels had Syrian origins, or they acquired them on the Parisian market, where they operated as experts from the 1910s to the 1930s.

[29] The six objects AOR 1 to 6 share the same wartime path. They belong mostly to a group of bronze pieces from the Luristan region, a western Iranian province, and date to the beginning of the first millennium BC. Five bronzes correspond to the typical Luristan Iron Age production: a rectangular open-work plaque ornamented with confronted felines (AOR 1; Fig. 8a); a rectangular open-work pinhead representing a mouflon-man taming felines (AOR 3; Fig. 8b); and finials in the shape of roaring confronted felines, whose function is not determined (AOR 2, AOR 5, AOR 6; Figs. 9a-9c). The outlier is a handle in the shape of a goatfish (AOR 4; Fig. 10), attributed to the Luristan region but dated to the Parthian period, circa the first and second centuries AD.

Figs. 8a, 8b. Plaque with two confronted felines (left) and pinhead with a “master of animals” (right), Luristan (Iran), beginning of the first millennium BC, bronze. Musée du Louvre, Paris, AOR 1 and AOR 3 (photographs © Musée du Louvre, dist. RMN-GP / Philippe Fuzeau)

Figs. 9a-9c. Finials with two confronted felines, Luristan (Iran), beginning of the first millennium BC, bronze. Musée du Louvre, Paris, AOR 2, AOR 5 and AOR 6 (left to right) (photograph © Musée du Louvre, dist. RMN-GP / Philippe Fuzeau)

Fig. 10. Handle in the shape of a goatfish, Iran, Parthian empire, 1st–2nd centuries AD, bronze. Musée du Louvre, Paris, AOR 4 (photograph © Musée du Louvre, dist. RMN-GP / Philippe Fuzeau)

[30] Breaking into the art market in the 1920s and 1930s and coming from clandestine excavations or commercial excavations authorized by Iranian legislation, Luristan bronzes fascinated a whole prewar generation of collectors and dealers who were passionate about these inventive and enigmatic pieces. The craze for this type of object led to the fabrication of many forgeries as early as the 1930s and 1940s, resulting in a corruption of our knowledge of genuinely ancient Luristan bronzes⁶⁹. With the exception of a few pieces appearing at the end of the 19th century and others entering in the early 1930s (following André Godard’s excavations in the region), the collection of Luristan bronzes in the Musée du Louvre in the mid-1940s was limited. This probably explains why these AOR bronzes were chosen during the Selection Committees for the Musée du Louvre by Jean David-Weill, son of the collector David David-Weill (1871–1952), who himself had an important collection of Luristan bronzes⁷⁰.

[31] During the war (exact date unknown), the AOR bronzes were acquired in France by the German art dealer Walter Bornheim (1888–1971)⁷¹. The ALIU, established by the Allies in late 1944, was tasked with the interrogation of enemy persons suspected of participating in art looting activities; Officer Theodore Rousseau wrote the report about Bornheim⁷². Established in Cologne, then Munich (Galerie für Alte Kunst), Bornheim, while remaining an independent merchant, played the role of an agent and adviser to Göring for the constitution of his personal collection from 1938. Bornheim regularly visited Paris from April 1941 to July 1944 and did the great majority of his business at the Grand Hôtel, known today as the InterContinental Paris le Grand. During the war, Bornheim stored many works of art at the Dresdner Bank in Tegernsee, Bavaria, and the six Iranian bronzes are listed there as “6 petits bronzes Grec, Luristan (de Garabed, Paris)”⁷³. We can identify Garabed as Arthur Garabed Kevorkian (born ca. 1891), an art dealer installed in London by 1923 and active in the art business until the mid-1960s⁷⁴. He was part of an influential group of Armenian dealers and collectors, including his half-brother Hagop (1872–1962) and his brother Carnig Kevorkian (1887–1964), who specialized in Oriental antiquities and Islamic art and were based in New York and Paris, respectively. After the war, the works stored by Bornheim in Tegernsee were identified and transferred on 15 May 1946 to the Central Collecting Point in Munich, where the “property cards” indicate “bought in France by Bornheim” and “unknown owner”⁷⁵. These cards also indicate that the objects were sent to Paris on 25 September 1947. Offered at the First Selection Committee on 27 October 1949, the objects were selected during the Second Selection Committee on 17 November 1949⁷⁶. They were assigned to the Département des Antiquités orientales on 16 May 1951.

Conclusion

[32] Most of the objects presented in this article are not uniquely identifiable works of art. Without individual markings, such as a collector’s label or inscription, the prior ownership of these works is very difficult to determine, presenting a special challenge for provenance research. However, by publishing them here, we hope to facilitate future identification, notably of the two remaining looted pieces, the sculpture UNB 25 and the silk carpet AOR 19934/2.

[33] Ninety percent of the AOR were purchases on the Parisian art market. Research since the Mission Mattéoli sheds light on the role and lives of dealers active during the German occupation, notably the Armenian network⁷⁷. This allows us to update the records of the dealers Joseph Enkiri and Arthur Garabed Kevorkian, contributing in the long term to the documentation of the art market and to projects such as the “Répertoire des acteurs du marché de l’art en France sous l’Occupation (RAMA)”.⁷⁸ Moreover, expanded criteria now apply to the classification of property as looted property: sales that may have been forced or made under duress are thoroughly scrutinized.

[34] Following recommendations of the Mission Mattéoli, the Commission for the Compensation of Victims of Spoliations (Commission pour l'indemnisation des victimes de spoliations intervenues du fait des législations antisémites en vigueur pendant l'Occupation, abbreviated CIVS in French) and the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah (Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah) were established in 1999 and in 2000, respectively. Continuous efforts to reveal the history of the AOR are coupled with a mission to document acquisitions by French museums during the Nazi era, supported by a new task force launched by the French government in April 2019 and directed by David Zivie (Mission de recherche et de restitution des biens culturels spoliés 1933–1945).

Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers whose recommendations have contributed to improve our essay. We are very grateful to the members of the Mission de recherche et de restitution des biens culturels spoliés 1933–1945 (Secrétariat général du Ministère de la Culture) for their help and in particular to Muriel de Bastier and Alain Prévet. At the Louvre, we would like to thank Sophie Marmois (Service du récolement), Caroline Biro (Département des Antiquités égyptiennes), Ludovic Laugier and Christine Walter (Département des Antiquités grecques, étrusques, et romaines), Anne-Lise Guigues (Département des Antiquités orientales), as well as Marie-José Castor (Département des Arts de l’Islam). We are indebted to Vincent Tuchais (Archives de Paris) and Frank Hildebrandt and Maria Sobotka (Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg) for the information they provided. Finally, many thanks to Blair Fowlkes-Childs for her attentive reading of our article.

Special Issue
Irene Bald Romano, ed., The Fate of Antiquities in the Nazi Era, in: RIHA Journal 0282-0294 (15 September 2023), DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/riha.2022.2.

License
The text of this article is provided under the terms of the Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0.