Antikwariat

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Antikwariat ( Russian Антиквариат ), officially the central office for the purchase and sale of antiques , was a department of the People's Commissariat for Trade and Industry founded in 1925 (Russian: Народный комиссариат по деилам торговли оис торговли) the Union . The authority had the mandate to sell expropriated antiques and works of art abroad for foreign exchange. It changed its name several times and existed until 1937.

background

Lily of the valley egg , the Fabergé egg given toEmpress Alexandra Feodorovna in 1898, sold by Antikwariat to the London jeweler Wartski in1927

After the February Revolution in 1917 and the October Revolution , the young state of Soviet Russia, and later the Soviet Union, pursued a policy of nationalizing cultural goods. As early as February 1919, Leonid Krassin , the commissioner for foreign trade, commissioned Maxim Gorki to sell confiscated antiques and works of art abroad. The inventories of the Hermitage and other properties of the imperial court in Saint Petersburg and the Gatchina Palace in the city ​​of the same name were affected , and to a lesser extent of buildings in Moscow and other Russian cities. Countless churches in the country were looted, but private property was also confiscated from those belonging to the nobility and the upper classes who had fled, expropriated or executed. The most valuable nationalized goods included valuable paintings from museum holdings and dozens of Fabergé eggs , some of which were taken over to newly founded or rededicated museums in public ownership.

After the October Revolution, only a small part of the important Russian cultural goods was initially sold. Less important objects, however, were sold by the ton abroad in order to raise the necessary funds for the industrialization of the Soviet Union. The main sources of export goods were antique shops, pawn shops, safe deposit boxes, abandoned and looted properties. It was not until 1926 that museum holdings were increasingly used. The sales were not discussed publicly domestically, but aroused great media interest abroad. They were present to such an extent that in 1939 they were able to form the framework for the plot of Ernst Lubitsch 's American comedy Ninotschka with Greta Garbo in the title role.

Foundation and activity of the Antikwariat

Jan van Eyck , The Annunciation , sold in 1930 from the Hermitage to Andrew W. Mellon , now the National Gallery of Art in Washington

In 1925 the Central Bureau for the Purchase and Sale of Antiques was established as a department of the People's Commissariat for Trade and Industry (Russian: Народный комиссариат по делам торговли и промышленности) of the Soviet Union . The institution, known for short as Antikwariat, quickly gained a monopoly on foreign trade in antiques and pursued an aggressive marketing of works of art, antiques and valuable books. Palaces of the aristocracy, such as the Stroganov Palace , the Anichkov Palace and the Yelagin Palace in Saint Petersburg, operated as national museums since the October Revolution , were liquidated and their inventory prepared for sale. In 1927 the Anikwariat instructed other museums to hand over objects of no museum value from their holdings. These measures resulted in the sale of works of applied art, decorative objects, furniture, crockery and silver cutlery mainly from the 19th and early 20th centuries from imperial and aristocratic households.

To fulfill the prepared by the Gosplan and 1927 by the XV. The first five-year plan adopted by the CPSU congress urged the government to increase exports of antiques and works of art in order to gain access to foreign currency. The Antikvariat received a monopoly over the export of art and antiques by a decree of January 28, 1928. In accordance with the mandate to increase exports, the Antikwariat demanded more and more important cultural goods from the museums. The sales are only incompletely documented, but the loss that occurred from 1928 is generally referred to as "catastrophic". The Hermitage in Saint Petersburg alone had to surrender objects worth 1.3 million rubles by April 1928, which was more than an annual budget. Between March 1928 and October 1933, 24,000 objects were handed in. These included 2,880 paintings, 18 of 48 Rembrandts alone , whose marketing was legitimized with the catchphrase Rembrandts for tractors . About 300 paintings by Dutch masters had to be handed over to the Antikwariat. The city's historic palaces lost even more of their holdings. The resistance of museum directors and curators to the sale of their holdings led to numerous layoffs and arrests, for example in the St. Petersburg Hermitage and in the armory of the Moscow Kremlin . The dismissal of the People's Commissar for Education of the RSFSR , Anatoly Wassiljewitsch Lunacharsky , took place in 1929 because of his criticism of the events.

