A Swenson

From plunder to preservation: Britain and the heritage of empire, c.1800-1940

PART I: INTRODUCTION PART II: THE CLASSICAL WORLD PART III: THE BIBLICAL WORLD PART IV: EMPIRES AND CIVILISATIONS PART V: THE NEW WORLD

Looted Art and Restitution in the Twentieth Century – Towards a Global Perspective

Introducing the Journal of Contemporary History Special Issue ‘The Restitution of Looted Art in the 20th Century’, this article proposes a framework for writing the history of looting and restitution in transnational and global perspective. By comparing and contextualizing instances of looting and restitution in different geographical and temporal contexts, it aims to overcome existing historiographical fragmentations and move past the overwhelming focus on the specificities of Nazi looting through an extended timeframe that inserts the Second World War into a longer perspective from the nineteenth century up to present day restitution practices. Particular emphasis is put on the interlinked histories of denazification and decolonization. Problematizing existing analytical, chronological and geographical frameworks, the article suggests how a combination of comparative, entangled and global history approaches can open up promising new avenues of research. It draws out similarities, differences and connections between processes of looting and restitution in order to discuss the extent to which looting and restitution were shaped by – and shaped – changing global networks.

Cologne Cathedral as an International Monument

What would Cologne be without its cathedral? Visible for miles across the flatlands, its twin towers direct the visitor’s gaze skywards on arriving in the city. Designated a UNESCO world heritage site in 1996 as ‘an exceptional work of human creative genius’ and ‘a powerful testimony to the strength and persistence’ of Christian belief in Europe,2 the cathedral is Germany’s most popular building, with over six million visitors per year.3 It also holds an exceptional place in local sentiment. The city’s unofficial hymn Mer losse d’r Dom en Kolle (‘We will leave the cathedral in Cologne’) imagines the inhabitants standing ready to defend their cathedral from being taken away. It was composed against the city council’s plans to modernize historic quarters and relocate inhabitants in the 1970s. A play on the German saying ‘Die Kirche im Dorf lassen’, literally to ‘leave the church in the village’, and figuratively ‘not to be excessive’, the song satirized the council’s hubris by juxtaposing the idea of removing the cathedral to the suggestion of transplanting world famous sites from the Kremlin to the Louvre to Cologne, concluding: ‘it is better if things stay as they are, and we keep our beautiful cathedral’.4