THE RE-PRIVATIZATION OF CULTURAL PROPERTY IN EUROPE DURING THE LAST FIFTEEN YEARS (Prywatyzacja dóbr kultury w Europie ostatniego pietnastolecia)

• Authors: Cieslinska-Lobkowicz Nawojka
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

The fall of communism in Central-Eastern Europe and the unification of Germany became the reasons why the 1990s witnessed a growing interest in the re-privatization and restitution of property illegally confiscated or seized from its owners, including historical real estate and cultural property that was incorporated into public collections. The latter group was composed, on the one hand, of objects forcibly nationalized during the first years of communist rule in those countries which fund themselves on the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain; on the other hand, the group in question includes objects whose frequently unexamined and convoluted path to public collections across the whole of Europe and beyond, started with Nazi plunder and confiscations. The article deals with the recovery of such forms of cultural property by former owners or their heirs (physical persons only). In the first part the authoress examines the arguments used in post-Communist countries for and against re-privatization. Within this context, she indicates strong resistance on the part of cultural institutions and associated environments. The basic cause of this attitude was the almost universal conviction about the superiority of public property, as well as the perception of the role of the state as a protector and guarantor of cultural patrimony. The second part deals with the statutes enacted and implemented in Central Europe during the mid-1990s, with particular emphasis on movable cultural property. She proposes a more detailed characteristic of the solutions applied in West Germany, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. In the third part 'The Moral Obligation. The Restitution of Art Works and Other Forms of Cultural Property to the Victims of the Holocaust' she discusses the gradually increasing demand to study the provenance of public collections from the view­point of their eventual origin as Nazi confiscations of the property of European Jews and other persons persecuted by the Third Reich. Another question involves the ethical directive of returning objects identified as plundered from their owners or heirs, in accordance with the so-called Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, signed in December 1998 by 44 states and expanded by, i. a. the Council of Europe, ICOM (1999), and the European Parliament (2003). In the following part of the paper the authoress proposes a critical analysis of the pertinent situation in her homeland. Poland is the only country in Central Europe, together with Albania, Belarus and Ukraine, which did not conduct re-privatization in the wake of the systemic transformation of 1989-1990. Nevertheless, works of art illegally nationalized as a consequence of the land reform of 1944 are being restored from time to time, but as a result of long-term and costly court trials. The absence of a suitable state policy signifies the lack of indirect or alternative solutions in the Federal Republic of Germany. Economic progress and the growing value of the zloty mean that an eventual repurchase of works classified as returnable from the owners, or for adequate compensation foreseen by the Constitution of the Republic of Poland in those cases when the legislator would sanction past expropriations, is becoming increasingly costly.

Keywords

EN

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PROPERTY; RE-PRIVATIZATION OF CULTURAL PROPERITY (EUROPE)

Discipline

• ARTS_&_ARCHITECTURE: ARTS & ARCHITECTURE

• Publisher: Krajowy Ośrodek Badań i Dokumentacji Zabytków
• Journal: Muzealnictwo
• Year: 2005
• Issue: 46
• Pages: 168
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Cieslinska-Lobkowicz Nawojka

• Nawojka Cieslinska-Lobkowicz

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

09PLAAAA066712