Week 12 – EC – WWII & Art

 The Monuments Men & Woman in Gold

1. The Monuments Men is about an army unit formed by President Truman made up of people in art related careers that are led by Frank Stokes. The art is stolen by German Nazis who hide thousands of art pieces in mines and other areas. These men are on a time crunch to find all of these artworks because they are told that the Nazis are to destroy all German possessions, including the art pieces, if the Nazis lose the war. They are also competing against the Soviets who want that art pieces as reparations for the war. I learned that during WW2, the Nazis stole Jewish art (and other cultural art pieces) and attempted to destroy them in order to erase their history. So not only are they physically doing a genocide, they also attempted a historical/cultural genocide. 

The Woman in Gold is about a Jewish WW2 survivor that escaped from Nazi Germany to America with her husband, leaving the rest of her family behind. Decades later, this woman, Maria Altmann, finds out that a painting of her aunt was stolen by the Nazis and now in an art gallery in Austria. Austria is unwilling to part with it because the painting has become a symbol for their country, causing her to make a claim for restitution against Austria. However, this claim is denied and she has to move back to America. She later finds a loophole in American law, files an appeal against Austria in U.S. courts and wins. She goes back to Austria to argue her case against them again in front of a panel and they rule with her. Austria attempts to bribe her with money to let them have the paintaing but she refuses and brings it to America with her where it is now in another gallery in New York. I feel like for this movie, I can understand both sides because both were negatively affected by the war. However, this painting is property of Altmann's family so Austria should not have challenged her so many times and caused her to have to face court so many times. I know that this is a common occurance not just for WW2 victims, but also for other countries in general, such as mummies found in museums all over the world and specifically a museum in Britain refusing to return some Egyptian artifacts when requested by the Egyptian government themselves. 

2. Erasing Culture is when a dominant culture or ethnic majority attempts to erase the presence of another culture from all forms of history, media, and art. This can happen in multiple ways from forcing a minority to adopt western cultures and only speak the western language (which can still be seen in America) or in the case of WW2, murder and destruction of cultural artworks and property. You can see this in the movie when the Nazis attempt to steal artwork and destroy tens of thousands of pieces to erase Jewish history. You can also see this today with China's actions against Tibet and Uyghurs. 

3. To be honest, I don't think saving one piece was worth taking away one life. Just from the movie, we can see that thousands of other art pieces are being saved. While art is important, and especially artwork from Michaelangelo, I don't think death is a good trade for one piece of art. One missing piece won't erase an entire culture. If it was the mines and they lost one life to save the thousands of pieces in a mine, I could understand, but one piece isn't worth it in my opinion. Honestly, I'm not even close to the relatives I speak to now, so unless my parents are dead and its the last momento I ever got from them, I'm not risking my life to save it. I literally do not even know my grandparents' name and I haven't met half of them, so I'm not in the business to be caring about relatives I've never met before in my life. Also slight trauma dump, but the grandparents I did know didn't even like me and they died when I was 10 so I'm okay with not saving their momentos. Now destroying an entire culture, that's terrible. I can understand saving artwork and momentos if my entire culture was being destroyed, but just relatives or people I've never met when my culture isn't being destroyed, no it's not worth it. 

4. First and foremost, the stolen painting always belongs to the family that it is stolen from. I think proper procedure would have been to ask if they could keep it and try to reach a settlement, but if the victim's family refuses, it must be returned. The way I think about it is today, if you were to buy a stolen vehicle, you still have to return the vehicle to the owners regardless of whether you stole it or paid for it yourself. Otherwise, you'd get in trouble with the law too. I think in this sense, the same has to be applied to stolen artwork. It doesn't matter whether or not this painting means a lot to a country or not, it'll always mean more to the family that was robbed first, especially since it was recovered during WW2. 

5. My favorite museum is the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose, CA. This museum holds a lot of ancient Egyptian artifacts, a mummy of a young girl, and a recreated tomb of King Tut that you can walk through and experience. If it was taken away, I'd be a little sad but still fine. The best part of that museum is the recreated tomb which they don't have to return so I'd be fine. 

6. It depends. If that church is still in use, I probably wouldn't destroy it for an excavation, but if it's not I would destroy it. I have weird mixed feelings about excavation because on one hand I think it is very cool to look at old pieces and learn from it, I do really enjoy ancient history, but also I feel uncomfortable with digging up burial sites and ancient architecture just because they're usually better preserved when they're left alone. Once people dig it up, they usually break and fall apart very quickly. Off topic but one super interesting archeological find was this one tomb in China that had a perfectly preserved human body from hundreds if not thousands of years ago. Now that body is wrinkled and destroyed because they removed her from the liquid she was buried in. That's a great example of why I don't like excavations. I think humans destroy other people's culture because they want to be the dominant force and think of other people as below them. The only way we can reach celebration of human diversity is to learn to respect each other and think of everyone as equal first. I don't think that would ever happen though, but it is a nice thought. I think there's too much history and bad blood between many races and cultures to ever reach a point of equality.