61340 Vorabseiten_e - Unabhängige Expertenkommission Schweiz

and irreplaceable; they are artefacts which not only have a quantifiable monetary
value, but also are of emotional and personal significance for their owner.
The concept of culture or art is quite easy to describe compared with the
definition of «looting». What is looting? What constitutes exploitation of
distress? What is coercion? What constitutes overreaching? Depending on
country, language, and time, different terms have been and are in use. The
«London Declaration» of January 1943 warned of transfers or dealings
regardless of whether they «have taken the form of open looting or plunder, or
of transactions apparently legal in form, even when they purport to be voluntarily
effected». 6 The «Comité Interallié pour l’Etude de l’Armistice» had the
greatest difficulty in supplying a precise definition of the French term «spolié». 7
In 2000, the Mattéoli Mission defined «spoliation» as referring to German
unlawful confiscations, opposing the term to «pillage» which, although being
inspired by the Germans, was executed by the French. 8 In 1945, the Swiss legislation
used the respective expressions for assets taken away, i.e., «weggenommene
Vermögenswerte» and «biens enlevés». 9 The Swiss Federal Court, however, which in
1945/46 set up the «Kammer zur Beurteilung von Raubgutklagen» (Chamber for
the Evaluation of Suits for Looted Assets, later to become known as
«Raubgutkammer» (Chamber of Looted Assets)) used the term «Raubgut», i.e.,
«looted assets» which since then has come into use also in the public. The terms
noted here refer in part to the same phenomena, and partly denote different
ones. In English one distinguishes between «transactions under duress»,
«confiscations» (with or without compensation) and actual «looting». As it is
often unclear which of these subcategories should be used to define a particular
event, «expropriation» is a convenient term for general use. Its focus is not
restricted to the period of 1939–1945, but is meant to include the occurrences
of «expropriation» as they emerged as early as 1933/35. 10 During the Nazi
regime’s early years and in particular until the outbreak of war, indirect and
pseudo-legal expropriations (such as sales under duress and emigration taxes)
seem to have been predominant. In later years and during the war, confiscations
by Nazi organisations such as the task force set up by Einsatzstab Reichsleiter
Alfred Rosenberg (ERR) and the Devisenschutzkommando, that is to say, the overt
and direct phenomenon of looting as well as cases of plundering, became
predominant. 11 The difficulty in working with the term «looting» is illustrated
by the acquisitions for the art collections which are rightly associated most
directly with the injustices of the Nazi regime – the «Führermuseum» in Linz
and Goering’s Carinhall. Both institutions acquired most of their paintings by
entirely legal means, at least in a formal sense, but used funds whose origins
were suspect. The transactions were also based on previous changes of ownership
which in some cases were illegal.
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