Beautiful Loot

• Author: Reviewed by H Wayne Elliott
• Pages: 05

He rernoued statue8 end ornaments from the city of the enemy whtch had been tahen hy force and ualoc tn accordance uith the law ofi/ai and the right ofn commander

-Mareus Tullius Cicero (106.43 B.C.)'

All seizure or destructLon of, or wdful damage to, works of art and sciencei is forbidden, and should he made the suhject of legal praceedmgs.

--Hague Conventions (18 October 19071~

In the spnng of 1945, the Soviet juggernaut moved rapidly into a collapsing Nazi Germany. German opposition WBS fierce, pwticw larly around Berlin. However, many German officds had recretlj prepared for defeat and allied occupation, and part of that preparation included the safeguarding of the cultural treasures of the German people. Unfortunately far much of Europe, among the trea-sure~of the Reieh were many art objects that had been acquired, SometimeS by purchase, but mom often by theft, from nations occupied by the German Army. Many of these artifacts fell into the hands of the Soviet Army.

The conquerors moved the artworks3 to the Soviet Union, then hid much of It from public vim,, and even denied having taken the treasures Thus, began the saga of the '%beautiful loot," the subject of this book. Konetantin Akmsha, a Ukrainian art historian who was on the staff of a Kiev museum, and Grigoni Kazlov, uho served an the staff of the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, are now research fellows in Bremen, Germany. Eminently qualified to write Beautiful

..** Former Chief, lnternstronal Law Dirismn. The Judge Advocate General's School. United States Army Currently an S J U eandldare Onwerin? of \nema School of Law, Charlottesvdle, v~rglnls

1 Quoted ~n HLGO gnarl^^. I1 THE LAX OF WAR iu P E ~ C E

650 ,Frenc~r

!V

Kelaey, trans, 1825)

M 66, Annex. Hague Can-entian Yo IY Rrzpecting the Lars and Cuirami of War on Land. Oct 16. 1907.36 Slat 2277. 1 Biwhs 631

"ArtnorV included not only canwieeh and drsumgr, but book-, itstuea. incvnabuls, manuberipte. and arehwal documents

Loot, the co-authors expand on articles they published m Art .Yeus magazine several years ago.'

During Its occupation of part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic IUSSR,, the German Army removed artaork from Soviet museums, including the famous and priceless "Amber Room from Catherine's Palace in Tsarskoe Se1o.j At the end of the war the Soviet leadership sought to make Germany pay for the cost of the war To this end, ~n 1943, Stalin ordered the creation of "trophy bngadea " Their missmn would be to strip Germany of all kinds of property as compensation for the cost of the \iar Igor Grabar a \sell respected Soviet artier and art histonan, introduced the idea that works of art should be taken from Germany as part of the compensation owed the Soviet Union Special trophy brigades composed mainly of art historians and archivists, were created to find objects of cultural value and send them back to the Sonet Union These trophy biigades excelled in them work, ultimately moving some two and one-half million works of art to the Soviet Union.

If compensation for damage to the Soviet Umon was the legal basis for taking German goads to the Soviet Union. then the value of a particular piece of art became crucial. The) started by determining exactly which art objects had been looted by the...