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Prosecutors Block Return of War Trophies
Wednesday, March 19, 2003
Gazeta.Ru

Communist Nikolai Gubenko told reporters that the return of the paintings was illegal. At least, he said, the authorities could demand up to $1.5 million in compensation, or ask Germany to remit part of Moscow’s enormous debt.

The Prosecutor General’s Office has blocked the return of the Bremen Kunsthalle collection to Germany, saying there were no legal grounds for the transfer of valuables which have long become the legitimate property of Russia by the right of acquisitive limitation. The prosecutors’ ban came days after the Culture Ministry pledged to return the collection of paintings taken from Bremen at the end of WWII by Soviet army captain Viktor Baldin.

The scandal concerning the return of the Bremen Kunstalle collection flared up earlier this month, after the Culture Ministry said it had brought the drawings from St. Petersburg’s Hermitage to Moscow for transfer to Germany. The State Duma, at the initiative of the former Soviet Culture Minister, the chairman of the house committee for culture and tourism Nikolai Gubenko, urged President Putin to block the ministry’s plans and lodged a protest to the Prosecutor General’s Office claiming the ministry had been acting in secrecy to sidestep the legislature.

The collection in question was brought to the Soviet Union in 1945 by the Soviet army captain Viktor Baldin. Baldin, being an architect by profession, stumbled across a collection of exquisite paintings, which included works by such masters as Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens, Delacroix, Manet, Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec, as well as paintings by Durer and Goya, in a cellar of a German castle in 1945.

Realizing their true value, Baldin carefully packed them in a large suitcase and took them home to the Soviet Union, gathering several more paintings from Soviet soldiers on the way. For three years he kept the collection at home and in 1948 presented it to a state museum. In 1991 it was transferred to the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.
(More: Gazeta.Ru)
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Not that I'm trying to change the subject,
;^)
Dan