[CPProt.net] Russia reneges on deal to return German art loot

[MSN and CPProt list (Ton Cremers)]

Russia reneges on deal to return German art loot
Mark Franchetti, Moscow
  
WHEN the Russian government announced two years ago it would return a unique
art collection smuggled out of Nazi Germany by a Soviet soldier, the
decision was hailed as a sign of growing warmth between President Vladimir
Putin and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. But the celebrations have turned out
to be premature. 
Alexander Sokolov, the culture minister appointed by Putin less than a year
ago, astounded the Germans last week by saying that the Baldin collection,
which includes work by Van Gogh, Rubens, Rembrandt, Goya and Dürer, would
remain in Moscow. 
 
The statement was made in defiance of a ruling by Russia’s constitutional
court that the stolen art should be handed back. 

“Sending the Baldin collection to Germany is out of the question,” Sokolov
said. “It’s highly controversial and my predecessor’s decision to return it
was premature.” 

The 362 drawings and two paintings are valued at £30m. The collection takes
its name from Viktor Baldin, a Soviet army captain and art restorer who
found the works in the damp cellars of Schloss Karnzow, a castle north of
Berlin. They had been moved there from a cultural centre in Bremen to
protect them from the advancing Red Army. 

Baldin, widely credited with saving the pictures, spent a frantic night in
1945 cutting them from their frames by candlelight and gathering other
priceless drawings which fellow soldiers had hung in their tents. 

He smuggled the collection back to Russia in a suitcase and kept it hidden
for three years. It was then given to a Moscow architecture museum, where he
was director. 

“I was surprised by what I saw,” he said later of the moment he found the
treasures. “All the masters of Europe from 14 countries. They had to be
saved. But I also knew they had to be returned. This collection wasn’t mine;
it belonged to the culture of humanity.” 

Yulia Silakova, Baldin’s widow, said her husband, who died in 1997, would
have been outraged by the Russian U-turn. She recalled how for decades he
had petitioned the Kremlin to have the artwork returned to Bremen. She was
all the more disappointed because only last September Sokolov had signed an
agreement to let it go back. 

“All these political games are unseemly,” she said. “The collection does not
belong to us. Viktor saved it so that people could see it, not for it to be
locked away in boxes.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/