Freedom

● Looting constructs the identity of looter and looted

○ Works looted established Aryan self-identity by using appropriated artworks in

Nazi showpiece

○ Jewish identity established as parasites who stole from the people, so not of the

people

■ This in spite of the fact that Jews supported and contributed to the arts,

spoke the language, married Christians, were baptised

○ Aryan contrasted with Jew through side-by-side exhibitions to show ‘degenerate’

art

● Totalitarianism as totalising thought that forces an identity upon people, thereby making

them static and bringing them into a static narrative about the way the world is

○ Nazi totalising thought still present

● Thinking through art restitution is an act of freedom because it encourages us to

question static identity, breaking it down, for example the looter/looted distinction

Breaking down identity

● Austria is an example of persisting identity in response to Nazism

○ In 1945, Jews were stateless and had their cultural treasures classified as

Austrian and integral to Austrian cultural heritage

○ Austria reluctant to restitute looted art; made it difficult, requiring Austrian

citizenship, and would restitute collections on the condition that most significant

pieces stayed in Austrian museums - extortion

 ○ Problem is restitution acknowledges Austrian complicity, and breaks down the

narrative of Austria as the first victim of Nazism

● Post WWII, international law focused on state v state interactions, not private restitution.

As seen above, this was problematic because states gained by non-restitution because

art in public galleries helped to establish a sense of identity

○ Individual claims to restitution break down this sense of identity. Tension between

liberalist focus on individual property rights on one hand, and collective identity

on the other

■ However, at the same time it reinforces Jewish identity through legal and

political regimes designed around Holocaust restitution that assume, like

the Nazis did, that Jewish people are homogeneous and distinct from

others

The fight for meaning

● Individual claims to art restitution challenge the understanding of the Holocaust as a

collective event, and also challenges dominant perspective that focuses on mass-murder

and genocide

○ The focus on the death camps in a way absolves states from having to

compensate, because how do you compensate for murder?

● Uncomfortable questions about the industry arising out of the Holocaust. Some argue

that accepting compensation from murderers sullies the idea of the collective experience

of the Holocaust. But if restitution fits this same model, then the assumption that the

Jewish people are homogenous forces upon some people a giving-up of what is theirs.
 ○ This invites other questions about the industry, such as the fact that pursuing

claims in court would only occur if lawyers see the claims as profitable.

○ Link to refugee lifejacket example: radical difference between suffering on the

one hand, and the object on the other.

● Restitution challenges the idea of victimhood, as those affected become the subjects of

history again, rather than the objects.

○ But the problem is that the works are being claimed by at times very distant heirs,

such as a cousin’s son’s widow.

■ This again raises questions about the Holocaust industry, and arguments

over who is a legitimate part of the Holocaust

● Individual claims may help to undermine collective meaning-making after massive

trauma removes the ground of meaning

Meaning

● Meaning is what the class is about - how do we see the world in which we live.

Courts

● Courts have specific procedures for establishing the truth; this is said to bring about

justice once the facts are known. But I suggest justice comes before truth: truth is a way

of linking each other through language, but before this is possible we must be open to

the other as an infinite unknown who can keep secrets. In court we are not open to the

other in this way, so only very specific procedures apply. Other programmes that are

non-litigious do not have such limits, and can explore the history of the object and be

open to the full realm of possibilities of the other.

● In this way law distances us from the other, so restitution that might take place as a

response to receiving the other is blocked by the attitude of fighting that is assumed in

court.