Ingeborg Berggreen-Merkel, Director of the “Schwabing Art Find Taskforce”
How can we use the Gurlitt case to establish a fair restitution process?
B-M: The current case reveals just how very complex the legal issues in particular are. However, given our responsibility to the victims of National Socialist terror and their descendants, we must find a fair and just solution. Therefore, the legal framework of the restitution process will have to be carefully evaluated. On the other hand, federal, state, and local governments will have to establish incentives and mechanisms for voluntary resolutions that involve private owners and collections. The Washington Principles have shown that resolutions can and must be achieved based on moral obligations, which go beyond purely legal approaches.
There are several calls for transparency. Why not make public who is in the taskforce?
B-M: We have afforded the greatest possible transparency with regard to the membership of the task force. Some members are known by name and it has also been disclosed, for example, that two experts from the Jewish Claim Conference will work with the task force. However, we have made a conscious decision not to name all the experts in order to guarantee them the greatest possible degree of independence in the highly complex and sensitive work that stands before them.
How are you working and how long could it take?
B-M: We are currently in the first phase, working intensively to enter all works suspected of having been looted by the Nazis into the Lost Art database in order to make them publicly accessible. Since we are still in the midst of a criminal investigation, however, the individual determinations need to be made by the office of the Public Prosecutor in Augsburg. How rapidly the provenance of the individual works can be determined depends on a very diverse array of factors, for example the notes of Cornelius Gurlitt’s father, archival holdings, or information provided to us by potential owners.
Ingeborg Berggreen-Merkel is the former German Government Deputy Commissioner for Culture and the Media.