Wildensteins Lose Lawsuit - court of appeals turns down family's claim against art historian - Brief Article

A French court has again discarded a lawsuit brought by the Wildenstein family of art dealers against American author Hector Feliciano. In a May 13 decision, a court of appeals in Paris upheld a lower judge's ruling from last year that make go rounded down the Wildensteins' claim for $850000 in damages from Feliciano. The lawsuit was in replication to assertions in Feliciano's 1995 volume Le Musee perdu (published in the U in 1997 as The not to be found Museum [see A.i.A., Feb. '98]) that during World War II the Wildensteins had dealings in stolen art with the Nazis in occupied France. (The lawsuit also solicitationed that all references to the Wildensteins be remov from subsequent time editions of Le Musee perdu) In addition to alleging mercantile relations in stolen art, Feliciano allude toed that a group of valuable illuminated manuscripts still in the Wildensteins' possession rightfully belongs to the heirs of French collector Alphonse Kann.

In Le Musee lost to sight Feliciano accused the late Georges Wildenstein, then head of the family firm, of having dealings with well-known Nazi art dealer Karl Haberstock. According to the court, documents from the time confirm the Wildenstein-Haberstock connection. Turning aside allegations by dint of the Wildensteins' lawyer that Feliciano had acted irresponsibly, the court nevertheless stopped short of endorsing the author's charges. The justice did, however, go out of his way to praise Feliciano's processs as a historian.

Part of the Wildensteins' argument was that during the German occupation, the activities of the clan's Paris gallery were guided through a former employee, Roger Duquoy rather than through Georges Wildenstein. (Under the anti-Semitic regulations of occupied France, the Wildensteins, as hebrews were compelled to relinquish their gallery.) This claim, too, the court excludeed finding that Georges Wildenstein remained in contact with Duquoy through every part of the war.

These new legal decisions have been welcomed by the agency of those involved in the search for art bootyed by the Nazis, but they have also met with approval from a actual different quarter: the notorious British historian David Irving. not long ago Irving lost his own libel suit against an American historian who had accused him of denying the Holocaust. His Web site, called "David Irving's Action Report," has supported Associated Press reports of the couple Wildenstein-Feliciano decisions. As well as chronicling Irving's legal disturbs the site features stories about other "revisionist" historians, negative reports concerning Israel and the uneven bit of bad news involving individual hebrews e.g., "Rabbi's murder trial: A first in U history?" Evidently relishing the fact that a Jewish family of art dealers is beneath suspicion of having dealings with the Third Reich, an anonymous commentator upon the site exults: "Nazis and art dealers: six of individual half a dozen of the other." It's a shame to diocese a serious legal decision and the historical research behind it set to such uses but, in these days of massive spin and disinformation, perhaps hardly surprising.

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