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Swiss Museum Removes Works by Artists Like Monet, Van Gogh as Origin of Nazi-Looted Art Examined

A man walks past the entrance of the Kunsthaus Zürich art museum on March 14, 2023. (AFP)
A man walks past the entrance of the Kunsthaus Zürich art museum on March 14, 2023. (AFP)
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Swiss Museum Removes Works by Artists Like Monet, Van Gogh as Origin of Nazi-Looted Art Examined

A man walks past the entrance of the Kunsthaus Zürich art museum on March 14, 2023. (AFP)
A man walks past the entrance of the Kunsthaus Zürich art museum on March 14, 2023. (AFP)

A Swiss museum on Thursday pulled down five paintings, including a van Gogh and a Monet, after the foundation that owns them called for a deeper look at their origins following new US guidelines on how to handle artworks once confiscated by the Nazis.

The Foundation E.G. Bührle Collection, which owns the works formerly shown at the Kunsthaus Zürich museum, said it was looking to reach a “fair and equitable solution” with the legal successors of the former owners, who were not identified.

The foundation’s board called for a new assessment of the works under new “Best Practices” published by the US State Department in March on how to deal with Nazi-confiscated art, as an upgrade to principles adopted in 1998.

“This is an important step in implementing the new Best Practices, now endorsed by 24 countries, including Switzerland,” Stuart Eizenstat, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s special adviser on Holocaust issues and a key architect of the principles, said in an email.

The works include the oil paintings “Jardin de Monet à Giverny” by Claude Monet from 1895, and “Der alte Turm” by Vincent van Gogh, of 1884. The other three are 19th-century works by French painters Gustave Courbet, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Gauguin.

A sixth painting, Edouard Manet’s “La Sultane,” was also considered as “a case deserving particular attention,” the foundation said in a statement last Friday.

The foundation said it was ready to make a financial contribution to the estate of Max Silberberg, a German Jew and art collector who died with his wife at the Nazi death camp in Auschwitz, in connection with the Manet out of respect to his “tragic destiny.”

Bührle, a German-born industrialist and weapons manufacturer who became Swiss in the late 1930s, oversaw a company that supplied the Axis powers including Nazi Germany, the foundation said.

Its collection of 203 works, given as a permanent loan to the Zurich museum in October 2021, is “one of the world’s most important collections of Impressionism with world-famous works by Van Gogh, Renoir, Cézanne, Manet, etc.,” the foundation said.

It said it has no reason to believe that other works in the collection fall under the scope of the “best practices,” but it will assess any new findings from previously undiscovered sources along with museum curators.

The foundation has issued a list of all 633 works that the industrialist acquired between 1936 and 1956, and says a review of the origins of those works was updated last year. The five works were pulled down as part of a new assessment.

After World War II, Douglas Cooper, a British army officer and art connoisseur, was asked by the Allies to investigate the disappearance of thousands of artworks. In a report that was declassified in Washington in 1975, Cooper identified Bührle as the largest Swiss buyer of art taken by the Nazis.

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Brick by Brick, Morocco Rebuilds 12th-Century Mosque Destroyed by 2023 Earthquake

A construction worker unveils recovered pieces from the Great Mosque of Tinmel, which dates back to the 12th century and suffered significant damage during a 2023 earthquake, in the Atlas mountain village of Tinmel, outside of Marrakech, Morocco, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (AP)
A construction worker unveils recovered pieces from the Great Mosque of Tinmel, which dates back to the 12th century and suffered significant damage during a 2023 earthquake, in the Atlas mountain village of Tinmel, outside of Marrakech, Morocco, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (AP)
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Brick by Brick, Morocco Rebuilds 12th-Century Mosque Destroyed by 2023 Earthquake

A construction worker unveils recovered pieces from the Great Mosque of Tinmel, which dates back to the 12th century and suffered significant damage during a 2023 earthquake, in the Atlas mountain village of Tinmel, outside of Marrakech, Morocco, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (AP)
A construction worker unveils recovered pieces from the Great Mosque of Tinmel, which dates back to the 12th century and suffered significant damage during a 2023 earthquake, in the Atlas mountain village of Tinmel, outside of Marrakech, Morocco, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (AP)

The hand-carved domes and brick-laid arches had almost all been put back together when an earthquake shook Morocco so violently that they caved in on themselves and crashed to the earth.

