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Spoliated property: battle in Germany around a tricentennial violin

2021-02-08T18:28:13.588Z


INVESTIGATION - The Hagemann Foundation, now owner of the instrument made by the famous Italian luthier Joseph Guarnieri, refuses to compensate the Jewish family who owned it during the Nazi era. This protest jeopardizes the process of restitution of art objects looted by the Nazis.


Correspondent in Berlin

It is a moving instrument, a violin fashioned in 1706 by the master of Cremona, Joseph Guarnieri, one of the two sons of the founder of the famous Italian dynasty of luthiers.

“The back of the object, made of two parts, is made of root wood marked by a small irregular loop;

the top is pine, uneven grain, and the varnish, brown-orange in color, has been somewhat polished on the top and sides ”

, wrote the London merchant Hills & Sons in an expert report dated February 26, 1937. It was a year in Germany when anti-Semitic repression was in full swing.

The signature of the violin is authentic but eighty-four years later, two families dispute the ownership and the value, underlining the difficulty to pay, in Germany, the enterprise of cultural plunder operated by the Nazi regime.

The Jewish broker Félix Hildesheimer, acquired the Guarnieri on January 24, 1938. After being forced to sell his house and his music store established in

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Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2021-02-08

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