Steindorff Artefacts to Remain at University of Leipzig

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The collection of Egyptian antiquities unearthed 96 years ago by Jewish Egyptologist Georg Steindorff will remain at the University of Leipzig, despite a Berlin Administrative Court ruling on May 26 that the university must return the collection to the American-based Jewish Claims Conference (sic) as unclaimed Jewish property.

The decision follows public protests against a recent Berlin court order that the objects be handed over to the Claims Conference, which had fought to reclaim them as stolen Jewish property since the unification of former East and West Germany in 1990 [...] An heir of Steindorff came forward recently to say the objects should remain in Leipzig [...] Steindorff’s grandson, Thomas Hemer, 88, traveled from Nevada to his Leipzig birthplace to argue that the objects should remain at the institute that his grandfather had cherished, Bloomberg reported.

The agreement establishes that the university will keep the collection and in return will devote time and funds toward a documentation of the life and work of Steindorff. It is unclear precisely what the Jewish Claims Conference had wanted to do with the items they fought for so long to obtain - given that Steindorff's heir apparently had no desire to see them divorced from the University's teaching collection.

Roman Haller, director of the Claims Conference in Germany said that the Berlin court judgment “sends a special signal to all museums, galleries and auction houses” that they must research the provenance of their collections. "The circumstances under which the cultural assets reached the museums must be transparent; we owe this to the victims,” Haller said. The same of course goes to all museums - for example those holding ethnographic material/art works taken from native communities, many of whom now want its return, and museums, collectors and dealers holding antiquities of unclear legitimacy.

It is reported that for some reason, Egyptian Minister for Antiquities Zahi Hawass had contacted the Claims Conference demanding that the Leipzig objects be returned to Egypt. The grounds for this second claim were not made clear. Some of us might feel that Dr Hawass' energies would be better utilised better documenting, securing and looking after what the Egyptians already have in their museum galleries and storerooms than chasing up material which has been in Europe since the 1930s, well before the 1970 UNESCO Convention.

JTA, 'Steindorff artifacts to remain at University of Leipzig', Jewish Journal June 23, 2011