Karen Franklin of New York remembers the stormy night she stood in the pouring rain in the heart of the Venice Ghetto and solved an art restitution case by locating heirs in record time. Franklin was at a museum conference when she received a frantic e-mail from the Netherlands' Origins Unknown Agency, asking for urgent help to find descendants of the Larsen family before a statute of limitations deadline ran out.
Orphaned art. This item is still looking for its owner (from southern Germany).
Photo: Courtesy
Her hotel's internet connection was very expensive - when it worked, but Chabad had wireless, she learned, so Franklin went and stood outside with her laptop in the rain and used a variety of online sources, including a New York Times marriage notice for a niece, which identified colleges attended by the couple. Their alumni offices helped locate and notify them.
She shows the e-mail she sent at 6:59 pm. Rushing into a 7 pm dinner with colleagues - and looking like a drowned rat - she shouted "Eureka!" Even though her laptop later failed from water damage and Franklin will likely never be recognized for solving the case - it might be worth millions - she's satisfied. The heirs have since filed a claim. It is an example, she says, of how genealogists can trace heirs to art works. There is no such thing as an heirless item, it just requires deeper digging.
Genealogy is not just about the names of dead people on a list, or DNA or Holocaust victims, it is now also about art restitution. Online resources used to solve cases include JewishGen, ProQuest, maps, Yad Vashem, the Leo Baeck archives, the Center for Jewish History, newspaper obituaries and other life cycle announcements (engagements, marriages), Ancestry and even eBay. Art restitution today utilizes three approaches: international and genealogical collaboration as well as artifact exhibits.
Collaboration brings together archivists, local historians and other experts around the world, whose combined but different research approaches are effective in solving cases. Genealogical cooperation is a useful strategy for provenance research, as partnering with genealogists enhances tracing of family members. Public exhibits provide valuable research information and raise awareness about the looting of Jewish property, the real owners and related issues.
At the recently-concluded 27th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, held this year in Utah, Franklin provided an overview of Nazi-era looted art issues in North American and European Jewish museums, and discussed how Jewish genealogical research has been utilized to help solve ongoing cases in the Netherlands and the UK.
Franklin is director of the Leo Baeck Institute's Family Research Program in New York. A genealogist and past president of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, she is also a coordinator of GERsig, a special interest group for those researching German Jewish roots.
Former director of the Judaica Museum of the Hebrew Home for the Aged at Riverdale and past chair of the Council of American Jewish Museums, Franklin has served on the American Association of Museums board and currently serves on the American National Committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM-US), in addition to positions for other national and international organizations. She researches major cases for the Origins Unknown Agency and the Looted Art Commission, and authored a January 2007 resolution of the Council of American Jewish Museums discussing how these issues affect claimants and the Jewish community. She also speaks around the world.
Provenance research is an international discipline, just as the art and cultural property it traces are international in origin and influence. In 2004, for example, North American specialists met with western and central European colleagues to exchange information. The emphasis was on WWII issues including Nazi elite collections, recreation of historic family collections, case studies of object provenance, resources and 20th century art trade.
Franklin's personal involvement in art restitution began in October 2001, when the Judaica Museum received an 18th-century pewter Seder plate, called the Hoffman Plate. The letter with the gift explained that the plate was"taken from the home of a Jewish family when they were deported in 1942," in the Wiesbaden area. Then the director, Franklin accepted the gift with the provision that the museum would trace the plate's provenance and return it if it proved appropriate.
The plate is inscribed in Hebrew as belonging to Wolf, son of Mordechai and Meschacha, daughter of Rabbi Eliyahu (of?) Do(e)rnbach. Strategies included exploring its history by identifying the town and the owners. Jewish genealogists identified seven possible German villages, and Langendernbach was near the donor's original family home. After 1717, Jews of several villages, including Langendernbach, founded the combined Jewish community of Ellar. A local German historian discovered three generations of family documents in the community's archives.
The search took almost five years, including travel to Israel and Germany. The plate was displayed four times in Germany and seen by more than a million people. In Cologne, the caption read "Have you seen this plate before? Can you help identify its original owner?"
Several people stepped forward to identify the family who owned it and where they came from. "We discovered, much to our surprise, that the original story was indeed true," said Franklin.
Most of the original owner's family was deported - except the owner herself, whose non-Jewish husband probably saved her by his alleged collaboration with the Nazis. He may have gone into Jewish homes and collected items after families were deported. Although the couple who owned the plate traded post-war in looted art, the plate was most likely actually a family heirloom.
Franklin visited the town and displayed the plate, asking if anyone knew its history or had any items taken from Jews that they knew about. "One man actually came forward and told us a story about his family and their furniture which originally belonged to a Jewish family… it does happen," she stressed.