The 2000th anniversary auction of Rudolph Lepke's Kunst-Auctions-Haus in Berlin attracted particular attention in November 1928, with proceeds of more than two million Reichsmarks. The importance of this auction is also evident in the fact that the catalog of works of art from the holdings of Leningrad museums and castles: Ermitage, Palais Michailoff, Gatchina, among others, was written by the important art historians Wilhelm von Bode and Otto von Falke . In June 1929 and May 1931 ( Stroganoff Collection, Leningrad: on behalf of the trade agency of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ), further important auctions followed. Lepke's Kunst-Auctions-Haus was Antikwariat's most important partner in the west and the three auctions were referred to as Russian auctions by the attentive press . The cultural goods sold at Lepke's were mainly works by Western European artists, so they were not originally Russian cultural goods.

Raffael , Madonna Alba , sold to Andrew W. Mellon for $ 1.7 million, now the National Gallery of Art in Washington

Until its closure in 1935, the Antikwariat had its European headquarters in Berlin with the Soviet trade agency . Since the Soviet Union was not diplomatically recognized by the United States until 1933 , business with US customers was also carried out via Berlin. The Antikwariat's most important customer was the American Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon . Mellon bought 21 important works of art for seven million US dollars , including Raphael's Alba Madonna for 1.7 million US dollars, the proclamation of Jan van Eyck and five Rembrandts. While the marketing by western auction houses repeatedly brought only unsatisfactory proceeds, the direct sale to wealthy collectors was always a profitable business for the Antikwariat.

In 1933 the Kremlin put an end to the sale of museum holdings. In 1935 the Antikwariat merged with the Mezhdunarodnaia Kniga, the organization for the international book trade. In 1936 the Torgsin stores, which also dealt in antiques, were closed. Finally, at the beginning of 1938, the Soviet Union banned all exports of art and antiques, and Antikwariat was dissolved at the end of 1937. Their stocks were returned to the museums, often with other works of art from other origins.

Restitution efforts

owner

The owners in exile in the West, expropriated by the Soviet authorities, have tried many times to legally prevent the sale of their property abroad or to seek compensation from the Soviet authorities and their customers in the West. During the interwar period, sales to the West were legally and politically controversial. Nevertheless, the plaintiffs were regularly defeated before Western European courts, as the Soviet Union was diplomatically recognized and the expropriations of the previous owners were carried out and permitted under Soviet law. With the beginning of the Second World War, interest in the subject completely waned and only revived in the 1980s.

As a national cultural asset

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the loss of Russian national cultural heritage was often lamented. Members of the new Russian elite are trying to get back the cultural goods sold abroad. Several examples of such efforts were provided by the Russian oligarch Viktor Wekselberg , who with his Link of Times Foundation funded the repatriation of the bells of Danilov Monastery and the purchase of the world's largest collection of Fabergé eggs and the Fabergé Museum in Saint Petersburg.

literature

  • Robert C. Williams: Russian art and American money, 1900-1940 . Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London 1980, ISBN 0-674-78122-8 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Waltraud Bayer: The booty of the October Revolution: On the destruction, preservation and sale of private art collections in the Soviet Union, 1917-38 . In: Archives for cultural history . tape 81 , no. 2 , 1999, p. 417-441 , doi : 10.7788 / akg.1999.81.2.417 .
  2. ↑ a b c d Waltraud Bayer: III. Sales in Europe and the United States . In: Canadian-American Slavic Studies . tape 43 , no. 1-4 , 2009, pp. 213-244 , doi : 10.1163 / 221023909X00110 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Waltraud M. Bayer: “A Past That Won't Pass”: Stalin's Museum Sales in a Transformed Global Context . In: Journal for Art Market Studies . tape 2 , no. 2 , 2018, doi : 10.23690 / jams.v2i2.22 .
  4. ↑ a b Elena Solomakha: II. Soviet Museums and the First Five Year Plan . In: Canadian-American Slavic Studies . tape 43 , no. 1-4 , 2009, pp. 131-161 , doi : 10.1163 / 221023909X00084 .
  5. ↑ a b Wendy Salmond: Russian Icons and American Money, 1928-1938 . In: Canadian-American Slavic Studies . tape 43 , no. 1-4 , 2009, pp. 273-304 , doi : 10.1163 / 221023909X00138 .
  6. ↑ Waltraud Bayer: Treasures for foreign currency: Soviet art exports to Germany in the interwar period . New episode. In: Yearbooks for the History of Eastern Europe . tape 48 , no. 2 , 2000, pp. 250-263 , JSTOR : 41050528 .
  7. ^ Robert C. Williams: The Quiet Trade: Russian Art and American Money . In: The Wilson Quarterly . tape 3 , no. 1 , 1979, p. 162-175 , JSTOR : 40255597 .