Return to Sender?

By: Nord Wennerstrom

December 2006

MOSCOW—The set-up is familiar: a decades-long dispute concerning art looted during World War II. This time, however, it is Germany attempting to retrieve "stolen" works from Russia. According to Interfax Information Service, in the waning days of the war, Soviet officer Viktor Baldin took more than 350 Old Masters drawings—including works by Rubens and Goya—from a Prussian castle. In 1948, he donated them to the State Architecture Museum, according to the Russian news service Novosti, and some have ended up in the Pushkin Museum.

While Baldin ultimately wanted the collection returned to Germany, years of in-fighting by government officials stymied those efforts. For example, Anatoly Vikov, deputy director of the Federal Cultural Heritage Service, recently said the collection should be returned. However, Interfax reports that this past May, Irina Antonova, Pushkin general director, said “nyet,” claiming the paintings were rescued and therefore taken legally from Germany.