Christie’s Teams Up With the FBI to Help Return Vases Looted by the Nazis to the Heirs of Their Jewish Owner

Christie’s auction house teamed
up with the FBI’s New York art crime team to return a pair of
Nazi-looted vases to their rightful owners. 

The bronze, fire-gilded, Louis
XVI vases, which are estimated to be worth around $120,000, were
returned yesterday, August 1, to the descendants of their original
Jewish owner in a ceremony held at the US embassy in
Berlin.

Christie’s researched the
history of the vases after they were consigned to the auction house
for sale by an unknown collector or dealer. During the course of
due diligence procedures, which includes a routine check of the
German Database of Lost Art among other historical records,
Christie’s specialists discovered the vases were confiscated by the
Nazis from a Jewish widow, Lucie Mayer Fuld. (The auction
house decline to comment on the consignor’s reaction about the
discovery.)

More than 500 items in the
lost-art database are listed as belonging to  Mayer Fuld.
These include 13 paintings, 18 sculptures, and more than 482 craft
and folk artworks, as well as two library objects, and two graphic
objects.

The vases were among the
hundreds of items stolen from Mayer Fuld’s home after she fled
Germany in 1939. The Nazis confiscated her art and other property,
ostensibly to collect an exit tax. After the Nazis came to
power, they seized Jewish people’s bank accounts, and levied hefty
exit tax on anyone who managed to leave the country.

Several hundred items from the
Mayer Fuld estate were listed for sale at an auction house in
Berlin on June 10, 1940. The lots included the French vases. The
stolen vases resurfaced first at an auction in London in 1997. They
reappeared at another auction in 2000, before they were eventually
consigned to Christie’s New York.

After Christie’s was able to
confirm the vases were looted property, it reported the discovery
to the New York art crime team, which organized the restitution.
Members of Mayer Fuld’s family met with FBI agents and a
representative of Christie’s at the repatriation
ceremony.

The post Christie’s Teams Up With the FBI to Help Return
Vases Looted by the Nazis to the Heirs of Their Jewish Owner
appeared first on artnet News.