Free air required by Matthew Angermuseum in Erfurt return of restitution 80 objects from the collection of his father.

Shestidesyatidvuhletny Matthew Free air (Matthew Dietel), who lives in Boston (USA), requires Angermuseum in Erfurt (Germany) return for the restitution of eighty items from the collection of his father, a collector Heinz exciter (Heinz Dietel). According to Prince, a collection that includes pieces from glass, porcelain and antique furniture, had been illegally seized from his father by the authorities of the GDR.

Matthew recalls how his father often attended Angermuseum in the early 1950's. Now he wanted to leave something to the museum, but about eighty items considered sole property of their families and calls for their return.

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During the art boom of the 1970 GDR authorities were harsher control the sale of art, seeing in them a source of replenishment of the treasury. Under special surveillance were private collectors and the people, by virtue of their profession, dealing in works of art.

Free air collector Heinz used his connections in the world of art for the acquisition of rare items from private individuals. He loved and auctions. Mathews recalls: "Sometimes reading the morning newspaper he learned about the next auction and the next moment in her dressing gown and coat fled there." Free air Heinz was arrested in 1974 on charges of illegal trade in cultural objects. Six months later he was released. In his absence, "competent authorities" have listened carefully to his collection, and then demanded that he pay a tax of one million marks. As we learned from the materials of the parliamentary investigation in 1993 in Germany, the GDR government often resorted to such measures: "There is a suspicion that the government GDR worked on a single system: the fact collectors, who refused to sell items from their collections, greatly raised their taxes."

Before his arrest Heinz Free air working graphic designer and got a few hundred marks a month, ie, pay the required taxes could not ever. He offered to sell part of the collection to the State. According to Matthew, his father had to pay half the tax until his death in 1975. The remaining part of the collection was sold in Angermuseum to cover the tax debt. Matthew said that his father never gave permission to sell.

Heinz Free air in his apartment in Erfurt Source: bloomberg.com

Free air Jr. first turned to the authorities of Erfurt in 2004. In January 2010 the official representative of the city authorities on culture Tirbach Tamara (Tamara Thierbach) stated that the city is ready to conduct dialogue with stewardship over what is necessary to determine what items to bring back the Prince. It would seem that the issue has been exhausted ...

problem is that the heir does not know exactly what items from the collection of his father joined the museum collection and stored it now. Together with his mother, he went from Erfurt to Düsseldorf in 1960, later moved to the U.S., and now at his disposal is just an old list of collections with brief descriptions - for example, "coffee pot with pictures of landscapes, Leib, XVIII century.", "Nut table, "etc., in the meeting also included figures from Thuringia and the large number of objects made of glass.

the apartment interiors Heinz exciter Source: bloomberg.com

Matthew Free air through his lawyer Bischof Ulf (Ulf Bischof) more than once appealed to the city authorities to provide him copies of the museum inventory of cards on items from the collections of his father's, but each time refused. By phone Tamara Tirbach declined to comment on correspondence with counsel makers. "All items collection Angermuseum are the property of the museum, all the processes are carried out legally," - she said. The situation is commented lawyer Thomas Hut (Thomas Hutt), a member of the Council for Cultural Affairs under the administration of Erfurt: "Tamara Thierbach is a Left Party, created with the participation of former members of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), Erich Honecker. Refusing to provide materials stewardship over it, thereby wanted to prove that the communist regime of East Germany had acted lawfully. " Sam Thomas Hatt is a representative of the opposition party the Christian Democratic Union of Germany.

lawyer and his client would not want to go to court, they seek to settle the matter peacefully, through negotiations.

material prepared by Mary Onuchina, AI

Source: bloomberg.com , artinvestment.ru