Nazi-looted Monet artwork returned to family generations later
NEW ORLEANS– On the eve of World War II, Nazis in Austria seized and sold a pastel by famed Impressionist artist Claude Monet, setting off a family’s decades-long quest that culminated Wednesday in New Orleans.
At an FBI field office, agents lifted a blue veil covering the Monet pastel and presented Adalbert Parlagi’s granddaughters with the artwork more than 80 years after it was taken from their family. Helen Lowe said she had a feeling her grandfather would be watching and he would be “so proud of this moment.”
Monet’s 1865 ‘Bord de Mer’ shows rocks along the coastline of the Normandy coast, where Allied troops stormed the beaches of Nazi-occupied France during ‘D-Day’ in 1944, marking a turning point in the war. The Monet pastel is one of 20,000 items recovered by the FBI Art Crime Team from an estimated 600,000 works of art and millions of books and religious objects stolen by the Nazis.
“The theft was not random or incidental, but an integral part of the Nazi plan to eliminate root and branch all remnants of Jewish life in Germany and Europe,” said U.S. Department of Holocaust advisor Stuart E. Eizenstat of Foreign Affairs in a speech in March.
After Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Adalbert Parlagi, a successful businessman and art lover, and his wife Hilda left behind almost everything they owned and fled Vienna, using British license plates to drive across the border, their officials said. granddaughters. Although the Parlagis had not identified as Jewish for years and had baptized their children as Protestants, they were still considered Jewish under Nazi law, according to Austrian government records. Other family members were murdered in concentration camps.
The Parlagis attempted to ship their valuable carpets, porcelain and works of art from Vienna to London, but later discovered that their belongings had been seized by the Gestapo and auctioned off to support the Third Reich.
Multiple international statements decried the trafficking of Nazi-looted art, beginning with Allied forces in London in 1943. The 1998 Washington Principles, signed by more than three dozen countries, reiterated the call and advocated the return of stolen art.
Yet Adalbert Parlagi’s efforts were stopped by the Viennese auctioneer who had bought and sold the Monet pastel and another of Parlagi’s works of art. The documents were lost after the fighting in Vienna, the auctioneer told Adalbert in a letter shortly after World War II, according to an English translation of a document prepared by an Austrian government agency assessing the Parlagi family’s art restitution claims.
“I can’t remember two pictures like that either,” said the auctioneer.
Many World War II survivors and their descendants eventually give up on retrieving their lost artworks because of the difficulties they face, says Anne Webber, co-founder of the London-based nonprofit Commission for Looted Art in Europe, which has more than 100 million people have been recovered. 3,500 looted works of art.
“You just have to be constantly, constantly, constantly looking,” Webber said.
Adalbert Parlagi and his son Franz kept meticulous ownership and search records. After Franz’s death in 2012, Françoise Parlagi came across her father’s stash of documents, including the original receipt for her grandfather’s purchase of the Monet pastel. In 2014, she contacted Webber’s committee for help.
The commission’s investigative team looked at archives and receipts, contacted museums and art experts and scoured the Internet, but initially found “absolutely no trace,” Webber said. Then in 2021, the team discovered online that a New Orleans dealer had bought the Monet in 2017 and sold it to a Louisiana-based doctor and his wife.
The FBI investigated the commission’s investigation, and earlier this year a federal court ruled that the pastel should be returned to the Parlagis’ descendants.
“There was never any question” of returning the art to its rightful owners after learning of its sordid history, said Bridget Vita-Schlamp, whose late husband purchased the Monet pastel.
“We were shocked, I’m not going to lie,” she said.
The family recovered another work from the Austrian government in March, but six works of art are still missing, including by acclaimed artists Camille Pissarro and Paul Signac. The U.S. is probably the “largest illegal art market in the world,” said Kristin Koch, supervisory special agent in charge of the FBI’s Art Crime Program.
The art world has a greater responsibility to investigate the origins of works of art and a moral obligation Unpleasant return stolen works Unpleasant their rightful ownersWebber said.
“They represent life and the lives that have been taken,” Webber said. “They represent the world from which they have been banished.”
The granddaughters of Adalbert and Hilda Parlagi say they are grateful for what they have already received back. Françoise Parlagi said with a broad smile on her face that she hoped to hang a copy of the pastel in her home. She said the moment felt “unreal.”
“There are so many families in this situation. Maybe they haven’t even tried to recover because they don’t believe, they think this might not be possible,” she said. “Let’s be hope for other families.”
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Jack Brook is a staff member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Brook on social platform X: @jack_brook96.