-->Albright given ultimatum over stolen painting claims
By Tony Paterson, in Vienna
A WEALTHY Austrian family has issued an ultimatum to Madeleine
Albright, the US Secretary of State, and her relatives demanding that they
return valuable paintings alleged to have been taken as"war booty" from an
apartment in Prague. The family claims that paintings and other valuables
were taken by Mrs Albright's father when he worked for the Czechoslovak
government after the Second World War. The ultimatum, which is likely to
cause considerable embarrassment to Mrs Albright, was delivered last week by
Philip Harmer, head of a well-to-do family of former Austrian industrialists
and landowners. He has asked for some 20 17th- century Dutch paintings,
antique furniture and silver worth several million pounds to be returned by
May 15."I cannot believe that the Secretary of State of the US and her
brother and sister enjoy eating with my family's silver while surrounded by
my family's paintings and furniture. I find it impossible to believe that
they are not prepared to make amends for this injustice," said Philip Harmer,
who has been attempting to obtain the property from the Albrights for more
than three years. During an interview at his Vienna home last week, Mr
Harmer, a management consultant, said he had received numerous brush-offs
from lawyers representing the Albright family. But he added:"We are assuming
that the Albrights are honest people and that they will want to clear up this
matter as soon as possible." The alleged misappropriation took place in
Prague after the end of the Second World War. But the Albright family's
connection emerged only in 1996 when Mrs Albright - then American ambassador
to the UN - paid a flying visit to Prague and looked up her former family
home where she remembered living briefly aged 10 in late 1945. After the Red
Army liberated Czechoslovakia from Nazi occupation, the incoming Communist
government expelled more than three million Germans. Among the members of the
new Czech government was Madeleine Albright's father, Josef Korbel. In the
late summer of 1945 he returned to Prague with his family as a Czech foreign
ministry diplomat after spending the war years in exile in London and
learning that many of his Jewish relatives had perished in Hitler's
concentration camps."Josef Korbel, his daughter Madeleine and the rest of
his family took up residence in our family apartment in Prague at 11
Hradsanke Street," explained Mr Harmer."Not one member of my family ever had
anything to do with the Nazis but the climate in Prague at the time was so
anti-German that my family had no option but to leave." Shortly afterwards Mr
Korbel is believed to have expropriated the Harmers' paintings, which had
been moved for safekeeping to an apartment belonging to the Swiss embassy in
Prague where Mr Harmer's great-aunt, a Swiss citizen by marriage, was living.
"Korbel saw the bare patches on the wall of our apartment where the paintings
had been hanging and demanded that the housekeepers tell him where they were.
He then went round to my great-aunt's flat and removed them," Mr Harmer said.
His allegations are backed up by a letter sent to Mrs Albright by Mr Harmer's
89-year-old great-grandmother Ruth Harmer-Nebrich:"Your father did not care.
He threatened my sister in a very nasty way and as she was a rather weak and
sick person she did not resist and so the paintings had to be brought back to
the place where he had moved in at 11 Hradsanke Street," she wrote."When
your family moved to Belgrade, Mr Korbel took every single item with him..
. He also took valuable silver and bedlinen that Jewish families had asked us
to keep for them during the Nazi occupation." Mr Harmer said that after Mr
Korbel had taken up a job as a Czech diplomat in Belgrade in late 1945, he
decided to return to London before finally emigrating with his family to
America."We are fairly sure that Korbel persuaded the British embassy in
Belgrade to shift our paintings to London as diplomatic baggage which would
have escaped any examination by customs," he said. Mr Harmer is certain that
although Mr Korbel may have sold some of the paintings on arrival in America,
several of the artworks are in the homes of Mrs Albright's younger brother
John Korbel in Arlington, Virginia, and her sister Kathy. Shortly after he
began approaching the US State Department, he was referred to the lawyer
Michael Jaffe, representing John Korbel. But Mr Harmer's initially cordial
correspondence met with a rebuff."Given the lack of evidence of ownership by
Mrs Nebrich of the items in question and the strong evidence that they were
expropriated by the Czechoslovak authorities, we can only conclude that your
family does not have any claim against our client," Mr Jaffe wrote. However,
Mr Harmer says the Czech authorities have no evidence that the paintings were
confiscated. He also says he has recently obtained important evidence
concerning the whereabouts of the paintings, supplied by the American
journalist Michael Dobbs who is due to publish a biography of Mrs Albright
this month. Mr Dobbs interviewed John Korbel at his home and was apparently
able to identify two of the paintings. The works by the Dutch 17th-century
painters Ludolf Backhuysen and Hendrik Van Steenwyck were said to be hanging
in Mr Korbel's living room. Mr Korbel is also said to have admitted to Mr
Dobbs that his sister Kathy had another painting formerly belonging to his
father. Mr Korbel insisted that Mrs Albright had none at her home in
Washington. Mr Korbel also dismissed suggestions that the paintings had been
stolen. He maintained that his father would have either paid for them or was
given them by the Czech government in recognition of his services. However Mr
Harmer rejects the justification he says Mrs Albright's father gave at the
time."Josef Korbel just told my great-aunt 'these are tough times' when he
took away the family paintings," Mr Harmer said."It was understandable
considering what the Nazis did to his family, but it was not necessarily
right."
9 February 1999: Disturbing enigma of Madeleine Albright
<ul> ~ The Prague Post</ul>
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