TATE GALLERY AGREES TO RETURN
CONSTABLE PAINTING TO OWNER’S FAMILY
The Tate art gallery in London has agreed to return an oil painting by the English Romantic painter John Constable, after evidence showed the picture had been stolen by the Nazis. The
1824 work, entitled Beaching a Boat – Brighton, is understood to
have been looted from wartime Hungary.
A committee of government-appointed experts said the Tate
had ‘a moral obligation’ to return the painting to the family of
the original owner, who died in 1958 having fled the Communist
takeover of Hungary.
The painting turned up in Britain in 1962 and passed through several hands before being donated to the London gallery in 1986.
The Spoliation Advisory Panel which was set up to assess the
claim, said the original owner, “a well-known Hungarian artist” of
Jewish decent, went into hiding in 1944.
A Tate spokeswoman said: “The Tate acknowledged the claim
and welcomed the suggestion that the case should be presented for consideration by the Spoliation Advisory Panel as
the body that was established by government to advise on the
merits of such claims.
“The Tate will therefore recommend to its trustees, when they
next meet in May, that the work be returned to the claimants.
Tate will continue to respect the wishes of the claimants to remain anonymous.”
The painting is currently valued at over £1 million.
Israeli architects suspended from
PHOTOGRAPH: WWW.WIKIPEDIA.ORG
INTERNATIONAL UNION
British architects have backed calls to suspend Israeli counterparts from their international union.
The Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) recently passed the
motion proposed by its former president Angela Brady. She had
campaigned for the organisation to urge the International Union
of Architects (IAU) to suspend members of the Israeli Association
of United Architects (IAUA) until ‘illegal projects’ in the West Bank
have ceased.
Brady said the Israeli union had repeatedly ignored an IAU resolution and had helped sustain settlement building.
In a letter to Riba council members before the vote, 26 members of the Constructive Dialogue group – which works on
projects with architects in Israel and the Palestinian territories –
opposed the motion, saying it was “dishonourable to single out
Israeli architects”. But the institute’s full council voted to adopt
the proposal.
Brady said the outcome was “a positive result for a positive way
forward”. The Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine group,
led by campaigner Abe Hayeem, also supported her initiative.
Constructive Dialogue’s Daniel Leon called the result hugely
disappointing. He said his colleagues were considering their
“ongoing membership of an organisation that might not want
us as members”.
IRANIAN LEADER QUESTIONS THE HOLOCAUST
Iran’s supreme leader has questioned whether the Holocaust took
place. In a speech celebrating the Persian New Year last month, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, “Expressing opinion about the Holocaust, or
casting doubt on it, is one of the greatest sins in the West.
“They prevent this, arrest the doubters, and try them while claiming
to be a free country. They passionately defend their red lines – how do
they expect us to overlook our red lines which are based on our revolutionary and religious beliefs?
“No one dares to speak of the Holocaust. The crux of which is not clear
if it is true, or if it were, how it was.”
Commenting on his Facebook page, Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor
Liberman said, “Iran’s omnipotent leader and its supreme spiritual
authority, Ali Khamenei, denied the existence of the Holocaust. Even
after [president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad left [the scene], and after
[Iran’s current] charm offensive, a small Hitlerite moustache continues
to lurk underneath the Ayatollah’s beard. This is another reminder for
those who think there is a new Iran.”
‘LAW OF RETURN’ PASSED FOR JEWS WHO FLED GREECE
Greece has passed legislation offering Jews who fled the country before
the end of the Second World War the ‘right of return’ and rights to claim
citizenship. Former deputy foreign minister Dimitrios Dollis promulgated the new law – which should come into effect by May.
He said it was unlikely many Jews would claim Greek citizenship, but
that he had acted out of principle. Dollis told Israeli media that Greece
wanted to “correct past mistakes”.
Around 100 000 Jews lived in Greece before the war, spread across 30
communities around the country. After the Shoah, only around 5 000
Jews remained. Dollis said a trip to Israel in 2010 had made him acutely
aware of the seriousness of Greece’s loss. He spent almost 30 years
living in Australia, where he was close to members of the Jewish community. He said Jews who applied for Greek citizenship would also be
able to pass it on automatically to their children.
However, he acknowledged that the rise of the far right Golden Dawn
party in recent years has caused concern for Greek Jews.
HEIDEGGER NOTEBOOKS SHOW
ANTI-SEMITISM AT CORE OF HIS THINKING
Though his membership of the Nazi party was no secret, the renowned
German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) has been unveiled as
indisputably anti-Semitic with the publication of his ‘black notebooks’.
Recently released by philosopher Peter Trawny, director of the Martin
Heidegger Institute at the University of Wuppertal, the notebooks
– philosophical musings written up in a journal kept from 1939-1941 –
contain observations that leave experts with no doubts about his views.
Some passages resemble the hateful ramblings of Nazi propaganda chief
Josef Goebbels and the rabidly anti-Semitic publisher Julius Streicher.
After he became rector of the University of Freiburg in 1933, Heidegger
wrecked the careers of several col