Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T15:43:42.958Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 September 2010

Patricia Kennedy Grimsted
Affiliation:
Senior Research Associate, Ukrainian Research Institute; and Associate, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University; Honorary Fellow, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam. E-mail: [email protected]

Extract

World War II was the occasion of the greatest theft, seizure, loss, and displacement of art treasures, books, and archives (“cultural items”) in history. Since then, governments and others have attempted to justify either their right to keep or to claim the return of the cultural items displaced as a result of the war and its aftermath. Such issues have intensified on the Eastern Front since the collapse of he Soviet Union and the opening of the Soviet secret depositories of long-hidden cultural items brought to Soviet territories at the end of the war. The principal protagonists in the public arena have been the Federal Republic of Germany (Germany), the Republic of Poland, and the Republic of Hungary, each claiming that the Russian Federation (Russia) has refused to negotiate adequately the return of cultural items displaced during and after the war that are now located in its territory.

Type
Introduction
Copyright
Copyright © International Cultural Property Society 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Akinsha, Konstantin, and Kozlov, Grigorii. Beautiful Loot: The Soviet Plunder of Europe's Art Treasures. New York: Random House, 1995.Google Scholar
Five Centuries of European Drawings: The Former Collection of Franz Koenigs: Exhibition Catalogue, 2.10.1995–23.3.1996. Milan: Leonardo Arte, 1995; Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation; Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. (Also published in Russian).Google Scholar
Grimsted, Patricia Kennedy. “Displaced Archives and Restitution Problems on the Eastern Front in the Aftermath of the Second World War.” Contemporary European History, 6, pt. 1 (1997), 2774.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grimsted, Patricia Kennedy. Trophies of War and Empire: The Archival Heritage of Ukraine, World War II, and the International Politics of Restitution. Foreword by Charles Kekskeméti.Cambridge MA: Harvard Papers in Ukrainian Studies, 2001.Google Scholar
Grimsted, Patricia Kennedy, and Akinsha, Konstantin. “The Sárospatak Case: Rare Books Return to Hungary from Nizhnii Novgorod: A New Precedent for Russian Cultural Restitution?Art, Antiquity and Law 11, no. 2 (2006): 215–49.Google Scholar
Grimsted, Patricia Kennedy, Hoogewoud, F. J., and Ketelaar, Eric, eds. Returned from Russia: Nazi Archival Plunder in Western Europe and Recent Restitution Issues. Institute of Art and Law [UK], 2007.Google Scholar
Katalog proizvedenii izobrazitel'nogo iskusstva iz chastnykh vengerskikh kollektsii / Catalogue of Art Objects from Hungarian Private Collections. Moscow: “Rudomino,” 2003. Series “Obretennoe nasledie”/“Heritage Revealed”. A free PDF file is available at the VGBIL web site: http://www.libfl.ru/restitution/catalogs/index.html.Google Scholar
Kurtz, Michael. America and the Return of Nazi Contraband: The Recovery of Europe's Cultural Treasures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Marienkirche Stained-Glass Windows. The Exhibition Catalogue. St. Petersburg: Slavia, 2002. Sponsored by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the State Hermitage.Google Scholar
Sandholtz, Wayne. Prohibiting Plunder: How Norms Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simpson, Elizabeth (ed.).The Spoils of War: World War II and Its Aftermath: The Loss, Reappearance, and Recovery of Cultural Property. New York: Henry N. Abrams, 1997.Google Scholar