6 ms·

Odd, why is this Roman sculpture being returned to Germany? It’s obviously not a German artifact and while I might be wrong, I assume it was “looted” from Ital

Odd, why is this Roman sculpture being returned to Germany? It’s obviously not a German artifact and while I might be wrong, I assume it was “looted” from Italy.

Turing_Machine 5y ago
> It’s obviously not a German artifact Why is it "obviously" not? The subject was named Drusus Germanicus, after all. The Roman Empire covered everything from Great Britain to the Persian Gulf. Artifacts produced anywhere in that (very large) region could be described as "Roman".
conk 5y ago
“Another auction house managed to find the head in a catalog of items from a German museum in the 1920s and 1930s.” Per the article it was looted from a German museum. How the german museum acquired it originally is anyones guess. But it’s possible it was legally acquired at some point over the past 1900 years.
- jart 5y ago
  It was legally acquired by the woman who just paid $35 at Goodwill. The thing is two thousand years old. Why do people care who owned it during the Weimar Republic?
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    People get funny of the provenance of things that were taken by military force, go figure. I'm trying to remember which state it is that periodically asks for their Confederate flag back from the Union state that acquired it on the battlefield.
    - jlund-molfese 5y ago
      Interesting! I hadn’t heard of that issue before. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/28th_Virginia_battle_flag https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/28th_Virginia_battle_flag
  - Wohlf 5y ago
    Possession and sale of stolen goods is not legal, just not a crime unless you are aware it's stolen/likely stolen.
    - judge2020 5y ago
      Genuinely curious, what if something is sold three times? Imagine a collector's edition book - Say it's stolen, then a month later it's listed on FB Marketplace, then the buyer re-lists it on ebay, then that ebay buyer sells it to a pawn shop. Does the person who was robbed still have a right to the book? Or are there special laws for the consideration of historical artifacts?
      - paulmd 5y ago
        Yes, the law is that it belongs to the bona-fide owner. The third buyer needs to get their money back from the second, the second gets their money back from the first, the first goes to jail. The fact that this is often impossible is legally irrelevant, it belongs to the original owner. One interesting place this came up was in the post-2008 financial crisis... turns out a lot of banks had been using an off-the-books legal record system, and transferred ownership of the property to the record system, and the record system would move it around internally to avoid filing fees every time a mortgage was resold. But this is actually specifically illegal in most jurisdictions, governments have a strong interest in a verifiable chain of custody maintained by themselves, they don't want it to go to an off-the-books system because then they might not be able to trace the true owner of a property. There is actually case-law dating back to the mid-1800s on specifically this - modern bankers aren't the first ones to try and create a "bearer note" conveying ownership of a mortgage lien, and it was specifically slapped down at that time, ruling that doing so would "separate" the note from the actual deed, invalidating the lien. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/business/06mers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/business/06mers.html https://repository.uchastings.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1170&context=hastings_business_law_journal https://repository.uchastings.