After nearly 900 years, the Great Mosque of Tinmel lay in pieces — its minaret toppled, its prayer hall full of rubble, its outer walls knocked over.

But even in ruins, it remained holy ground for the residents of Tinmel. Villagers carried the sheet-laden bodies of the 15 community members killed in the quake down the hillside and placed them in front of the decimated mosque.

Among the mourners was Mohamed Hartatouch, who helped carry the remains of his son Abdelkrim. A 33-year-old substitute teacher, he died under bricks and collapsed walls while the village waited a day and a half for rescue crews to arrive.

“It looked like a storm. I wasn’t able to feel anything,” the grieving father said, remembering the day after the quake.

One year later, the rubble near Hartatouch’s half-standing home has been swept aside and Tinmel residents are eager to rebuild their homes and the mosque. They say the sacred site is a point of pride and source of income in a region where infrastructure and jobs were lacking long before the earthquake hit.

“It’s our past,” Redwan Aitsalah, a 32-year-old construction worker, said the week before the earthquake’s anniversary as he reconstructed his home overlooking the mosque.

The September 2023 quake left a path of destruction that will take Morocco years to recover from. It killed nearly 3,000 people, knocked down almost 60,000 homes and leveled at least 585 schools. The damage will cost about $12.3 billion to rebuild, according to government estimates.

Stretches of road were left unnavigable, including Tizi N’Test, the steep mountain pass that weaves from Marrakech to Tinmel and some of the hardest-hit villages near the earthquake’s epicenter.

Workers are now sifting through the rubble searching for the mosque's puzzle pieces. They are stacking useable bricks and sorting the fragments of remaining decorative elements arch by arch and dome by dome, preparing to rebuild the mosque using as much of the remains as possible.

Hassan Ait Ali Ouhamous, a religious scholar from the region of Al-Haouz, inspects restoration works at the Great Mosque of Tinmel, which dates back to the 12th century and suffered significant damage during a 2023 earthquake, in the Atlas mountain village of Tinmel, outside of Marrakech, Morocco, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (AP)

Though incomparable to the human loss and suffering, the restoration effort is among Morocco’s priorities as it attempts to rebuild.

The country’s Ministry of Islamic Affairs and Ministry of Culture have recruited Moroccan architects, archaeologists and engineers to oversee the project. To assist, the Italian government has sent Moroccan-born architect Aldo Giorgio Pezzi, who had also consulted on Casablanca’s Hassan II Mosque, one of Africa's largest.

“We will rebuild it based on the evidence and remains that we have so it returns to how it was,” Morocco’s Minister of Islamic Affairs Ahmed Toufiq told The Associated Press.

The Great Mosque was a marvel of North African architecture with lobed arches, hand-carved moldings and the adobe-style bricks made of rammed earth used to construct most the area’s structures.

It was undergoing an 18-month-long restoration project when the quake struck, causing its ornate domes and pillars to cave in. Its clay-colored remnants lay in pieces beneath scaffolding erected by restoration workers from villages throughout the region, five of whom also died.

“The mosque withstood centuries. It’s the will of God,” Nadia El Bourakkadi, the site’s conservationist, told local media. The temblor leveled it months before repairs and renovations were to be completed.

Like in many of the area’s villages, residents of Tinmel today live in plastic tents brought in as temporary shelter post-earthquake. Some are there because it feels safer than their half-ruined homes, others because they have nowhere else to go.

Officials have issued more than 55,000 reconstruction permits for villagers to build new homes, including for most of the homes in Tinmel. The government has distributed financial aid in phases. Most households with destroyed homes have received an initial $2,000 installment of rebuilding aid, but not more.

Despite the extent of their personal losses, Moroccans are also mourning the loss of revered cultural heritage. Centuries-old mosques, shrines, fortresses and lodges are scattered throughout the mountains.

The country sees Tinmel as the cradle of one of its most storied civilizations. The mosque served as a source of inspiration for widely visited sacred sites in Marrakech and Seville. Pilgrims once trekked through the High Atlas to pay their respects and visit. Yet centuries ago, it fell into disrepair as political power shifted to Morocco’s larger cities and coastline.

“It was abandoned by the state, but materials were never taken from it,” said Mouhcine El Idrissi, an archaeologist working with Morocco’s Ministry of Culture. “People here have long respected it as a witness to their glorious and spiritual past.”