Court: British Museum can’t return looted art
LONDON – A High Court judge ruled yesterday that the British Museum cannot return four Old Master drawings to a Jewish family that lost them to Nazi looters in 1939. The British Museum is not legally permitted to return the drawings, ruled Vice Chancellor Andrew Morritt, a senior judge in the Chancery Division of the High Court. While sympathetic to the family’s claim, Morritt said it would require a change in the law. An activist group representing the family making the claim called the ruling a setback for all people who lost art to Nazi-era looters. The ruling also was likely to disappoint Greece, which has long demanded that the British Museum return the Parthenon Marbles. The marbles, a series of statues and fragments, were removed from Athens’s Parthenon in 1811 by Lord Elgin, and later sold to the museum. Greece has consistently demanded them back, most recently during last summer’s Olympic Games. Under British law, trustees at Britain’s museums must maintain the integrity of their collections, including works obtained by the country when it was a 19th century colonial power. The British Museum, which obtained the four Old Master drawings at an auction after World War II, had sought permission to return them to the heirs of Czech lawyer Arthur Feldmann, under the terms of the Snowden principle. The principle, set by a court ruling in 1970, permits charities to ask the attorney general for permission to return items it believes would be wrong for them to keep. Lawyers for the British Museum had said the case of art looted by the Nazis during World War II is exceptional and would not create a precedent for other artwork claims. Feldmann had lost the art from his home in Brno, Czechoslovakia, when Germany invaded the country. He was tortured and killed by the Nazis, and his wife, Gisela, died at Auschwitz. During the case, lawyers for Attorney General Lord Peter Goldsmith argued that a decision in favor of the Feldmann family could open claims to other art works in British museums, including the Parthenon Marbles. However, in his ruling, Morritt said no moral obligation can justify the British Museum trustees departing from the law protecting objects that form part of the collections. «In my judgment, only legislation or a bona fide compromise of a claim of the heirs of Dr Feldmann to be entitled to the four drawings could entitle the trustees to transfer any of them to those heirs,» Morritt said in his 13-page ruling. The Commission for Looted Art in Europe, a group that represents the Feldmann family, criticized the decision. The group said it «very much regrets that this avenue to achieve the return of the drawings is not now open to the museum. This application, which highlighted the exceptional moral circumstances of the case, seemed a constructive way to enable the British Museum to return the drawings without putting at issue other objects in its collection, such as the Elgin Marbles.»