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl... And it also turns out that many of the banks did it digitally, so they could not actually provide the original wet-ink mortgage, so they did not have an effective lien on the property at all in any respect, nor could they rebuild it themselves unless the owner voluntarily re-signed a note. So many of the properties in that era have (big airquotes) """title insurance""" that includes a clause that basically says "in the event of a defect in title, the title insurance doesn't pay out". So if the original owner figured out they might be off the hook, they could come back with improper foreclosure and get the property back, and you would be left paying a mortgage on nothing because the title insurance didn't pay out. My parents were looking to buy a foreclosed property in that timespan and the bank tried to pull one of those and they walked away. (also, in that era many banks responded by simply forging the wet-ink mortgage notes. When they got caught, oops, no penalty and they got to try it again. Laws are for plebians.) https://www.propublica.org/article/disputes-over-citigroups-faulty-mortgage-documents-yield-settlements-princi https://www.propublica.org/article/disputes-over-citigroups-... https://financialpost.com/news/economy/four-years-later-u-s-banks-still-havent-answered-for-foreclosure-mess https://financialpost.com/news/economy/four-years-later-u-s-...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- Aeolun 5y ago
  It’s also possible it was legally brought to the US. Speculation about it being looted doesn’t really hold a lot of legal weight I think.
vkou 5y ago
You generaly loot from occupied territories, not from peer nations. If Britain invades and occupies Egypt, and starts digging up artifacts that end up on a British museum, that's looting. If some Frenchman digs up some artifacts in France, and then sells/trades/gives them to a British museum, that's not looting. Because the sale/trade/gift is not done at gunpoint. In this case, if the artifact was not plundered from an (occupation of)/(war with Italy) to begin with, the most recent rightful owner is someone in Germany, not the nation of Italy.
- Bayart 5y ago
  > If some Frenchman digs up some artifacts in France, and then sells/trades/gives them to a British museum, that's not looting According to French law, it is both looting and traficking ;) We have a different approach to it than the British.
  - vkou 5y ago
    Sure, that may be the case - but my point is that if French law allowed what I described, it wouldn't be looting, because France is a peer of the UK, as opposed to a vassal.
LanceH 5y ago
It's not Italian either.
- slim 5y ago
  it could be. the article says it comes from a museum dedicated to pompei
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - DocTomoe 5y ago
    Let's just assume that the way 19th century, Ludwig-II-style museums worked was not exactly historically accurate. This is the king who built Neuschwanstein Castle. He essentially cosplayed as a Roman sometimes, and he built a "Roman villa", more as a holiday home than a museum, and a roman villa needs roman stuff in it. It only became a museum later, half dedicated to the Romans, half to the old king. https://www.schloesser.bayern.de/englisch/palace/objects/as_pom.htm https://www.schloesser.bayern.de/englisch/palace/objects/as_...
buescher 5y ago
Some roman may have left it in Germany.
disgu 5y ago
Are you being serious? The Roman Empire covered Germany and it covered that specific part of Germany (Aschaffenburg) as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire
- mkl 5y ago
  Wrong link, I think: "Not to be confused with Roman Empire, Western Roman Empire, or Byzantine Empire." The actual Roman Empire seems to have only just reached Aschaffenburg.
- mullen 5y ago
  The "Holy Roman Empire" was neither Holy, Roman or an Empire.
Bayart 5y ago
> Odd, why is this Roman sculpture being returned to Germany? Because the museum was the rightful owner of the piece. > It’s obviously not a German artifact and while I might be wrong, I assume it was “looted” from Italy. To start with, Italy has been actively looted by Italians since at least the later part of the Middle Ages, but more actively from the Renaissance onwards. A lot of the pieces you see in other countries, and I'm quite certain this one fits the bill, were just traded privately between aristocrats for centuries. And that's assuming it's from Italy at all, it could just as well have been found in German soil. Germany happens to host a few major Roman cities.
JKCalhoun 5y ago
When I saw it I assumed it was of Charles Laughton from "I, Claudius".

