4 ms·

“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

by conk 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
  Possession and sale of stolen goods is not legal, just not a crime unless you are aware it's stolen/likely stolen.
  - judge2020 4y 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 4y 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-...
  - adastra22 4y ago
    Well by that logic it was stolen by the person who dug it up in Italy. After all, there’s someone walking around Italy today that is the heir to this sculpture. You have to draw the line somewhere.
    - wegwerfbenutzer 4y ago
      How do you know it was dug up in Italy? It could also be from the following countries: At its zenith, the Roman Empire included these today's countries and territories: most of Europe (England, Wales, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, Gibraltar, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine), coastal northern Africa (Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt), the Balkans (Albania, Greece, Hungary, Bosnia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Turkey), the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, Asia Minor, and some parts of Mesopotamia and the Middle East (Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Israel).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Aeolun 4y 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.

by conk 4y ago

jart 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
Possession and sale of stolen goods is not legal, just not a crime unless you are aware it's stolen/likely stolen.
- judge2020 4y 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 4y 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-...
- adastra22 4y ago
  Well by that logic it was stolen by the person who dug it up in Italy. After all, there’s someone walking around Italy today that is the heir to this sculpture. You have to draw the line somewhere.
  - wegwerfbenutzer 4y ago
    How do you know it was dug up in Italy? It could also be from the following countries: At its zenith, the Roman Empire included these today's countries and territories: most of Europe (England, Wales, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, Gibraltar, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine), coastal northern Africa (Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt), the Balkans (Albania, Greece, Hungary, Bosnia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Turkey), the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, Asia Minor, and some parts of Mesopotamia and the Middle East (Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Israel).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Aeolun 4y 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.