Odd, why is this Roman sculpture being returned to Germany? It’s obviously not a German artifact and while I might be wrong, I assume it was “looted” from Italy.

Turing_Machine 5y ago

> It’s obviously not a German artifact Why is it "obviously" not? The subject was named Drusus Germanicus, after all. The Roman Empire covered everything from Great Britain to the Persian Gulf. Artifacts produced anywhere in that (very large) region could be described as "Roman".

conk 5y ago

“Another auction house managed to find the head in a catalog of items from a German museum in the 1920s and 1930s.” Per the article it was looted from a German museum. How the german museum acquired it originally is anyones guess. But it’s possible it was legally acquired at some point over the past 1900 years.

jart 5y ago
It was legally acquired by the woman who just paid $35 at Goodwill. The thing is two thousand years old. Why do people care who owned it during the Weimar Republic?
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  People get funny of the provenance of things that were taken by military force, go figure. I'm trying to remember which state it is that periodically asks for their Confederate flag back from the Union state that acquired it on the battlefield.
  - jlund-molfese 5y ago
    Interesting! I hadn’t heard of that issue before. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/28th_Virginia_battle_flag https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/28th_Virginia_battle_flag
- Wohlf 5y ago
  Possession and sale of stolen goods is not legal, just not a crime unless you are aware it's stolen/likely stolen.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Genuinely curious, what if something is sold three times? Imagine a collector's edition book - Say it's stolen, then a month later it's listed on FB Marketplace, then the buyer re-lists it on ebay, then that ebay buyer sells it to a pawn shop. Does the person who was robbed still have a right to the book? Or are there special laws for the consideration of historical artifacts?
    - paulmd 5y ago
      Yes, the law is that it belongs to the bona-fide owner. The third buyer needs to get their money back from the second, the second gets their money back from the first, the first goes to jail. The fact that this is often impossible is legally irrelevant, it belongs to the original owner. One interesting place this came up was in the post-2008 financial crisis... turns out a lot of banks had been using an off-the-books legal record system, and transferred ownership of the property to the record system, and the record system would move it around internally to avoid filing fees every time a mortgage was resold. But this is actually specifically illegal in most jurisdictions, governments have a strong interest in a verifiable chain of custody maintained by themselves, they don't want it to go to an off-the-books system because then they might not be able to trace the true owner of a property. There is actually case-law dating back to the mid-1800s on specifically this - modern bankers aren't the first ones to try and create a "bearer note" conveying ownership of a mortgage lien, and it was specifically slapped down at that time, ruling that doing so would "separate" the note from the actual deed, invalidating the lien. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/business/06mers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/business/06mers.html https://repository.uchastings.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1170&context=hastings_business_law_journal https://repository.uchastings.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl... And it also turns out that many of the banks did it digitally, so they could not actually provide the original wet-ink mortgage, so they did not have an effective lien on the property at all in any respect, nor could they rebuild it themselves unless the owner voluntarily re-signed a note. So many of the properties in that era have (big airquotes) """title insurance""" that includes a clause that basically says "in the event of a defect in title, the title insurance doesn't pay out". So if the original owner figured out they might be off the hook, they could come back with improper foreclosure and get the property back, and you would be left paying a mortgage on nothing because the title insurance didn't pay out. My parents were looking to buy a foreclosed property in that timespan and the bank tried to pull one of those and they walked away. (also, in that era many banks responded by simply forging the wet-ink mortgage notes. When they got caught, oops, no penalty and they got to try it again. Laws are for plebians.) https://www.propublica.org/article/disputes-over-citigroups-faulty-mortgage-documents-yield-settlements-princi https://www.propublica.org/article/disputes-over-citigroups-... https://financialpost.com/news/economy/four-years-later-u-s-banks-still-havent-answered-for-foreclosure-mess https://financialpost.com/news/economy/four-years-later-u-s-...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Aeolun 5y ago
It’s also possible it was legally brought to the US. Speculation about it being looted doesn’t really hold a lot of legal weight I think.

vkou 5y ago

You generaly loot from occupied territories, not from peer nations. If Britain invades and occupies Egypt, and starts digging up artifacts that end up on a British museum, that's looting. If some Frenchman digs up some artifacts in France, and then sells/trades/gives them to a British museum, that's not looting. Because the sale/trade/gift is not done at gunpoint. In this case, if the artifact was not plundered from an (occupation of)/(war with Italy) to begin with, the most recent rightful owner is someone in Germany, not the nation of Italy.

Bayart 5y ago
> If some Frenchman digs up some artifacts in France, and then sells/trades/gives them to a British museum, that's not looting According to French law, it is both looting and traficking ;) We have a different approach to it than the British.
- vkou 5y ago
  Sure, that may be the case - but my point is that if French law allowed what I described, it wouldn't be looting, because France is a peer of the UK, as opposed to a vassal.

LanceH 5y ago

It's not Italian either.

slim 5y ago
it could be. the article says it comes from a museum dedicated to pompei
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- DocTomoe 5y ago
  Let's just assume that the way 19th century, Ludwig-II-style museums worked was not exactly historically accurate. This is the king who built Neuschwanstein Castle. He essentially cosplayed as a Roman sometimes, and he built a "Roman villa", more as a holiday home than a museum, and a roman villa needs roman stuff in it. It only became a museum later, half dedicated to the Romans, half to the old king. https://www.schloesser.bayern.de/englisch/palace/objects/as_pom.htm https://www.schloesser.bayern.de/englisch/palace/objects/as_...

buescher 5y ago

Some roman may have left it in Germany.

disgu 5y ago

Are you being serious? The Roman Empire covered Germany and it covered that specific part of Germany (Aschaffenburg) as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire

mkl 5y ago
Wrong link, I think: "Not to be confused with Roman Empire, Western Roman Empire, or Byzantine Empire." The actual Roman Empire seems to have only just reached Aschaffenburg.
mullen 5y ago
The "Holy Roman Empire" was neither Holy, Roman or an Empire.

Bayart 5y ago

> Odd, why is this Roman sculpture being returned to Germany? Because the museum was the rightful owner of the piece. > It’s obviously not a German artifact and while I might be wrong, I assume it was “looted” from Italy. To start with, Italy has been actively looted by Italians since at least the later part of the Middle Ages, but more actively from the Renaissance onwards. A lot of the pieces you see in other countries, and I'm quite certain this one fits the bill, were just traded privately between aristocrats for centuries. And that's assuming it's from Italy at all, it could just as well have been found in German soil. Germany happens to host a few major Roman cities.

JKCalhoun 5y ago

When I saw it I assumed it was of Charles Laughton from "I, Claudius".